Katherine Butler: The terrible price of freedom
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Independent Minds
Sultan Munadi thought he had already seen the darkest hours. In a now poignant last entry to his New York Times blog, the 34-year-old Afghan "fixer" explained that no matter how bad things are now in Afghanistan, under the Taliban they were worse. He wanted to dedicate his life to rebuilding his homeland, he wrote, even if it meant "cleaning the streets of Kabul".
Munadi's death during the raid that freed his colleague Stephen Farrell is a reminder both of the courage of those who report wars and the grim realities of the task. His bullet-ridden body was left behind in a ditch until Afghan journalists went to fetch it yesterday.
Attacks on foreign correspondents were still a rarity when John McCarthy and Terry Anderson were taken hostage in Beirut in the 1980s. Now, being kidnapped or killed, either by ideologically driven militias or gangsters seeking money or the release of prisoners, is a daily risk in conflict zones from Somalia to South Ossetia. Editors can warn staff to stay well behind the front line, but in modern unconventional warfare, there is often no front line.
But the local journalists, photographers, interpreters and drivers, who provide the foreign media with a vital service, also pay an intolerably high price in the pursuit of giving Western readers a free and balanced account of what is happening. At least four Afghan journalists have been killed in recent years while many more have been attacked, arrested or forced to flee their homeland, accused of being spies.
In the wake of Farrell's rescue, Afghanistan-based journalists will have to factor in a new consideration. Will militants, who might have negotiated, bother to keep their hostages alive if they think Western troops are on the way, guns blazing? Few war correspondents will be deterred. They know "embedding" is not the answer. They will need to exercise more caution, but ultimately they want to be where the action is, and an "embed" is rarely it.
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Comments
"pay an intolerably high price in the pursuit of giving Western readers a free and balanced account of what is happening." Are you kidding? Farrell worked for The New York Times, a more pro-war, Zionist newspaper you could not find. With news agencies like these, if a reporter gives them a story they don't like, it isn't published. You have to go to the internet to read reports by freelancers like Jonathan Cook who reports on Palestine issues and whose articles feature on antiwar.com to read about what is really going on.
Oh, and I think it is clear that the unfortunate Munadi died in a hail of Crusader bullets because he had a dark complexion.
This cretin was a fine example of what living a worthless life is all about.
Freedom is never going to be imposed by foreigners dropping big bombs on villages and petrol contaiiners.
The imposition, at enormous expense, of western democracy is almost humorous in a sick joke kind of way. It's only spoiled a bit by British soldiers giving life and limb for non voters in a flawed election.
Munadi's death had llittle to do with courage but quite a lot with being a traitor to his people.
But something made Sultan Menadi believe that Taleban rule was so obnoxious to him that he was prepared to help the occupiers rather than see it return. Does that, by definition, make him a traitor, or lacking in courage, and his life worthless? What a curiously black and white world you inhabit. Not one I'd care for ...
But you can have conscientious quislings, not just self-seeking ones. The sort who, in all good faith, take on board the ancient logic that "my enemy's enemy is my friend". My point was simply that Sultan Menadi might have been one such.
For example I have no scruples at all about standing with the BNP against quisling government, no matter what are the secondary characteristics of my enemy's enemy, but there is a special hatred reserved by all societies, for the quisling
IN WAR THERE IS NO FREEDOM IF YOU ARE DEAD THERE IS A BOUNTY ON YOUR HEAD FIRST THEN YOU GO TO WAR.
ASK Brown, Davis, Tony, Darling, yours and mine asso You speak Japanese No? I dont yes?
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla