With my self-preservation system in full effect, I was assigned to covering the events and features of Tripoli and after weeks of extensive coverage by my colleagues, it was getting harder to find new angles to cover.  Still, while ever I wasn’t being shot at, I could always look on the positive side!

One of the things that’s interested me since my arrival here is the youth culture in Libya. Coming from the UK where bars, pubs and nightclubs can be found everywhere, it’s surprisingly shocking to spend time in a culture that has nothing along these lines for the young people. While the lack of drinking venues is due to the ban on alcohol, my interest was in the lack of social opportunities for people. Aside from privately organised parties, the young people simply cruise the streets of gather outside coffee shops. Having spent the majority of my teens in practise rooms and venues, I wanted to look into music and thanks to some assistance from a local fixer, found Ausman.

When the revolution started, Ausman spent time fighting with the anti-Kadhafi forces before returning to Tripoli. During the last weeks of Kadhafi’s control, he spent his evenings writing and recording anti-regime music in his bedroom with his friend Aimen. An added complication came from the Government offices directly opposite his house. With the building in such close proximity, the songs had to be rehearsed and recorded in hushed tones before being released anonymously on YouTube. With the NTC now in power, they can finally share their music openly.  The fact that he had a huge collection of Iron Maiden served only to make him even cooler in my opinion.

The next day was another feel-good story as the fighter pilots that had defected to Malta after refusing to fire on unarmed protestors received the heroes welcome that they deserved. As was the way with nearly every official event that I covered in Libya, no-one really knew what was going on and after monstering the people getting off a completely unrelated jet, the media found the right target. With soldiers and police holding everyone back, I managed to slip the cordon and get a few personal moments before the rest of the crowds broke through.

Having opted to keep away from the front lines, the evening provided a little reminder of where I was as I made a phone call on the hotel balcony. Halfway through my conversation, I heard the now-familiar “zyip” of a bullet passing close by. Cue comical slow sinking from view and sharp exit from the balcony. Speaking to an NTC fighter later on, I was told of the continuing problem of snipers within the capital. While most of the day to day life seems to be a million miles away from the fighting, the continued presence of NTC roadblocks and threat of random sniper fire shows the work remaining for the new Government.

Continuing with the feature ideas, I visited a former Kadhafi weapons store underneath a building site in central Tripoli. Now burnt-out, it was clear from the hundreds of AK-47 clips and remains of packing crates that it had previously held some SERIOUS firepower.  With a bullets now cheaper than cartons of milk at 1 Libyan Dinar each, it can only lead to further trouble in years to come.

Next on the list of possible stories was a visit to the notorious Abu Salim prison.  Human Rights Watch believe that over 1200 prisoners were killed in 1996 and many political prisoners were held there for lengthy terms under the previous government. Now, like the former stronghold Bab Al-Azizir, the prison has become a tourist attraction but, more than that, a chance for those who were previously held here to show others what they endured. I bumped into one such man during my visit who was visiting the site with his son.  Thanks to hearing his story, I could begin to appreciate what the previous inmates went through. Cells that I’d initially thought cramped for one were actually for three and hearing of the forty+ rats that they caught one day in the communal area was quite an eye-opener.  Throughout the brutal conditions, the inside of the some of the cell doors had been decorated with pictures torn from magazines of tropical islands and even commercial passenger planes in flight.  The prisoner that I talked to told me that  he would never have believed that he would be visiting as a free man today.

That night, I received bad news. Following my previous comments on the dangers of Libyan roads and a very near-miss that we encountered on the roads to the East of Tripoli, I received a call that our Sirte team had been involved in a serious car crash while driving from Sirte back to Misrata. With the roads changing from smooth new tarmac to foot-deep holes and ruuble with no warning, I feared that this would have been the cause but instead it was simply stupidity on another driver’s part. While they were overtaking at speed, the other car decided to turn in front of them. With injuries including a fractured pelvis, dislocated shoulder and deep cuts, it truly is a miracle that they survived. Having been rescued from the wreckage, they were transported back to the medical centre that they’d only just evacuated due to increasing amounts of incoming shell-fire. As one of those involved told me afterwards, luck was on their side in so many ways that day. My thoughts and wishes for a speedy recovery to all of those involved.

While normality slowly returned to life in some areas of the city, the examples of wartime chaos continued to stand out with children playing on the beach next to a sandcastle sculpture built around an explosive missile and empty shell cases littering the floor wherever you walk.

Every day, those who are cover the frontline fighting are returning with shocking stories that would sound comical if they weren’t so tragic. While one guy accidentally set his AK-47 to automatic, spraying bullets everywhere at a checkpoint without knowing how to stop it (but thankfully killing no-one), others weren’t so lucky. A photographer witnessed a truck carrying three fighters explode into pieces after one fighter accidentally fired his RPG into his own vehicle, immediately killing two of his comrades. Combining the total lack of weapons training on some in the NTC side with the highly-skilled techniques of those former soldiers and mercenaries fighting on the pro-Kadhafi side results in the frontline being a very dangerous place to work.

