THE HILL TIMES
Monday, January 21, 2008
THE HOT ROOM - pg. 45
"Roy wonders: is Afghanistan mission worth it?
Radio-Canada TV's Patrice Roy, who survived a landmine explosion last August, says he doesn't think anybody knows if the mission in Afghanistan is worth it, even the generals who will be sent there on rotation."
By Meghan Moloney
Radio-Canada TV's Ottawa bureau chief Patrice Roy, 44, who survived a landmine explosion in Afghanistan last August while covering the war, says he's a stronger man because of it, but wonders if the war is worth it today. As bureau chief, Mr. Roy says he wanted to report on the war in Afghanistan first-hand.
On Aug. 22, when Mr. Roy and his cameraman Charles Dubois were embedded with the B Company of the Van Doos regiment from Valcartier, Que., two of the Canadian soldiers who were accompanying them were killed when their tank hit a landmine. Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier and Master Corporal Christian Duchesne both died when they tried to reclaim a hill in Zari province, 40 kilometres west of Kandahar.
Mr. Roy captured the events that day in his documentary which later aired on CBC's The National and Le Téléjournal. The powerful documentary was presented as a narrative.
Mr. Roy, wearing a helmet, flak jacket, goggles, and protective gloves, throughout his report talked to soldiers as they repeatedly stopped the tank to check for landmines. There's some banter and humour between the soldiers and Mr. Roy. The documentary is 14 minutes long, but it captures the tediousness of battle too. By noon the tanks were under fire. “This is no training exercise--this is the real thing,” one soldier tells Mr. Roy in the documentary.
By six o’clock, the soldiers were 200 metres from their goal, but didn’t know whether there were IEDs--improvised explosive devices--in the area, so they moved slowly up the hill. Mr. Roy was writing his description of the battle in a notebook just as they reached the top. “Suddenly, with a bang, everything went black,” he said in a voiceover. “Our vehicle had backed over a mine, buried in the thick dust on the hillside.”
The soldiers previously joking in the report were killed, along with the Canadian Forces' Afghan interpreter. Mr. Dubois’ right leg was later amputated below the knee. The camera was destroyed, but the footage remained intact.
Mr. Roy spoke to The Hill Times last week about the experience and how it's changed him.
How does war reporting compare to daily reporting on federal politics?
"It’s more dangerous, obviously. It’s another ball game completely. It’s very, very different in the sense that the goal is not the same. When you are in Afghanistan, at least my goal was to explain to our viewers the complexity of the mission, and to go beyond some cliché about the Taliban on one side and the soldiers on the other. So it was a macro, a big operation, and we wanted to do a documentary plus some news items. So it was quite different from my day-to-day work here in Ottawa, which is to follow the puck and the politics.”
What happened to your documentary project?
"Our goal was to do a one-hour documentary on Afghanistan for Radio-Canada television, and to do a series of items for the most important newscast, Le Téléjournal, and for the radio, et cetera. Because of the accident, I was forced to of course come back with Charles and the project was completely dropped. But I did a 14-minute piece for Le Téléjournal and The National on that famous day. I chose to use only the footage of August 22, real footage of the operation. So I explained the day from A to Z, from the morning to the explosion."
Was that a more emotional experience for you to make that documentary?
"Of course. At first, I had difficulty watching to screen the pictures, because it was like reliving the incident again and again. But I think it was good, at the end, like a way to put—not a final period, but to close something, a chapter."
What feedback did you get from that piece that you made?
"I have to say that since the explosion, I got so much feedback, so many emails, so many beautiful notes from reporters, a lot of reporters that I don’t even know from all over Canada. I got some notes from Europe. I got some notes from people who were caring about us, Charles and I. I was shocked by this wave of sympathy. And after the airing of the piece, it was a little bit the same kind of reaction. People were saying basically, Wow, what an experience, I hope that you will be fine, that Charles will recover okay. So it was very touching for us to see that our work is important for a lot of people. And not only press people, I mean, most emails came from ordinary viewers who got to know me over the years and were touched. I have a blog on Radio-Canada.ca and it was a very useful instrument for that communication between the viewers and me."
Has the experience changed you as a reporter?
"I don’t know, I don’t think so, as a reporter. As a man, certainly, I’m more strong, I’m more aware that we are going to die one day, the mortality of our essence. I’m more sensitive to our human condition, if I may say. It makes you stronger when you live [through] something like that. But as a reporter I think I’m the same. I have the same flaws and the same qualities."
Are you more afraid now to report from war zones? Will you go back to Afghanistan?
