Last week, I attended an unusual event called the Courage
Forum at which half a dozen speakers, from tightrope artist Philippe Petit and
Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal to Virgin founder and chairman Richard
Branson, talked about about overcoming fear.
CPJ was asked to suggest a journalist to speak at the
event, one who embodied courage. For me, that’s The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson. Jon Lee has covered wars from
Afghanistan to Somalia, but as he noted in his remarks he is no adrenaline
junkie. His dispatches are beautiful chronicles from ugly places; they are full
of empathy and humanity.
In his speech at the courage event, Jon Lee noted that
“to tell the story of our times, a journalist has got to go to wars. It is
unlikely that any side in a war is going to tell the whole truth and nothing
but the truth. Without journalists there to document and analyze the
conflicts, how are we to know and understand?”
His prepared remarks are below.
“When I received the invitation I was told I was invited to
speak because of the supposed courage I show by working in the conflict zones
of the world. That was a cause for some introspection on my part. But, in
fact, people often ask me why I go to wars.
“I usually say that it is so that I can document the history
of my time. As a child I dreamt of being a witness to the times of my
life. Reporting, as a journalist, has given me that opportunity. But
there is, I confess, another reason, too. It is not, as many think, a war
addiction or an adrenaline fix.
“I was born in the postwar 1950‘s, after World War II and
Korea, and I came of age during one of America’s most traumatizing
wars: Vietnam. I think I cover conflicts because I am an American who
has grown up in many countries around the world at a time when my country was
at the apogee of its superpower status. In my lifetime, my country—rightly
or wrongly, and for better or worse—has defined itself in much of the world as
a military power, and an interventionist one at that, known for sending in
troops wherever and whenever it perceives threats: from Grenada and Panama to
Iraq and Afghanistan, or in more covert roles in many other places around the
world. In all of the countries were America has intervened, or aided and
abetted proxy wars in the name of anti-communism or anti-terrorism—in Latin
America, in Africa, in the Middle East—very little has been done by the United
States to make amends for the damage that it has left behind. Truly, American
power often collides with American principles.
“So if I have gone to war it is because war has been the
defining ingredient of the times I live in. And the reason I keep going
is because I have found that I can find out things that no one else is telling
me, and which seem important. Perhaps it is a vain hope, but I suppose I do
cling to the notion that such knowledge can help us all and maybe even save
lives.
“A couple of years ago, in Baghdad, I met a man named Ali.
He had embarked on a killing spree to avenge his brother who had been murdered
by militiamen of his own sect a few months earlier. Ali had vowed before
God to kill 10 men for each of his dead brother’s fingers.
“Ali told me that he would not stop until he had killed 100 men,
whether members of the militia responsible, or if not, their brothers and
fathers. At that point he had killed 20. From each of his victims, he
informed me, he sliced off a piece of their bodies—a hand, a toe, an eyeball,
an Adam’s apple—and took it to his mother, who then travelled to the gravesite
of her son, Ali’s brother, and buried the pieces in the soil next to him.
“Ali’s mother confirmed the story. She told me that as she
buried the pieces she spoke to her dead son and told him the name of the latest
man’s life taken by Ali to avenge his death. Ali said to me that ever
since he had begun his revenge killings he no longer felt any fear, and he felt
closer to God. God, Ali told me, approved of what he was doing because the
men he was killing were evil and did not deserve to live.
“What made Ali’s story so disturbing was that he was also a
secret collaborator of the American military forces in Iraq. He called in
targets against the militiamen in his neighborhood for the American troops to
raid and capture.
“Ali’s blood vengeance — endorsed by and participated in by
his mother — came out of old, deep-seated tribal traditions of honor that
predate their religion, Islam, but which has become suffused with it. The
Americans who paid him had no understanding of Iraq’s culture. And that was the
terrifying truth: They were colluding with a serial killer in order to
end a war, and who knew what the effects of that would be? They didn’t, and we
still don’t. Like a mutating gene, human history keeps moving on, accumulating
its own DNA which continues to show up in what we do and how we behave.
“Ali’s story is extreme, maybe, but is not an isolated
case. Revenge is a concept that, to a greater or lesser degree, is
universal. Revenge is one of the keys to understanding war itself. Once
the killing starts, it becomes very difficult to stop, for every drop of blood
that is shed demands another to avenge it. When President Bush declared
the “War on Terror” after 9/11 and then invaded Iraq, it would seem that he
unwittingly opened Pandora’s Box to further war, which continues unabated.
