PHOTOS: STEPHEN J. THORNE; LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES

Clockwise from top: Stephen J. Thorne relaxes with soldiers in Afghanistan; Canwest Global writer Matthew Fisher; the CBC’s Bob Bowman reports amid World War II rubble; filmmaker Garth Pritchard on assignment.

A few years ago, I was sitting with some Canadian paratroopers about to embark on a combat mission in the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan when the subject of my survival came up. Like countless soldiers over the past 150 years or so, they were wondering why a civilian–a journalist–was there when he didn’t have to be and what I would do to defend myself if the need arose.

The soldiers wanted to equip me with a 9-mm pistol. No, I explained, I did not believe journalists should carry firearms. Besides, I told them, it only takes one journalist carrying a weapon to compromise all journalists, thus putting us all at greater risk.

The soldiers shrugged off my comments and reasoned that if I ever really had to defend myself, there would be plenty of weapons available with which to do so. I was cool with that. And so off we went. Needless to say, we were never overrun by an attacking enemy. I stayed close to the troops most of the time, and the need to defend myself–physically at least–never arose.

In fact, in three trips to Afghanistan totalling almost a full year, being overrun by an attacking enemy was probably the least of my worries. While correspondents in wars past feared sudden death or maiming by a sniper’s bullet, exploding shell or torpedo, today’s war correspondents face a much longer and more insidious list of dangers.

Last year, 54 journalists were killed around the world, making 2004 the media’s deadliest year in a decade. Iraq was the most dangerous place for journalists to work. Twenty-three war correspondents were killed there last year, up from 13 in 2003. Most were Iraqi reporters killed by insurgents, and many of them died while feeding the insatiable, ever-more-demanding American media machine.

In a way, war correspondents are the first writers of military history. From the London Times’ Henry Crabb Robinson, who covered the Napoleonic wars, to Canadians Ross Munro of World War II and Matthew Fisher of today, our job has been to record events as they happen–to bear witness to the deeds and misdeeds of troops on the ground, at sea and in the air.

The element of danger in what we do has never disappeared, although the nature of war and how we cover it has changed dramatically. The main difference between Munro’s time and the war correspondents today is that back then–during WW II–you could usually recognize who the enemy was and pretty well where it was. Today, the enemy is there, but it is sometimes very hard to find. It can be a solitary suicide bomber in a crowded market or it can be a heavily armed group of fighters hiding deep within a cave or high on a rooftop–any number of scenarios.

While a new term–embedding–has been introduced into the lexicon, the demand for news–telling of the causes and complexities of war–is ever greater. And more than ever before, this appetite requires journalists such as CanWest Global’s Fisher, the Globe and Mail’s Paul Koring and documentary filmmaker Garth Pritchard to venture far off the beaten track in potentially hostile territories to get the story. “It is of vital importance that there be independent witnesses to what is going on in the world,” explains Fisher who has reported from 14 war zones over his 30-year career.

I know first hand how tricky and dangerous it can be to get those stories. So does the Toronto Star’s Kathleen Kenna. Not long ago, she was making her way across the Afghan countryside in a van with her Dari-speaking husband and two others when a grenade was lobbed through an open window and rolled under her seat. It exploded, shredding her body with shrapnel. They had been returning from a trip to the southeastern province of Gardez where they had been interviewing, not soldiers, but well diggers.

Kenna survived, although she lost part of her back and upper leg. Still, she remains committed to her job. “I would like to return but I couldn’t put (my family) through that stress again,” she told the University of California at Berkley School of Journalism last fall. “But I think about the Afghan people a lot. I read everything I can about the country. I worry about their future.”

Kenna’s story–a rare Canadian example of a journalist wounded in conflict–is becoming more commonplace in the world of war correspondents. Attacks are often indiscriminate, and they’re not just coming from the ‘other side.’ The U.S. military has been blamed for the deaths of almost a third of all journalists and media employees killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war there–the inevitable result of a Western media that no longer stays on one side of the proverbial firing line, if, in fact there is a line at all.

One positive result of this coverage is that the reading and viewing publics are given the opportunity to learn that wars are far more complex than good vs. evil. And they have gotten this from war correspondents that are not only armed with laptop computers and similar-sized satellite uplinks, but positioned very close to both sides of the action.

In 2003, when it came time for the United States to invade Iraq for a second time, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came up with an ingenious plan to supposedly rein in the media. His idea was to bed them down with the troops they wanted to cover. This wasn’t exactly a new idea. War correspondents had been doing it for more than a century. During WW II, journalists Munro, Bill Stewart, Peter Stursberg and Matthew Halton wore uniforms with a special patch identifying them as war correspondents. They, too, had to operate under specific guidelines and be careful of what they reported.

Thanks to technology, the reporters who are embedded today can have their stories seen, heard and interpreted immediately by all sides of a particular conflict. This, of course, creates a whole new field of military security concerns.

Rumsfeld reasoned that, given the kind of access he was offering and the risks they would be sharing, journalists would be more than willing to co-operate with relatively tame military restrictions on reporting. He was right.

Under his directive, media were assigned to specific units–from training right on through the war. They were given full access to intelligence briefings and operations. Critics argued that journalists would compromise their coverage and integrity because they would identify too closely with the troops they were suppose to cover, getting only a narrow perspective of the war.

This did not happen.

