INSIDE/OUT

David Silva

o7 This is the first of a two-part column.f7

“Greetings from Peshawar.”

Although the Instant Message that flashed across my screen almost made

me drop my coffee cup in my lap, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The

message was from Laura Winter, who used to work with me as a reporter for

the Foothill Leader, the News-Press’ sister paper. Laura always had a

fascination with “being there” -- with being on hand when history was in

the making. She traveled about the planet so much upon leaving the Leader

in search of the elusive “there” that she could probably have retired on

her frequent flyer miles.

She was in Washington covering Clinton’s last State of the Union

speech; was in Hong Kong when the Chinese took possession of the city;

was in Beijing during the U.S. spy plane crisis. I wouldn’t hear from her

for months, then suddenly a message from “LJWinter” would pop on my

computer screen. “Greetings from D.C.” or “Greetings from Hong Kong” or

“Greetings from the Forbidden City.”

I got the feeling it was her way of needling me for having sent her to

so many La Canada Flintridge City Council meetings when she had insisted

she was capable of so much more.

When I saw her latest message, “Greetings from Peshawar,” I felt my

heart sink.

Laura had asked me not two weeks earlier in an online conversation

what I thought about the possibility of her going to Pakistan as a

freelance war correspondent. I replied that I thought it was a perfectly

batty idea. It wasn’t that I thought she couldn’t do it. It’s just that

I’m protective of my friends and have very strong views against traveling

into war zones if one doesn’t absolutely need to be there. I’ve also

advised friends against camping overnight on Rosarito Beach or visiting

certain parts of East L.A.

This war, I had messaged Laura, was going to be a particularly

dangerous one for Western journalists, and especially for female Western

journalists. And I hated the notion of someone I cared about getting

killed covering a war, because I knew it would go unappreciated.

Americans have a thirst for war news, but little respect for war

correspondents.

Eight Western journalists have been killed so far in the Afghanistan

conflict. I’m still waiting for Bush or any other nonjournalist to

publicly complain about that.

But Laura had once more caught the fever for “being there.” She told

me she had had drinks with Peter Arnett, the former CNN reporter perhaps

best known for having gotten himself trapped inside Iraq during the

Persian Gulf War and becoming a sort of de facto biographer of Saddam

Hussein. “This is your war,” she told me Arnett had said to her. “You

should be there for it.”

I tried to tell her that Arnett was probably the last person who

should be giving war-correspondent advice, but I knew she wouldn’t

listen.

“Greetings from Peshawar.”

Laura explained to me how she found a relatively cheap ticket to

Pakistan from Hong Kong, where she was based, arriving in Islamabad

shortly before the fall of Kabul. Media outlets hot for news from the

front quickly agreed to pick up her dispatches, including the South China

Morning Post, the New York Daily News and Glamour magazine.

But the war front was still a long way away. Laura and several other

journalists found themselves cooling their heels in a Peshawar hotel,

itching to get to the news.

“For about two days, we had been moaning that we should have gone to

Uzbekistan to enter Afghanistan from the north with the Northern

Alliance,’ Laura wrote me. ‘It was Nov. 14, and Kabul had just fallen.’

Then, on the morning of the 15th, Willis Witter, the deputy foreign

editor of the Washington Times, called Laura’s room. “Start packing,” he

said.

Laura picked up the phone and started calling loved ones to tell them

she was headed to Afghanistan.

Most of what took place next I found out just a week ago, through

interviews and news accounts. In an article titled “Ambush,” Washington

Times photographer Gerald Herbert wrote of traveling with Laura and about

200 journalists in a 15-bus convoy into Afghanistan. With them was an

Australian videographer for Reuters named Harry Burton, a tall, gentle

man who Herbert said reminded him of Jesus Christ.

Just three days earlier, Laura had been at the Pakistan-Afghanistan

border, taking pictures of a group of Afghani women who were fleeing the

country. A Pakistani soldier walked up to her and told her they had just

received a message from some Taliban warriors, who were watching from

over the border. The Taliban wanted her to know that if she did not stop

photographing the women, they would open fire. Laura put her camera away.

The convoy of journalists was on an incline headed toward Jalalabad

when anti-aircraft shells began screaming overhead. A journalist Laura

had befriended handed her a flak jacket, which she pressed against the

window next to her. She knew the jacket wouldn’t actually stop a bullet,

but it would slow it down.

They reached Jalalabad, where Laura bribed her way into a room at the

Spinghar Hotel. She had come down with a severe stomach ailment and had

to force herself to eat in order to keep up her strength. Harry Burton

saw how sick she was and pleaded with her to return to Pakistan, but she

refused. Laura had made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t leave

Afghanistan until “this thing was over.”

The next day, she set out with Herbert, Willis Witter and others on

the road to Kabul Province. Burton and several other journalists were

traveling in a car ahead. Herbert drove, since their Muslim driver was

reserving his strength because of Ramadan.

It was Nov. 19. The journalists were flush with excitement to finally

be entering the capital of Afghanistan, unaware that four among them

would be dead before the day’s end.

o7 Next week: Beyond Kabul to the caves of Tora Bora.f7

DAVID SILVA is the News-Press city editor. His column runs on

Wednesdays. Reach him at 637-3233, or by e-mail at

david.silva@latimes.com.