“Though troop withdrawals are now scheduled for Iraq, that
country is still a seriously disturbed place. And in Afghanistan and
neighboring Pakistan it seems likely that a lot of fighting must still take
place before there is anything like peace or stability. However well
these wars ultimately end for the United States and its proxies, their legacies
will be long-lasting.
“Again, Ali’s story is just one example of the submerged
parallel universe that the United States blunderedinto
when it invaded Iraq and then bogged down in bewildered fighting. But it
illustrates how the American government has often been ignorant of what
some of their darker policies really meant, and therefore, ultimately, of their
consequences, too.
“There is an old Somali proverb which says that “when
elephants fight, the grass is trampled.” The United States, as the
most powerful country on earth, is like an elephant and whatever it does sends
shock waves around the world. The effects of those shocks affect all of our
lives. In today’s globalized economy, it affects how you do business. Like it
or not, it also affects what our families’ futures look like.
“If I can say two things with absolute certainty it is,
first, that there will be more wars. In my lifetime we have been at
perpetual war for perpetual peace.
“And second, all wars leave wounds that take many years to
heal. In fact, the healing usually takes much longer than the actual
duration of the wars.
“But no matter where they are, and no matter how long they
last, somebody has to be there to watch, to document, to analyze, to make
everyone see and understand. So I go to wars.
“Everyone in the world has an opinion about Americans, of
course, and nowadays it is often negative. The election of President Obama
brought us a short respite on the negativity, but it was a brief bubble, alas. Sometimes
the negativity is justifiable, but just as frequently it is based on false
information or conspiracy theories that flourish paradoxically more than ever
in today’s age of instant and constant global communication.
“How many times have I heard that the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan are wars waged by Jews and Christians against the Muslim
world. This perception is what has helped turn the conflict that began as
a reprisal attack against terrorists into something like a clash of
civilizations.
“One of the most common misconceptions I’ve encountered as a
journalist is the perception that the U.S. media was complicit with the
Pentagon in preparing the pretext for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and that
nowadays no real news emerges from those countries because it is all somehow
stage-managed propaganda orchestrated by the Pentagon working through its own ‘pet’ reporters.
“To combat these perceptions I have turned the question back
on my skeptical interrogators. I ask them: How did you learn about the American
abuses against Iraqi prisoners in the prison of Abu Ghraib? How do you know
about what happened in the prison in Guantanamo? To the blank looks I usually
receive I say, ‘You learned about them from journalists.’
“Millions of people persist in believing that Osama bin
Laden was a paid agent of the CIA before he turned against them, or that the
Jews who worked in the Twin Towers had prior knowledge and evacuated the
buildings before the 9/11 attacks, and that it was not Al-Qaeda but Mossad that
provoked the U.S. war against Islam—and so forth.
“But there is misinformation everywhere, some of it
deliberate, some of it simply misguided. Sadly, in spite of
globalized communications, many people continue to be isolated physically,
economically, or culturally, or really don’t seek any news that is contrary to
their own closed worldview. That happens in all our countries.
“We have learned at great cost, or perhaps are
beginning to learn at great cost, that history is never past, that we cannot simply
sweep it under the rug. The triumphalism that followed the collapse of the
Soviet Union allowed the untreated wounds of the Cold War to fester throughout
the ‘90s. The “Mission Accomplished” scene with President Bush on the deck
of an American aircraft carrier was meant to be a triumphal end, but it was
actually just a newer, more toxic, beginning.
“My point is this: To tell the story of our times, a
journalist has got to go to wars. It is unlikely that any side in a war
is going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Without
journalists there to document and analyze the conflicts, how are we to know and
understand?
“Without journalists taking risks to be there we compromise
our ability to understand the world at all. When I say understanding, it
is not simply a tale of boots on the ground, battles, or blood. We must
comprehend how these wars shape perceptions, and what effect those perceptions,
or misconceptions, will have on our lives.
“At this
time of economic crisis, when newspapers and magazines question their very
existence due to changing consumer patterns and the rise of the free Internet
technology, journalists talk fretfully about the still-elusive “economic model”
that will sustain the media and provide journalists with a livelihood. Many
wonder if what they do is still meaningful, or is offering anything of value to
the average citizen.
“If anyone
wonders about the value of the role of the media, go to Russia, where the
government and its henchmen murder journalists at will for the sole reason of
silencing them.
“In Mexico,
in Guatemala and in Honduras, journalists are regularly murdered, mostly
by drug traffickers—hugely
violent and powerful criminals at war with the state. Why do they murder
journalists? Because journalists can report the truth, and in a war, the truth
can hurt one’s own side and aid that of the enemy.
