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War correspondents reporting feelings from the front line
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Specialized Journalistic Sevices (SJS)
Servicios Especializados de Información
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English
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_________________________________________________________________________
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The history of domination in Latin America. MONROE: Let's reformulate!
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English
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SpecialSeries
War correspondents reporting feelings from the front line
(Photo Truthout.org/Seinforma)
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Special REPORTS
Even though human trafficking has been included as a crime in legislations, half of the countries do not have an action plan against this crime, condemned by all but punished by few around the world. Central America and the Caribbean: the most permissible.
Even though human trafficking has been included as a crime in legislations, half of the countries do not have an action plan against this crime, condemned by all but punished by few around the world. Central America and the Caribbean: the most permissible.
Exclusive Interview
KAREN MARON
The process of listening to the victims’ voices
KAREN MARON
The process of listening to the victims’ voices
Some correspondents are interested in political or military aspects. Others are more interested in the diplomatic aspect. Karen Marón is focused on the victims and their stories. "That is what I do on warfare: I write the story of the victims. If you keep only the anecdote of the war, it is only an anecdote among others. Some journalists wear the helmet and a vest with the word Media on it. They are like war tourists, like mercenaries, they make money with the war, they look for blood and they don’t care about the background.”
(Photos Courtesy Karen Marón / Seinforma Canada)
“As a war correspondent, I probably experience in one day what a common person might experience in 50 years. It is like a slide of feelings; you experience happiness, sadness, and worries. It is a full time journalism practice. You face death, you undergo unparalleled stressful situations. You have your own fears and anxiety, but you have to complete the job.”
By Ana Maria Carrano / Seinforma Canada
Special Series*
Caracas, Venezuela.- A personal and professional story with Iraq. That is how Karen Marón defines her relation with a conflict with which she has no cultural relation at all, but to which she comes back every year. It is a kind of unpaid debt. The recall of a grandmother’s crying in a refugee camp in Faluya, pledging her to adopt her new-born granddaughter. Her departure with empty hands. The guilt. The feeling that her head was breaking down. An intense treatment due to a post-traumatic stress disorder. The return to Bagdad some months later. Her visit to an orphanage and the deep disappointment after knowing that the adoption was not possible because she was a foreigner. During that trip, Karen Marón knew that she had a personal story with Iraq.
Since then, she comes back to Iraq every year continuously in order to photograph the victim’s pain, to walk among the refugee camps and hospitals, and to collect histories of suffering. She does not want to be seen as a vulnerable woman, but her eyes give her away: they get moistened frequently and cover her socket as if they were looking for an exit. Moments of fragility are hidden on the following instant, when she takes distance from her memories and recovers the fluency of her words, which she rarely run out of. She is accustomed to retell, to describe in detail the pictures that she recalls in her mind.
Karen Marón up in a town, located at 35 kilometers from Buenos Aires, where she got used to live among social contrasts. Her family belonged to the “typical Argentinean middle class”, but on both sides of the street she could see other reality: on the one side, closed neighborhoods with luxury houses; and on the other side, the so-called “villas miserias”, where grew up unfed children and violence was very frequent. “All these backgrounds, that misery, have been part of my life since I was born. I could enter inside my world and the other’s world and leave it very easily. That context made me adaptable, a very determinant quality for a journalist”.
By Ana Maria Carrano / Seinforma Canada
Special Series*
Caracas, Venezuela.- A personal and professional story with Iraq. That is how Karen Marón defines her relation with a conflict with which she has no cultural relation at all, but to which she comes back every year. It is a kind of unpaid debt. The recall of a grandmother’s crying in a refugee camp in Faluya, pledging her to adopt her new-born granddaughter. Her departure with empty hands. The guilt. The feeling that her head was breaking down. An intense treatment due to a post-traumatic stress disorder. The return to Bagdad some months later. Her visit to an orphanage and the deep disappointment after knowing that the adoption was not possible because she was a foreigner. During that trip, Karen Marón knew that she had a personal story with Iraq.
