How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone Read online

  /TEAMWORK

  The team you find yourself working with might have been put together by a human resources department who have chosen people for their individual strengths and qualities. On the other hand, it might be made up of a band of brothers and cousins, chosen because someone wanted to keep the money in the family. Or it could have been scrambled together as you were going out the door. There is no guaranteed way of assembling the best team. But there is a lot of groundwork you can do to put your team in the best possible position for working together.

  Try to make contact with the rest of your team before you travel. If you get into trouble during your first tentative steps in the country, it is best if they know your name and the sound of your voice rather than just a flight number. And similarly, you need to know their names and who is in charge rather than just an address.

  Get to know your team. There will likely be a clash of cultures, not least in the way they work. Some cultures like to work late in the night, leaving time for a three-hour siesta in the afternoon. Others like to have everything wrapped up by 5 p.m. in time for an early dinner and bed. In intense situations there will always be personality clashes, so it is a good idea to have ironed out some of your differences before arriving.

  Get the best team to ensure success. This might not always be as simple as choosing the best. You need to choose the most appropriate. One MSF volunteer told me: ‘In Yemen we chose not to bring Americans into the team because there was a high level of anti-American feeling.’ This person also gave me some other interesting information: ‘For the Yemenis their names give away their tribal history, but we outsiders had no clue when we were moving into different territory. You need to know someone locally who can tell you about it. One translator we hired was half-Ethiopian, half-Yemeni. That made him very low-ranking in society. He was our translator in the women’s section, and that was sensitive enough to create problems. It became extremely difficult and we reached a point where we were risking his life, so we had to evacuate him from the area.’

  Create systems where everyone is responsible for everyone else in case the real or natural leader is not around to tell you what to do. Nick Toksvig illustrated the importance of this with the following story: ‘At one night-time checkpoint four of us were ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint while the car was searched. We were then told we could go. I was driving and just before setting off realized only three of us were in the car. The fourth was having a slash nearby. Count them out and count them in.’

  Create equality in your team. Even if people are treated differently outside the team, within the team they should be served the same food and sleep in the same beds. Apart from anything else, griping and whining about the hideous situation you are all in will bring a team together. If someone is receiving better treatment than others, it causes problems. Another point Nick Toksvig makes is: ‘Make sure everyone has a flak jacket. The whole team should have the same level of security or insecurity.’

  A team that eats together stays together. One MSF volunteer told me: ‘When I first got to Yemen we used to eat our breakfast separately from our national staff – us with bread and chocolate spread, and them with the local food. But I decided it would be better for the team if we ate together. Then we discovered they had some amazing food. Honey and meat and their own type of pancake. It was delicious. Now, wherever I am, I seek out Yemeni restaurants, I love the food so much.’

  Be upfront about pay. In my experience, transparency is the best way forward when it comes to money. If everyone knows what everyone else is getting and they choose to stay in the job, they cannot complain. It is a good idea to set aside some cash to use later as tips for the lower-paid workers in the team. It should be a surprise, not expected. Make that prize-giving transparent too and everyone will strive for that one goal.

  Nick Toksvig discovered the hard way that paying team members should not be delegated: ‘I was paying our translator in Kabul $150 per day, 50 of which was meant to go to the driver. In the end I found out that the translator was giving the driver only 10 bucks a day, and this was the guy driving us to some dodgy areas. Pay each person separately or they might get pissed off.’

  Make sure everyone understands the point of your trip and agrees with the chosen method of getting there. When lives are in danger it is not fair to impose rules on people. Everyone needs to be in agreement. On the other hand, if someone is stubbornly refusing to toe the line, the team needs to make clear that it will not be tolerated.

  Clearly define roles within a team so there is no clash of responsibility. When lives are at stake it is sometimes difficult to delegate, but it must happen or people will not be fully invested in the task and will begin to feel sidelined.

  Sherine Tadros was one of the only international reporters inside Gaza during the war between Hamas and Israel in 2009. She was there for several months, just her and dozens of boys in a building stuck in the heart of the conflict. In the build-up, then during and after the war, they all witnessed more horror than I can ever imagine. She says one of the hardest things was learning to allow individuals their own response to a situation they were experiencing as a team. She drew a comparison with a family tragedy she’d experienced herself:

  ‘When I was 15 years old, my baby cousin fell in the swimming pool and started drowning. My aunt froze, my mother screamed, my dad jumped into the pool. At a moment of extreme stress everyone has different ways of reacting and coping. You need to recognize that each of your colleagues is coping in their own way and respect their mechanism for dealing with stress, even if you don’t think it’s healthy or it’s not what you are doing.

  ‘During the Gaza war I had a lot of men around me; most were incredibly robotic, seeming almost unaffected by what was going on, or in some kind of bubble. I was the opposite. I felt every day of that war and the suffering around me, and I didn’t hide my fear or distress. A lot of the time my colleagues would walk out of the room when I was emotional. I felt they were being unsympathetic and unkind. What I realized later was that I was disturbing their coping mechanism. Just as I needed to cry and feel to stay sane, they needed not to cry or feel at that moment.

