A Killing Field for Journalists   

The war in Afghanistan—a land of gun-toting gangs and no central government or police force—is one of the most dangerous reporting assignments in modern times.

When TV producer Gary Scurka left the field hospital in Afghanistan, he carried grim reminders of a brush with death in a region where decaying corpses, millions of land mines and roving bands of killers are part of the landscape. His ordeal began with the bone-chilling whistle of an incoming artillery shell.

Razor-sharp slivers of steel remained embedded in his leg, along with two holes the size of quarters. Two small wounds marked the spot where shrapnel tore into his chest as Taliban gunners found their mark on the rocky ridge that afternoon. When the veteran journalist returned to the United States, he passed through customs carrying a passport splattered with his own blood.

Despite the terror of the moment and the pain, Scurka, 50, counts himself lucky. That same day, November 11, three foreign journalists were killed during a daring nighttime venture into contested territory with opposition Northern Alliance forces. Scurka, who works for National Geographic television, knows he was milliseconds away from having his name added to the roster of the dead.

At AJR's deadline, eight journalists had been killed in Afghanistan--all within a 17-day period, the profession's heaviest death toll in such a short amount of time in recent memory.

So far, the fighting in Afghanistan has proven deadlier for the media than for American and British commandos stalking al Qaeda terrorists or for pilots making hundreds of bombing runs. By mid-December, three American soldiers had been confirmed dead. One CIA operative was killed November 25 during an uprising among Taliban prisoners in Mazar-e Sharif in the north.

The war in Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous assignments in modern times. Journalists' accounts abound with nerve-racking close calls in a lawless land ruled by gun-toting warlords, tribal chiefs and gangs of renegade Taliban fighters. There is no central government, no recognized police force, no single person or group in charge of quelling the chaos.

Adding to the risks, locals know foreign correspondents are walking ATMs. In a region where credit cards are useless, they come in loaded with cash for transportation, lodging, food, fuel, generators, fixers, bodyguards and other necessities. They also carry highly prized satellite telephones, computers, digital cameras and Western-style watches.

When the bodies of the three killed on November 11 were recovered, colleagues found them stripped of all valuables. Clothing worn by Volker Handloik of Germany's Stern magazine was slashed open, apparently in a search for his money belt. On November 27, Swedish cameraman Ulf Stroemberg was shot in the heart during a robbery in a home where he was staying in the northern city of Taloqan.

Gary Scurka calls Afghanistan "a killing field for the media." While there, he heard that Taliban fighters put out the word that "journalists are going to be killed on the spot."

"It was meant to scare--another form of terrorism," he says. The international press corps likely is targeted because it is viewed as a symbol of the coalition that brought about the Taliban's demise.

Evidence that journalists are being singled out is mounting. In early December, 10 wounded soldiers rigged as human bombs on a final mission showed up at a hospital for treatment. An astute Northern Alliance commander became suspicious, and the men, all non-Afghani Taliban fighters, were taken prisoner. They had planned to kill foreign journalists or top commanders, according to a doctor at the scene.

Around the same time, reports surfaced in the Western press that Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar was offering a bounty of $50,000 to any Afghan gunmen who kill a Western journalist.

The bottom line: There are no Pentagon press pools, no United Nations peacekeepers to run interference, no neutral territories. For the media, there is no safety zone.

Scurka and other journalists have found that bonding with colleagues affords the best chance of survival. He has high praise for Tim Friend of USA Today and Kevin Stiles of NBC, who braved artillery fire to stop his bleeding and drag him to a trench. "They didn't panic; they didn't run," Scurka says. "Any second after I got hit, another shell could have landed right on top of us. All they thought of was saving me."

Camaraderie has become a vital commodity, perhaps even more essential than flak jackets and helmets, for beleaguered journalists operating in a country where anarchy reigns and killers blend in with the spice vendors in ancient bazaars.

In an essay sparked by the death of Aziz Haidari, a photographer for Reuters executed along with three other journalists on November 19, Pamela Constable of the Washington Post paid tribute to the collaborative spirit among her peers. "In the process, our competitive instincts have been replaced by a spirit of platoon-like solidarity," she wrote. "We are sharing information rather than keeping it to ourselves, traveling in groups, checking on each other's whereabouts. None of us expects to die here, but we are no longer sure our passports and sophisticated gadgetry will protect us. We need each other."

Constable was riding in a Jeep that trailed behind the death cars that day. Stopping for a bathroom break, she says, might have saved her life as she headed in a convoy from Jalalabad to Kabul.

At a notorious pass known as the "black ridge," six heavily armed men stopped two of the cars and ordered the four journalists out. At first they threw stones and marched them toward a small gorge. Then they beat them with rifle butts.

Eyewitnesses, including an interpreter who escaped after begging for the journalists' lives, say they were executed in cold blood, most likely by roving Taliban.

