Military Maverick - Scott Taylor and "Unembedded"

Ottowa Citizen ^ | March 1, 2009 | Chris Cobb

[Ravnagora]

NOTE: This is new book release in March 2009. "Unembedded" looks like a worthwhile book for any library. Ravnagora____

Unembedded: Two Decades of Maverick War Reporting

Scott Taylor has risked his life in war zones dozens of times, going his own way to get 'the whole story'.

By Scott Taylor

Douglas & McIntyre, $34.95

The scene is Mosul, Iraq, September 2004 and three days into Scott Taylor's captivity in the hands of insurgents.

"Only after I was completely trussed up," he writes, "did my interrogator enter the room. I could sense him as he seated himself a few feet in front of me.

"'We know you are a spy,' he said in nearly flawless English. 'Tell us who you are working for and your execution will be quick and painless.'

"'My name is Scott Raymond Taylor. I am a Canadian journalist and I entered Iraq on Sept. 7. The purpose of my visit is to report on the humanitarian crisis created by the U.S. invasion.'

"'You are lying! You are an American pig,' my interrogator replied."

Taylor resigned himself to a grisly death, but we have to wait until the final pages for him to reveal -- after a long dramatic pause -- how he dodged the bullet. Or, more likely, the blade.

But "Unembedded" is such a compelling read that the 360-page ride from part one of his kidnapping saga to the dramatic conclusion seems no distance at all.

Maverick is an overused label but in Scott Taylor's case it only partly describes the man. He has been an artist, a musician, a professional soldier and since 1988, editor and publisher of the Ottawa-based military magazine esprit de corps. He's part pragmatist, part romantic, part journalist, part author and, for reasons even he might not totally understand, a man addicted to danger.

He's been pilloried as an amateur glory seeker, and worse, but a 20-year record shows an often brave, principled man who pursues his professional goals with often scant regard for his own physical or economic welfare.

As he relates several times in his book, the Taylor family's economic performance has resembled a roller-coaster with more affinity for the valleys than the peaks.

Taylor isn't a trained journalist but has carved a niche by going where most journalists don't -- or won't. He's been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan dozens of times both pre and post-war and latterly has travelled in Afghanistan dressed as a hirsute local, carrying a weapon the Canadian army taught him how to use more than 25 years ago.

He reported extensively and with distinction from the Balkans during the late 1990s and also did reporting tours in Kuwait and Cambodia.

Most western journalists covering the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are embedded, which means they operate under the protection, guidance and watchful eyes of their country's military. It also means that despite their best efforts, reports are inevitably one-sided.

Taylor is graceful in his dissent but obviously doesn't like that sort of arrangement.

"The dangers of being embedded are real," he said in an interview. "You can get hurt. But if you're not getting both sides of the story, you're not getting the whole story. So yes, there's a degree of danger for embedded reporters getting our soldiers' side but it's one tiny corner. We need to view things through the other guys' eyes sometimes."

Down the years, Taylor has developed an impressive rolodex of contacts of "other guys" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the mysterious, labyrinthine tangle that is the social and insurgent structures of those countries, Taylor has some relatively sophisticated acquaintances who know him as a trusted conduit for their side of the story.

In Unembedded, Taylor describes how he became friends in Ottawa with Turkish ambassador Aydemir Erman, who served in Afghanistan during the six years of the Taliban regime and left with what Taylor describes as "a tremendous network of connections" among northern Afghan leaders who replaced the Taliban.

Through Erman, Taylor gained significant access in Afghanistan, including a meeting with the heavily guarded head of the Afghan secret police who, instead of a formal interview, took the Canadian for a long walk and a picnic during which he offered some remarkable insights about his country.

Throughout his two decades at the helm of esprit de corps, Taylor has been an unremitting critic of top brass at the Department of National Defence (DND) and a defender of the rank and file.

His magazine was especially critical of former deputy minister of defence Bob Fowler -- the diplomat now missing and presumed kidnapped in Niger. Their battles are revisited in Unembedded.

The battles with DND coincided with massive revenue losses as Canada's military suppliers pulled their advertising from esprit de corps.

Taylor is against Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, which he says has been sold with less than full disclosure to Canadians and pursued in an ill-advised manner at the behest of the Bush administration.

"Unless there is a change of flight path on this mission," he says, "it's going to crash."

Iraq and Afghanistan are still in the news, but Taylor's experiences in the now-forgotten Balkans conflict offer some of the more substantial passages in the book.

In the confusing mess that was -- and to an extent still is -- the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, Taylor saw much of the brutality and cynical conniving that killed thousands of innocents.

But in the process, he broke from the media pack and in print began defending the Serbs, whom he still maintains were wrongly maligned as the sole aggressors. This, he says, was especially true in Bosnia.

"Complex circumstances were dumbed down to a good-guy-versus-bad-guy equation," he writes. "The Serbs lost the race to win public opinion, assisted in part by some slick U.S. public relations firms who had no qualms about rewriting history."

Taylor subsequently chronicled his Balkans experiences into the book Diary of an Uncivil War: Aftermath of the Kosovo Conflict, which was translated into Serbian and subsequently brought him face-to-face with former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic at a Hague prison in 2004.

Taylor relates the story of how he was summoned to meet Milosevic.

"'How would you like your coffee?' he asked.

"Even as I answered I realized the situation was surreal. Here was Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and indicted war criminal, preparing coffee in a plastic cup for me."

Milosevic, who was preparing his defence against war crimes, had asked to interview Taylor with a view to bringing him as a witness. The former leader died of a heart attack before his trial.

Taylor, 48, says he won't return to Iraq -- "It's no longer on my beat" -- and probably won't miss it. "I've stayed in hovels in northern Iraq as the guest of someone who generously gives you his best blanket and within minutes the bugs are crawling all over you."

He buried the hatchet with his nemesis Bob Fowler when they appeared at a debate last year and the diplomat suggested they put the past behind them. "He's a clever bastard," says Taylor. "People said we were naive to take him on and perhaps we were. We both left the field tattered but under our own flags."

Taylor has been to Afghanistan twice since delivering the "Unembedded" manuscript a year ago and is going again in May -- "It takes six weeks to grow my beard and hair."

It's tough work that most of us would say deserves greater recognition and reward, but Taylor believes in his mission and believes that by digging out the other guy's side of the story, he can make a difference.

He opens Unembedded with the familiar 1917 quote from U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson: "The first casualty when war comes is truth."

He also thanks those who have helped and encouraged him throughout the years and offers the same "to all those naysayers and cynics who unwittingly served only to strengthen my resolve."

All of which offers some small clue as to why a man who came so close to losing his head would go back for more.

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