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Three Afghanistan reporters I won't soon forget

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  • Three Afghanistan reporters I won't soon forget

    Toronto Star, Canada
    May 30 2008


    Three Afghanistan reporters I won't soon forget


    Star columnist reflects on 2001 trip she declined to take - a patrol
    that claimed three lives

    May 30, 2008 04:30 AM
    Rosie DiManno
    Columnist

    TALOQAN, Afghanistan-Some things you try to forget. I came back here
    to try and remember.

    In late 2001, the front-line in the ground war between the Taliban and
    the Northern Alliance ran right through this provincial capital.

    Reporters, billeted in tents and mud-brick hovels clustered around the
    Alliance's "Foreign Ministry'' compound - which was actually the home
    of assassinated leader Shah Massoud - would routinely make the
    three-hour trek by jeep and donkey from Khwaja Bahuaddin, in
    neighbouring Badakhshan Province, to get a close-up view of the action
    in Takhar.

    It wasn't called "embedding'' then. The Alliance were simply delighted
    to have foreign media finally - in the aftermath of 9/11 - pay
    attention to their long and gruelling defensive campaign against the
    detested Taliban, having for years been able to hold out only in a
    small northeastern wedge of Afghanistan.

    Now, they were on the offensive, primed to hurl themselves at the
    enemy.

    With U.S. Special Forces calling in co-ordinates, B-52s had been
    pounding Taliban formations. Bombing usually started at dawn, the
    whooshing pressure wave of explosions sucking in and blowing out the
    plastic sheeting stretched across the window frames of my hut.

    At the front, dug into World War I-style trenches, the two sides were
    separated only by about a thousand metres and we all prayed the
    Americans would make no bombs-away miscalculations. The Taliban
    artillery launchers were clumsy - their mortar shells flying way over
    our heads and landing harmlessly quite a distance beyond.

    There were only about 40 reporters in the region. At night, back at
    the compound, we would take turns sitting around a trestle table in
    the courtyard, lit by one weak bulb hanging overhead, computers and
    satellite phones plugged into a cranky generator. Because of
    deadlines, European journalists were always allowed to file first.

    This is a story, as best as I can now recall it, about three of those
    journalists: Johanne Sutton, 34, from Radio France Internationale;
    Volker Handloik, 40, of Stern news magzine in Berlin; and Pierre
    Billaud, 31, with Radio Television Luxemburg.

    Johanne was very tall and very shy. Because there were so few females
    in the group, we usually sat together, ate together, griped together.

    Volker was a card and stuck in the Gary Glitter 70s. He had blond,
    straggly hair that fell almost to his waist and wore his jeans tucked
    into knee-high silver-collared boots with three-inch platform
    soles. For weeks, before and after the U.S.-led coalition began its
    attack against Afghanistan, Oct. 7, Volker had complained bitterly
    that this was really no war at all. Where was the fighting? Where was
    the bang-bang?

    Pierre I knew just to nod hello.

    Late one evening, an Alliance commander, Gen. Muhammad Bashir, came
    over and invited anyone who was interested to accompany a unit on its
    way to the outskirts of Taloqan, where enemy tunnels had been
    taken. Some Taliban fighters had apparently surrendered.

    I had interviewed half a dozen Taliban prisoners that very afternoon,
    was busy writing, and passed on the offer. "No thanks.''

    Johanne, Volker, Pierre and three other journalists - including
    Armenian-born Levon Sevunts, a reporter with the Montreal Gazette -
    were game.

    The reporters clambered on top of a battered, Russian-made armoured
    personnel carrier and the convoy set out.

    I watched them leave the compound.

    Near Dasht-e-Qala, north of Taloqan, they were ambushed. There were no
    surrendering prisoners. Instead, the Taliban opened fire with
    machine-guns and rocket propelled grenades.

    Pierre either jumped or fell off the vehicle. He was shot in the
    head. Others tried to flee and were cut down either then or shot in
    cold blood later. Sevunts, as he wrote afterwards, had served in the
    Soviet army and knew well enough to stick with the tank, hanging on to
    the cannon as the lumbering beast swivelled and juddered in the
    opposite direction.

    A search party was formed and Joanne's lifeless body was found in one
    of the trenches.

    The next morning, journalists demanded that the Alliance return and
    bring back the other two bodies. They adamantly refused. Furious, a
    Boston Globe reporter commandeered a truck, rounded up a few
    volunteers, and we retrieved the dead.

    They were the first journalists killed covering the war in
    Afghanistan. Between then and now, 11 more have died.

    I came here seeking the spot where the ambush occurred. I cannot find
    it. Everything looks the same. Or maybe everything looks different.

    Afghans build stone cairns and drive rag-flapping lances into sites
    where their own are either buried or perished.

    But nobody much remembers three slain reporters.

    http://www.thestar.com/News/Columnist/ article/433913
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