Despite all the precautions, including hiring bodyguards and local fixers who provide reconnaissance and help assess danger as fluid hot zones shift, the risks remain high. Longtime New York Times correspondent John F. Burns, who earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for documenting the rise of the Taliban, issues an apocalyptic warning: "In my judgment, there is a significant risk of death down virtually every road out of every city of Afghanistan right now."

Burns wasn't surprised when the journalists and an Afghan traveling with them were murdered at the pass along the Jalalabad-Kabul route. "This has been the single most dangerous place in the country for the past 23 years, since the communist takeover," he says. "It is an obvious ambush point, like a gulch in a Wild West movie that everybody wants to avoid."

Deciding when to venture into danger often hinges on balancing two questions: How big is the story? And how serious are the risks? Journalists in Afghanistan gather in coffee shops and hotel lobbies and around campfires to muse about these choices deep into the night. "You can make a lot of calculations, but in the end, it's unknowable," says Burns.

A veteran of the wars in the Balkans, he points out that videophones, lightweight laptops and satellite telephones tend to drive the media deeper into the trenches for longer periods of time than in the past. With the new technology, they can talk to editors back home and file stories on the spot in combat zones rather than returning to the relative safety of a city under Northern Alliance control. "It has completely changed the map of daily war coverage," he says.

The New York Times' bureau chief pauses for a moment as the static on the telephone line clears, then adds: "There is absolutely no way to travel in Afghanistan that is acceptably safe today."

In this war, embarking on a terror-filled journey that pushes human endurance to the limit often is the only avenue to what some are calling "the story of a lifetime" or the "World Series" of assignments. Keith B. Richburg of the Washington Post might have frozen to death in a blizzard if it hadn't been for an old nag named Khazil.

In early November, Richburg and Post photographer Lucian Perkins set out on a harrowing climb along a treacherous mountain pass to gain access to a remote front-line position. The reporter described it this way: "The snow and ice were driving down hard, like daggers on our exposed faces. The temperatures had dropped below freezing, and icicles were forming on our eyebrows and noses. But our 12-horse team forged ahead, guided through the blinding blizzard by Afghan trackers on foot."

Richburg's account says that "of all the dumb things reporters have done to get a story, this definitely was one of the dumbest." That did not keep him from crossing "narrow, rock-strewn, crater-marked roads snaking along mountainsides, with sharp turns skirting sheer drops of several thousand feet."

Horses, rented for $60 per day, were the only chance of making it through the pass to the Panjshir Valley. "There was the danger of simply falling off the horse from exhaustion and being stranded at 14,000 feet in freezing conditions. There was the danger that the horse might miss a step in the blinding sleet and snow, and send himself and his rider hurtling down a half-mile drop. And then there were the wolves, baying in the distance," wrote Richburg.

The reporter clung to Khazil, and afterward, his clothes, soaked from the ice, were frozen to the blankets that served as a saddle.

Upon arrival in the Panjshir Valley, he immediately began planning an exit strategy to avoid being trapped until the spring thaw. He learned that Northern Alliance helicopters occasionally flew into the area and added his name to a waiting list with 190 other correspondents.

Journalists often are guided by an instinct to head for forbidden territory in pursuit of elusive and important stories. In Afghanistan, the quest to gain greater access, verify secondhand information and act as an eyewitness can be a death sentence.

The nightmare of November 11, in which three journalists were killed, began with a Northern Alliance commander heading out to claim victory over a strategic ridge after a bloody battle. Despite the common wisdom to never travel after sunset, reporters jumped onto an armored personnel carrier to record the aftermath of the fighting.

Paul McGeough of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald was one of the survivors. He described how the personnel carrier was rambling along, loaded with other journalists and Northern Alliance fighters, when explosions ignited in three directions. As the driver doused the lights and headed down a slope, Taliban troops opened up with fire from assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

A day later, McGeough told his readers: "There has to be measured response to the death of these colleagues. We are here by choice and we all took the calculated risk of riding off into the night with Bashir [the Northern Alliance commander]. I didn't really know any of the three, but in this business you instinctively come to rely on some people."

Chronicling brushes with violence has become common fare among journalists in Afghanistan. Alissa Rubin of the Los Angeles Times saw her chance to report from Afghanistan firsthand when she finally gained permission to visit the border town of Spin Boldak, a longtime smugglers' haven then controlled by the Taliban.

On the drive in, angry Afghans attacked Rubin's vehicle and someone threw a rock, shattering a window and causing minor cuts. It happened so quickly she didn't have time to be afraid. "Because we were Western, we were assumed to be rich," she says. "They didn't pull us out [of the car]. We weren't killed."

Her spirits lifted temporarily when Taliban officials announced that they might arrange a convoy into Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home, to show reporters the suffering of civilians caused by the U.S.-led bombing campaign. Then, suddenly, the mood in Spin Boldak turned ugly.

