dan maertens's List: Time

• But, mostly, we had to sneak in because the regime was not granting visas. Despite the government's promise to the United Nations that foreign reporters would be given access, visas were often impossible to obtain. A hard slog with low-life smugglers was a small price for avoiding the Syrian security forces. "Seven years for crossing the border illegally. Another 10 for having a sat phone," an activist warned when we were setting up our first trip, in November 2011. "Do you really want to do this?"
• He told me that Dounia showed one of my pieces on camera while the anchor accused me of using certain words and gestures to send coded messages to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. I found this too ridiculous to believe, even for Dounia. Why wouldn't I just phone Mossad? But other Syrians told me later that they had seen the broadcast, too.
• Still, we got the same warning from activists as at the beginning: It's more dangerous to go out with a camera, they said, than with a Kalashnikov.
• The FSA said a captured government sniper admitted carrying out orders to target foreign reporters. It is hard to know if that is true, but Syria's citizen journalists believe the regime is out to get them--and foreign journalists, too.
• Between the members of the BBC team, we had been to two dozen wars, but the shelling there was the worst we had ever seen
• Marie was all over the BBC, CNN, and Sky with a gut-wrenching account of a baby that had been hit by shrapnel dying in an ill-equipped field clinic. "The doctor said 'I can't do anything,'" she told the BBC. "His little tummy just kept heaving until he died." She was killed less than 24 hours later. If the regime was trying to suppress coverage of Baba Amr before its ground offensive, it failed. An editor in London stated a fact when he said of Marie's death: "This has put rocket boosters under the story."
• "There were two [impacts] happening and they appeared to be bracketed in on our location," he said. "They got a fix and then four [more] hit. As an artilleryman, I think that was a good day's work for a well-trained team.
• Paul got out, but those following had to turn back when the tunnel was attacked. They included the Spanish correspondent Javier Espinosa, the French photographer William Daniels, and the French writer Edith Bouvier, who, with a shattered femur, was taped to a stretcher. All of the foreign journalists did eventually escape Baba Amr. Remaining behind were the local reporters who had been there throughout 25 days of shelling.
• Most of the activist-reporters in Baba Amr I spoke to thought the fighters had made a mistake. One told me by phone: "The FSA are sitting in Qusayr, drinking tea and chit-chatting while Baba Amr is destroyed. They are cowards."
• "Who do you think shot him?"
   "The bullet was from behind. That's where the security were."
   "Does that necessarily mean, in your opinion, that the security targeted him?"
   "Maybe. Maybe not."
   "So, nothing proving that?"
   "No, no."
   "Would the security shoot this guy when they want the citizens' welfare?"
   "Of course not."

    

  The pendulum swung back and forth. Jeddi did not denounce the revolution. Nor did he throw the questions back in the interviewer's face. It was a skilled performance and courageous, given the enormous pressure to say what was expected of him. The FSA was still furious. One commander called him a traitor. The reaction was unfair but explained by the fact that the FSA would previously have seen Jeddi as "their" journalist and the Baba Amr media center's function to put out propaganda for the armed uprising.

• There was a debate over what to do with him. Our host, Abu Sufian, a leading figure in Baba Amr, had lost three members of his family in the uprising and was enraged. "I lost my brother. My brother. They killed my brother," he screamed.

    

  Another man tried to calm him. "We can't harm him," he said. "That is not our religion."

    

  The cameraman was taken to see the body of a 6-year-old boy shot dead as he played on his doorstep. Male relatives, tears running down their faces, were standing silently over the boy, laid out in the nearby mosque. Our hosts informed us that the cameraman was shocked and said he'd been wrong to support the regime. They asked if we would film his statement to show he hadn't been harmed. We refused. They tried to use the cameraman in a prisoner swap. That failed, but he was released that night in exchange for the return of two bodies, we were told. The next day we laughed as state television announced that two kidnapped journalists from Al-Manar had been freed in a "special forces raid" on Baba Amr.
• The unspoken attitude of the fighters toward reporters was: You're either with us or against us. FSA officers would nod and agree when we told them we were not there to put out propaganda. But there was little real understanding of objective journalism. At the beginning, the rebels thought foreign reporters would bring Western planes to bomb the regime, as in Libya. By late 2012, they told us there's no point in helping journalists--they know they are on their own. But, though they are bitter about the outside world's failure to help, fighters and activists have continued to welcome us to their homes, feeding us, moving us around the checkpoints.
• We began to suspect that this was fallout from emails written by Nir Rosen, the controversial American journalist and commentator. Among the thousands of emails uncovered when activists hacked into President Bashar al-Assad's private account in February 2012 were forwarded messages from Rosen. He had written to officials to inform them that reporters were sneaking into Homs. He did this to help his own visa application. He named me. This was not helpful. We assumed the regime knew we had been in Homs--we had broadcast from there--but Assad was apparently not aware himself. We worried that if he were to take a personal interest, the security services would really start looking for us.

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