In fact, the RAND Corp–a non-profit research organization based in the U.S.–concluded last December that the Pentagon’s decision to embed reporters was a major success for the military, the media and the American public. “Allowing reporters to share the same risks as the military units seems to be the best solution we’ve come up with so far on how to cover a war,” said Christopher Paul, the study’s lead author and a social scientist specializing in defence issues. “From the military’s perspective, operational security was assured during the opening weeks of the war and as long as they performed their jobs well, the military units got great public relations.”

Fears the media would be manipulated or heavily censored by the military–or that the actions of reporters would lead to the deaths of service personnel–didn’t pan out, said Paul. More than 2,000 reporters from around the world were in the Middle East to cover the Iraq invasion in 2003. About 700 were embedded with American units. Less than a half dozen were yanked from the battlefield for security reasons.

Fisher was embedded with a U.S. combat unit for the Iraq invasion–Bravo Company of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion of the 1st Marine Division based in California. The unit travelled 600 kilometres across Iraq and was in three major engagements. “I am an advocate of the embedding process,” said Fisher. “Speaking personally, I wanted to see how combined arms, the Marine fighting doctrine, worked. Speaking as a journalist, embedding gave me only a tiny slice of the war. But with 700 journalists embedded, and others in Baghdad during the U.S. bombing, in the north with the Kurds or trying to come overland independently from Kuwait or Jordan, I believe the world was well served by the media.”

Fisher said embedding is not the be all and end all. “It is only one part of a big journalist puzzle, but it is a vital ingredient of this mix. I was able to report the situation on the actual battlefield. The U.S. forces had overwhelming firepower and used it to great advantage. But from what I saw, they also used that power responsibly. There was concern shown for civilians. The main purpose was to get the war over with as quickly as possible and with as few casualties as possible.”

Fisher also got a foretaste of the problems the U.S. would have as an occupying power in Iraq. This was first illustrated by the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad and elsewhere in the days immediately after Saddam’s regime was toppled. The lieutenant-colonel commanding the battalion Fisher was with helped put it in perspective the day before Baghdad fell. Fisher said there had been complaints from “armchair generals at home that the campaign had not gone as well as expected because of logistical problems. The lieutenant-colonel I was with was incredulous at this. To paraphrase what he said: ‘The war has gone well and exactly according to plan. The problem isn’t with how we fought the war. It is that we do not have nearly enough troops to keep the peace.’ That prophetic remark explains many things that followed. It also is a perfect illustration of why it is important for some journalists to be embedded with the troops.”

Canadian journalists who want to embed with the CF are required to sign agreements that outline the rules surrounding their stay. The rules themselves are not onerous–at least that has been my experience. For example, they require a review of operationally sensitive copy or time delays on sensitive stories such as deaths. However, the interpretations individual commanders can place on them may vary, and sometimes include bans on certain types of coverage.

The good thing about Canada’s form of embedding in Afghanistan is that journalists are not required by the rules to stick with a single unit and reporters are allowed to venture out on their own with local Afghan drivers and interpreters, known in the trade as Fixers. The value of this freedom of movement and perspective cannot be overstated, though the cost of a Fixer can be anywhere from $35 to more than $200 US a day, depending on the environment they’re working in. This can be prohibitive, particularly for freelancers.

Fisher points out that while there is a rising demand for stories about war, there is less and less actual war reporting. He cites three reasons for this. First, war correspondents used to get a ‘free pass,’ given wide latitude by all sides in conflict to move about and do their jobs, relatively without fear. “That has not been the case lately, with journalists being kidnapped and, in some cases, hunted down, especially in Iraq, where a journalist carries huge risks.”

Secondly, some companies are unwilling to pay the high insurance costs associated with such coverage. These costs can be $1,000 a day or more. Thirdly, budgets for everything in the news business continue to get cut although, as Fisher noted, many profit margins remain healthy. “This affects all kinds of coverage, but especially foreign coverage because the world beyond Canada’s borders costs a fortune–as any Canadian who travels abroad quickly discovers,” said Fisher. “The number of Canadian foreign correspondents has been in a freefall for about 15 years…. It is not talked about nearly enough, but compared to somewhat similar countries, in terms of size or economics, such as Australia, Italy or Spain, Canada has very few correspondents working abroad, especially in war zones.

“Curiously, this is happening at a time when Canada takes in more and more waves of immigrants and depends more and more on foreign trade and has its troops deployed in some really dangerous and complex places….”

The Canadian War Correspondents Association, which was started in 1945 by the likes of Gillis Purcell, Ross Munro and others, still represents about 100 correspondents scattered all over the world, including Fisher. It is the association’s firm belief that the military should require some form of combat survival training for foreign correspondents, but not necessarily provided by the military itself. Security firms, including Britain’s Centurion Security Systems Ltd., have provided training to Canadian Press correspondents and many other journalists.

I know that covering war is risky business. However, it has been my experience that knowledge works wonders. It always comes down to knowing where you ought to be and where you ought not to be. You can never forget the line of work you are in and its relative importance to the public, the military and the politicians. Like soldiers themselves, the decisions journalist make in war zones are critical–far more so than any place else.

Some of our greatest war correspondents are gone now, including Halton, Munro, Doug How, Charles Lynch, Wally Reyburn and, most recently, Pierre Burton and Bill Stewart–all members of the Canadian War Correspondents Association. These journalists survived the battlefields and lived long, productive lives. Their commitment and courage, I believe, won’t be forgotten, and they will continue to inspire today’s correspondents who are reporting from the world’s trouble spots.