Since then, she comes back to Iraq every year continuously in order to photograph the victim’s pain, to walk among the refugee camps and hospitals, and to collect histories of suffering. She does not want to be seen as a vulnerable woman, but her eyes give her away: they get moistened frequently and cover her socket as if they were looking for an exit. Moments of fragility are hidden on the following instant, when she takes distance from her memories and recovers the fluency of her words, which she rarely run out of. She is accustomed to retell, to describe in detail the pictures that she recalls in her mind.
Karen Marón up in a town, located at 35 kilometers from Buenos Aires, where she got used to live among social contrasts. Her family belonged to the “typical Argentinean middle class”, but on both sides of the street she could see other reality: on the one side, closed neighborhoods with luxury houses; and on the other side, the so-called “villas miserias”, where grew up unfed children and violence was very frequent. “All these backgrounds, that misery, have been part of my life since I was born. I could enter inside my world and the other’s world and leave it very easily. That context made me adaptable, a very determinant quality for a journalist”.
Karen recalls that when she was 7 years old, she was in front of the TV, almost paralyzed, making questions about the Arab-Israeli conflict; and when she was 12 years old, she remembers her with a huge recorder in her hands, making homework for school. Her experience in a community radio when she was 18 confirmed her desire to become a journalist, studies that she combined with her Law studies.
June, 2004, in a Shiite refuge camp in Iraq
“The most terrible things happen on the human’s mind. A mother said to me once: I am so afraid for my children that I have thought that they must sleep together in one room so that, in case they are killed, they all get killed at the same time. But then I think: No, I prefer them to sleep separately, so that at least some of them might survive. ¿Do you understand the pain of that woman? ¡She is prepared to die with all her children! ¡That is not a normal situation! I can’t even process it”.
On the year 2000, when she traveled to Israel thanks to a scholarship, the second Intifada took place. There she gained her first experience as a war journalist, where she developed subjects like the peace process and the visit of Yasser Arafat to Bethlehem on Christmas during the Year of Jubilee.
Actually, she has a large experience as a correspondent: she has made media coverage in the Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Colombia, Peru, Cyprus, Gambia, Tunes, Venezuela and countries from the European Union.
She frequently makes clear that she needs time to know the culture and to understand the chaos of every place. That is why she prefers to be an independent journalist. “I have been a free lance journalist for 7 years and I decide to which conflict I will go and how much time I will stay in each place. In an agency work, which has limited times, it is very difficult to discover the culture, the idiosyncrasies, and the different religions. You must learn about a war. If you stay only 10 or 20 days, you cannot understand the conflict”. During her first trip to Iraq, she stayed in Bagdad for four months and a half.
“I first entered Bagdad on April 7th of 2004 to cover the first anniversary of the occupation. When the invasion took place, I tried to obtain a visa, but I couldn’t obtain it, like many other correspondents. The entrance was very hard. I was going to enter by land, but in that moment massive kidnaps of journalists were taking place, so I preferred to go by plane, on a trip that lasted 45 minutes from Jordan.”
“When you land on Bagdad, the plane descends like a corkscrew, to avoid the impact of land- air missiles. In that moment you realize that you are arriving in Iraq. The plane gets on one side and starts to descend in spiral. The airport is a military airport, with many American troops; you can see combat vehicles and helicopters, barb wires, cement barricades. On that moment, the troops are constantly flooding the streets, mortar attacks and war tanks in your hotel. Everything is grey, dark, and dirty. Buildings are being destroyed.”
Actually, she has a large experience as a correspondent: she has made media coverage in the Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Colombia, Peru, Cyprus, Gambia, Tunes, Venezuela and countries from the European Union.
She frequently makes clear that she needs time to know the culture and to understand the chaos of every place. That is why she prefers to be an independent journalist. “I have been a free lance journalist for 7 years and I decide to which conflict I will go and how much time I will stay in each place. In an agency work, which has limited times, it is very difficult to discover the culture, the idiosyncrasies, and the different religions. You must learn about a war. If you stay only 10 or 20 days, you cannot understand the conflict”. During her first trip to Iraq, she stayed in Bagdad for four months and a half.
