‘Another ghost who had haunted me was a Chechen mother, begging to borrow my driver to take her son to a hospital. A cluster bomb had blown up next to her house in a rebel-held town called Shali that was coming under regular attack from advancing Russian troops. On this sunny winter afternoon a spray of shrapnel had pierced a thousand holes in her fence, hitting her 15-year-old son. His body, still warm but clearly dead, was lying in the middle of the yard and there was no point in taking him anywhere.
“Please take him to the hospital, he is wounded,” she was insisting. Her husband shook his head and told us to leave.
“Stop it, Fatima. We don’t need a car. He is dead.”
‘Back in the 1990s I lived in or near the war zones I would cover. My husband and virtually all my friends were war reporters. It seemed the most normal sort of life. We would respond to the traumatic things we saw by drinking harder, popping Valium, making wild jokes and driving too fast. Mostly, we would respond to the pressure of work with more work – the relentless logistical task of creating television in the most remote and dangerous parts of the world. We became hyper-competitive, almost manic. And if we couldn’t stop the war or protect its vulnerable victims, we could still achieve victories by getting video images to air faster than the competition, track down a guerrilla commander for an exclusive interview, take an extra risk, go someplace the other guys wouldn’t go. Some of my friends got killed doing the job, some of them cracked up and quit. Some of them are still out there, living life in just the same way.
‘By the time I met Aneta, I was older and perhaps wiser, now living in London with a child of my own. I’d still go out into the field on assignment, but I’d struggle to summon the same mad passion to get the story at all costs. In between missions I’d be back at home with a mortgage to pay, schoolteachers to meet, rose bushes to prune and a leaking roof to fix. There isn’t much point in talking about Aneta’s choice at parties I go to. It would ruin the atmosphere. But Aneta’s story is still present in my life of buying groceries and walking the dog.
‘I kept recalling many other terrible events as a tool to get Aneta’s words and pain out of my head. It was not working. I must have gone soft with age. Or possibly since I had become a mother I appreciated more the value of human life: now I knew what it takes to make and raise a person. I also projected what would it be like to lose my own child. How helpless, stupid and humiliating it would feel not being able to protect your kid from the dangers of the world. The unforgettable look of a parent who lost their kids and basically their future would stay with me forever.
‘I analysed my reaction over and over again. The fact was, I had trouble handling Aneta’s pain. It had now become mine. So I contacted CNN’s psychiatrist on call, who told me that it was a normal reaction to a traumatic event. And if the symptoms continued after three weeks, I should call him back.
‘Aneta’s story was nominated for prizes, including an Emmy. It felt nothing like the victories we achieved in the old days in the field, standing out in the cold rejoicing after transmitting exclusive pictures of a gun battle that our competitors couldn’t match. The Emmy awards ceremony, attended by rich executives and TV personalities in Manhattan, left me dazed and feeling guilty. Aneta had been forced to abandon her child to die, and here I was being fêted at one of the TV world’s most prestigious parties. Producers from New York studios were credited in our nomination, as if it was some kind of outstanding accomplishment to include in their nightly news broadcast the report we sent them about Aneta’s grief.
‘In New York I recounted Aneta’s story to an old friend. Her six-year-old son overheard us and asked his mother whether she would save him or his sister if it happened to them. The question, asked in a quiet Brooklyn townhouse, seemed meaningless and bizarre.
‘Some months after the siege, I went back to Beslan to do a follow-up report. Watching the town come to grips with its enormous grief helped me to heal my own wound. But it took a few more years for me to stop crying every time I told the story. I still have Aneta Godjieva’s mobile number in my phone and we talk occasionally, about once a year.
‘Although her hair is now completely grey, she looks good. And little Milena, the infant she saved that day she made her choice, has grown a lot.’
When the trauma experienced after leaving a war zone or disaster doesn’t resolve, it can become what doctors like to call a mental disorder. But thinking in advance about what might happen can make it worse. It’s a bit like taking magic mushrooms: if you worry about having a bad trip, this will increase the odds of that bad trip becoming a reality. James Brandon
/Postscript by Jon Swain
It was Jon Swain’s stark account of his time covering the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia from 1970 to 1975 that sent me catapulting into journalism. I wanted to see the world through his eyes, as depicted in his book River of Time. Within a month of my moving to Basra, he turned up and I was assigned by the Sunday Times to be his local fixer. I would have fixed anything for this man, but he knew when a story was a story, and he knew when to say no. He told me to trust my instincts and if I was going to be brave, to write brave journalism – don’t be stupid. Then one day I went to meet him in the hotel and he was gone. But his early support and advice have stayed with me ever since. He offers the following insights:
‘It was my godfather, who had won a Military Cross with the Eighth Army in North Africa, who warned me that the most dangerous time in war was nearly always the first few weeks. The newcomer was prone to inordinate risk-taking, convinced he was invincible and that the bullets splitting the air were always intended for someone else.
