Unprepared, Inexperienced And In A War Zone: The Frontline Club in association with the BBC College of Journalism

On Wednesday I was delighted to take part in an important discussion on news safety and the recent debates surrounding young freelancers working in hostile environments. The event was hosted by BBC Senior World Affairs Producer Stuart Hughes, who lead the discussion after his own articles on the same subject for the BBC CoJo blog which I highly recommend reading here and here

I was also joined by Colin Pereira, Head of Safety and Security at ITN and formerly of the BBC's High Risk Team, the Director of INSI - the International News Safety Institute - Hannah Storm, and upcoming freelance journalist Aris Roussinos who had just joined us back from a month-long trip to Mali.

You can watch the video on YouTube by clicking the picture above, or download the mp3 of the talk by clickinghere (right click and save as) or go to the podcast in iTunes here.

The Independent: Why we should pay more attention to Lebanon's "Little Palestine"

JULIA MACFARLANE

Friday 30 November 2012

Why we should pay more attention to Lebanon's 'Little Palestine'

The Palestinians in Lebanon are fixated on the cause of their homeland

Palestinians around the world woke up today to news that the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to recognise the Territories as an observer state. But for those Palestinian refugees awaking in Lebanon, the joy was particularly acute: they can now hope that developments on the international stage may one day lead to their being able take their place in a sovereign state.

Palestinian patriotism is strong here, despite being forged on foreign soil. “I think if I had actually been allowed to visit Palestine, and see it with my own eyes, I would not love it and long for it as much as I do now”, says Salah Hamseh, just outside Beirut's Shatila refugee camp. Hamseh sums up the deep-rooted patriotism that runs through the camps in Lebanon.

Across these urban warrens of densely packed houses it is hard to escape the visual bombardment of patriotic symbols as you wind your way across the streets. Each available space serves its purpose whether as a canvas to graffiti of the omnipresent Arafat, revolutionary lyrics painted on walls, posters of martyrs or ribbons strewn across the narrow gaps in the tapering streets in the red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag. In the streets of Bourj el Barajneh camp last night, residents took to the streets with joy and a furious pride in their newfound recognition. “This is big, very big for us,” shouted an elderly woman over the bagpipes and snare drums played with gusto by a group of Palestinian boy scouts. She had been dancing the Dubke or traditional dance with such youthful vigour that her headscarf was in disarray. “This is proof that the world is not against us.”

Scars

The loyalty of the refugees to their homeland is a force of increasingly relevant consequence. In 1982 when the presence of the PLO led Israel to invade Lebanon’s southern frontiers, it left deep fault lines of conflict still running today; an Israeli stamp in one’s passport will prevent you from entering the country. Not that Israel is alone in bearing the brunt of animosity when the Lebanese consider the civil war that ravaged the country; resentment of Palestinian refugees is acutely felt, more so when spats of violence erupt around the camps where unlicensed weapons circulate freely, and often end up in the hands of youngsters.

According to the United Nations, more than half of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are under the age of 25, and just under two thirds are unemployed.  As one refugee working as a school teacher in Nahr el Bared camp said: “Here you either have two choices, you work with UNRWA in the camp, in one of their schools or medical centres, or you find work with one of the mafias in the camps. That is why there is so much tension – you have all these young men and boys, testosterone all over the place, with no jobs and nothing to do but obsess over liberating your country.”

At a time when the Lebanese government is gripped in its own withering crisis, and fears are mounting of the country being pulled into neighbouring Syria’s civil war, there has been little speculation on the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian feud from within. Unlike Palestinians in the territories who live alongside Israelis – those displaced to Lebanon don't integrate, leaving them to vilify the absent enemy without interruption or contradiction. Here, hopes and desires for a two-state solution are lacking. An official from Fatah living in Beirut, who asked not to be identified, said during the recent hostilities in Israel, “everyone wanted to support Hamas by fighting the Israelis. It was all anyone was talking about.”

Captive audience

As air strikes continued to batter Gaza, the twelve camps of Lebanon were conducting coordinated protests and demonstrations in solidarity with Hamas, whom the US and other Western governments regard as a terrorist organisation. Even revolution-themed merchandise was quick to circulate some of the camps, with purple and navy t-shirts emblazoned with the words “I support the resistance of Gaza against the Zionist entity” being handed out for free in Rashidieh camp near the southern border.

The response to calls for activism and demonstrations by many of the popular committees inside the camps has been so effective for the simple reason that the refugees in Lebanon are a captive audience.

Without jobs, without rights to travel, even without rights to owning your own home, there is little for Palestinians in Lebanon to do except dedicate themselves wholly to ‘the cause’.

What the latest developments at the UN may bring are still debated, many have concerns that it may put a spanner in the works of any possible two-state solution. Yesterday’s vote may carve a path towards access to the Security Council, allowing the Territories to bring Israel to an international court over settlement building and perhaps even allow them control over their own airspace and put an end to the Gaza blockade. It might bring the West Bank its own airport, allowing refugees to actually return home without the problems of crossing an Israeli border. While the Israeli frontier for now remains tightly manned with convoys and border patrols, it would still be wise for them, given these developments, to heed the distilling fervour and patriotism swelling in ‘Little Palestine’ to the north.  

The original article is found here

Please visit my page on The Independent

Kate Adie

Adie is one of those enigmas that produces opposite reactions from different people. She has been described by some as ‘the Vera Lynn of war reporting’ and ‘cantankerous’ and ‘imperious’ by others. She has openly derided her own BBC for glamorising their anchors recently yet she herself was once compared to a ‘younger Julie Christie’.

