In my nine years as a journalist I was accused of being an agent for the Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Qataris, the Afghan government, and others. We journalists are used to these silly and ignorant slurs. The Taliban sentenced me to execution once because they thought I was a spy. But they are less sophisticated than others, I thought. So while I feel it is beneath me to respond to the contemptible people who now accuse of being an agent for the Syrian regime, I must do so anyway.
I have been accused of having “contact” with the Syrian regime. Of course this is true. I am not ashamed of it. I am a journalist. It is my job. We struggle to obtain contacts and access. This is the currency of our profession. I spent four months in Syria during the uprising writing and filming for Al Jazeera. Though my last article was published by Foreign Policy .
In my four months in Syria I traveled to Daraa, Damascus, Reef Dimashq, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo. In all these places I met with senior leaders of the revolution, including many leaders of armed groups. I slept in their houses and met with them in their secret bases. If I was a spy I could have damaged the revolution but nobody I met was harmed because of me. I also met with security officers and members of the mukhabarat and army and government. They also invited me to their homes. No harm came to them either. I am a writer describing events and people. The first rule is do no harm. I challenge all those hysterically accusing me of being an agent to produce any evidence that anybody was harmed by me.
I requested and received two visas which allowed me to enter Syria. No conditions or limitations were placed on me. I tried to help other journalists enter Syria one way or another as well. In January I was in touch with my friend, the late Anthony Shadid, who was frustrated that he was being denied a visa and was asking me for advice on whether he could get a visa or from where he should try to enter.
In the past I have requested and received access from American military Public Affairs Officers to embed in Iraq or Afghanistan, from Mahdi Army leaders in Sadr City, al-Shabab commanders in Somalia, Mexican drug cartel leaders, Mujahedin leaders in Falluja, former Taliban Minister of Defense Mullah Baradar, and worst of all even from the Israeli Government Press Office so that I could operate in Occupied Palestine.
Some journalists compromise their work to obtain access and the privileges that come with it. I never have. As my work shows. And which is why I lose access as much as I gain it. Doing your job right often means burning those bridges and later losing access, but that is part of the process of finding out truths people do not want to be revealed. The goal of my work has always been to challenge and subvert those in power. Any power. My own views on journalism can be found here.
I believe the trove of leaked emails from the Syrian government are indeed all real. The emails which contain my name are certainly real, I do not mind saying. They are from people who were introduced to me and other western journalists as media and public relations advisors to the Syrian government or the president himself. They are the same people who arranged for the ABC News interview with Barbara Walters, for the Sunday Times interview with Bashar al-Assad, for Agence France Presse, and for others to enter Syria. This is normal. How else does a journalist enter a country such as Syria?
In November 2011, after Al-Jazeera conducted a live interview with Iran’s president Ahmedinajad, I tried to persuade media advisers to the Syrian president that they should grant a similar one to Al-Jazeera’s English network. I sent them several emails trying to persuade them it was a good idea, including an email with my CV and biography. I also met with these media officials to try to persuade them.
And as this November email also shows, I forwarded them a link to a BBC program on Syria done by the heroic Paul Wood in order to try to persuade them that journalists are coming in anyway and they might as well let Al-Jazeera in formally.
Importantly, the fact that I had to send my resume and biography to establish my credentials for an interview bid with Assad and the very need for sending these things shows I was not an agent for them. And I never communicated any information to the authorities that was not already in the public domain by that point. It was normal for journalists to receive visas by communicating with the Syrian government back in November and I was not the only one. Now it is assumed that journalists have to sneak into Syria.
They did not want to let media they perceived as “hostile” to enter Syria so I sent links or told them about the many excellent (in my view) news programs that had already been aired by journalists from the British Breoadcasting Corporation (BBC), Sky News, and other European agencies who had sneaked into Homs, meaning it was pointless to deny Al Jazeera access when everybody can get in.
I did not inform on journalists who were already in Syria. In fact in my four months in Syria I never crossed paths with a journalist who had sneaked into the country and like the rest of us, I only found out that they had been in Syria once they left and published their stories or aired their news programs. These journalists, like Paul Wood, Ghaith Abdul Ahad, or my late friends Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin did amazing and important work. But because they were “embedded” with the opposition in one location their view was limited. My visa allowed me to travel throughout the country and obtain a more holistic picture of the situation. There is nothing else in English, Arabic or any other language as extensive as the coverage of Syria I was able to provide based on a visa that allowed me entry and my own resourcefulness which made it possible for me to travel from Daraa to Idlib unhindered.
Of course as with any government information and media people in authoritarian countries or with Public Affairs Officers in the American military, I assumed that my interlocutors had additional responsibilities. But this had nothing to do with my relationship with them and I do not know anything about them except that the people I dealt with were in charge of handling the media. My contacts helped me understand all sides. This is essential. I was able to meet with officials in the Syrian government, including security members and normal regime supporters to understand their views, motives, expectations and actions and then provide my readers with this knowledge.
Remarkably, my regime interlocutors had not seen the videos by BBC, Sky News, and others that came out of Homs in late 2011 when I was in touch with them about my proposal. They appear to be in an echo chamber, believing their own media and propaganda. I never compromised my fealty to the truth, and providing some young media advisers to the regime with information that was already widely available in the public domain hardly compromises me. But now people are making me into a Syrian super-spy. While the release of the emails is a big scoop for The Guardian, there has been a tendency to over-emphasize the importance of this channel of information over what are assuredly more knowledgeable analyses that have not been revealed or are not written on public email services. To say that Bashar “increasingly relied” on this group of advisers, who are really nothing more than cheerleaders, based on the fact that they had his personal email address is kind of a joke. I never informed on arms shipments to the opposition. In fact, I would not have known about them anyway. But it was available from open sources that the new Libyan government had offered the Syrian opposition weapons and fighters, although I do not believe than any Libyans or their weapons made it to Syria. I never revealed the location of any journalists. I never knew the location of any journalists and I would never betray a fellow journalist anyway.
The media advisers to the regime arranged for many western journalists to obtain visas and work in Syria. I saw them do this for French, German, Belgian, British, and other journalists working in print, radio and television. There is nothing wrong with this of course. Some western journalists were actually escorted around different parts of Syria by media and security advisers to the regime, as if they were embedded, their stories arranged for them. I saw this too and of course it is problematic. I traveled and worked completely independently. Nobody I ever wrote about from any side in any conflict has been hurt or suffered negative consequences.
In Syria my articles have not been pro-regime or anti-regime. From the beginning opponents of the regime accused me of being its agent while supporters of the regime accused me of serving Qatar, Saudi Arabia or America. These are stupid accusations and I never lowered myself to respond to them before. My goal was to provide an anthropology of Syria’s descent into civil war so people could understand what is happening there. I am more proud of my work in Syria than anything I have previously done. It is a clear eyed account which does not idealize or romanticize anybody but while sober it is always empathetic.
Some people gave me the benefit of the doubt. But I do not need it. My journalism speaks for itself and should prevent any doubts, as should my work for Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations. But I do not give the benefit of the doubt to those who made these scurrilous accusations against me, including one who publicly accused me today of collaborating with the Taliban as well. These accusations against me are more than irresponsible, they are malicious, politically motivated, and conducted by my ideological enemies. I have already contacted a lawyer to explore whether I can take those who are defaming me to court. The rest should say a silent thank you that there exist people willing to endure difficult and dangerous conditions to provide them with an understanding of events in far away places, and offer a prayer for our safety.
[This article was originally published on Line of Departure.]