THE DUSTYBEAR POST

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A DUSTYBEAR POST SPECIAL FEATURE - MUSTAFA KAZEMI-THE FACE OF BRAVERY

MUSTAFA KAZEMI - 
THE CONSUMATE PROFESSIONAL
WAR CORRESPONDENT 

THE FOLLOWING IS SUZANNE MALVEAUX FROM CNN INTERVIEWING MUSTAFA FOR CNN

THANKS SUZANNE FOR A GREAT INTERVIEW
& MY THANKS TO CNN 

(FOLLOWING IS ANOTHER ACCOUNT FROM A BRITISH SOURCE-
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THAT STORY)  

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MALVEAUX:  (coming out of a commercial break) 

Now I want to go to Kabul, Afghanistan where on Friday insurgents armed with guns, rocket propelled grenades, explosives, rushed a hotel. They opened fire on guests who were eating there killing 19 people, holding hostage others. During an 11-hour siege. While this went on, three journalists rushed to the scene, sending out a stream of harrowing tweets as the insurgents fought Afghan and NATO troops. One of those journalists is a 26-year-old Afghan born, his name is Mustafa Kazemi. He sent powerful short messages describing the action. These are his tweets, he says people pray for us, heavy gunfire all around, several bullets cross over head, hundreds of shots flying toward us. Mustafa, he's joining us now. Mustafa, I think it's kind of hard for people to understand who are not journalists -- when I was in Afghanistan the U.S. Embassy was attacked. You go running to the streets, go running to the gunfire. It's your job. So when you went running to that hotel, to that dining area, what were you thinking?

MUSTAFA KAZEMI, JOURNALIST: I had an idea of what it was going to be like on the ground especially close to the scene because this was not the first time I would attend and cover a combat, a live combat coverage. I could understand there will be a lot of casualties and I could -- because there's no standard during the night to protect the life of the hostages. I was expecting there will be a bloody combat during the day when the security forces attack the insurgents and started releasing the hostages.

MALVEAUX: Sometimes you think about the fear and you think about what could happen afterwards. Were you thinking at all? Were you afraid, were you fearing for your life as you were reporting as it was happening this gunfire?

KAZEMI: There's no time to think you might survive or not. You have to just concentrate on the work, provide the coverage as well as look for your safety. There's two minute or one minute of time when you move out of the home and head straight toward the area of the attack when you think you may not come back alive. It is not a new feeling to me, because throughout several past years when I went to a combat coverage, I did think before leaving home that I may not come back alive. I come back home alive. You will think that you may not survive seeing the situation down on the ground.

MALVEAUX: How did you do this, Mustafa? How were you actually live tweeting as this attack was going on?

KAZEMI: I went there to provide coverage on twitter as well as to -- because I'm an independent journalist, media does not have journalists in Afghanistan. I had my telephone, my iphone. I unfortunately ran out of battery and I could tweet as well as tweet the televisions or any paper or media outlet that would call a get for updates.

MALVEAUX: Were you actually --
KAZEMI: My nokia telephone through texts.
MALVEAUX: Were you actually behind anything? Were you able to take cover as you were tweeting out what you were seeing and experiencing?


Replenishing Medical Kits




Replenishing Medical Kits




             Pinned down, with bullets whizzing over his head as he cowers under a sofa, Mustafa tweets and desperately tries to share the horror first hand with little or no thought for his own personal safety.


Dangerous: Lying cramped in his hideout, Mustafa Kazemi tries to locate his tourniquet in case he or one of the other journalists get hit



KAZEMI: The cover was not really strong. We could not rely on that. It was 40 centimeters tall stone wall and we were trying to stick to the ground as far as possible because there were dozens of stray bullets. You could not see who was hitting who and the bullets without any direction or any target, bullets were flying all around. Stick to one place, find out if it's safe, stay there. If not, if you see bullets coming toward you, change your position. Go to somewhere safer. But for us, it was the safest place. Although it was not every safe we had a lot of bullets landed close to us, machine gun bullets as well as assault rifle bullets, but it was for us the safest place we could cover as well as have an eye on the combat scene on the hotel that was going on.

MALVEAUX: I'm sure you were probably not checking if anybody was reading your tweets at the time or responding to you. Afterwards, did you see if people were actually responding to you as this was happening, as you were under attack? Were people tweeting back?

KAZEMI: People did actually. They appreciated the coverage as well as it was very useful for them. Previously my audience, my followers were not as big in terms of number as this time. And people were happy they were having solid information from the ground because if they would have waited for a wire or TV, it would have taken them a while. They did tweet back to me. They were happy. They thanked me.

