Killing the journalists
The barriers between “legitimate” targets and people and places that have been historically (and legally) out of bounds have collapsed, as in Ukraine right now.
Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made.
In the summer of 2013, the Turkish side of the Syrian border was sweltering. I was near Antakya, within spitting distance of Syria, where bombs were more felt than heard — a kind of sonic judder.
My fixer and I had arranged to meet with a Free Syrian Army fighter that evening. The FSA was an early rebel group cobbled together to fight the Syrian government. Hour after hour passed as we waited at our small, low-lit hotel for the young man to arrive so we could debrief him. He showed up eight hours after we’d expected him, saying that because he thought he was being tracked he’d taken greater precautions than usual while slipping across the border. When we finally sat in a booth at the hotel restaurant, he recounted stories of women being raped and men being tortured. Hearing directly from Syrians at the front lines was difficult in those first few years. I went to bed that night feeling we’d learned a lot.
The next morning’s sun amplified the blue sky. A glorious nearby café breakfast included the greenest cucumbers, the reddest tomatoes, the blackest sweating olives. But then I started noticing the huge men with oddly thick beards glancing our way. And when I say “huge,” I mean MMA-fighters-on-steroids huge. My fixer excused himself for a minute.
“We have to get out of here,” he said when he returned. “Now.”
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