A mob of increasingly menacing local men perched on top of the walls of the compound where the journalists were bivouacked. Some attempted to swarm through the gates to get at the Westerners. Citing security concerns, the Taliban ordered the more than 100 international journalists to leave the country and cross back into Pakistan.

Assessing risk, says Rubin, is the most difficult--and stressful--part of this assignment. "Every single day there is a whole series of very difficult judgment calls," she says. "The safe thing is not to venture out at all, but as journalists, we cannot accept that."

Some hedge their bets by paying locals to travel the route ahead of them to assess the risk. But, says Rubin, who is still relatively new to war reporting, "No matter how many precautions we take, you can't know for sure."

As danger for journalists mounted in Central Asia, foreign desk editors back home agonized about how to help keep their correspondents safe. The murder of the eighth journalist on November 27 sparked a brief media retreat, as several news operations pulled personnel out of northern Afghanistan. Some editors set guidelines to help their people on the scene make wiser decisions.

"We stress that nothing happening there is so important, so exclusive, that they should risk their lives or injury to get a story," says Elisa Tinsley, USA Today's world editor. Still, there is always a certain amount of fear when her telephone rings at 1 a.m. and she learns that journalists have been executed.

"You can tell them that safety is paramount and that they should take all precautions, but you also have to pray," she says.

For her reporter Tim Friend, it might have been prayer or a bit of good luck that saved him on November 11. He was standing next to Gary Scurka on the ridge when the shriek of an incoming shell signaled disaster.

Friend, 46, a science writer covering his first war, had heard from veterans about the cone of silence, an eerie quiet that occurs before the impact. That's how he knew the artillery shell was headed right for them. "Before we could dive for cover, the concussion from the explosion just 75 feet away knocked us to the ground," he recalls. "There was a moment when I didn't know if I would get it or not. As soon as I realized I was OK and not bleeding, I focused on what had to be done at the time to stabilize Gary and get out of there."

The reporter, who once had been a surgical assistant, helped bandage Scurka's wounds and move his colleague out of the line of fire just minutes before a second shell hit. A few days later, he was back out in the field with Northern Alliance fighters, driving through minefields and scouring Taliban trenches abandoned only hours before.

"I had a bulletproof vest, which I put on the floorboard beneath my feet in case we did hit a mine," Friend says. At the entry to the death zone, there was a muddy road that suddenly vanished, leaving only deeply rutted tire tracks marking the safe route. Finally, they were on their own to pick carefully through one of the most heavily mined areas of the country.

"I don't want to sound cold, but the key is to make sure there is somebody else walking in front of you, usually from the Northern Alliance," he says. "That's one of the ways journalists stay alive." Friend made a point of hiring a sturdy, newer model Jeep and experienced help. His driver, who doubles as a bodyguard, was once an elite commando with the Northern Alliance.

Friend's trek through the minefield paid off in an A-section story about miles of recently abandoned Taliban trenches where tea leaves still were damp, signaling a quick retreat. He also found the carcass of a roasted mouse, evidence that supplies were not getting through, and dozens of empty bottles of cough suppressant.

He described how the Northern Alliance fighters moved cautiously through the tunnels, probing the ground with long sticks in a search for mines or booby traps.

After weathering a dust storm with 100-mile-per-hour winds that kept him trapped inside a tiny tent for six hours, a flash flood that destroyed his computer, and the near-miss on the ridge, Tim Friend has no hesitation about staying in Afghanistan.

"In fact, I am looking forward to it," says the reporter, who has been bartering Starbuck's coffee, brought from the United States, with journalists in exchange for bottled water and other supplies.

After losing his equipment in the rushing waters, he wrote stories by hand and dictated via satellite telephone. There was good news, he said in December. He finally was getting rid of a chest infection brought on by inhaling sand, as fine as baby powder, during a storm his second day in the country. At one point during the interview from his rented house in Kabul, Friend swore loudly as gunfire crackled in the background. "In order to get a good phone connection, I have to stand out on the balcony high up. You feel a little bit exposed at night," he says.

Like Friend, Gary Scurka, also covering his first war, recalls in stark detail what happened on the ridge that afternoon when he came within inches of dying. He describes the impact of an explosion that slammed him to the ground and left him feeling as if he had been clubbed by a baseball bat. "At first, I thought my leg was blown off," he said from his office at National Geographic. Warm blood soaked his jeans as the Northern Alliance responded with their own artillery.

In a fog of searing pain and fear, he was dragged to a trench before the next round hit. He remembers hearing the voice of a colleague telling fighters who were attempting to assist him, "We'll take care of him. He is one of our own."

Scurka carries his bloodstained passport as a reminder "of how close journalists are coming to death over there" every day. Yet he'd return in a heartbeat.

"Yes, I would," he says. "Frankly, it's more important, especially with these journalists being killed. I want to go back because it is the place to be in the world today. It's the place where the story is."

Senior writer Sherry Ricchiardi wrote about coverage of the anthrax scare in AJR's December issue.