“I first entered Bagdad on April 7th of 2004 to cover the first anniversary of the occupation. When the invasion took place, I tried to obtain a visa, but I couldn’t obtain it, like many other correspondents. The entrance was very hard. I was going to enter by land, but in that moment massive kidnaps of journalists were taking place, so I preferred to go by plane, on a trip that lasted 45 minutes from Jordan.”
“When you land on Bagdad, the plane descends like a corkscrew, to avoid the impact of land- air missiles. In that moment you realize that you are arriving in Iraq. The plane gets on one side and starts to descend in spiral. The airport is a military airport, with many American troops; you can see combat vehicles and helicopters, barb wires, cement barricades. On that moment, the troops are constantly flooding the streets, mortar attacks and war tanks in your hotel. Everything is grey, dark, and dirty. Buildings are being destroyed.”
“Every time I go back to Iraq, it gets worst, although nowadays you don’t see occupation troops on the streets, because most of them are on military bases. What you see are the check points of the Iraqi police or the Iraqi militaries, which nowadays get mixed. Because the occupied have assumed the attitude and the appearance of the occupant. It is a very interesting psychological phenomenon. It is not always easy to identify an American soldier from an Iraqi soldier.”
“I had never been in Bagdad before the invasion. I heard that it was a very beautiful city. But, after being there, you can only recall on your mind grey pictures. It is very difficult to breath. If I have to describe it, it feels like a very heavy energy. Then you get accustomed to it and it is terrible, since tanks explode at your hotel‘s door or at 100 meters from where you are. And your colleagues are kidnapped, and some of them die or are decapitated. You are facing your own dead all the time.”
“I had never been in Bagdad before the invasion. I heard that it was a very beautiful city. But, after being there, you can only recall on your mind grey pictures. It is very difficult to breath. If I have to describe it, it feels like a very heavy energy. Then you get accustomed to it and it is terrible, since tanks explode at your hotel‘s door or at 100 meters from where you are. And your colleagues are kidnapped, and some of them die or are decapitated. You are facing your own dead all the time.”
"What is happening in Iraq is absolutely obscene. It is the deterioration of the body and the mind of the Iraqis. Most of them suffer from post-traumatic stress as a consequence of the war. New illnesses arose, spontaneous abortions, premature births. For me, Iraq has almost become a cause. The reconstruction is a big cheat, in five years nothing has been rebuilt. Millionaire contracts have been signed, and then resold again and again.”
The Abu Ghraib Mothers
During her first stay in Iraq, Karen wrote an interview about the questioned Abu Ghraib prison, published by the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. That article was the first to discuss the subject on the Latin-American media. The prison, a symbol of the violation of rights during the Saddam Hussein’s regime -where thousand of political prisoners were tortured and executed or used to experiment with chemical and biological weapons-, was retaken by the invaders for similar purposes: torture and humiliation.
“When I arrived, the Iraqis told me that, on the Abu Ghraib prison there were tortures, killings and disappearances but there were no evidence of them. Actually, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported abuses, as well as Amnesty International, but there were no professional pictures by then.”
“Abu Ghraib is 30 kilometers West of Bagdad, very near to Faluya. I went to the prison many times, but they didn’t allow me to enter. So I decided to work with the mothers that were outside the prison, waiting, on very hot days, about 56 ºC under the sun, claiming for their sons. I called this article The Abu Ghraib mothers. The article talked about the relatives of imprisoned and disappeared persons, about the mothers claiming for their sons, they described how their sons were arrested, taken out of their house and even tortured in front of the family.”
“It was my first work in Iraq and it was very significant for me, because it also talked about the human rights violation, the abuses and the killings that were taking place there.”
A generation of terror
For Karen Marón, Iraq is the great journalistic story of this era, although for security reasons the journalists covering the conflict nowadays are less than the 10 per cent from the number of journalists that were there at the beginning of the conflict; some of them even assure that the story is over.