MALVEAUX: You're a young guy, and I imagine your parents are kind of worried about you when they see this kind of thing happening live. I don't know if they tweet or not, but I certainly called my parents when I was in the middle of all of that mess there. Did you talk to them? Are they concerned? telling you, come home, what are you doing?
KAZEMI: My family is living in another part of the country. I'm living alone here in Kabul. But they usually, when they get to know about an attack from tv, they have a sense of me going to the attack, so the first thing they do is they call me up on telephone saying, do not go to the attack scene, just stay at home and do the coverage. I tell them, I'm not going, I'll be here only. I switch off my home telephone and go straight to the attack scene. I can't risk staying at home and miss all the updates and the news. So I do go there. They get to know -- they will not like me for that, but this is my commitment, this is my job. I have to do this.
MALVEAUX: You certainly are committed. yes. Sometimes you ignore the parents, you do your job, do what you have to do. Mustafa, we appreciate you. We appreciate your bravery in bringing that story to us through live tweeting. Thanks again, Mustafa.
KAZEMI: Thank you.
THIS IS MUSTAFA...the face of Bravery under fire. THIS IS the life of someone who reports so that the rest of us can know the full story about what is going on in that war-torn country...at great personal sacrifice to his life and safety.

 I can honestly say that there is NO ONE on the planet who inspires me more or gives me greater hope for his part of the greater Middle East. Mustafa is TRULY unique...one of a kind.
 
And via this I relived the entire episode again, and gained a renewed appreciation for this tender-hearted but fearless dude who reports every single day from and about Afghanistan.

WHO of us could do what he does and survive...not only physically but emotionally?

 I wonder.

& I salute my Mate...for who he is and what he does. 

 PEACE, Mustafa. ALWAYS...for I can't even begin to imagine life without you for your country and what you bring to the world.


Db

 Here again is the link to the related video.
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/jun/29/kabul-intercontinental-hotel-attacked-video


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Ready for death today': Journalist extraordinary live tweets as he braves fierce fire during Taliban attack

Trapped in a grisly fire-fight, a war reporter has been broadcasting live from a Taliban attack through a series of fascinating updates to his Twitter feed.
Mustafa Kazemi was among a group of journalists who braved gunfire to Tweet about the attack which took place at a hotel outside of Kabul.
It began on Thursday evening when insurgents, armed with guns, grenades and explosives, opened fire on dining guests, killing 18.


Rather than fleeing the area, Mustafa Kazemi (@combatjourno), Martin Kuz (@MartinKuz), and Ahmad Mukhtar (@AhMukhtar) rushed to the scene, where survivors were being held hostage.

In a series of 140-character messages they described what they saw as the insurgents fought with Afghan authorities through the night and into Friday morning. 
An accompanying email, sent to the New York Daily News, Kazemi told how the three men had taken a risky route over a hill so as to get a better view of what was going on. 
               Tragic: One of Kazemi's Tweets, broadcasting the aftermath of the Taliban attack
Service: Even after having been awake for more than 50 hours Kazemi continued to provide information to his followers
 
 Souvenirs: Kazemi posted a photograph of cartridges and bullet casings collected from the scene


'Gunshots were coming from every side,' he said. 'You could not really distinguish who is who.'
They took cover by a stone wall and were then trapped as the gunfire got heavier, weapons firing from all directions and some bullets falling close to where they hid. 
Most of the Tweets were short and urgent, coming in rapid succession. 

They included: ‘Hard to survive today,’ ‘bullets flying every side,’ and ‘oh god gunshot really fierce.’
‘Strong blast,’ ‘extremely strong blast’ and ‘strong blast again’ brought the fatal attack to life for followers.
Even after surviving their harrowing ordeal, the journalists remained at the scene of the firefight to speak to survivors.
‘I spoke to one teenager who was a hostage,’ Kazemi wrote. ‘His face was injured with a shrapnel. He was inside for 12 hours but eventually escaped himself.
He documented the resulting scenes through descriptive posts including: ‘One young man was shot dead with a lite cigarette in one hand & the cigarette pack in the other hand. He couldn’t smoke the cigarette.’
‘Another young man was killed with his coke glass filled and not taken a sip,' came a second. 'His hand was going to approach the glass.'
In a third he wrote: ‘According to one official, the Taliban had taken the pants off a young boy, he was lying dead naked in his own blood in a corner.’
Small details in the Tweets humanise the victims and bring home the brutality of the attack, for example: 'The birthday cake smashed in the attack today, was very, very sadly still uncut. The person who was supposed to turn 22, never made it.'
The journalists were awake for more than 56 hours, Fox News reported. But Kazemi continued to update Twitter, keeping his followers up-to-date with breaking news and information.

In an interview, 26-year-old correspondent Kazemi explained: ‘In this country, if you want to survive you have to be brave.’

Twitter and other social media is fast becoming an essential tool for war reporters, allowing the user to witness live events as near to first-hand as possible. 
‘This is not something they’re used to here, the violence is horrid,’ he told the news site. ‘Having [my Tweets] as a piece of factual information. This is happening, right now. They appreciated it.’

Kazemi Tweeted that he was ‘ready for death today again. But somehow I narrowly missed it. Strange.’

THANK GOD, Mate. THANK GOD!

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A comment...


Brave!! believe only this, these guys think only of the story and themselves! Brave are the guys facing these monsters head on,brave are the Afghan people who have to live with this threat hanging over them daily. That's BRAVE.



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