Abstract
The issue of reporters embedded with British troops is much debated, but what of those in with rebel troops, asks a defence correspondent
The killings had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in tents clearly marked with the symbols of the Red Crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Others were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot up. For a few, the end had come on the ground as they tried to crawl to safety. Many of the 30 bodies, bloated and decomposing in the heat, had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic handcuffs or ropes, a few had gags stuffed into their mouths; almost all were black.
The bodies had been dumped on a roundabout next to Bab al-Aziziyah, Muammar Gaddafi's fortress in Tripoli, which had been stormed by the rebels.
“Come and see, these are Africans, the men Gaddafi brought,” shouted Ahmed Bin Sabri, jumping from foot to foot with excitement as he lifted a tent flap to show the body of one man, his green patient's tunic dark with blood, the saline pipe running into his arm black with flies. Why had an injured man receiving treatment been killed?
Mr Sabri shrugged. It was incomprehensible to him that any wrong had been done. Had he been one of those shooting? I asked. He shook his head and, to be sure, he did look more camp follower than fighter. “They did it,” he pointed to a group of heavily armed young men, lounging on the back of pick-ups, engaged in banter.
As I approached, one of them shouted out my name. I knew the men from my time in Misrata. After an exchange of pleasantries, catching up with what we had been up to in the last momentous weeks, I asked why the men on the roundabout had been killed. “They were shooting at us at Abu Salim; we had no choice. They are from Chad, Niger, Ghana,” said Mohammed Tariq Mathar, offering me a water bottle. But if they had been killed in action, why did they have their hands tied behind their backs? “Maybe some were arrested and they tried to escape, anyway, they were mercenaries.”
I walked away a little saddened, not just at seeing more brutal deaths, but because the executioners were from Misrata. Some of my colleagues and I had spent a long time in Misrata during the most brutal days of the siege. I had got to the city relatively early in the conflict, our fishing boat from Benghazi arriving with the port under mortar attack. The house where we were put up for the night had been shelled the following day, killing members of the family. We'd observed the daily bombardment, the two hospitals overflowing with the wounded — so many of them children or the elderly — the hasty burials between swings and slides, in what used to be a school playground.
I wanted to believe they were good
All this made us intrinsically sympathetic to Misrata, where they were brave and tougher than the often-shambolic rebels in the east. They endeared themselves even more by being staunchly anti-Islamist, worrying about the influence of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whom they saw as fundamentalists stealing the gains of the revolution.
I wanted to believe these men were good and I found myself toying with editing out where these men were from. But it could hardly be kept a secret. I didn't censor myself, but inserted a long account of how Misrata had suffered in the hands of the regime.
The truth was, many of us had effectively embedded with the rebels during Libya's revolution. There is much debate about what happens when journalists go in with British and American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is very little discussion about the implications of becoming beholden to rebel forces for protection and support.
The risks are the same; in extreme cases it leads to a form of Stockholm Syndrome, where correspondents lose their objectivity and become so partisan that they refuse to recognize, or at least report on, misdeeds of those they are with.
There is also the intrinsic sympathy, often romanticised, that so many journalists feel towards the underdog; the Bosnians and the Kosovars in the Balkans, the Palestinians, the young men and women of the Arab Spring. I am not suggesting that we lose our sense of objectivity in covering any of these conflicts and I don't believe it happened in Libya. But atrocities committed by the opposition during the uprising received nothing like the attention given to those carried out by the regime. The bodies at Bab al-Aziziyah were not the first evidence of lethal retribution we had come across. There had been other examples of lynchings of officials and sub-Saharan Africans — on the pretext that they were hired guns — since the uprising had begun. But reporting on them had been brief and with little of the gusto that went towards charting the downfall of the hated dictator.
I am writing this in Antakiya in Turkey, near Syria, waiting to cross the border with the rebels. I am aware that our coverage will be through a certain prism. There has been little verifiable coverage out of Syria because Bashar al-Assad's regime has granted few visas to the international media. Reporting from the rebel side has been highly risky, as the deaths of Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik and the injuries suffered by others such as Paul Conroy in Homs showed.
In going inside Syria with the opposition, we know we shall not get the full picture. On my last foray into Idlib province, the group I was with came under fire from a village. The rebels opened up with newly-acquired Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Most of their efforts were pretty wild, but there would have been people on the receiving end. I asked them how they could be sure that civilians were not getting hurt. “Believe me, all people there are the Shabia. The local people, the residents, have gone,” explained “Commander” Azauddin. The Shabia are the militia of the Alawites, the community from which the ruling elite is drawn. The village in question was Alawite, while the vast majority of the opposition fighters are Sunnis. So was this an opportunity for a bit of sectarian bloodletting?
