By Rashid Mughal
He gambled with death, got beaten up by secret police and shot at by Russian MiG fighters. Virtually indestructible, he covered every war, conflict and disaster in Africa and Europe in the past 30 years and scooped some stories that moved the world. Until his death on assignment in Jerusalem last Tuesday, February 6, 2001, Mohammed Shaffi was possibly the luckiest cameraman in the world.
"I never fear death. I believe it's my duty to God to report these terrible events around the world. I believe I will not die until He decides it is time," the veteran London-based Reuters television cameraman told me recently. "People suffering in wars need cameramen to be there. Someone has to show the world what's happening. When my pictures are seen by millions of people on television, that's my reward, that's my happiness. I feel I've achieved something. I want to keep going back time and time again. God wants me to continue what I am doing. I'm a very strong believer. And I've told my wife and children that if I'm killed, then they shouldn't be sad for me because I've died doing something worthwhile."
Before flying to Jerusalem, he phoned me from his Croydon, Surrey, home to say how excited he was about going to cover the Israeli election. He said Reuters had granted him his wish to spend a few days in Jerusalem after the assignment, "just to be a tourist in the Holy Land so I can do some photography." He said the office had warned it might not be prudent for him to go there because of his obviously Muslim background, "but I insisted and got my wish."
When he failed to show up for work, his news agency folks found him in his Jerusalem hotel room. Dead. Massive heart attack, they said. Police said he had apparently died of natural causes. Hundreds of people from around the world attended his funeral in London on February 10, the day before his 50th birthday.
I've known Shaffi off and on all his working life, a friendship spanning three decades. I have seen his coverage of upheavals in Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He had already chalked up a notable career covering the major stories in Africa and the Indian subcontinent before joining Reuters in London in 1994.
He was severely injured covering violent demonstrations in Kenya in 1992, but his closest brush with death came in Somalia in 1993, when four journalists were killed by an enraged mob after some civilians died in a raid by U.S. Black Hawk helicopter gunships. Although shot at and severely beaten, Shaffi managed to escape, while my former colleagues Dan Eldon, Anthony Macharia and Hos Maina of Reuters and Hansi Krauss of the Associated Press were brutally murdered. "We'd left in a Reuters car to cover the American attack on the leading warlord's headquarters in the capital, Mogadishu," Shaffi told me in Toronto a couple of years ago. "The Black Hawk bombing of this building angered the crowd, who vented their fury on foreign journalists." Later he was featured prominently as a subject and narrator in Kathy Eldon's TBS documentary "Dying to Tell the Story," an hour-long film about the Somali incident in which Eldon's son Dan perished.
Virtually Indestructible
Shaffi gambled with death again and again, as a matter of routine. A few years ago, he escaped death from NATO bombs in Albania. He was filming the bruised and battered Kosovan refugees escaping Serb brutality when NATO forces bombed concrete bunkers on the Albanian side of the border. "It was an unexpected attack in an area littered with refugees who could have been killed," he recalled. "One bomb landed a few meters from where I was filming. The force of the blast knocked me to the ground, sending blocks of concrete flying past my head into the trees behind me, with the explosive heat burning my face. Moments earlier I had been sitting sipping water in the shade of a small tree with a group of journalists. That first blast burned my face and blew me to the ground. I leapt up and pressed the Record button on my camera — in time to catch another explosion. I always use a tripod even in a war zone, so the camera remained running as I reeled under the force of the explosion.
"Huge lumps of concrete flew past my head, ripping leaves and branches from the tree," he went on. "Colleagues told me later that if I hadn't been knocked down I would certainly have been killed. My only injury was a burned face. We made a rapid exit, stopping our cars halfway up a hill to film from what we thought was a safe distance. But again the bombs dropped so close we felt the blasts. It was as if we had become the targets ourselves."
Sparking Consciences
Shaffi's work depicted the sheer, dehumanizing brutality of mankind and the sacrifices journalists have to make to open a window on this world in order to spark the conscience of people and politicians capable of stopping such appalling degradation. He believed it was his purpose in life to do what he could to change the world for the better. "A cameraman in a war zone can make a difference. That journalist faces unique problems. The most difficult choice," he once told me, "is when not to film."
When civil war broke out in Rwanda, Shaffi was the sole Reuters cameraman in Kigali, and he witnessed some terrible scenes. He saw Hutu tribesmen "chopping up and killing the Tutsis with machetes all across the country." For once in his professional life, Shaffi made no attempt to reach for his camera. He sensed filming the Hutus would encourage them to kill more people to show off in front of his camera.
But he had to file pictures so the world would know the true horror of what was happening. He moved away from the killers and climbed a hill so they were not aware of his presence. Only then did he start taking pictures of the machete killings, which Reuters beamed around the world, prompting the response that eventually brought an end to the slaughter.
Another incident I remember is when Shaffi, accompanied by assistant Mike Ray, flew to Khartoum in December 1987, ostensibly to cover the famine in northern Sudan. The Ministry of Information in Khartoum did not believe they had come to cover the story in Sudan. Officials had a strong feeling the two journalists were going to go into Eritrea. Shaffi convinced them they were not. "Out in the open country, away from the city, we were soon attacked by Russian MiG fighters. We hid beside scrawny trees in the bush and somehow escaped injury. As we got further into Eritrea, we saw more and more traumatic scenes: people living in trenches trying to avoid the Ethiopian napalm bombs, starving babies, young children dying by the hundreds."
At about two in the morning they arrived in a village that had been bombed with napalm. "I was told about a family injured by the bombing. The father had died and the mother had been taken to hospital. The children were very badly burned, and the villagers had no transport for them.
"I requested that the elders of the village let me film the children. As it was very dark, I asked them if I could use a camera light. At first I was told no, because the light would hurt their eyes. The two children were between eight and ten years old. The skin had been scorched off their entire bodies. I understood the pain I could cause in filming these children, but I still requested the elders to give me not more than thirty seconds. I was only looking for one shot of both the children sitting on their bed under the mosquito net.
"It was the most painful shot of my life.
"As I left the village I could not forgive myself the pain I caused. I have seen a lot of death in my life. The pain I caused to the children, I can still feel it. But I had to show the world what problems Eritrean people were facing. The bombing raids continued to kill innocent civilians and to destroy houses. I justified my actions by hoping that my pictures would save many more lives. I just hope I was right."
On his way home, Shaffi thought about his wife and family. When he got home, Shaffi's eldest daughter Saima came out running and said: "Dad, we've a baby brother!" Shaffi spent the rest of the night looking at his three-day-old son, who was born December 16, 1987.
In the morning it was business as usual. He went to the office to edit the tapes and send them to Visnews in London for the whole world to see.
Shaffi leaves a widow, Shanaz, and four children ages 22, 16, 13 and 6.
— Rashid Mughal (rashid@mughal.com) is a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer and a member of the Editors' Association of Canada. He was a friend and colleague of Mohammed Shaffi for 30 years. He can be reached at 905-803-9718.
© 2001-02-09 Rashid Mughal
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