Running from the Law

Gori
Georgia

Law today on the outskirts of Gori, involved a crazed Ossestian wielding a pistol firing a journalists, this directly in front of a Russian tank flanked by Armored Personal Carriers, the fact that the Russian soldiers did nothing is not surprising as reports of all sides in this conflict are committing atrocities. In the spirit of the Olympics car jacking and robbery are now national sports, and as journalists we are being targeted to new heights.

You can get that sense of calm and normality sitting around an army only to have it destroyed in seconds.

We managed to get through all the road blocks and arrived on the outskirts of Gori, to find the Russians taking up positions and for the first time a tank barrel was pointing down the road. The soldiers seemed calm enough and after thirty minutes of media mayhem most of us along with the Russian Soldiers were sitting under trees chatting as they asked us to make calls home for them, and let their families know that they are OK. Unlike the US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, few have cell phones and the concept of Internet Cafes and AT&T phone centers, these guys have nothing. A young Kazach soldier lay on the ground playing with a puppy.

After the melee of the first half hour, we had let our guard down, doubting that any trouble could happen surrounded by the Army.

It was the crack of a single round that made me look up as Steve and I walked back up the road towards the tank and up ahead our car. Anya, our Producer was still getting beseiged by soldiers giving her numbers of families to call. I thought it was strange to hear a small arm sound. But the smell of cordite drifted down to us and I commented to Steve.

"Smells like cordite!"

Another ten steps and it was revealed, the entire media pack was running away back up the road, cars with tires squealing were bearing away, and between us and our car was "the law". A middle aged man with a pistol was screaming as he wrestled with a cameraman trying to get his camera. The pistol was swinging wildly and he was between us and our car.

More shots sounded, a gun swinging around in the air.




Steve and i were running to the side as he continued to wrestle with the cameraman yelling in Russian

"Give me your camera, you jerk or I will shoot you"

You do not stop or try to establish eye contact, you simply run, as fast as you can in a flak jacket. Each step seems to get slower. The distance to safety seems to become an eternity.

Now with fifty yards between us and the gunman I yelled for Steve to start talking, the drama and tension as I ran on with the camera pointing back at Steve, at this moment in time framing and lighting even exposure takes second place. It is a matter of capturing the impact.



With a few hundred yards between us and the crazed militiaman, we slowed to a walk and for the first time I stopped and turned back , wondering where our Producer Anya was in this mayhem. I could not see her so I started walking back towards the scene. It seemed to have cooled down.

Back fifty yards, and all of a sudden everyone is running back past me at full speed away. It was going to hell again.

Cars with doors open full of media hanging out screamed off, shouts were drowned out by the sound of engines reving and horns blaring.

And I could not find my car, I could not even see it. So I ran around cars as they took off wondering if I should just jump into a half open door. This was not one of the times when life flashes past your eyes or everything goes into slo motion.

This was full body contact effort, only my own effort was going to get me out and safe.

It seemed an eternity and the sound of cars became less as they were just about all gone, when I saw our car ahead. The mere sight of perceived safety gave me a boost. This is no armored car, but as we call them "soft skins" but it is "sanctuary".

I remember my arm finally touching the handle and opening the door to scramble in and I turned the camera still rolling to my face, my eyes shot with blood, my breathing and heart rate pulsing to the maximum.



Lifting the camera I turned to Steve and said go, rolling ...

"it's a good thing Mal James is a triathlete, he just had to run
about a mile in a vest. That's how quickly things
change here. One minute you are sitting down with
Russian forces, next minute - car loads of Georgian
forces drive up, they are furious, and they seem to
take out that fury and humiliation on the people they
can, which is the journalists. We saw one Georgian,
irregular force, pointing a gun and then another
fired.I don't know the result, but I saw a pistol fat
guy pointed our way and we just had to run by that
pistol and keep running. This is an irregular,
undisciplined, chaotic, angry, humiliated Georgian
force. They don't listen to orders, they fire on
civilians from what we've just seen."

It is called Law and Un Order

Get Out NOW

Gori Georgia
Covering a war like this one is honestly to a degree like rolling dice, hoping that snake eyes does not come out. You assess every risk and decision rapidly and logically. Just how far do you push the envelope to get a picture or story. All intel amongst the Press Corp was that the town of Gori was a no go zone this morning, eve one of the major agencies was reported to have decided that since their armored car took an attack yesterday that they were nit going to risk it today.

But events change so quickly that the line in the sand shifts and your assessment and gut feel is that, yes go for it.

We arrived at the gas station overlooking Gori and saw smoke rising but it looked more like fires than military operations and every now and then a team would bundle into a car and head into the town. We have been into Gori everyday for the past four days and had the feel of the geography and lay of the land. Seeing a bus of people returning after fleeing we jumped in teh car and drove in following the bus. The bus stopped and people got out and we jumped into the bus to film faces and emotions plus a piece to camera, then having chosen a woman we decided to follow her home filming the return with all the heart ache and emotions associated. I only ever knew her as the woman in green, because of the shirt she was wearing.

She had to go to the hospital where she worked to say hello and check in on friends, by now there was probably twenty or so Press in the courtyard of the hospital. When all of a sudden a simple text came through from a fellow journalist somewhere else to a friend.

It simply said three words

GET OUT NOW

The adrenaline kicks in at such speed that decisions that could be workshopped on merit for hours and made in a millisecond.




