Fixer

Local "fixers" have been essential to foreign reporters covering the Afghan war. While they often do the same work as their international counterparts, they run greater risk and face a far more uncertain future. By Monica Campbell

Today, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day. But on this day, this year, I am not thinking about the dangers for the many journalists whose bylines I’ve come to associate with places like Mogadishu or Manila, Kabul or Islamabad. It’s not because I don’t have immense respect for them and for the risks they take to bring their readers essential reports from some of the most dangerous corners of the world. I do.

What can we do to help liberate our colleagues? French journalists have been struggling with this dilemma since December 30, when two reporters of the public service TV channel France 3 and their three Afghan fixers were abducted by a group purportedly linked to the Taliban in the region of Kapisa, in eastern Afghanistan.

I am from Afghanistan, but I have lived in exile in Sweden for almost a year and a half. I spent my teenaged life in Pakistan, where I moved in 1997 to escape the savage regime of the Taliban.

Sri Lankan journalists flee under severe pressure in the past year. Iraq and Somalia, two deadly countries for the press, also rank high in numbers of journalists forced into exile. Hundreds of journalists have been driven into exile this decade. By Karen Phillips

In New York, the Tribeca Film Festival showed a strong documentary, The Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, on Sunday. After the screening, I moderated a panel that featured director Ian Olds and Naqeeb Sherzad, a close friend of Ajmal, shown at left. The panel also included U.S. journalists Christian Parenti, who helped produce the movie and appeared throughout (he and Ajmal had worked closely together), and George Packer, the New Yorker staff writer who, among other things, is considered by many to be one of the best reporters on Iraq. (In a small way, CPJ helped Naqeeb get out of Afghanistan and gain asylum in Sweden.)

New York, September 17, 2008--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that authorities in Yemen continue to hold a fixer in custody while releasing another. The two were picked up in July with a reporter for the U.S.-based television network HDNet.

Mohammed Ahmed Hassan al-Bokhaiti, an interpreter, was released on Sunday after spending almost two months in a prison in Sana'a, the capital, according to Willem Marx, the HDNet reporter who had worked with the fixers. Ali Nasser Gaid al-Bokhaiti, a driver, remains in prison. The two fixers are not related.

New York, April 9, 2007-The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply saddened by the brutal murder of Afghan journalist Ajmal Nakshbandi.

Several Taliban spokesmen told media organizations in Kabul that the group had beheaded Naqshbandi in the Garmsir district of Helmand province Sunday afternoon, after the Afghan government refused to release senior Taliban leaders in captivity.

On the front lines of international journalism, local fixers face growing dangers, and their western employers face tougher questions. By Elisabeth Witchel