Among the many priv­i­leges of being a rov­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dent is encoun­ter­ing stark, and some­times edi­fy­ing con­tra­dic­tions in the midst of chaos. Over time, they help build a prism through which to view today’s world.

Since 1973, I’ve report­ed on wars, civ­il upheavals, famines, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and uncount­able non-haz­ardous news events in near­ly 100 coun­tries on six con­ti­nents. The won­drous land­scape of the sev­enth, Antarc­ti­ca, is the only place I’ve ever been whose inhab­i­tants nei­ther despoil it as a mat­ter of course, nor try to seize more space or resources than they need.

I’ve met ter­ror­ists and aspir­ing democ­rats, heroes and heart­less vil­lains. In a para­dox one per­haps has to expe­ri­ence to believe, wars exposed me to the best of human­i­ty. In the midst of strife and suf­fer­ing, strangers extend­ed kind­ness and hos­pi­tal­i­ty. A ter­ri­fied African woman risked her own life to save me and four white col­leagues from a machete-wield­ing mob. Peo­ple with next to noth­ing offered to share what­ev­er they had. None asked any­thing from me oth­er than to tell their sto­ry, and respect the dig­ni­ty they were strug­gling against all odds to pre­serve. Vic­tims of a tsuna­mi, floods and famines — who’d often lost every­thing but their lives — were among the kind­est, most gen­er­ous souls I’ve ever encountered.

Com­pare that to West­ern gov­ern­ments who see noth­ing immoral in trim­ming aid bud­gets even as they pro­vide bil­lions of dol­lars worth of mil­i­tary assis­tance to human rights-abus­ing despots, while inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an aid agen­cies have to beg for funds.

In Africa, I wit­nessed the bloody end to Por­tuguese colo­nial­ism in Ango­la, and white rule in Rhodesia’s bush war in the 1970s. I chron­i­cled the iniq­ui­ties of apartheid, and the blood­shed and brav­ery of the 1980s street protests that final­ly over­whelmed it.

Being there when Nel­son Man­dela was sworn in as pres­i­dent was a tru­ly excep­tion­al moment in my career, and life. All around us, thou­sands of ordi­nary South Africans from all the racial cat­e­gories apartheid had so heart­less­ly invent­ed to keep them apart, sang and danced togeth­er as one joy­ous, hope-filled ‘rain­bow nation’. That cor­rup­tion, unremit­ting pover­ty and per­sis­tent inequal­i­ty are the lega­cy of that strug­gle and moment is deeply saddening.

For more than three decades I report­ed on con­flicts in the Mid­dle East, includ­ing both sides of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, the many sides of Lebanon’s civ­il war, the 1982 Israeli inva­sion, the bomb­ing of the Marine bar­racks and the rise of Hezbol­lah in Beirut, and  from Iraq on Gulf Wars I (1990) and II (2003 to 2011).
In South Asia, I cov­ered the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Afghanistan in 2001 and its sub­se­quent travails.

Report­ing on that ‘end­less war’ was punc­tu­at­ed by hair-rais­ing assign­ments try­ing to make sense of the fren­zied, West­ern-backed over­throw of Libyan dic­ta­tor Muam­mar Khadafy dur­ing the Arab Spring in 2011.

None of those con­flicts turned out the way any of the pro­tag­o­nists hoped, claimed, maybe even believed they would. Rather, their results can best be summed up by a quote from George Bernard Shaw’s Cae­sar and Cleopatra:

“And so, to the end of his­to­ry, mur­der shall breed mur­der, always in the name of right and hon­our and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and cre­ate a race that can understand.”

Being at Check­point Char­lie on the night the Berlin Wall fell was a moment in his­to­ry that made me feel Shaw’s gods might actu­al­ly have a shot at get­ting the last word. But report­ing the Balkan wars of the 1990s, includ­ing the siege of Sara­je­vo and the Koso­vo con­flict under­scored how quick­ly even the “civ­i­lized” West­ern world can descend into bar­bar­i­ty on a Medieval scale.

The Russ­ian pul­veris­ing of Grozny in 1995 was as bru­tal and inhu­mane as it was ter­ri­fy­ing to report on. It helped cat­a­pult Vladimir Putin into pow­er and pro­vid­ed a clue to the ethos he lat­er brought to the Russ­ian presidency.

I’ve trav­elled with three popes, and mar­vel that dog­ma can still dom­i­nate real world real­i­ty, and reli­gion is more often the cause than a key to the res­o­lu­tion of so many conflicts.

And yet…in a mis­er­able hut in the mid­dle of a dirty lit­tle war, I met a man who even an athe­ist like me can only describe as the liv­ing def­i­n­i­tion of a saint.

The core prin­ci­ple that focus­es the prism all of that built was best artic­u­lat­ed by the French nov­el­ist Mar­guerite Duras:

“Jour­nal­ism with­out a moral posi­tion is impos­si­ble. Every jour­nal­ist is a moral­ist. It’s absolute­ly unavoidable.”

Offi­cial­ly, I’ve been retired since 2016, but jour­nal­ists nev­er real­ly retire. We just change the perch from which we view the ever- evolv­ing, ever-chal­leng­ing world. I hope you’ll come back to mine and share views through my prism in the week­ly blog I’m launch­ing today.

Com­ments and opin­ions are always welcome.
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