Clark University - Clark News spring 2003
One reporter's war story
Matthew McAllester M.A. '02 talks about his experiences as a war correspondent
As a United Nations correspondent for Newsday, Matthew McAllester M.A. '02 has watched war from the unique position of a reporter. He has been an observer, a witness to the worst, and sometimes the best, in humankind.
In 2001, while reporting for Newsday from Kosovo, McAllester defied the Yugoslavian government's ban on unescorted foreign reporters and traveled to Pec, Kosovo's most war-torn city. His recent book "Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo," which served as his master's thesis, records the suffering and survival of several families that remained in Pec during the war.
Most recently, McAllester was reporting from Baghdad, where he and three other journalists were arrested by the Iraqi government and held in a jail just outside the city on suspicion of being American spies. McAllester and the other journalists were missing for eight days at the end of March. They were released and crossed the border into Jordan on April 1. According to Newsday, they were not mistreated or abused, but conditions in the prison were harsh.
The following interview with Clarknews Editor Judith Jaeger took place in early February, before the war in Iraq began.
Jaeger: How did you go from earning your master's degree at Clark to covering the war in Kosovo?
McAllester: After Clark, I did an internship with Newsday as a local reporter on Long Island…It was the most fun summer of my life, and at the end of it they gave me a permanent job. I had always thought that the ultimate point of being a reporter was to be a foreign correspondent so I badgered the foreign editor for ages and ages about getting a posting. He tried me out a bit in Northern Ireland and I sent myself to Burma. Eventually he gave in, and I was posted to Jerusalem as the Middle East correspondent in early 1999. Five weeks after I got there, the war in Kosovo started and off I went, even though it wasn't strictly on my turf.
Jaeger: What were some of the challenges you faced in Kosovo, as a journalist and as a person?
McAllester: I was new at being a foreign correspondent and suddenly I was covering a major war. I had to learn fast about how to use translators, hire drivers and all the other logistical stuff that takes up so much of the time of correspondents. There were certain dangers also. I was based in Montenegro, part of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav army was extremely hostile and had a habit of arresting and deporting Western journalists. So I spent a lot of time avoiding them. I also walked into Kosovo three times during the war over a very high range of snowy mountains. I was crossing Serb lines, and if I'd been spotted, I would probably have been shot. What I was doing could have been construed as spying in the eyes of the Yugoslav military.
Jaeger: What did you hope to achieve in writing your book, in telling that particular story?
McAllester: I wanted to explore a few things. Primarily, I found that the book may have been set in a particular time and place but that it had, at its core, a rather universal theme: How can armed men bring themselves to kill children? To me, it's the ultimate crime to kill a child. What I try to do in the book is to build up to a particular moment and to explore the complexities—historical, social, local, political, emotional—that could result in such brutality. And ultimately, to show how complex an event this particular killing was—with blame falling in the most unexpected corners.
Less thoughtfully, I also had a rather strong urge to expose the killers in the most public way. So I name them, describe them, have photos of some of them in the book. I saw the blood and disinterred bodies of the children they killed, and I know where some of them are living, in freedom, to this day. I'm sure that they are considered too low-level for the prosecutors in The Hague to ever address, so I felt perhaps even more strongly that it was worth recording their crimes in a public way.
Jaeger: What are some of the challenges to reporting that you anticipate in Iraq?
McAllester: First of all, the Iraqi Ministry of Information insists that all foreign reporters are accompanied at all times by government minders. These men act as translators, appointment-fixers and spies. It's a horrible way to work, frankly, because every sinew in a reporter's body wants to work freely. It's enormously frustrating because their favorite word tends to be "no."
Secondly, when the war starts, there may be considerable danger involved. From American bombs, from Iraqi biological or chemical weapons and from members of the regime who may realize that their time is up and may choose to take it out on the nearest Western journalist. I'm not sure which I find more alarming but they are issues that all of us are dealing with right now. It's almost a constant source of conversation among correspondents at the moment.
Jaeger: Why have you remained involved with war reporting?
McAllester: I wonder that myself sometimes. It does get a little tiring and draining. But I think it's because wars usually feature the outer limits of human behavior and experience. I find that utterly fascinating. You can see people at their very worst and sometimes at their very best. It can also bring out the worst and best in the reporters themselves. I suppose that I also like being in places where history is happening. And, if I'm honest, there is a horrible but slightly addictive thrill to being so close to death.
Jaeger: What have you learned from your experiences as a war correspondent?
McAllester: What Kalashnikov bullets sound like and how to run very fast when I hear them.
Jaeger: How has your Clark education influenced your career, or life in general, since your time here?
McAllester: I'm British so it allowed me to enter into American society, which has always fascinated me. It gave me two years to explore whether I wanted to try academia for life or journalism. Ironically, it was the very freedom that Clark's English Department allowed that helped me make the right choice. It was just a very wonderful two-year opportunity to breathe and think. I also taught undergraduates in small sections of Shakespeare, and that was absolutely among the most fun I've ever had. Oh, and it made me realize what an absolutely appalling teacher I would have been.
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