“I think that in Iraq and in the entire region the global political situation is at stake, as regards the strategic, geopolitical and economic aspects. Moreover, it is the first genocide of this century. The most powerful army of the world has become halted by resistance groups, trapped in a place they supposed to be out in six weeks or six months. On the other hand, its presence opened the door to Al-Qaeda, an organization that never before has had power inside Iraq. All these things show the ignorance of the West regarding the Oriental world.”
“Unfortunately, what I am experiencing as a journalist is the history of decadence of a nation and its people. The invasion and occupation of Iraq are one of the worst strategic mistakes in the history of the United States. Before the occupation, the Iraqis lived in peace with each other -through an oppressive regime, of course-; nowadays, neighbors and relatives have become enemies.”
“What is happening in Iraq is absolutely obscene. I don't know if the number of deaths reported by the US Department of State is true. All I know is what I see every time I am there: the deterioration of the body and the mind of the Iraqis. The scenes are devastating, closed stores, everything is getting more and more deteriorated, destroyed buildings are never restored. 70 per cent of the Iraqis suffer from post-traumatic stress as a consequence of the war. New illnesses arose, spontaneous abortions, premature births.”
“The reconstruction is a big cheat, in four years nothing has been rebuilt. Millionaire contracts have been signed, and then resold again and again. American and also Iraqi companies are flooded with corruption. For that reason, there is little electrical energy, there is no drinking water, nor gas, and it is impossible to make phone calls to other countries. 70 per cent of the Iraqis who are admitted in a hospital die due to the lack of medicines. You can perceive the sourness on people’s eyes. Nowadays, people say: we prefer the dictatorship since, although we weren’t free, we were safe. The Shiits, the group who suffered the most and did everything to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime are the ones who say that they prefer to be submitted by a president than being colonized. The continuous claim persists.”
“Life in Bagdad depends on the ethnic group you belong to. There is a lot of school desertion, 50 per cent of unemployment. However, those who began to work for the occupation forces, for example, have improved their lives. But they are paying a high price for that: they are being accused by the Sunnit resistance of collaborating with the occupation, or by Al Qaeda of being unfaithful renegades. Therefore, although they have employment, those groups put bombs on the market and hundreds of them die.”
“What is taking place in Iraq is not a military search; it is terrorism, the creation of terror. Terror is created through selective assassinations, clandestine prisons, paramilitary groups; Al Qaeda, because everyone may be an Al-Qaeda member. Every day the “Islamic army of I don’t know what” appears. The damage done in Iraq is so huge. The social structure has been broken.”
The victims’ stories
Some correspondents are interested in political or military aspects. Others are more interested in the diplomatic aspect. Karen Marón is focused on the victims and their stories:
“I think we have a lot of visual contamination, we see any movie and there is a car bomb exploding in Iraq and we think it is all the same; moreover, we are always saying: I am tired of hearing about that war. The important thing is not the car bomb who exploded, but the persons who died, the mothers who lost their sons, the wives who lost their husbands, the children who lost their parents. The pain is deeper every day. That is what I do on the war: I write the story of the victims. If you keep only the anecdote of the war, it is only an anecdote among others. Some journalists wear the helmet and a vest witht the word Media on it. They are warlike persons, like mercenaries, they make money with the war, they look for blood and they don’t care about the background.”
“The most terrible things happen on the human’s mind. A mother said to me once: I am so afraid for my children that I have thought that they must sleep together in one room so that, in case they are killed, they all get killed at the same time. But then I think: No, I prefer them to sleep separately, so that at least some of them might survive. ¿Do you understand the pain of that woman? ¡She is prepared to die with all her children! ¡That is not a normal situation! I can’t even process it”.
Karen keeps, in a thick folder, press articles and many pictures of her interviewees. She appears in almost all pictures: near the affected families on refugee camps, surrounded by children in the dessert, outside a hospital with some wounded. She says that she is sympathetic with the other’s pain and that she feels it as her own suffer. She scans Iraqi stories through the pictures and speaks slowly when she talks about children. Karen inhales the smoke of her cigarette as if it gave her the motivation to continue speaking.