"To Afghanistan, I don’t think so. Not in 2008, for sure. Honestly, not because of me, but because of my family—to ask them to live in the waiting and the fear that something could happen to me again, it’s too much to ask. If I was alone, I think I’m crazy enough to go back, but again, it’s so improbable. That was not supposed to happen to us, and it did happen. By the way, for me, one of the most important things of this whole story is to see the courage of other reporters who, after what happened to us, decided to still go out—[Christie] Blatchford from The Globe [and Mail], reporters from CP, from Presse Canadienne, from TVA in Québec, from La Presse—the courage of those persons who saw us, who saw the event, who saw me after, who saw Charles, it’s striking for me. It tells you a lot of the importance of a free press and the importance of our work."
Had there been other moments in your career that prepared you for this experience?
"Nothing prepares you for that. CBC sent me to a training week in first aid and to be able to have some reflex in a war zone. Maybe it did help, I don’t know, but nothing prepares you to see bodies around you and blood and explosions and the fear that other mines would be there—it’s like a nightmare and you have to live it. I think you are stronger in the hour than you think you would be. But I did travel a lot, as I said, I started my career with three months filming a documentary around some tough places—I went to Africa, I went to Haiti, but it’s not the same. I’ve been caught in the middle of riots in Italy for the G8[summit], those types of stressful events, but nothing like a tank exploding."
Do you think journalists who experience trauma in the field should be required to undergo therapy?
"I don’t know. I got a lot of offers from CBC and even from the Forces. I think it’s each person—you have to be confident that if somebody needs help, he or she will ask for it. For me, I talked to a lot of people but I didn’t feel the need to get real therapy. Again, I was very lucky. The guy who suffered was Charles, my cameraman, who got [his leg] amputated. He’s the one who will live the rest of his life with real consequences."
The media has reported that you were in shock after the incident.
"I think it’s an automatisme to say that, I read that too. Of course, I must have been in shock but I was very conscious. Actually, I did an interview the day after—a couple of hours after, in fact, and I was calmer then, right after, than a week after. It’s serious, and I talked a lot about that episode, and I’m not taking it lightly, but for me I didn’t see the need to treat post-traumatic syndrome. I don’t think I suffered from that."
Have you become more or less critical of public officials involved in making decisions about Canada’s commitment in Afghanistan, since seeing it first-hand?
"I’m not more or less critical, I mean, I think I understand a little bit more than others who never went to Afghanistan. I think you have to go there to be able to understand. I read before my departure, I read everything on the mission and a lot of documents. But it’s not the same thing to be there and to feel it on the ground. There’s no other way to do it. But because we blew [up] under a mine doesn’t mean that I’ve become an expert on Afghanistan. I’m a Canadian reporter. I’m following the political scene here. But I thought that it was one of the most important files here in Ottawa, so it was important as a bureau chief to understand the mission."
At the end of your documentary, you said that the operation you witnessed was a success, but you’re not sure the mission as it stands will honour the soldier’s sacrifice.
"It was more like a question. I’m still at the same point, actually. The real question is, we know that it’s a very dangerous mission, we know that the international community had to go there, that’s a fact for a lot of people and that’s a consensus. But right now, witnessing all the incidents and all the difficulties that we face in the south, it’s a question that we can raise—is it worth it? At the end of the mission, will the Afghan people in the south be living differently than now? And nobody has the answer to that question. Time will tell, but at the end of the report, I wanted to underline that it’s not clear if Canada will succeed in a way that people think we should succeed."
So if someone asked you to predict now, based on what you’ve seen from your own coverage, would you say that it’s going to be worth it?
"I don’t know. That’s why I finished my item with a question. It’s the honest answer, I really don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows, to be frank—even generals who will be sent there for the other rotation. It will depend on so many things—on the frontier with Pakistan, on the way the Afghan president is dealing with the pressure. Honestly, I hope those guys [in the army] are not there for nothing, and that’s a personal view. After seeing what they’ve accomplished there, it’s real, real hard work for them. But honestly, I don’t know. The south of the country is so unpredictable, and so it’s a difficult place to predict anything. But we’ll see—it’s too early to tell. But that’s why, on the other hand, I think it’s kind of normal that Canada wants to stay a bit longer. Because quitting now, leaving now, would be in a way a failure of the mission—in a way. That’s the consensus. But as I said to you, I’m not an expert on Afghanistan. I’m a reporter. So it’s not for me to tell if we’re going to succeed or not. It’s a question that people will have to answer."
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