‘I have never forgotten his advice and even now, decades and many wars later, I try to apply it every time I go into a new combat zone. Each conflict is different and has its own lethal idiosyncrasies. Because you have become a veteran of one battle zone does not equip you to be competent in handling the risks of another.
‘The best example of this was the war in Cambodia between 1970 and 1975, when the press corps, of which I was a part, lost a higher percentage of its own than in any other conflict, and that includes Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1970, 26 foreign reporters and photographers were killed out of a tiny press corps of about 60. Between 1971 and the war’s end (with the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom Penh) a further 12 foreign and local Cambodian journalists were killed, and a further 32 were killed or disappeared under the Khmer Rouge.
‘Quite a number of the 26 foreign reporters and photographers who were killed in the first months of 1970 were seasoned in conflict, having come from covering the war in Vietnam. But although Cambodia was just next door, the war was very different. In Vietnam we usually attached ourselves to an American or South Vietnamese military unit and travelled to military operations by helicopter. The helicopter was the taxi to the war, and the conflict was less fluid than in Cambodia, where there were no front lines.
‘In Cambodia the usual way to see the war was to go by car down roads that could change almost at any time from government to Khmer Rouge control. So timing and being aware of danger signs were critical to survival.
‘Of course, one was careful not to drive through pot-holes, which might conceal landmines. But sometimes that was unavoidable. It was important not to be the first vehicle down the road in the morning, when you were more likely to hit a mine or be ambushed. It was important to talk to local people and get a feel for what lay ahead.
‘And the golden rule was not to push it too hard, particularly if the peasants working in the fields on either side of the road were no longer there. This was a sure sign of a danger.
‘In addition, one learnt never to be on the road too late in the day. As the afternoons wore on, government troops would melt away, back to their outposts, and the insurgent Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese communists would move in.
‘In 1970, fresh from the big war in Vietnam, some reporters and photographers were perhaps ill equipped to judge these risks and were killed. On one black day – 31 M
ay 1970 – television crews for CBS and NBC, with eight foreigners and one Cambodian, were killed on Route Three, 34 miles from Phnom Penh. The first CBS vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and one of the journalists was shot trying to get out of the burning car. The occupants in the second CBS car and the entire NBC crew were taken prisoner and later beaten and shot to death.
‘And so it went on.
‘For me, one of the lessons of these tragedies was that none of us is safe. In recent wars, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western journalists have decided that they are being targeted in a way that never happened before, and that somehow the notion that their job as non-combatant observers should protect them has been violated. My experience in Cambodia meant I have never held to this view. I have always assumed that we could be targets for a whole variety of reasons, and have been prepared to act accordingly. You have to be prepared to accept that there is someone out there who wants to kill you.
‘I don’t think that having a white skin or being a journalist accords one any special protection or privileges in a war zone. But I have found that being a white man has on occasions saved my skin. In East Timor, renegade militia hesitated to shoot me and a colleague because they realized it was a big thing to kill a white man rather than one of their own. It gave us enough time to make a bolt for it and survive. Obviously, in Cambodia that did not apply. Indeed, on the day that Phnom Penh fell I and two other Western journalists were on the point of being executed by the Khmer Rouge, who had captured us for the very reason that we were Westerners. Our lives were saved by a Cambodian interpreter, Dith Pran – the story told in the movie The Killing Fields.
In Ethiopia, where I was kidnapped for three months, it also helped that I was a Westerner, I think. And there was a horrible occasion once in the Congo, when an angry Angolan major pushed an AK-47 rifle hard into my neck but hesitated to squeeze the trigger long enough for others to calm him down and allow me to get away.
‘So you have to follow your instincts. Be prepared for each situation to be different.
‘If you are in a soft-skin car that is under sustained fire, like in an ambush, get out of it quickly, as I did in East Timor. It is difficult, but staying inside will certainly get you killed.
‘Listen to those more experienced than you. I was fortunate in Cambodia and Vietnam to have around me very experienced journalists, some of whom had fought as soldiers in World War II, and they were generous with their advice of what to look out for in the field, where to go, where to hide in a firefight, all these things.
‘I tended to drive myself to war because I did not want to put my life in the hands of another colleague. Also, travelling in a car with other journalists can sometimes be more dangerous, as being together can turn them into courage snobs and they lose perspective. I know of incidents of this, some fatal. No one wants to be the first to buckle and say we have gone too far, this is too dangerous, admit he or she is afraid and say to the others, “Let’s get out of here”.
‘Much better to know your own capabilities. The drawback is that if something happens to you, there may be nobody to help or tell the tale.
‘Never lose your temper with locals who are threatening you, but at the same time do not be so craven that it is easy for them to shoot you before any others. And don’t argue if you are held up over trivial things. I remember a German who was shot dead by rebels in the Congo because he refused to hand over the keys to his Mercedes, which he had saved up for and just bought. It was brand new, but he was silly. He would be alive now to buy another if he had given up the keys. He had lost his perspective and it proved fatal.