“One of the stories that touched me deeply was about a little four-year-old child, named Alí, who lost his left arm and his left leg. He was walking to the Faluya market, accompanied by his grandfather, when they were attacked with F16. His grandfather died instantly, as well as 16 other members of his family.”
“Everyone has a dead person on the family or a person that has disappeared. One of them told me that his five-month-old baby died of cold when he decided to take refuge on the mountains, on their way to Iran. That was when Hussein decided to expel the Kurds. But, amazingly, he didn’t have the least trace of resentment; he thought that it happened because God wanted it to happen. For that reason you can see, in the same place, intense hatred and almost angelical acts of forgiveness.”
“I go to wars because of the children. I am not adrenalin-addicted and I don’t feel excited because of being inside a war. Many people talk about peace as an abstract discourse. I think that, to talk about peace, you must experience the lack of peace; that is to say, the war. War must not be seen as an entertainment.”
During her first stay in Iraq, Karen wrote an interview about the questioned Abu Ghraib prison, published by the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. That article was the first to discuss the subject on the Latin-American media. The prison, a symbol of the violation of rights during the Saddam Hussein’s regime -where thousand of political prisoners were tortured and executed or used to experiment with chemical and biological weapons-, was retaken by the invaders for similar purposes: torture and humiliation.
“When I arrived, the Iraqis told me that, on the Abu Ghraib prison there were tortures, killings and disappearances but there were no evidence of them. Actually, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported abuses, as well as Amnesty International, but there were no professional pictures by then.”
“Abu Ghraib is 30 kilometers West of Bagdad, very near to Faluya. I went to the prison many times, but they didn’t allow me to enter. So I decided to work with the mothers that were outside the prison, waiting, on very hot days, about 56 ºC under the sun, claiming for their sons. I called this article The Abu Ghraib mothers. The article talked about the relatives of imprisoned and disappeared persons, about the mothers claiming for their sons, they described how their sons were arrested, taken out of their house and even tortured in front of the family.”
“It was my first work in Iraq and it was very significant for me, because it also talked about the human rights violation, the abuses and the killings that were taking place there.”
A generation of terror
For Karen Marón, Iraq is the great journalistic story of this era, although for security reasons the journalists covering the conflict nowadays are less than the 10 per cent from the number of journalists that were there at the beginning of the conflict; some of them even assure that the story is over.
“I think that in Iraq and in the entire region the global political situation is at stake, as regards the strategic, geopolitical and economic aspects. Moreover, it is the first genocide of this century. The most powerful army of the world has become halted by resistance groups, trapped in a place they supposed to be out in six weeks or six months. On the other hand, its presence opened the door to Al-Qaeda, an organization that never before has had power inside Iraq. All these things show the ignorance of the West regarding the Oriental world.”
“Unfortunately, what I am experiencing as a journalist is the history of decadence of a nation and its people. The invasion and occupation of Iraq are one of the worst strategic mistakes in the history of the United States. Before the occupation, the Iraqis lived in peace with each other -through an oppressive regime, of course-; nowadays, neighbors and relatives have become enemies.”
“What is happening in Iraq is absolutely obscene. I don't know if the number of deaths reported by the US Department of State is true. All I know is what I see every time I am there: the deterioration of the body and the mind of the Iraqis. The scenes are devastating, closed stores, everything is getting more and more deteriorated, destroyed buildings are never restored. 70 per cent of the Iraqis suffer from post-traumatic stress as a consequence of the war. New illnesses arose, spontaneous abortions, premature births.”
“The reconstruction is a big cheat, in four years nothing has been rebuilt. Millionaire contracts have been signed, and then resold again and again. American and also Iraqi companies are flooded with corruption. For that reason, there is little electrical energy, there is no drinking water, nor gas, and it is impossible to make phone calls to other countries. 70 per cent of the Iraqis who are admitted in a hospital die due to the lack of medicines. You can perceive the sourness on people’s eyes. Nowadays, people say: we prefer the dictatorship since, although we weren’t free, we were safe. The Shiits, the group who suffered the most and did everything to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime are the ones who say that they prefer to be submitted by a president than being colonized. The continuous claim persists.”
