Lost another helicopter?

The answer was yes. It has been another difficult week for the RAF in Afghanistan. Political stirrings in the UK have meant that most of the news savvy public now know of a severe shortage in vital heavy lift military helicopters.

Two weeks ago an RAF Chinook helicopter was brought down by enemy fire in southern Afghanistan. The crew and occupants, soldiers from 2 Rifles, all escaped the wreckage. The airframe and engines had been badly damaged.

The crew and soldiers came under enemy fire and a decision was made to make the helicopter unusable rather than recover it for repairs, a tactical choice. The Chinook was destroyed with plastic explosives in the desert.

The British forces had 10 Chinooks in Afghanistan. This number dropped to 9 and at the end of last week had dropped again to 8.

How does this affect the position of UK forces?

A glaring example can be seen in the Helmand River Valley.  The Taliban controls much of the 'Green Zone' a highly fertile poppy growing area next to the Helmand River. Small military camps known as FOB (Forward Operating Base) Jackson and FOB Inkerman are a mere 7km apart. It is deemed, even in armoured vehicles, to be suicidal to travel this distance on the ground. the only way to reach these bases is by Helicopter. All supplies, food, water, ammunition and medical services have to be flown in and out by Chinook. These are small outposts, home to between 30 and 50 men. 

It can take, for example for a person to get back to Camp Bastion a 10 minute flight away and the HQ of British Forces, on average about 2 days to travel this distance due to the lack of helicopters.

Now that 2 have been lost how will the gap be filled? 

Real news or coded news

Often I turn on the TV, read the newspaper or browse the Internet and get an update on the world around me. I see, hear and read about Afghanistan. About elections that have gone off peacefully and wars that have deaths but no reported casualty figures. Then I learn about the real picture.

Who benefits from censored news? Not consumers, no, but those who wield the power above us. 

Since working in Iraq and assisting those who have striven in great danger to themselves to bring us real news. I have found that the only news I can trust is from those in the thick of the action on a day to day basis or the foolhardy freelance journalists who report without sanction.

One fine example of such reporting is that of Michael Yon. Yon is a former US Army Green Beret. Yon tells the story as he sees it. He often offends those who try amid political wrangling to bury bad news. He is supported by every unit in the field he is embedded with from all nations serving in Afghanistan.

Yon has a style of reporting that buries nothing, highlights weaknesses, portrays real human passion and often human sacrifice. And all this is laid out online as a free magazine to all and any who want to read it.

Yon has his work paid for by those who want to hear the real and un-coded news in a country that is very much at war. A country where voters in some provinces barely got in to treble figures. Military actions that have gone un-recorded or buried by headlines elsewhere. 

Why do so few of these people exist? Progress made in Afghanistan is merit-able. Nobody by way of reporting wishes to rock the boat. Anybody who has worked within the country or indeed with the member nations of ISAF or who knows real Afghans would ever put at risk the progress. Journalists, however, must report in styles that allow real news to be heard. 

Politicians seem to forget that support for our troops has grown since they have been engaged in heavy fighting, it has not shrunk. 

Read the Michael Yon online magazine.

Now compare it with the news you read, watch or listen to each day.

Interesting Conversations

It has been an interesting day. Not least for the fact that a lengthy conversation with the MD of a notable government contractor in Afghanistan has led to possible sponsorship for travel to and from Afghanistan but also the chance of additional revenue income for the project.

Secondly I have been inundated with requests to help out on the project after a worker at the UN in Kabul noticed our program on the Kabul Guide website. Offers from former a Reuters Bureau Chief, an Australian media training manager currently in Vietnam, the Killid Group Media NGO and many others.

I am glad that such interest can be aroused by what is a very simple, yet effective solution to encourage young people to start having a say in the world they are living in.

I have also found four very good final paper topics including the pro's and con's of Six Sigma and ISO performance benchmarking  in the development of media companies in transitional countries.

More soon......

The Afghan Elections

Future Voice Program has launched itself with the publication of its first news images on the front page of Demotix.

http://www.demotix.com/content/future-voice

Demotix-Future Voice is the window for all Future Voice users to the Global Press.

Our Afghan reporters have made good progress in the last two weeks.

Next week will see the introduction of all reporters to the regional Provincial Reconstruction Teams from USAID and DFID (UK). This will enlarge the reporting capacity of the organisation greatly.

Other news stems from the registration of The Future Voice Press Club - a local NGO in Kabul.

The Club offers a safe and secure hostel, business facilities including the Internet and workshops and welfare services for Future Voice Journalists as well as a membership service to allow Afghan journalists from any organisation to use the accommodation, restaurant, business services at a nominal charge.

The Club also runs a basic HEFAC course and introduces reporters to potential stories and acts as a relaxed environment for media networking.

