How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone

by Rosie Garthwaite

  Leith Mushtaq, senior Al Jazeera cameraman

  ‘Condoms, peanuts, water-bottle, torch, long- and short-sleeved shirts, anti-mosquito repellent, a small bottle of gin or vodka that will not get spotted in a Muslim country where booze is forbidden. Vodka in an IV bag is the best!’

  Monique Nagelkerke, MSF head of mission

  ‘Good book and a head-torch to read it by. Sleeping mat or a sleeping bag as it can get very cold at night.’ Tim Albone, journalist

  ‘Music on my iPhone, shortwave radio, snakebite kit (in the wilds of Southeast Asia), and a US army escape kit (in Vietnam).’ Jon Swain, journalist and author

  ‘Army tourniquet, clean needle, antiseptic, water purification tablets and portable chess set.’ Sebastian Junger, journalist and author

  2/ Avoiding Misunderstanding

  There is no such thing as an enemy. You are independent in a war zone: you should be able to deal with everyone and everything. Understand that the people outside are just men and women. How are they thinking? What part of them can you understand? In the end they are all human. You need to find the kernel of humanity. Leith Mushtaq

  At the risk of sounding like a beauty pageant contestant, if everyone could approach the unfamiliar with the same sensitivity and lack of preconceived judgement as Leith Mushtaq, a world of violence and death could be avoided.

  Unfortunately, when two people meet they bring their baggage with them – fears and notions of otherness that lead to dangerous misunderstanding. All we, as visitors, can do is to try to bridge the canyon of difference. There are many different ways to do that, from speech to looks and body language.

  John Simpson, the BBC correspondent who has sat on many a front line, says you always need to retain your ‘self’. ‘Act naturally, don’t allow yourself to be scared; be friendly, look people in the eye and never, ever try to pretend you’re not who you are.’

  Kamal Hyder has spent years working as a journalist in the tribal lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His reports are as popular with the Taliban as they are with the Pakistani Army. He advocates learning how to blend in with people in any way you can. ‘Even if you can’t assimilate, you can learn how to treat people, show respect for their culture. You should aim for them to respect you as much as you respect them. Engage them on their level.’

  /TO BLEND IN OR NOT?

  There are two very different schools of thought about blending in, and both sides feel equally strongly.

  I spent a lot of time in Iraq struggling with my abia, the black, all-in-one number that covers you from head to toe. Initially, I wore it to travel when visiting scary places in town, and to funerals. But I quickly learnt that it was never going to help me – a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl – blend in. While other girls could go through an assault course in their headscarves, mine would not stay on. It was like the material and my head were magnetized at polar opposites. Wearing it just meant that people looked twice and often came up to me and asked who I was – the last thing I wanted.

  A friend of mine, however, was able to wander freely around Baghdad without anyone batting an eyelid because she had brown eyes and brown hair. She had also perfected the art of dressing to blend in – carrying only plastic bags, never a smart laptop case. She wore local clothes, bought on arrival, and, most importantly, local shoes, and went quietly about her business. Our Muslim translators thought it was fantastic. The Christian was furious.

  I ended up wearing the abia only out of respect, never for disguise. If I was meeting a member of the Badr Brigade – the Shia armed group who clashed with the Mehdi army just after I left town – I would wear an abia so that he was able to talk to me. If I was meeting a recently bereaved family, I would cover my head to show I understood their values. They would often tell me to take it off. But they knew I was willing to try upholding their culture, even if my efforts didn’t work very well.

  I think I was saved more than once by people wanting to protect me because I stood out. As one of the only blondes in Basra – the only one I ever saw – and a journalist who was listening to their stories, I was apparently dubbed ‘the angel’ by some people in the town. They would bang on the ice-cream parlour window, where I chose to interview all the most dangerous people I met, to let me know if trouble was coming. They would stand in front of my car window if we got stuck in a crowd so that no one would see who was inside. They would run into the Internet café I used every day and tell my translator when we needed to move on.