“Life in Bagdad depends on the ethnic group you belong to. There is a lot of school desertion, 50 per cent of unemployment. However, those who began to work for the occupation forces, for example, have improved their lives. But they are paying a high price for that: they are being accused by the Sunnit resistance of collaborating with the occupation, or by Al Qaeda of being unfaithful renegades. Therefore, although they have employment, those groups put bombs on the market and hundreds of them die.”
“What is taking place in Iraq is not a military search; it is terrorism, the creation of terror. Terror is created through selective assassinations, clandestine prisons, paramilitary groups; Al Qaeda, because everyone may be an Al-Qaeda member. Every day the “Islamic army of I don’t know what” appears. The damage done in Iraq is so huge. The social structure has been broken.”
The victims’ stories
Some correspondents are interested in political or military aspects. Others are more interested in the diplomatic aspect. Karen Marón is focused on the victims and their stories:
“I think we have a lot of visual contamination, we see any movie and there is a car bomb exploding in Iraq and we think it is all the same; moreover, we are always saying: I am tired of hearing about that war. The important thing is not the car bomb who exploded, but the persons who died, the mothers who lost their sons, the wives who lost their husbands, the children who lost their parents. The pain is deeper every day. That is what I do on the war: I write the story of the victims. If you keep only the anecdote of the war, it is only an anecdote among others. Some journalists wear the helmet and a vest witht the word Media on it. They are warlike persons, like mercenaries, they make money with the war, they look for blood and they don’t care about the background.”
“The most terrible things happen on the human’s mind. A mother said to me once: I am so afraid for my children that I have thought that they must sleep together in one room so that, in case they are killed, they all get killed at the same time. But then I think: No, I prefer them to sleep separately, so that at least some of them might survive. ¿Do you understand the pain of that woman? ¡She is prepared to die with all her children! ¡That is not a normal situation! I can’t even process it”.
Karen keeps, in a thick folder, press articles and many pictures of her interviewees. She appears in almost all pictures: near the affected families on refugee camps, surrounded by children in the dessert, outside a hospital with some wounded. She says that she is sympathetic with the other’s pain and that she feels it as her own suffer. She scans Iraqi stories through the pictures and speaks slowly when she talks about children. Karen inhales the smoke of her cigarette as if it gave her the motivation to continue speaking.
“One of the stories that touched me deeply was about a little four-year-old child, named Alí, who lost his left arm and his left leg. He was walking to the Faluya market, accompanied by his grandfather, when they were attacked with F16. His grandfather died instantly, as well as 16 other members of his family.”
“Everyone has a dead person on the family or a person that has disappeared. One of them told me that his five-month-old baby died of cold when he decided to take refuge on the mountains, on their way to Iran. That was when Hussein decided to expel the Kurds. But, amazingly, he didn’t have the least trace of resentment; he thought that it happened because God wanted it to happen. For that reason you can see, in the same place, intense hatred and almost angelical acts of forgiveness.”
“I go to wars because of the children. I am not adrenalin-addicted and I don’t feel excited because of being inside a war. Many people talk about peace as an abstract discourse. I think that, to talk about peace, you must experience the lack of peace; that is to say, the war. War must not be seen as an entertainment.”
Knowing that your life is in other's hands
The security conditions in Iraq have put journalists covering the war on a very particular situation. Karen preferred to use the hiyab instead of using a bulletproof vest. Her nationality has not been a problem since Argentina is not one of the occupying countries; however, she has experienced some cultural conflicts for being a woman.
“It is difficult for occidental women to work there. You can’t even touch a man’s hand and you must always keep a certain distance. Some journalists warned me: They are going to touch your body, your bottom, your legs, your breasts; they are going to grope you… I thought: Ok, it doesn’t matter, nothing is going to happen.
The security conditions in Iraq have put journalists covering the war on a very particular situation. Karen preferred to use the hiyab instead of using a bulletproof vest. Her nationality has not been a problem since Argentina is not one of the occupying countries; however, she has experienced some cultural conflicts for being a woman.