  ‘There is no right way to cope. In the end we are there to do a job, to perform, and you must do whatever you need to do in order to do your job. Respect that and don’t take things personally.’

  /EXIT PLAN

  Understanding that everyone responds in different ways is important when it comes to planning for the worst.

  Make an exit plan. Talk through the exit plan with your team as thoroughly and as early as possible. Everyone needs to know how they are going to exit the hotel or area where you are meeting, and should know each other’s numbers, as well as those for the emergency people. Do you have a reliable driver who will pick up the phone at any time of night? Does everyone have his number? Does everyone know where everyone else is staying so they can go and find them if they are not responding to a phone call?

  Don’t assume that everyone understands the situation as well as you do. Make things crystal clear to those around you. Remember, everyone on the team has a responsibility to make sure the rest know what is going on.

  Don’t assume you always have the best ideas. Be prepared to listen and learn.

  Check and double-check that everyone knows the risks and exactly what to do in a disaster because you might not be there to shout instructions.

  Zeina Khodr, an Al Jazeera English correspondent, talked to me about looking after the weakest link: ‘You need to have thought and talked about the worst eventualities. I was in Kandahar during the election in Afghanistan in 2009. We were well staffed. We had two local guys, but also two guys from our head office to help work the satellite. They had never been anywhere dangerous before and nobody briefed them about what to expect. They were terrified that the Taliban were going to take over the town. They would hear mortars and they would panic. We sat down with them and I explained what was going to go on. We talked through the
worst-case scenarios – from suicide bombing, mortars landing and car bombs to major armed assault and take-over. Everyone in the team should know what’s going on. That was the first time I realized that we didn’t have an exit plan. I had started to take it for granted that everyone knew what was going on. So we worked out a plan.

  ‘I come from Lebanon. I grew up in a civil war. We don’t think of insurance, we don’t think of exit plans. We used to film fighting in the morning and go clubbing in the evening. It is only recently I have realized that we need to ensure the safety of the whole team – to look after the weakest link. You should have an exit plan before it happens: this is damned important.’

  When thinking about your exit plan the place you decide to stay is key.

  /WHERE TO STAY

  I arrived at our house in Baghdad late one afternoon after a 16-hour drive from Amman. I had been told it was in a leafy Christian suburb, away from the hectic dangers of the capital’s centre. We parked up. I was very excited about being able to pee after so many hours on the road. A white van drove slowly past on my right. On my left a man started running and the van sped up. Inside I could see men in black masks. Shots rang out, the man stopped running and fell to the ground. The van sped away and we ran to see the body of what we were told was the local booze shop owner. It was my first dead body, my first picture on my new camera. A man murdered in broad daylight on my quiet suburban street. We were, in fact, not very far from what became Sadr City – the heartland of the Shia militia run by a man most of the press were calling the ‘renegade cleric’, Moqtada al Sadr. The Mehdi army were our neighbours.

  But we stayed in our chosen house, preferring to be amongst people who would protect us and our reputation as a ‘paper of the people’ than be sitting targets in a hotel. That was our decision and we made it work.

  Choosing the right place to stay is the key to being able to sleep at night, eat well during the day, and open a window without fear of being burgled. It should be researched and thought about properly before you arrive, and constantly checked thereafter.

  Check the location of the building and find out what key official buildings are nearby. Does the threat of their being targeted outweigh the usefulness of their proximity?

  What kind of security is there at night? Outside lighting is a minimum, CCTV is good, but guards and a checkpoint are even better.

  Who else is staying in the building? There are no hard and fast rules about who the ideal occupants are. If there is no one at breakfast and lots of shady-looking businessmen making deals at night, you probably want to avoid it. If it is a well-known hang-out for one side or another during a war, and therefore a potential target, you should probably avoid it. Strange as it sounds, I was once told that any hotel where prostitutes feel safe to hang out is often a safe one…for women at least.

  Where are the nearest police station and hospital? You need to know how to get to both these places, so find out where they are and drive the route. Being close to a police station is almost always a good idea – unless the police are part of the problem.

  Ask about the local area. Find out if it is known for being safe. If it isn’t, find out what the locals do to avoid trouble. It might mean not travelling at night or knowing which streets to avoid on your morning jog.

  Check room security. The locks on the doors and windows need to be secure.

  Avoid having a room on the ground floor – it is the most easily burgled. And avoid any rooms with balconies that can be reached from the ground.

  Never let anyone know where your room is. If you’re staying in a hotel, meet visitors in the lobby. Tell the desk that you are staying in a different room – the one where your security man is staying.

  Choose a room for its proximity to an emergency exit. How close is the fire escape? Check the route for padlocks and work out a way to avoid them.

  For the sake of your sanity there are several things you can do to improve your day-to-day life…

  Nick Toksvig says, ‘It’s a good idea to hire extra rooms for offices and equipment. Otherwise some poor person’s room will become the de facto office till the wee hours of the morning, everyone smoking and drinking.’

