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Journalists and War
An Online Report from Ivan Watson in Northern Iraq
This essay was filed for npr.org by NPR correspondent Ivan Watson, who has been reporting from northern Iraq and traveling with Kurdish fighters and U.S. Special Forces.
April 6, 2003 -- I took a break from the war this weekend, by spending last night at a mountain lake resort called Dukan. This decision came after I realized that too many of the people I eat dinner with have recently been killed or injured covering this conflict.
Since the war began, three of my colleagues have died here in northern Iraq -- most recently, an award-winning Iranian camera-man for BBC named Kaveh Golestan.
I can still picture Kaveh's face from when I met him at breakfast in Suleymaniye about a week-and-a-half ago. He was a small, grizzled guy whose face was covered with white stubble. Old enough to be my father, Kaveh had been a journalist covering conflicts around the world while I was still in diapers. And yet he exhibited no bitterness or cynicism. Instead, I was struck by the way he softly enunciated his words, by the way he patiently answered my questions about the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, by the way he'd give this funny, sweet smile in between puffs on his cigarette.
At one point, he described how several of his Iranian colleagues recently passed away of mysterious health complications. This happened some 15 years after they had all covered the aftermath of the Iraqi army's chemical weapons bombardment of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. It was the most deadly use of airborne poisons against a civilian population in modern history.
Kaveh photographed the carnage just three days after it happened. He suspected his friends came in contact with the chemicals while trying to help transport some of the wounded civilians. They remained healthy and strong for more than a decade -- and then abruptly died from cancer and respiratory illnesses.
Last Wednesday, Kaveh's television crew struck land mines after traveling to the front-line Kurdish town of Kifre, which was under bombardment from Iraqi artillery. Kaveh was killed instantly. His producer Stuart Brown, a young British guy I'd had dinner with several nights in a row last month, suffered severe injuries.
Stu was just medivacked out of the country. I hear he may lose his foot. Meanwhile, my friend Quill was one of a group of people who escorted Kaveh's body to the Iranian border.
The land mine incident occurred after a veteran ITN correspondent I'd also met at dinner fell to his death mysteriously off the roof of his hotel. This tragedy followed a suicide car bombing in the Halabja Valley that killed Paul Moran, an Australian Broadcasting Company cameraman.
Now Paul's photo hangs in the lobby of the Suleymaniye Palace Hotel. The Kurds are calling him a martyr. At least five Kurds were also killed in the explosion, and dozens suffered burns and shrapnel wounds. One of the injured men was Handren, a chubby, chuckling Kurd who had just finished a month-long stint as my translator.
Over the last week, I've had to dive on the ground three times to escape incoming Iraqi machine gun fire and artillery. The last time came at the end of a day-long battle between Kurds and U.S. Special Forces against Iraqi troops, fighting for control of a bridge leading to Mosul. After burying my face in the dirt of an abandoned Iraqi fox hole during a gun battle, I opted to drive several miles away from the scene of the battle. I stopped at a hilltop where CNN had been camping out for the past three weeks.
A group of us sat there at sunset, watching fighter jets circle overhead, dropping bomb after bomb on Iraqi targets in the distance, when we heard the sudden woosh and subsequent thud of an artillery shell landing several dozen yards away. I was amazed at how quickly the entire group immediately dove on the ground. Then dusting ourselves off, we started nervously walking towards our vehicles. Suddenly another round flew in, landing even closer than the first. All of us fled. The CNN crew didn't even stop to gather their satellite dish and equipment.
Fortunately, no one was injured. Later investigation of at least three nearby blast-sites showed the Iraqis appeared to have been targeting the CNN position from a battery miles away. Saddam Hussein's soldiers are far more skilled with their artillery than I ever imagined.
I am writing this journal entry from the balcony of my hotel room, overlooking Lake Dukan. A storm front is whipping wind across the water.
My "break" is evidently over. I've just received a phone call from a colleague informing me that another BBC television crew has just been hit, this time by friendly fire. The team was driving with American Special Forces and Kurdish guerilla fighters when a U.S. jet mistakenly bombed them. Among the more than 50 people who were accidentally killed and wounded was BBC's translator, Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed. Fred Scott, a BBC cameraman I had beers with just a few nights ago, videotaped the aftermath of the explosion. He was bleeding on his own camera.
Unlike the millions of Iraqi civilians who are facing similar threats and dangers, all of the journalists here chose to come to this country. Our motivations vary: glory, duty, curiosity. First and foremost, though, we came to cover the news. We all knew the risks. And yet, I can't help but fear it's just a matter of time before one of us again becomes a casualty of this conflict.
In Depth
 Hear NPR reports by Ivan Watson
Hear an NPR War Diary from Lynn McConaughey, who was a close friend of Australian Broadcasting Company cameraman Paul Moran, killed in a suicide car bombing in the Halabja Valley.
NPR News Coverage of the War in Iraq
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