“Facebook
and Twitter, podcasts, Webinars and blogs are interesting new phenomenon.
But the disturbing trend is that more and more of these informational offerings
are often PR peddled as “news.” I’ve seen government officials
stand before a background that highlights the key words of the daily message. This
tactic serves only to reinforce that what’s going on is public relations
too. We must not be crucified on the poverty of our own expectations.
“Journalists
have to sail in these waters and some don’t navigate very well. We can say
that what some journalists fail to do is tragic. But what so many journalists
do is truly heroic. They choose what is right over what is easy. They
daily risk political persecution, physical injury, and death in their efforts
to expose corruption and champion the truth. Many journalists endure
continual threats to their lives and often the lives of their families
too. Some are forced into exile outside their home countries. Journalists
sometimes feel helpless. Journalists have to cope with greed, duplicity
and despair. Their revelations are not always recognized. Yet they
have the determination to defend the least, the last, and the lost. They
insist on their right and responsibility to write the truth.
“I would
like to say a word about a special kind of journalist too. Whether or not
there is an economic model to sustain those of us in the affluent West, who can
come and go from far-flung lands and conflicts, dropping in and out of foreign
countries like visiting tourists, it is the local journalists, who must stay
and brave the front lines at perhaps the greatest sacrifice. They usually
eke out the most humble of livings. It has always been this way, and still
somehow, they manage to forge on with absolute courage, in spite of the
contempt of their governments, in some cases, and let’s face it, too, at times
the apathy of their fellow citizens.
“At the
best of times, such journalists are not only courageous, they are true heroes,
rare individuals who actually believe that without their work their society
runs the risk of being informed only by the propaganda and coercions of
the warring sides, whether it is a repressive regime they are dealing with, or
two sides in a civil war, or narco armies and the gunmen of corrupted security
apparatuses.
“Last year
I was in Mogadishu, Somalia. The president of that tragic country and his
government hold no more than a few blocks of the capital city, as radical
Islamic insurgents daily bombard them, held back only by U.N. peacekeeping
troops. But in the midst of it all are local Somali journalists who risk
their lives to cover what is happening. Some of them get blown up by
suicide bombers or get shot in an alleyway. They get threats for broadcasting
music on the radio. But they persevere.
“Some years
ago, I gave a workshop in Colombia to reporters from around the country who
were reporting on their conflict. In a private session, one of my ‘students’ said
to me: ‘Jon Lee, it’s all right for you. You are American. You work for a
powerful magazine which has resources to send you everywhere and you are
protected by your visibility. But what about us, here, how can we do it?’ He
explained that in his province, the violent paramilitary army was the real
force on the ground, and that his own editors were secretly allied with them.
He could not come out with the truth of what the paramilitaries were doing—massacres
and so forth—or he would be killed.
“It
reminded me of a dilemna I’d faced years before, when I collected raw
information from the war zones of Central America where I worked as a young
reporter and found that my only outlet, Time magazine, was not interested. I felt a moral duty, however, to get
out the news, and so I sometimes handed off this information to human rights
investiagtors. I hoped that it might save lives.
“To my
Colombian friend, I told this story and he nodded unhappily. He could do that,
but did this mean he was condemned to a life of stifling self-censorship? He
was a writer, he said, so how could he write?
“I urged
him to keep a diary. If he couldn’t share his words with his public today, he
could exorcise those demons in private and one day, hopefully, he could share
his truth with the rest of the world, without fear of reprsial. At the time, it
was the only solution I could think of for him.
“Eight
hundred and eight journalists have died for their profession since 1992.
Last year alone 70 journalists were killed because of their work. The
deaths of many journalists are ignored, since it is often the powers-that-be
that killed them. Nobody is charged, nobody is convicted. In some
countries, it seems, it is not a crime to kill the messenger. The victims of
this impunity are people like Anna Politkovskaya of Russia, who
documented the Chechen conflict and was tossed into a pit by Russian soldiers,
nearly died of poisoning, and finally was assassinated, shot in the back of the
head outside her apartment door. Hayatullah Khan of Pakistan was abducted and
starved to death for investigating U.S. Hellfire missiles used inside Pakistan.
Armando Rodriguez of Mexico died for writing about drug traffickers.
Norbert Zongo of Burkina Faso was shot while investigating crimes in the
president’s family; Elmar Huseynov of Azerbaijan was killed for criticizing his
president.
“We must
honor them all and so many others who fight daily for the truth and the freedom
to tell it. Without their courage, we are all well and truly
lost. Thank you.”