  Mary O’Shea and I originally met on a sweaty floor mat under a tent near Timbuktu, both of us doubled over with food poisoning, but that’s another story. She now works as an election observer, moving hotel every two months all year round. When choosing a room, she recommends: ‘Never higher than the third floor. Soviet-manufactured fire engines in developing countries do not reach higher than this. Never ever stay in a room with bars on the window (tricky in south Asia). Avoid any room with windows facing onto the street or the hotel entrance. I was once advised never to get into a lift with anyone else. This is nearly impossible, however. Ideally, stay on the outskirts of a town so that you are not trapped if there are street protests.’

  My personal phobia in hotel rooms is cockroaches. I once found five on my bed in a shockingly bad hotel in southern Nepal. The whole town was on an electricity blackout, and as I crunched across the floor in flip-flops, my head-torch flicked down from my crawling bed to the shiny, wriggling black carpet around my feet. I hadn’t slept for a couple of days, so I took two sarongs from my bag, swept the roaches off my pillow and made myself a stripy head-to-toe shroud to keep ’em out till morning. Next time my grumpy correspondent recommended a hotel, I pretended I couldn’t hear him. Sarongs are a key piece of kit.

  In her years spent filming dodgy and dangerous diseases in the outback of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Filipino slums and all sorts of other glamorous locations, Laura McNaught has picked up some key things to avoid. ‘Make sure you get a room that is away from the entrance, the restaurant, the bar, the pool, the barking dogs, the Chinese take-away, the nightclub next door… Alternatively, bring earplugs.’

  Other great tips from Laura include: ‘Bring a T-shirt that can double up as a second, protective pillowcase. Bring a silk sleeping bag and never sleep naked, no matter how hot it is.’ She also notes: ‘A mini bottle of Cif goes further than alcohol handwash when you’re cleaning the doorknobs, light switches and phone.’ It’s wise to do this if you’re in an area where sickness is spreading as the cleaners rarely remember to do it.

  My colleague and friend Jane Dutton is a genius of security tricks designed to thwart thieving fingers. Brought up in Johannesburg and weaned as CNN’s ‘Hotspots’ girl, parachuting into 35 countries a year, she can spot potential hazards a mile off. She has even persuaded me to travel with a suitcase that padlocks shut these days. When it comes to hotel rooms these are her tips:

  ‘Before you leave the room always check that your windows are locked, and double-lock the door on the way out. If there is no safe, hide valuable or important things around the room in the least obvious places. Put them in your shoes, in your pants, in your dirty washing. Zip and lock your bag with your stuff still inside to act as a temporary safe.’

  In some places you will have little choice about where you can stay. Even if you are not in a war zone, it can still feel like one if there is a high enough crime rate. In those cases, you must take every precaution to make your house secure. Change your locks and take advice from neighbours. Don’t use the first security firm that knocks on your door.

  Nick Toksvig points out that there are many times when it is a good idea to have a different ‘safe house’ to return to in case something goes wrong. ‘Covering the volcano eruption on the island of Montserrat, I rented two houses, with the second closer to the “safe” zone. It meant we could move our operation quickly if things got out of control close to the mountain. Another time, during Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006, we had local hotel accommodation, but also a safe house down by the harbour in case things got heavy and the Israelis invaded.’

  I always carry a simple little wooden wedge. Just slide it under the door as an additional lock: the harder the door is forced, the more it jams. And remember, your ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is a simple deter
rent. I’d much rather a grubby room than some cleaner snooping around my belongings. Chris Cobb-Smith

  /SAFE ROOM

  I first met Chris Cobb-Smith in a favourite London pub with the mad but fantastic BBC reporter John Sweeney. We were investigating the deaths of six British ‘Red Caps’ (military policemen) during a riot in southern Iraq. I was ex-army and so was Chris, an artilleryman from the 29 Commando regiment. After working in Kosovo as a weapons inspector, he founded Chiron Resources, which provides specialist security support to news and documentary teams reporting from war zones. We have been bumping into each other on various jobs ever since. Name a conflict or disaster and you will find Chris was a visitor.

  He says that in addition to having a safe house, a ‘safe room’ should be prepared in advance – somewhere to go when evacuation is impossible:

  ‘Offices, bureaux and accommodation in high-risk areas should have a safe room – a secured area that could be used as a last resort for sanctuary in the event of an attack or attempted abduction. The aim of a safe room is to provide a hardened sanctuary that will at least buy additional time until help arrives, and may even act as a deterrent to an aggressor.

  ‘Ideally, the safe room should not have any outside walls, be of substantial construction and have a solid and securable door. If the room does have windows, external or internal, they should be armoured. The room should also have power and, ideally, be equipped with a panic button connected to the agency responsible for responding to an emergency. A safe room can be specially constructed, or created by enhancing a bathroom or possibly the space under the stairs.