‘There is no special talisman I take into the field. But I do generally have some personal photographs with me. These pictures are anchoring. They attach you to your real life, and they can also help to break the ice with potential enemies. They show that you too are a human being, not just a cipher to get rid of with a bullet or a bash on the head. When I was kidnapped in Ethiopia the first thing I did was to step out and very deliberately shake the hand of my kidnapper, who was training his AK-47 on me. It made him deflect his weapon and helped break the ice. Later I showed my kidnappers a picture of my girlfriend. It all helped.
‘There is no point in being a journalist if it destroys your humanity so that you put the story above everything, even a person’s life. You cannot help everyone, of course, in a war situation or a natural disaster. But you should always be ready to help with a little money or food.
‘I constantly marvel at how the poorest and most desperate people, say the victims of an earthquake who have lost absolutely everything, including their family and homes, talk to you, a complete stranger, and ask for nothing in return. It is very humbling and good to help them.
‘On occasion, I have made some mistakes, pushed the envelope too far, especially when I was in Cambodia and Vietnam, but fortunately not to the point of being wounded or getting a colleague wounded or killed. Such situations remind me of my mortality. I vow never to put myself in such a situation again, but inevitably it can happen, and I must always steel myself for it and be prepared.
‘Coming back from a combat zone is tricky. Usually, I have to write a story, so am under a lot of pressure. That is a good thing. I isolate myself so that I can retain the authenticity of the experience, even to the point when I was in Vietnam or Cambodia of not washing the muck off myself or changing my clothes until I had written the piece. It’s no good making oneself too comfortable.
‘You feel exhilarated to be alive after going through so much fear. Perhaps broken too because of what you have seen and experienced. It’s important to realize that these things are natural reactions to the exceptional situations you have gone through. Living on the edge of death can also make love and sex more real and intense. It isn’t necessarily true, but making love certainly helps.
‘I think that no one who sees a lot of combat and misery comes back from it in one piece. Trauma is cumulative. See the signs before it really damages you and, if necessary, get help.’
/Postscript by Wadah Khanfar
Wadah Khanfar is the director-general of Al Jazeera, having worked his way up from cameraman, reporter, correspondent and Baghdad bureau chief. He has worked in many war zones and picked up solid ideas on how to go about your job and life while surrounded by danger. Anyone who has ever met him will tell you that to hear him speak is an inspiration. Here’s what he had to say when I asked him how he has avoided getting killed in a war zone:
‘There is nothing more important than understanding the area where you are going. You cannot go anywhere without understanding what the people stand for – what their ideology is and how they understand the ideology around them. You need to understand how their perceptions differ from yours.
‘You should not be discovering people and their background at the point where you meet them for the first time. Your understanding should be deep and specific, not superficial. Most of the time we have a general idea, but you need details.
‘You can read. But there are sources of knowledge that are more important than a few articles or a book recommended to you.
‘History is important – it tells us what people believe and how they will react a thousand years in advance. It might look like chaos now, but if we really understand the history – and I mean a long way back – we discover that today is actually just a repeat. It is often true that new and apparently radical groups often look back to history for how to navigate their way.
‘The second most important thing is religion. The people you meet will have different religious perceptions and sensitivities. That will affect the way they interact with people. Sometimes you can save yourself by referring to a religious or historical value that appeals to the person you are talking to.
‘The third most important thing is respect – a visitor should not be a judge. If you are a journalist, you should not try to put your own print on reality. Look for the familiar, but accept the differences and respect an
d reflect them.
‘Approach people with innocence. Never assume a group you are approaching will be against you. Approach people in a confident manner. If you go in with fear or expecting trouble, you will get into trouble.
‘Afghanis are a particularly complicated case. If you don’t understand their history and religion, and fail to show respect, you are going to be in trouble. There is a story I always refer to when thinking about Afghanis and how they work.
‘I was in Shemari valley, about 60 kilometres from Kabul, covering a story. We climbed one of the mountains, trying to reach an area where we knew we could make a story about landmines. There we found two soldiers who belonged to the Northern Alliance. They were living in a destroyed house. The temperature was minus something. The people had nothing and were not happy to see three journalists approaching. They were nervous, thinking we were a threat. They had never seen or had to interact with a journalist. The first thing we did was to greet them in their language, then ask how they were. Their clothes were torn, they had no food. I was talking to them on a human-to-human level. They were not guards any more – they were just people. The first 20 minutes was a conversation about themselves…their family situation, their happiness. This made them think we were open and alive on a human perspective.
‘As a human you can always establish some kind of communication. We explained our mission. And they helped us film the area and explained the story. When we wanted to leave they refused to let us go back. They insisted we stay for food. They said no guest could leave without food. They were passionate and determined, and I agreed to stay. They had nothing – just water and green tea. One of them ran away to search the nearest village for some food. He came back 30 minutes later with some giant, thick brown Afghani bread, freshly baked. They prepared a picnic for us with the green tea. These people had started out scared and distant, thinking we were enemies, but ended up so excited to have been able to give their guests something to eat, with pride. When I returned to the area a week later I took some small things for the guards. They were offended that I thought the relationship was reciprocal and refused the gifts.
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