  Then there was the army – the only people who knew where I lived in town. When I was with them I had to blend in too. I needed to be respectful, smart and familiar – I needed them to trust me. It was a difficult balance, especially given the complete lack of running water during my whole stay in Basra. A daily ‘baby wipe shower’ just didn’t cut it.

  My advice would be that if you can blend in, then try to do so, especially for one-off encounters, such as checkpoints, or travelling on public transport. But if you are staying for a while, blend in only out of respect for the local culture, not to hide. In the long run you will be found out.

  Others have different advice. James Brandon was in Iraq and Yemen for several years and found going undercover worked best for him. ‘The number one rule is to try to blend in with the locals. Wear a cheap shirt. Grow a beard. Go to a local barber’s and demand the latest style. If locals don’t wear seatbelts, then you shouldn’t either. The exception is footwear. Even if most locals wear sandals, you should stick to trainers (in a local fashion of course) because if people start shooting, you might need to run. Unless you can run in sandals, don’t wear them.

  ‘Remember that disguises that work in one part of the world won’t work in another. Heading up into northern Yemen to report on the civil war in late 2004 with an American journalist, I travelled in a battered pick-up truck with some sympathetic Yemenis. The other journalist and myself were dressed in the traditional Yemeni outfit of long grey thoab and Arab-style headdress, plus a belt and traditional curved tribal dagger. To complete the image, we chewed qat, the local drug beloved by Yemenis. As we neared our destination, we were flagged down in a stretch of barren, volcanic desert by two tribesmen carrying AK-47s. They asked for a lift and we were happy to oblige – two armed men in the back of our truck only added to our authenticity. As a result, we made it through over a dozen army checkpoints to get into this remote region declared strictly off-limits to foreigners. We were later arrested and thrown into prison, but that’s a different story.’

  If you are in a location as part of a team, you must realize that the actions of one individual could harm the whole group, so you should lay down some rules. One (female) MSF volunteer explained to me how they went about it in Yemen during the battle between government forces and tribes in the north in 2007. Peace talks were under way, but it was very tense and one of the hardest places to work as an outsider. The tribal, social and religious divisions are incredibly complex in Yemen. Everyone carries weapons.

  ‘We established a strict dress code…to find a way to be respected by the tribal leaders and respect their culture at the same time. It is a completely patriarchal society. Women are not considered to have any value. If we looked just like the Yemeni women, we would be dismissed immediately, so we went halfway – we covered our heads. We wore long shirts down to our knees and over our trousers. We also avoided flashy colours. Once we had established what we thought was sensible, we wrote a behaviour code and no one was allowed into the country to work with MSF unless they agreed first to stick to it. It risked putting us in danger if they stood out or gave the group a bad name. No NGOs had worked in the area before us, so we decided to go low profile in the beginning. Our logo would not have offered us any protection.

  ‘When we were at home we had an understanding that we could do what we wanted inside our own four walls. We didn’t cover our heads. We wore T-shirts. And if people didn’t like it, they could leave. People respected that. We had a complete ban on alcohol. There was zer
o tolerance on that. And if you had a tattoo, you had to keep that covered. It is an extreme culture.’

  Clothes are a uniform, and every choice you make is a sartorial sign of your tribe, whether it be a teenage traveller, an off-duty security guard or a group that is friendly to the Taliban. In Pakistan a millinery mistake could get you into trouble.

  Kamal Hyder advises: ‘Be aware of the signals given by your clothes. In tribal areas I often carry several different types of turbans and hats, known locally as pakols. When you cross front lines you have to know which one to wear. In some areas the other side will just shoot at you if you are wearing the wrong one.

  ‘Foreigners should try to blend in too. They shouldn’t feel silly. There are many European-looking people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once upon a time, it didn’t matter what you wore. Many of these places used to be very hospitable to foreigners wandering around in T-shirts and trousers (never shorts). But because of the “War on Terror” the attitude has changed and you have to understand that. Xenophobia has crept into what used to be the easy-going hippy trail.