A great two week period for Future Voice, with thanks to Wahidullah and the rest of the team in Kabul.

The website for The Kabul Post is online

It has been a while coming, but we have the basics working, now we can start loading the daily feed in English. We still need more Dari translators and some willing local journalists to get further out in to the countryside to get more images and reports.

The Kabul post is the Future Voice of Afghanistan, is independent, non-political and seeking support.

It is going well and support in Afghanistan is growing.

www.thekabulpost.com

www.thekabulpost.com

Interview with a real hero

Quiet Heroes

By Chris Green

(Image shows Dany in Iraq - Front middle in tie)

 

In the West, we often hear the stories of those who challenge a political process. Those who perform their work amidst the carnage and noise of the battlefield. We give praise and bestow honour upon them. How often do we hear about a young journalist who has taken on a corrupt system? Helped us hear the news from a country whilst others have taken credit for it? Been threatened by extremists and evaded kidnap and death on a daily basis and still lived to carry on his work?

 

The answer: hardly ever, mainly due to the fact that such true heroes are not the citizens of our own countries. I met and had the privilege of working with one such young journalist, Dany Asaad who from the age of 16 decided it was his duty to report on the truth of what was happening within his own country, Iraq.

 

Dany is now in France seeking asylum. He has given me an open and disturbing account of life and work both under the old Iraqi regime.

 

Dany, the name many western journalists know him by, is called Dana Asaad Mohammed. Dany was born in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. His father was a Colonel in the Iraqi army and his mother stayed at home to look after his other siblings and himself. Dany has four brothers and one sister. “They are in Iraq still, so it is better not to use their names."

 

“My early years living under Saddam where happy, I was a child, care free and I enjoyed a good standard of living. My father had a car and we had a nice house with a garden. My brothers and sister and myself went to a good school. It was not a religious school, it was a school for the high end of the government's children.”

 

“It was not until 1993 that my life was touched by the troubles of my country. I had read the state news two years earlier about the invasion of Kuwait, but I was only 13 at the time. It meant nothing to me. I knew my father was a soldier so I supported him.”

“My Grandmother was living in the Kurdish region, my father was working for the Iraqi defence offices in Baghdad. He was a trusted member of the military now.”

 

1993 was the middle of the Anfal campaign launched by Saddam Hussein to rid the natural resources rich marshes and wetlands of Kurdistan of its Kurdish population. The Kurds where forcibly removed from their homes. Later to be the victims of poison gas and chemical weapons attacks. Dany’s family was part Kurdish. “My father went to visit his mother who was ill. He never came back.”

 

Aged 15 Dany was waiting, like he did on a Monday, for his father to pick him up from school. 

“This was all very hard for me, I was waiting by the gates of the school, but he didn’t come, actually I did not ever see him again. And then we lost everything.”

 

“My mother was told that my father had been arrested on suspicion of treason. My mother knew he had been to Kurdistan to see my grandparents, but could not understand why he would have been arrested.”

“We heard that because he was part Kurdish, and that he had visited the region and met with some Kurds, that he had been arrested by the special state police.”

“I felt very alone, this one incident changed my life and my view on life forever."

 

Dany or his family did not hear from their father again. In 1994 they received word from a close friend who also was an army officer. The officer said that the Colonel had been tortured and executed by the Revolutionary Guard in Baghdad for Treason against the State.

Aged 16, Dany’s world had now changed forever.

 

After the arrest of Dany’s father, the security services that ran on a mixture of paranoia and misguided brutality came for his older brothers. The family fled for their lives, escaping to Erbil, a city that is now the capital of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. “We left everything behind, our house, our money, land. We even left the car as we did not want to be stopped on the way by the police.”

 

I asked Dany how he started writing and reporting: “When we ran from our home, I left school for 4 years. I could not concentrate on my studies after loosing my father. At the same time we all had to work to get back the life that we had lost.”

 

“I started to work in sales, selling on the street. I got to hear all that was going on in the country. Then the army attacked Erbil because the city was the home to the PUK movement that was opposed to the Iraqi government. We had to move to Sulymenia, the second city of the Kurdish region. I saw much destruction and wanted to start writing about it.”

 

“I needed a qualification to be a proper journalist, so I went back to school and then enrolled at the state university. I graduated with a degree in Journalism. I was free to write and have my voice heard.” 

 

“I started writing for a few youth newspapers, mainly on the destruction caused by the regime. In 2000 I landed my first proper job with Hawlati a regional newspaper as a reporter”.

 

Most news organisations in 2000 were pro-government and did not air expressions of political freedom. Dany and his young friends in journalism wanted to give a neutral view, but for this they had to wait. The wait was not long; in 2003 the US-led coalition invaded Iraq. It was an alarming time for Dany and his friends, but one that would shape their futures.

