On fateful day, journalists saw little risk in Afghan trip

KABUL, Afghanistan - For the two seasoned war correspondents, it was not an unusually risky trip. Getting out to see Afghanistan up close was what Anja Niedringhaus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for The Associated Press, and Kathy Gannon, a veteran reporter for the news agency, did best.



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The eastern province of Khost, where Niedringhaus and Gannon traveled to cover Afghanistan’s presidential election, is considered dangerous, still plagued by regular Taliban attacks. But they had carefully plotted their trip, arranging to move beyond the relatively safe confines of the provincial capital under the protection of Afghan army troops and the police.

Yet it was those precautions that proved fatal for Niedringhaus on Friday morning. As she and Gannon waited outside a government compound, a police commander walked up to their idling car, looked in at the two women in the back seat, and then shouted “Allahu akbar!” - God is great - and opened fire with an AK-47, witnesses and The Associated Press said.

Niedringhaus was killed instantly. Gannon, shot three times in the wrist and shoulder, was in stable condition Saturday and receiving medical treatment at a military hospital in Kabul. She was expected to be transferred to a hospital out of the country in the coming days.

In the span of a few muzzle flashes, the two women, who had covered the war since it began in 2001, became victims of another attack that blurred friend and foe.

For both Afghans and Westerners, the list of adversaries has expanded beyond the Taliban, who have staged a series of attacks to disrupt the election. Afghan soldiers and the police have repeatedly turned on one another and their foreign allies. The squabbling between President Hamid Karzai and U.S. officials has grown into a deep-seated animosity.

At the same time, Afghans have seen scores of their fellow citizens killed by errant airstrikes. And even as the United States pushes for a long-term security deal that would allow it to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond theend of this year, it does so with the understanding that its forces will be largely hidden away behind the high walls of fortified bases.

The dwindling number of foreigners in the country live that way, frightened by a recent surge in attacks aimed at Western civilians.

Niedringhaus, 48, and Gannon, 60, had no desire to hunker down. The focus of their work over the past dozen years had been putting a human face on the suffering inflicted by the war.

“They just seemed so bravely willing to go into these kinds of situations and get to the places that you needed to get to tell stories that weren’t being told,” said Heidi Vogt, a reporter who worked for the AP in Afghanistan until last year.

Niedringhaus, a German citizen who was based in Geneva, first went to Afghanistan after joining the AP in 2002, and she quickly formed a partnership with Gannon.They were among a band of female photographers and correspondents who persevered through many years of conflict in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan.

Niedringhaus’ fascination with Afghanistan continued to grow even as she was pulled away to other trouble spots, including Iraq, where she was part of a team of AP photographers who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

Gannon, a Canadian who is a senior writer for the AP, arrived in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1986 when the Afghan mujahedeen were battling the forces of the Soviet Union. She went on to serve as the AP’s bureau chief in Islamabad, and she was one of the few Western reporters permitted by the Taliban to work in Kabul when they ruled Afghanistan.

But the divide between Afghans and Westerners has been deepening for years, and insider attacks in which Afghan security forces turn on their coalition counterparts or one another have been the most visible symptom. Afghan and Western officials say they believe most of the attacks are driven by personal animosity or anger about the war in Afghanistan, where many have come to view foreign forces as occupiers.

Though Western civilians working with the coalition have at times been killed in such attacks, the shooting Friday was believed to be the first time an Afghan police officer had intentionally killed a foreign journalist.

Afghan security officials said they believed the shooting was an opportunistic attack, not the work of the Taliban.

The police commander, identified as Naqibullah, 50, was known for his anti-Western views, one official said. Naqibullah surrendered to other officers immediately after shooting the journalists and was arrested.

The doctor who first treated Gannon, Muhammad Shah, was distressed by the shooting and Niedringhaus’ death.

“Not only me, but all Afghans are disappointed and sorry for this loss of life,” he said by phone Friday night from Khost Provincial Hospital. “She was a guest here in Afghanistan, a foreigner.” Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 8 on 04/06/2014

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