Comparative analysis of two conflict

zone reporters.

 Nishi Kumari
 18SCMC48
Hwaida Saad
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/world/middleeast/conflict-in-syria.html

Hwaida Saad is the Lebanese war correspondent for the New York Times’s.

She has been covering the Syrian conflict since 2011.

Across Syria, Violent Day of Attacks and Ambush
Hwaida Saad and Ben Hubbard.
It was reported on July 21, 2013.

Talks about the attack on Syrians by the government in order to curb the rebel forces.

The involvement of Al Qaeda extremist groups, Kurdish Militia and the local rebels against
the government is talked about in this article.

This article includes the condition of conflict in parts of Syria like Damascus, Adra, Ariha,
Tartus, Bayda and Hasaka and Iraq.
Talks about the social equation of the communities like Sunni Muslims
engagement with the society and the Government.

The report is based on Syrian activists’ information and Syrian observatory

groups.

This article looks at the civil war in Syria from a larger perspective, and also
shows the understanding of the reporter of the area.
Starving Syrians in Madaya Are Denied Aid Amid Political Jockeying

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/article/starving-syrians-madaya-are-denied-
aid-amid-political-jockeying/2016/01/11/

Published on January 11, 2016, in Anchorage daily news.

This article talks about the prevailing situation amidst war considering the
humanitarian angle.

Narrative description of the condition-

The people in the town make soups of grass, spices and olive leaves. They eat donkeys and
cats. They arrive, collapsing, at a clinic that offers little but rehydration salts. Neighbors
fail to recognize neighbors in the streets because their faces are so sunken.

One of the sources-

Hamoudi, 27, a business-school graduate who took up arms after the government's
crackdown on protests in 2011, said many people would surrender in order to eat, even
though they expected arrests and retribution to follow.
"In the revolution I was dreaming of democracy, freedom. Today all my dreams are food. I
want to eat. I don't want to die from starvation."
 Shows how the place has turned into an open-air prison with people dying of
hunger.

How international forces have intensified military and diplomatic activities in
the name of resolving conflict, including states like USA and Russia.

Talks about how international forces have been using hunger as a weapon to
voice themselves at international platforms but have actually useless in
helping Syria out.

"Surrender or you will be annihilated," was the message residents say Assad's
negotiators delivered to Moadhamiyeh — which endured a chemical weapons
attack in 2013 and a two-year siege that ended with a deal favoring the
government.

Samar Hussein, a nurse, was one of a dozen residents interviewed. She said
she had spent $40 last month for a few spoonfuls of sugar for her 19-year-old
daughter, who had passed out, and the baby her daughter was trying to
breast-feed. She and several families recently shared a soup made with one
cup of bulgur wheat, gathering together to cook it because there was little
wood. On the street, she said, she saw a woman picking grass to eat and did
not realize at first that it was her neighbor.
 Hwaida Saad: The human side of reporting conflicts
 https://en.annahar.com/article/950945-hwaida-saad-the-human-side-of-
reporting-conflicts

 Published on 23 March, 2019, in an Arabic language news daily, AN-NAHAR.

 In this article, Hwaida discusses on the nuances of conflict zone reporting.
 She talks about, how correspondents should listen to human voices.
 How reporters should create a network of civilians who are willing to share their
stories.
 Covering war requires empathy and ethics.
 The job does not end after the interview is finished.
 How to find the balance between one's work and morality and duty towards the
others.
 Also talks about how being a female journalist makes herself feel proud.
Anthony Shadid
He was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times based in Beirut and Baghdad.
 He covered nearly two decades of Middle East turmoil.
 He died in 2012 of an asthma attack, while on a reporting assignment in Syria.
 He has won Pulitzer Prize for international reporting twice, in 20014 and 2010.
 He reports on the Syria unrest from the time of its initiation.

 Unholy War Into the Heart of Darkness

 Boston Globe • May 2002
 An account of the Israeli-Palestinian war:
 “In the week before leaving for Ramallah, I had driven to northern Israel to cover a
crowded bus torn apart by a Palestinian with bombs strapped to his body. the next day,
I saw the scene repeated in Jerusalem, followed by the horrific carnage of the bombing
of a Passover seder in the coastal town of Netanya.
 The bloodshed had a way of blurring the specifics of each tragedy. As a reporter, how
many ways can you describe bodies hurled through windows, twisted metal forged by
the detonation, and the bomber's blood splashed across a building's facade? The very
monotony of the attacks made them so horrifying. The less novel they seemed, the
more vividly they touched lives that had long been isolated from the brunt of the
conflict.”
 In Iraq, the day after
 Washington Post • January 2009
 As the war begins to end, Iraqis confront a broken country:
 “‘A ruined state’ was the term Iraq's parliament speaker had for what the
Americans have left behind those walls. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said it in anger
after he resigned in December. But the phrase resonates, in both Iraq as a whole,
a weary landscape dominated in hues of brown, the color of poverty, and in
Baghdad, a city where everything these days seems twisted or torn, bent or
broken, snared in barbed wire that has lost its sheen. Every median has its piles
of dirt and rubble, often both. Every curb has its soggy trash.
 “This war's end feels more truce than treaty, more respite than reconciliation.
There is no revival or renaissance, no celebration. It manifests itself most in the
simple lifting of a siege.”
 Syrian Unrest After a Failure of Diplomacy
 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/middleeast/syria-steps-up-crackdown-after-failed-un-
motion.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fanthony-shadid

 It was published on February 5, 2012, in New York Times

 It was reported from Beirut.
 This is an article on how the emergence of civil war was looming on Syria.
 He talks about the alliances involved in the unrest, including the international ones.
 He talks about how people went up to take arms to deal with the insurgency, especially
in areas like Idlib and Homs.
 Discusses about the rebels becoming more militarised and posing threat to the
residents.
 He shows how the town dwellers are fearing the approach of war, which has started
taking toll on people.
 An activist in Idlib relayed a recent chant: “Enough for being peaceful, enough
whatever, we want weapons and rockets.”
 He opines, Whether or not a civil war is fought, many fears those forces will pull apart
society, causing rifts that could take years, even a generation, to reconcile.
 How people started realising the intensity of the siege in town, is put down in
this article.
 In the neighborhood of Inshaat, a woman in her 50s, who gave her name as Samah, said
that for months she and her husband had refused to leave.
On Sunday, she said they had finally decided to leave for Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
“It’s been a month and a half since I’ve seen the street,” she said.
 He talks of the time when people had hope in Assad, settling up things for the
commoners.
 “Damascus has completely changed,” said a 50-year-old man who gave his name
as Sharif. “I am not anti-Assad. I want to live in peace with my children and
wife. But for the first time, I get the feeling that President Assad is going to fall
from power.”
Grim Evidence of Fighting’s Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/embedded-in-iraq-as-the-war-began-the-most-challenging-assignment-of-my-
careers

By ANTHONY SHADID and KAREEM FAHIMAUG.

Published on 26, 2011

In this article he reports about the skirmish between anti and pro Qaddafi followers.
This was reported two months before Qaddafi was killed.

It talks about how people attacked each other under the name of the ruler.

How the civilians started protesting the fear which was instilled in them for carrying
out their daily routine in town.

He talks about how the intolerance against Qaddafi amongst people went up.
Thank You