“It is difficult for occidental women to work there. You can’t even touch a man’s hand and you must always keep a certain distance. Some journalists warned me: They are going to touch your body, your bottom, your legs, your breasts; they are going to grope you… I thought: Ok, it doesn’t matter, nothing is going to happen.
But after a military attack, I went with a cameraman and a photographer to Faluya in order to report the victim’s and I felt that somebody was touching me, again and again. I realized that I were surrounded by thirty men, I felt a terrible anguish. I left the place overwhelmed, as if I had been raped. I couldn’t help crying, because I was going to report the stories of their wives and their daughters and I received a terrible treatment.”
“In that exact moment, female journalists were receiving obscene telephone calls in the hotel Palestina. One of them found the curtain of her room scratched and she received calls telling her that she was being spied. An American photographer in Nayaf, on the south of the country, ended with her ribs and backbone broken, and her kidneys destroyed.”
“I asked them why all theses things happened and I received no answer. Finally, somebody explained it to me: The thing is that we consider occidental women are unfaithful because they are not Muslims. And we consider you as prostitutes for the life you live. Because we see you on the movies and you have many men, you change from one boyfriend to another. Besides that, what are you doing here? Why you are not at home, with your mother if you are single, or with your husband if you are married? They think that, for that reason, they have the right to touch you. That day I thought: Or this beats me or I continue with my work.”
“During my second trip, I experienced that proverb saying that you can put your life in the hands of a person that may betray you. Maybe that can happen every day, with a husband or with a friend, I don’t know. But there you can see it clearly. Its detection and recognition belong to a learning process. You discover your own vulnerability.”
“It happened with a driver and translator that worked for me, named Garigh. I contacted him through a trusted friend. Specifically in Iraq, you are almost entrusting your life to those persons. They know all your movements and they may give you away for money or for pressure by a terrorist group. Pressure is very high because you are living with someone that may betray you.”
“One day, Garigh put his hand on my leg and told me: I want to have a son with you. It is not the same if a man puts a hand on your leg, you take it out and get off the car; if you are on a war zone, you don’t know anything. I took his hand off my leg and told him: Nooo, Garigh. And he told me: So we are not friends anymore, and he made a gesture (he put his fingers on his neck, as signal of decapitation). Although he didn’t work with me as a translator, each time I saw him at the hotel's lobby, he made me the same gesture. That has a great psychological impact.”
Being a witness
Karen’s experiences at war have left a sadden look on her face. She talks about her childhood as a lonely child, that she has been “almost pathologically” overprotected by her mother, about the death of her father when she was five years old and the need to strengthen her masculine character.
“I developed a personality that manifests the man and the woman I have inside, and that helped me to survive on a war: a woman may be very feminine, but sometimes you have to bear situations for which your body is not prepared.” She also talks about a search from personal freedom through journalism, where she can channel some of her human needs.
“In Iraq you hear a lot about hotel journalism. Journalists that stay at the hotel, cut agencies’ information, paste it and date it. I have seen much of that, due to its distance and because it is very difficult to confirm. As a free lancer, I have to make something different. Firstly, because I reject the hotel journalism; and secondly, because you have to do special things to attract clients.”
“As a war correspondent, I probably experience in one day what a common person might experience in 50 years. It is like a slide of feelings; you experience happiness, sadness, worries. It is a full time journalism practice. You face death, you undergo unparalleled stressful situations. You have your own fears and anxiety, but you have to complete the job.”
“Then you feel the joy of sharing the night with your colleagues, the only ones that can understand you. There is a kind of tribal thing between journalists, we are always the same persons who work in the same conflict. The correspondent is also very lonely, something that is rarely mentioned. Most of them usually hide very strong personal stories, but they don’t speak about it. When you go back to normal life, how can you tell the others what you have experienced? Some persons ask it as if you have been on an adventure. But for us it is a real suffering or a very deep experience that you prefer not to tell.”
“More than once I told myself ‘I will never go back again’ because I am physically and psychologically touched by such experiences. However, I can’t go back. For me, Iraq has almost become a cause”.