I was in no position to find out; my companions were adamant it was simply not safe to go in there. I am not sure how one overcomes such hurdles. We have to accept that out in the field, all we can do is present a snapshot of what we see and try to avoid being susceptible to the propaganda of those with whom we are travelling. If we are to get anywhere, we also have to take care that the copy we produce, so quickly available for all to read in these days of instant communication, does not damage our relationship with our hosts.
We must be alert too to the danger of over-empathising, either because of shared danger or because we feel they are on the “right side”. While I am not sure that will necessarily ever change, I have noticed how time and distance make a great difference. Journalists who were enamoured of the Kosovo Liberation Army, for instance, seeing them as freedom fighters against brutal Serb oppression, later became more questioning of the soldiers they had initially regarded as heroes.
Certainly the British and American military now find the embedded media less emollient than in the past. They do not accept, for a start, that everything is going swimmingly in Afghanistan.
We can expect a similar re-evaluation of the opposition in Syria — perhaps as early as this piece is published — if the revolution degenerates into an ethnic war against the Alawites and the Christians or if al-Qaeda and its affiliates, responsible for some of the most devastating bombings, continue to make further inroads. In Libya, the infighting between the militias that has followed in the months after Gaddafi's death, the continuing detention of thousands of people and the prevalence of torture, have had a disillusioning effect for many.
But the rebels did not forget the past
As for me, I returned to Libya for the first free elections in the country for half a century, elections in which, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood were far from victorious. I went to Misrata where the Islamists were, unsurprisingly, trounced. It was good to see the port functioning pretty smoothly. There were buildings going up, the dockside where we were bombed was busy with imports rolling in, there appeared to be a sense of purpose and pride. But I quickly realized that, while looking to the future, Misrata does not forget the past. A violent vendetta continues against a neighbouring city, Tawergha, whose men are accused of committing atrocities in the pay of Gaddafi.
There were undercurrents here we had known nothing about, in the days we had lived among the folk of Misrati. Now it became clear that freedom in Libya had come at a heavy price for Tawergha. As the war turned and the city fell, some of the population of 35,000 were killed and others driven out, their homes burnt behind them. They are now in camps across the country, unable to return home. But that has not stopped the bloodletting, with Misrata fighters accused of travelling to these camps to carry out drive-by shootings and arbitrary arrests. Majdi Suleiman Omar, from Tawergha, was one of the casualties of this strife. He'd lost his right arm in the closing days of the war. A week later, as he lay on a hospital bed in Tripoli, a militia fighter from Misrata came in and ordered: “Get ready, we are going to take you to Funduq al-Jannah.”
There was no doubt about what awaited there: “Paradise Hotel” was the name given to a remote part of a beach of sand and pebbles where captives were buried after torture. The journey did not take place. After a terrified nurse had been allowed to change the bandage, Mr Omar was shot in the back and left for dead. He survived and was now living in a shack made out of PVC pipes, a sprawling “home” in a camp where 17,000 from the city were living in squalour.
Mr Omar was among a group of Tawerghan men who described their mistreatment and continued fear of further attacks. My driver and fixer, both from Benghazi, were sceptical; the Tawerghans were collaborators and should be viewed with suspicion.
“Anyway, you were in Misrata, you know all about Tawergha. We have Misrata people coming to capture them here and we have to stop them from doing that. This has been nothing but trouble for us.”
At least these stories are now being told. I discussed the bad feeling with my friend Othman Karim Ali at the Martyrs' Museum in Misrata, where an exhibition details the suffering and losses in the city during the siege. Among images of families killed were those of journalists who lost their lives, including Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. “Would there ever be a commemoration of the innocent Tawerghans who were also victims?” I asked.
“Most of those who died were guilty, but yes, there were some who had nothing to do with the regime who suffered and that is very sad,” said Othman, an architect who fought during the uprising. “We are not racists in Misrata or Libya. There were black guys fighting here and everywhere for the revolution. But some stupid things are being said and these continuing arrests of Tawerghans should stop, all those being held in prisons all over Libya for being with the regime should be tried or freed. People here need to know how badly this is being viewed internationally.”
Then should there be more objective and critical coverage? “Yes, it was great to have the support of the journalists during the revolution, but now they can help us by investigating what's going on. This will also encourage our own media. After all, everyone keeps saying they want to join the rest of the world after Gaddafi kept us isolated for 40 years. So the time has come to treat us like any other country.”