Fixers are the unsung heroes of foreign wars

16 September 2009

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Sam Kiley pays tribute to Sultan Manadi who was killed last week during the operation to save Stephen Farrell, and says any idiot can be a war reporter with the help of a good fixer

The black Mercedes lurched forward and sideways, a thick grey cloud erupted at its rear and its boot flew open. The thump of the detonating Israeli tank round reached me 300 yards away as I looked on from the Jewish settlement of Metulla.

There was a cheer from local residents, who had gathered to watch the withdrawal of their army from southern Lebanon after 18 years, from the relative safety of Israeli territory. An Israeli army sniper directed the tank’s heavy machine-gun towards a building off to the left. I sat on the grass hitting the redial button on my phone. I was trying to get through to Abed Takoush, who was working with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen.

The Mercedes was the second car I’d seen hit by an Israeli tank that morning. I knew Jeremy and Abed were in the area — I wanted to warn them to stay away. But Abed was dead behind the wheel of the black car. Jeremy was pinned down by the Israeli tank, and wasn’t answering my calls.

Abed was a ‘fixer’, like Sultan Manadi, who was killed last week during a Nato operation to free the British journalist Stephen Farrell from Afghan kidnappers. ‘Fixer’ is an ignoble title. The word is sleazy and demeaning: it implies the local people hired by the foreign media are mere higglers. The reality is that without a worldwide network of local freelance drivers, translators and general all-round fixers, there would be a lot of dead journalists, and pretty soon no foreign news at all.

Any nitwit, and I am living proof, can be a ‘war correspondent’ if they are lucky enough to come across a great fixer. These men and women usually earn no more than $100 a day. For that they provide introductions to gangsters, war lords, terrorists, politicians — all the sociopaths who drive world events — as well as navigate, drive, and give instant tutorials in Albanian politics, Somali clan rivalries, and Balkan history. More important, they keep us alive. Behind our backs they apologise for our cultural insensitivity, anticipate our needs before we know that we’ve got them, and from time to time literally lead us through minefields.

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