 

Dany took his chances, as did many young reporters. He worked for many western news organisations in the following 2 years. He worked first with the Macclatuy Newspaper Group from the USA and notably for USA Today. He was the organisations chief local fixer and also gathered reports in Mosul, Baquba and Kirkuk amidst some of the heaviest fighting between tribal factions, Al-Quieda and US Forces.

 

Dany has many friends who were helping the west. One worked for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, a UK based media charity. Al Quieda targeted reporter Yasin al Dlemy for writing a piece about the rise of extremism in Anbar Province. He was killed in a car bombing as he made his way to work. Dany picked up the half written story and spent the next two months finishing it. 

 

Of the heated street fighting and assassinations of journalists in the early years of the US occupation of Iraq Dany is quietly spoken. The experience has visibly moved him. 

 “I lost 10 very close friends to bombings and shootings, I knew of many more who I had worked with.” 

 

Whilst speaking with Dany this last week. A fear that I have never seen from him has emerged. A fear that was not present on the surface when I worked with him in Iraq. When we went out together on the streets he was always cautious but had held his fears close to his chest. Dany has not just been a reporter. When the Americans captured Saddam Hussein and brought him to trial in Baghdad. The US Department of Justice and The State Department in Washington DC wanted to find a trustworthy translator for his trial. Dany having worked for western newspapers, and having a visible record due to his fathers execution was asked to translate the trial for the US Government.

 

This was the start of an ongoing and frightening time for Dany. Death threats by telephone. Graffiti on the wall of his accommodation. Kidnap attempts against him and a constant fear. Sunni Militias all over Iraq wanted to revenge the passing of their leader. Dany became a hate figure, and because of his status as a journalist he was offered no protection or assistance by either the USA or its allies or by the new Iraqi government.

 

Dany recalls a telephone call he received only this year; “ they said to me; you are a betrayer of the Iraqi people, you are really an American in an Iraqi skin. We will find you. We will hurt you and we will cut off your head for the world to see.” 

Dany says that after 2003 and in the years reporting on the war he has received death threats and had seen friends killed. But he chose not to care and used it as motivation to continue to report on the unfolding events in Iraq.

Dany steers the conversation back to his time reporting in 2004. At this time Dany was roving between Kirkuk, Mosul and Baquba. 

“Kirkuk was a real danger zone, you know, one of the ‘hottest’ places to report from back then.” He continued, “It was only due to friends, western journalists, that I could go out and get my stories.” 

I asked him what he meant by this, he replied: “Even though I was writing stories for western publications, I did not get paid very well or looked after by them. My friends lent me their body armour and helmets so I could get out on the streets. If it was not for them I could well be dead like so many others by now.”  

It was at this time in 2004 that Dany had started working for the Aswat al-Iraq agency. The first independent non-political news agency in Iraq. Despite the murder of his friend and fellow Aswat reporter Soran Mama Hama, he continued to work in Kirkuk.

How many western journalists would continue in such circumstances?

Now safe, but in a strange new world in France, Dany tells me of his passion to continue to report the truth about Iraq.

 “I love being a journalist. I am only 30 years old. I have been working as a journalist for 10 years and seen the worst that a journalist could see.” Dany continues, “When I am sure that my safety is looked after I will return to Iraq to continue my work. Until then I will write from here of all the things I was not writing in Iraq as I know I will be safe here.”

 

(Interview August 2009) – By Chris Green

 

 

 

 

 

New beginnings

The first elements of any new program always take time, research and trust in ones own judgement and the sanity of others around you.

Today, like many, my day started with a lengthy Skype conference with my project partners at the newly established (on paper anyway....) Kabul Post Newspaper

Just had I started to make headway the communications faded... Much like they did as a matter of day to day life in Iraq. Power cuts and destroyed infrastructure adding to the pressing task before me.

My colleague Wahidilla in Afghanistan knows exactly what is required for progress but like many new afghan journalists does not realise the effort required to get such progress moving. It will be a learning process all round. Afghans are motivated to achieve press freedom but they need to slow the pace of this freedom to understand the barriers and red tape that will need to be crossed and cut in order to gain movement.

Lunchtime: My dear friend Dany Asaad from Aswat al-Iraq is in the EU after fleeing from Kirkuk after even more threats and a kidnap attempt as he was on the way to work for the agency. He is short of funds and seeking somewhere to stay. I make hurried phone calls and emails and organise for him to visit a bar recently set up by a member of the Frontline Club and in addition I hope he has now gained himself a Blog on the Frontline Club website to get himself in circulation with the press in Europe. I hope something comes of it for him.

 I have been conducting my first ever formal interview with Dany even though I have worked and lived with him in Iraq for over 14 months. He only let on today that he was in need of help. Good old Dany. I hope I have been able to help. Image shows Dany in Iraq working as a Journalist.