* Ana Maria Carrano, publisher and magazine editor, is our correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela. Her journalistic activity has been always tied to the local cultural environment.
“In that exact moment, female journalists were receiving obscene telephone calls in the hotel Palestina. One of them found the curtain of her room scratched and she received calls telling her that she was being spied. An American photographer in Nayaf, on the south of the country, ended with her ribs and backbone broken, and her kidneys destroyed.”
“I asked them why all theses things happened and I received no answer. Finally, somebody explained it to me: The thing is that we consider occidental women are unfaithful because they are not Muslims. And we consider you as prostitutes for the life you live. Because we see you on the movies and you have many men, you change from one boyfriend to another. Besides that, what are you doing here? Why you are not at home, with your mother if you are single, or with your husband if you are married? They think that, for that reason, they have the right to touch you. That day I thought: Or this beats me or I continue with my work.”
“During my second trip, I experienced that proverb saying that you can put your life in the hands of a person that may betray you. Maybe that can happen every day, with a husband or with a friend, I don’t know. But there you can see it clearly. Its detection and recognition belong to a learning process. You discover your own vulnerability.”
“It happened with a driver and translator that worked for me, named Garigh. I contacted him through a trusted friend. Specifically in Iraq, you are almost entrusting your life to those persons. They know all your movements and they may give you away for money or for pressure by a terrorist group. Pressure is very high because you are living with someone that may betray you.”
“One day, Garigh put his hand on my leg and told me: I want to have a son with you. It is not the same if a man puts a hand on your leg, you take it out and get off the car; if you are on a war zone, you don’t know anything. I took his hand off my leg and told him: Nooo, Garigh. And he told me: So we are not friends anymore, and he made a gesture (he put his fingers on his neck, as signal of decapitation). Although he didn’t work with me as a translator, each time I saw him at the hotel's lobby, he made me the same gesture. That has a great psychological impact.”
Being a witness
Karen’s experiences at war have left a sadden look on her face. She talks about her childhood as a lonely child, that she has been “almost pathologically” overprotected by her mother, about the death of her father when she was five years old and the need to strengthen her masculine character.
“I developed a personality that manifests the man and the woman I have inside, and that helped me to survive on a war: a woman may be very feminine, but sometimes you have to bear situations for which your body is not prepared.” She also talks about a search from personal freedom through journalism, where she can channel some of her human needs.
“In Iraq you hear a lot about hotel journalism. Journalists that stay at the hotel, cut agencies’ information, paste it and date it. I have seen much of that, due to its distance and because it is very difficult to confirm. As a free lancer, I have to make something different. Firstly, because I reject the hotel journalism; and secondly, because you have to do special things to attract clients.”
“As a war correspondent, I probably experience in one day what a common person might experience in 50 years. It is like a slide of feelings; you experience happiness, sadness, worries. It is a full time journalism practice. You face death, you undergo unparalleled stressful situations. You have your own fears and anxiety, but you have to complete the job.”
“Then you feel the joy of sharing the night with your colleagues, the only ones that can understand you. There is a kind of tribal thing between journalists, we are always the same persons who work in the same conflict. The correspondent is also very lonely, something that is rarely mentioned. Most of them usually hide very strong personal stories, but they don’t speak about it. When you go back to normal life, how can you tell the others what you have experienced? Some persons ask it as if you have been on an adventure. But for us it is a real suffering or a very deep experience that you prefer not to tell.”
“More than once I told myself ‘I will never go back again’ because I am physically and psychologically touched by such experiences. However, I can’t go back. For me, Iraq has almost become a cause”.
* Ana Maria Carrano, publisher and magazine editor, is our correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela. Her journalistic activity has been always tied to the local cultural environment.
After three years and a half of being a witness of the war in Iraq, the Argentinean Karen Marón has been awarded by the International Press Club of Madrid as the Latin American journalist with more permanence in Iraq during the occupation. Her work as independent correspondent has been valued by 12 media companies. She also has made media coverage in the Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Colombia, Peru, Cyprus, Gambia, Tunes, Venezuela and Europe