  ‘When I first started working in the tribal areas of Pakistan I was clean-shaven. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was an outsider. Many people asked me why I didn’t have a beard given that I was speaking their language. So I grew one and started to blend into the local population.’

  Kamal is now famous for his beard. It used to have its own fan club on Facebook.

  Zeina Khodr has been working in dangerous places as a journalist for nearly 20 years. She says you should be careful of trying to ‘be’ one of the locals. A nod of respect towards their culture should be the aim:

  ‘Your “look” is important…there is no way to look exactly like the locals. It should be a balance. You don’t want to appear as if you are trying to be one of them; you might be taken for a spy. Don’t overdo it. I usually buy something from the local market. I want to look like I am a foreigner showing respect for the local customs. So while I might use a burka to travel in disguise, I can’t work in one because that would be showing a lack of respect to their local culture.’

  I have worked with Sebastian Walker my whole career in one way or another. From the Baghdad Bulletin to Reuters in Iraq through to Al Jazeera, where he is now a star reporter, flying from his base in Washington DC out to one story or another. An open and unthreatening approach has won him many friends out of potential enemies. In Iraq his wide eyes and brown hair helped him get by as a young whippersnapper swimming around in a bowlful of sharks. He describes our first encounter as follows:

  ‘By late 2003, with the insurgency raging, there were only two field-based Western stringers working for the wire agencies in post-invasion Iraq. One was the author of this book, in Basra, and the other was me, in Mosul. Neither of us spoke Arabic, and the day job consisted of taxi rides around two cities quickly spiralling out of control, stopping frequently to interview witnesses at the scene of car bomb explosions, riots, attacks on coalition soldiers, and so forth. I have no idea how the blue-eyed, blonde-haired, young British girl got back in one piece.

  ‘As for me, the strategy was to try to blend in. As ridiculous as that sounds, it was the advice I was given by an Iraqi colleague while mulling the offer of $200 a month plus expenses and a satellite phone. “If you want to survive as an ejnebi [foreigner] in Mosul for six months, start wearing clothes like mine,” he advised. So I went to Baghdad’s second-hand clothes market and purchased several nondescript nylon shirts, cheap trousers and some faux-leather shoes. As I checked into Mosul’s finest budget hotel, the manager peered over the counter and studied me carefully: “Kurdish?”

  ‘Over the next few months, as Iraq’s second city descended into violence, with death squads cruising the city in search of anyone collaborating with the occupation, the only occasions anyone gave me a second look was when I opened my mouth. Traipsing the streets with translator in tow, we looked like a pair of unsuccessful Iraqi businessmen. As we pushed our way through crowds thronging the scene of one of the many US military slayings I witnessed while down there, I took notes while he did the talking.

  ‘A low profile isn’t always going to be possible. But for a lone stringer living in a flat in Mosul and filing text reports for Reuters from Internet cafés over the winter of 2003, managing to avoid attention – at first glance at least – was the difference between being able to do my job, or ending up like Nicholas Berg, who was staying at my hotel before being kidnapped and then apparently beheaded live on the Internet. It was four months before I started being followed and had to leave town… I’ve still got those awful clothes in my wardrobe at home.’

  /BODY LANGUAGE

  If you want to blend in, it starts and ends with an integral understanding of the local body language, down to the smallest detail. As Tom Coghlan, defence correspondent for The Times, told me: ‘Southern Afghans don’t cross their arms, nor do they move their hands and bodies when they are talking. These they regard as a peculiar Western sort of acting. So if you are being Afghan, don’t do it either. Afghans also walk at half the pace of Europeans. Being shy and modest is quite normal, so looking at the ground is fine if you don’t want to be engaged.’

