In a lawless land, hazards mount for reporters

In the northern city of Taloqan, a Swedish cameraman was shot by masked gunmen in a house he shared with other journalists. Also on Tuesday, a Canadian freelance correspondent was reportedly kidnapped by the Taliban in the southern town of Spin Boldak. He was reportedly bound hand and foot, and kept in a small cell. Last week, four journalists were ambushed and killed on the road between the eastern city of Jalalabad and Kabul.

Days later, several journalists ventured down the same road and were robbed, but apparently saved from injury by the deft intervention of their translator. He was told by the gunmen that a local mullah had put a price on the head of any Westerner.

Afghanistan is certainly not the first country where foreign journalists have become targets during a military conflict. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 19 journalists were killed during the Bosnia war from 1992 to 1995, as combatants accused them of taking sides.

In Sierra Leone last year, four journalists with half a century of conflict experience among them drove up a road where many had been before. But Kurt Schork of Reuters and Miguel Gil Morena de Mora of AP television were killed in an ambush.

The two survivors - both friends of this correspondent, as were the victims - are also covering this war in Afghanistan. As a reminder to take care, they wear vials with the crematory ash of their fallen colleagues around their necks.

But those kinds of losses - that happen with even seasoned and careful reporters - are causing many journalists and editors to think twice before taking further risks in Afghanistan.

A battle-front story for the French newspaper Libération was held for a day - to the consternation of its correspondent here - because editors in Paris were concerned about the risks taken to get the story. Associated Press television - which suffered losses in Macedonia earlier this year - ordered its cameraman in Afghanistan to be cautious, despite complaints from clients that some footage was too far from the action.

Some correspondents wear bullet-proof vests. An AP photographer's life was saved by his vest when he was shot in the chest during the Northern Alliance offensive to take Kabul. But many journalists here don't have them.

The stories of looting and threats are rising. A Knight Ridder correspondent had his computer and satellite phone stolen as he changed a flat tire roadside on Tuesday. Cameras and money are more and more often stolen as reporters walk through the markets in Afghan cities.

Two American photographers were pinned in a ditch for two hours by heavy gunfire last week, during a failed alliance offensive south of Kabul. As they lay huddled, the rebel next to them was shot and killed. Trying to get around a rebel checkpoint by foot last week, this correspondent was shot at repeatedly by alliance soldiers.

Despite the risks, the drive to find out what's happening, to put a spotlight on events in Afghanistan, continues. Now the shop talk is of who will be first into Kandahar - near where US combat troops are deploying to hunt down Osama bin Laden and finish off the Taliban. Local ethnic Pashtuns - who dominate the Taliban - have even had trouble on the road from Kabul to Kandahar, with windows of their buses smashed, and frequent robberies.

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