The options of why are not discussed but with camera rolling we ran for the car, the greatest threat is of an air strike coming in and from that there is no escape. You do not form up into convoys or wait for stragglers the moment we were half in the car we were driving out fast,



Not a crazy speed but enough to make distance fast and back to relative safety, like the gas station we were bombed at yesterday seemed very safe.

The streets were empty as we sped out of town and then face to face we met them

As i sit in the front seat to film out the window, the first of the Russian Armored Personnel Carriers came into my viewfinder, then a second then for the forseeable future we had run into the Russian Army storming into Gori. If they had wanted to shoot us we were dead but speeding cars going the other way are given usually the right of fleeing.

You do not stop to think you film and prey that it will be alright, Steve gave the commentary and I filmed this was a defining moment in our coverage to date.

We rounded a bend and came to the Gas Station, to an enormous mass of Press who had missed the Russians entering because they had come down a road out of sight of the long lens.

You stop for a few minutes, and then the emotions of risk kick in.

That Close

Apar from the fact that I did not hear the second explosion, I have looked back at my day trying to figure out what the hell the Russians were trying to bomb into oblivion and the Communications tower you can see behind Steve in this photo was the target the trouble is that they missed the tower and landed so darned near us.
I can sit back and review what went thru my mind at the time, but the worst statistic is that in the last five days up to seven journalists and cameramen have been killed covering this conflict. And in a haunting fashion we discuss amongst all of ourselves on the road , did you hear that so and so was killed and we can all place the the location having been there and it is just luck that we are alive at times, this is a bad area, a small war between two totally nations one a superpower, one a small nation that dreams it matters. No one has come to their aid, because the cold fact is that they started the fight.
And seven members of the Fourth estate have paid the ultimate price, not for being foolish or reckless they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Tomorrow we will have to go back to the front, just hope this peace deal has reached the troops on the ground

The Adrenaline of Fear

Steve Harrigan yells we "Out of Here" , Gori Georgia

You can be filming artillery landing on a hillside five km away , and then suddenly the air cracks and 200 m away a Russian Artillery shell lands, in the adrenaline of fear , it is a matter of calm, panic will not help . What made me scared was that I never heard the second shell land in the same area until I got back to the hotel and edited the material.
5 members of the Press have died in the last few days
Today we were lucky

What lies around the next corner ?

There is a Golden Rule, in covering war and that is "Believe a Sixth Sense" , you can be traveling down a road and a member of the team gets that gut feeling that "We should not be here!". Everyone else may feel fine and comfortable, prepared to a bit further down the road around the next corner.
The moment one member gets that feeling and voices that fear we turn around, no questions we turn.
Today Correspondent Steve Harrigan, Producer Anya Ardayeva, our driver Rez and I wanted to try and get as close as we can to the capital of South Ossestia "Tshkinvali" which is now in teh hands of the Russian Army after the Georgians tried to crush the separatists there. No crew has gotten in, some get close but it is an extremely dangerous area with one road in and who controls it can vary and checkpoints can spring up and be manned by Russians, Georgians or anyone who wants to set one up and there rule is law. And law is an AK47 at your head combined with Vodka at times.
The line between safety and danger is rather like drawing a line in the sand during on a very windy day, it shifts every minute and you are never sure where it lies. What was safe an hour ago could be deadly the next minute, it all depends on what lies around the corner.
Yesterday we went to the city of Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. Complete with the house he was born in and a statue in the town square dominates this city. Gori is about an hour from Tsibilsi the capital of Georgia. Yesterday it was quiet after a Russian jet had bombed the day before, and the pictures showed me in the ruins of an apartment block.
Today as we approached Gori, artillery guns were on the road overlooking the city, camouflaged with tree branches making them harder to spot from the air. In one of the few shops still open and running a bakery soldiers were carrying out trays of freshly baked bread and loading them into civilian cars to take to soldiers.
Our driver spoke with a few of them and they all assured us that the road we wanted to take was safe.

We left town to head to Tshkinvali, troops with artillery guns were hidden in the trees, then tanks under bridges and under the canopy of a grove. We stopped and hopped out of the car, walking over wanting to get some footage of the Georgian tanks, before I even lifted the camera up, the tankers indicated NO, we drove on out to the front

Six hours later ... Tabilisi nearly midnight

I wrote this much and basically .... the shit hit the fan

Russian troops are in georgia proper

Georgian troops are in disarray and have pulled back to defend the Capital Tabilisi where I am

A second front has opened in the West of the country Russian troops are in there

And i suppose my title stands , even without finishing the story

what lies around the next corner ?

Gore Georgia

The Edge of the Abyss

Tbilisi Georgia
Below the hotel balcony , young Georgian males parade around the city with car horns blaring and flags hanging off the cars , in attempt to stir up the patriot spirit whilst a few miles up the road the might of the Russian Army masses. It could get nasty here very nasty. All the signs are for a full blown war to erupt, and I find myself on the edge of the abyss again.
We arrived here late this afternoon to a functioning city on a half empty plane full of journalists, nervous yet at the same time excited that we made it in, before access is cut off from the outside world. My first flight here was cancelled as the airline flying direct from London cancelled late yesterday, probably due to the fact that their insurance company advised that flying into a conflict zone might add a premium, so my route here was last night to Frankfurt, five hours sleep in the airport hotel, up at five am for a flight to Istanbul then a connecting flight on Turkish airlines which obviously does not have the same Insurance company. What amazed me was that all my 11 cases arrived amongst all those connecting flights.
It is hard to predict what could happen and tomorrow we will don the flak jackets and go forward to try and make some sense of this conflict.
Keeping safe as I can Lou, and Bj we will swim with the turtles soon have no doubts.