  Doing what the locals do will often mean going against your instincts. James Brandon told me: ‘People in developing world war zones frequently look as if they have seen it all before. If you can mimic this quality, when necessary, it will increase your chances of staying alive. If you are walking down a street and see trouble brewing ahead, whatever you do don’t turn around, stare, run or slow down. Do what a local would do: keep your nerve and don’t panic. Trudge on past the incident, ignore everything and don’t catch anyone’s eye. You need to act as if you’ve seen everything before: after all, most locals probably have.

  ‘I once saw a Jordanian man kidnapped from his hotel in central Baghdad. As two men with guns fired warning shots over his head and forced him into a car, I stood at a tea stand no more than 10 yards away and calmly watched, sipping tea as this unknown man was forced into a car and driven away to his possible death. Keeping cool in such situations might save your life. By watching this incident with an Iraqi-style air of bored indifference, I escaped the attention of this particular kidnapping gang.

  ‘Unfortunately, after too many months of acting like this, the coldness stops being a mask: this aloofness from humanity becomes part of your character. I sometimes wonder what happened to that unknown man. Five years later I wonder if I should have intervened or somehow done something to help him.’

  No matter what you look like or what presents you take, it is your body language that shows respect for the local culture. I have no fluent languages other than English, but all around the world there is a common language of humanity. You just have to learn the local dialect of body language and your message will be a lot clearer.

  Zeina Khodr enlarges on this point: ‘They need to know that you are one of them. As a human, show them that you can relate to them. I went to meet a Taliban commander. At first I was shocked when 30 or 40 men emerged from nowhere with guns. But I remembered he had invited me as a guest. They wanted to talk to me, so I should assume the best. I told them I came from a place of conflict in Lebanon. We discussed something we had in common. That way it’s not like I am coming from Paris to talk to them about fighting in the jungle.

  ‘As a visitor to the area, I would be regarded as a guest by the local tribal elder in Afghanistan, and he would see me as his responsibility. Those feelings are even stronger if you are a female visitor. Having a woman in the team helps.

  ‘Little things help to show your respect. In Afghanistan don’t look men straight in the eye at checkpoints. They are not used to that from a woman.’

  Fitting in is all about knowing how to approach people so that they forget the barriers that might otherwise exist outside that room. Monique Nagelkerke, MSF head of mission, told me: ‘When dealing with UN peacekeepers or with officials, and when trying to break the ice, look at the name o
n their shirt pocket and address the man with his name as printed on his uniform. Often it is long and difficult to pronounce, so you can always ask what his mother or wife calls him. This always worked for me until I met a sharp officer from India, who looked me straight in the eye and answered, “My mother always calls me Sweetheart.” Oh well, it did break the ice!’

  Jon Snow is the chief presenter of Channel 4 News in the UK. He is as famous for his socks and ties as his challenging interviews. He was a long way from the studio in 1982 when he had a brush with a group of fighters north of the capital of El Salvador. ‘I had my life saved by a small gesture at the right time…by a man with a packet of Marlboro. A Dutch film crew had been killed and we wanted to find out what happened. We went to the area they had been murdered and found what seemed to be the same death squad. We looked into their eyes and thought we’d had it. My Italian fixer Marcelo Zinini got out a packet of cigarettes and handed them round. They put down their weapons and never picked them up again.’

  And sometimes, says one former UN worker, who prefers to go unnamed, you need to know the body language in order to avoid offence. ‘Gestures for implying “Would you like a drink?” are not universal. The hand rounded, as if holding a glass, and tilting back into your mouth can imply something quite different in different cultures. This was a lesson I learnt when working as a cocktail waitress, with limited Spanish, in Buenos Aires many moons ago. The drink gesture in that part of the world is in fact a thumb gestured towards the mouth. I did well on tips however.’

  Knowing the right gesture to make at the right time could save your life. Leith Mushtaq told me: ‘I am a white-skinned Arab. I was sitting having coffee in a teashop in Kandahar and there were some men who looked like Taliban. The tea boy told me they thought I was a kaffir [non-believer]. I got up and started saying a prayer, something I knew from childhood. It worked – they came and shook my hand.’