 Yet for all her idiosyncrasies, the most baffling contradiction of all is her unscathed psychology in the  face of the horrors one can only imagine she has witnessed in her exciting life. True to form, when asked about the severity of the threats she and other war correspondents face she dismisses the scale of this and compares herself to her parents who lived through two world wars, as well as reminding us that journalists face these terrible events alongside soldiers, medical personnel and other citizens. She snuffs out any admiration for having been shot three times – ‘grazed’, she revises, before finishing, ‘…it’s a reminder not to be careless.’ War correspondence, she assures, need not be a dangerous job. However it is clear that she feels her career has been one of vocation – the need to share and describe to the world the events that need to be seen. It is this call of duty she feels has stabilised her mental balance in the face of what she has experienced, and no doubt the driving force of her tenacity during that renowned report from Tiananmen Square in 1989.

 In spite what must be a plethora of memories of genocide and atrocity she is optimistic of the world’s future and is hopeful for a resolution to the current hostilities of the Middle East – a hope she expressed whilst opening the 2010 Ubud Writers’ and Readers’ Festival, the theme of which is ‘Unity in Diversity’.

JM: what is your one possession that you never travel without?

KA: Believe it or not, a toothbrush. Many moons ago I was told by members of Special Forces that if you get up in the morning after a night spent on damp ground in the middle of a jungle or the world’s worst hotel room, with no bathroom in sight, you’ll always feel better if you brush your teeth.  (They also added you can shine your shoes with a toothbrush or possibly use it as a weapon of last resort. They didn’t explain how).

JM: In a different life, what would you have chosen for a career instead of one in journalism?

KA: As I never expected to be a journalist, didn’t choose to be one, and never trained as one. I’ve always expected that this was actually ‘the other life...’

JM: During your career, you’ve been shot at three times -did the experience change your views on your career?

KA: I’ve been grazed by bullets three times and taken shrapnel once. It’s a reminder not to be careless.

JM: How did your family and friends cope with the risks involved in your line of work?

KA: My grandparents went through WW1, and my parents went through WW2. They’ve had more experience than I’ll ever accumulate.

JM: Scenes of violence aren’t fully understood by merely watching the report on television but for those who experience it for themselves, it can be psychologically traumatic. How did you feel after reporting from scenes of mass genocide in Rwanda and Sierra Leone?

KA: All kinds of experiences can be emotionally traumatic -but not inevitably. Journalists who cover major events involving violence are pretty realistic before they set off for such assignments.  Anyone who’s read a word of history, especially about conflict, should have no illusions about what might happen. Of course, it’s very affecting to see terrible scenes -but you have work to do- to describe and convey to other people what’s happening.  If you believe you’re doing something worthwhile, it helps you get through it. And most journalists are pretty sociable people - they don’t bottle up emotions or deny what they’ve seen. We’re alongside soldiers, medical personnel, aid workers, ordinary citizens in all this -we’re not a special case.

JM: When asked about your risky career, you have always maintained that you were able to choose not to do anything dangerous in your line of work. How important is it, do you feel, for news reporters to be at the scene of a dangerous story rather than standing in front of a blue screen where they will be safe and unharmed?

KA: You get as near to being ‘at the scene’ as you can - as long as you bear in mind that you’ve got to get back with the story. It’s not the journalists’ decision these days to ‘stand in front of a blue screen’. It’s editors who decide what kind of reporting they want, and ultimately the audience.

JM: The theme for this year’s Ubud Readers’ and Writers’ Festival is “Harmony in Diversity” - which is a profound ideal of Indonesian culture. Global alliances have continually increased throughout history thanks to treaties and institutions - Europe is an example. Do you think that in the future, the same kind of ‘harmony in diversity’ is possible for countries currently in hostilities with each other - such as in the Middle East?

KA: We can only hope - and I’m an optimist.

Photo above is courtesy of the BBC



Afghanistan 10 Years Later...

This talk actually took place a few weeks ago on the 5th October but I have only just figured out how to embed videos online! The talk took place at the Frontline Club near Paddington, and the panel included Horia Mosadiq from Amnesty International, Dawood Azami from the BBC World Service, Lucy Morgan Edwards former advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul and Edward Girardet, freelance conflict reporter. The talk was chaired by Paddy O'Connell of BBC Radio 4. You can catch me at 16 minutes in!

While the majority of the audience and the panel agreed that conditions for women in Afghanistan had improved during the occupation, the negatives vastly outweighed the positives apparent in the country ten years on. Morgan Edwards, who has recently published a book called "The Afghan Solution" following her experience in the country, feels that the coalition squandered a 'golden opportunity' to resolve issues with the Taliban and Haqqani network, especially following the recent death of Abdul Haq.

  The most of the panel stressed the critical failure of the coalition concerning the social DNA of Afghanistan, namely its tribal structure. Assuming that the generic demographic is not anything but an amalgamation of different ethnicities, localities, dialects and communities will lead to a complete misunderstanding of the country which would ultimately cause any interference to fall short. This was stressed in the documentary clip, which showed tribal elders being presented with stills of the attacks on the twin towers on September 11th, and when asked about the location depicted in the photographs their response was to guess that they were taken in Kabul.

  Just as Wadah Khanfar was to tell our class the following week, the most important preparation you make as a foreign correspondent is more than a basic background to the country you are covering. A profound and diligent study into the country, its idiosyncrasies and details of its culture, history and most importantly its people, is essential to truthful and accurate journalism. Perhaps if the press revealed more about the flavour and nature of Afghanistan would real knowledge filter through to the politicians and authorities directly involved in the future of the people in this war-torn country.

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