After covering the re-opening of the US Embassy in central Tripoli (complete with a live performance of the American National anthem that had that subtle dischordant touch, worthy of a Terry Gilliam film), I headed to Zawiya to shoot a feature on the re-opening of the oil and gas production facilities. With oil production making up 96% of the country’s income (and most of the final 4% coming from gas), getting the output up to speed again was of huge importance. While even last week, I’d have been able to drive straight into the facility, the red tape monster has begun to weave it’s official nastiness through society again so I had a long wait as we worked our way through office after office of people claiming to be in charge but invariably unable to permit entry. By now, I’d got a handful of shots but was too deep to escape so when the permission was granted, my driver and I had to endure a thorough and totally unecessary tour of the site, complete with “v for victory” gestures and uncomfortable poses from everyone we passed. Sheesh…

Saturday arrived and it was time to fly home to Blighty. After already covering the story of the re-introduction of flights to Turkey from Tripoli, I booked tickets on Turkish Airlines to fly me back to London via Istanbul. I should have known really. A few days before, I’d gone down to Matiga then Tripoli International airports to record the first planes arriving only to find that they were cancelled. Despite enjoying the last moments of bureaucratic freedom that saw us given permission to wander around freely on an active international runway, there was no sign of any commercial flights. Heavy with hope and assurances from Turkish Airlines that they were now flying, I headed to Matiga to begin the long trip home. Nope. They were still selling tickets and confident assurances to those wanting to fly out of Tripoli, despite them still not having flown or landed a single international flight in Tripoli since their grand announcement. What a complete waste of time and money.

So that looks like that’s it.  I write this from the hotel with one extra day to cover before beginning the very long journey home via Tunisia.  It’s certainly been a hell of an experience of both the good and bad flavour.  If Libya plays it’s card right, the future could be very bright indeed.  Aside from it’s huge oil reserves, cashing in on the tourist dollar is a real possibility.  While to some in the West, Libya has previously been seen as a secretive country filled with people running around in bomb vests, it’s been a real pleasure to to see this proved so wrong and to witness the early days of a whole new country.  With this much optimism in the air, my fingers are well and truly crossed for you all.

Parts one and two of the assignment can be found here;

http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2011/09/17/life-in-libya-september-2011/

http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2011/09/19/fear-and-reloading-in-libya/

As my assignment to Libya has continued, I’ve fallen into the routine of a day in the city followed by a day on the checkpoints with the latter involving a lot of waiting and a lot of guns.  When I say a lot, I mean a LOT.  I’m continually expecting to see Mel Gibson and Tina Turner wandering through the gatherings  as the NTC have converted all of their cars and pick-up trucks into weapons of war.  While some are armed with the right gear for the job, others have rocket launchers from the underside of military jets while the most scary of the lot seem to be drainpipes stuffed with high explosive rockets.

The biggest fear out of here is that of friendly fire.  While Kadhafi’s dwindling forces are essentially trained mercenaries and soldiers, the NTC is an army of the public with former lawyers fighting side-by-side with heavily armed teenage boys.  In the week that I’ve been here, I’ve heard of a guard at our hotel taking most of his hand off through lack of basic safety protocol while an NTC fighter on the frontline managed to lose his front teeth (but thankfully not his head) after using a live bullet as a hammer.

After all that gung-ho stuff, I had a short burst of normality when the political roadshow rolled into town.  British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy became the first world leaders to visit Libya since Tripoli’s fall causing much excitement and general security panic.  As they were holding the press conference in our hotel (handy, that), we simply had to wait for the show to start.  In a bit of a busman’s holiday, I found myself waiting with Pete Nicholls from The Times, Stefan Rousseau from PA and Jamie Wiseman from The Mail for the PM to rock up; basically a regular day in Downing Street!  For once, it was nice to actually be able to feel my fingertips though due to the lovely 35 degree heat.

With the day of politics over, it was back to the frontline.  With news coming through that the fighting in Sirte had begun, we gathered up our armour and hit the road.  To break up the seven hour journey to Kadhafi’s hometown, we stopped off briefly in Misrata, the city that was absolutely destroyed during fighting earlier in the month and the place where Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed.  I cannot begin to explain how much damage there was to see.  Block after block of homes and businesses were riddled with bullet holes and whole streets had been burned to the ground.  Due to it’s strategic importance in connecting roads between Tripoli, Bani Walid, Sirte and other major cities, the Pro-Kadhafi forces had fought tooth and nail to keep it, totally destroying it in the process.

Outside the remains of a shopping street, a temporary exhibition has now been set up to show the range of weapons and firepower that was unleashed on this urban non-military area.  Truly horrifying.

So that was the “relaxing break” over with and we got back in the car to complete our journey.  As we got further from the capital, the checkpoints became more “Wild West” with massive shipping containers filled with sand blocking the dual carriageway at random points.  Heavily armed soldiers guarded each one with some waving you through without a glance while others searched the car, inspected our papers and demanded extra forms and letters to prove that our vehicle was worthy of handling off-road driving.  As it was, we were in a Chrysler PT Cruiser; an adults equivalant of one of the 50p-a-go Noddy Cars that kids ride in supermarkets.  Miraculously, we were eventually allowed to pass as long as we wore our body armour from that point onwards.

As we passed through the final checkpoint, the guard waved us through with a smile, saying something to us as we passed.  On asking for a translation, Mohammed Ali, an Arabic-speaking AFP journalist explained that he’d said “Welcome to Sirte.  I hope you don’t die here”.

By now, I’m hoping that I’ve managed to give you even the smallest idea of how I was feeling.  This really wasn’t much fun.  As we progress down the road, we stopped as we passed every group to see how much further we could go.  For some reason, I always thought of a frontline as being something more “solid” than how it actually is.  As we got closer, we were told that just 30 minutes before, the area that was now filled with soldiers relaxing and eating had been the frontline and could just as easily be the scene of fighting again in another thirty minutes.  After a tentative approach, we finally reached what we knew to be the final “safe point” where fighters and medics were gathering after brief probes into the centre.

Within five minutes, we were united with the other AFP team in the area including AFP’s Lisbon photographer Fransisco Leong.  After a brief hello, the fresh arrivals got into their pick-up truck while they stayed behind to wire their work and headed to the front.  As soon as we arrived on the main street to the airport, I could see that the far end was just a mass of smoke as both sides fought to take control of the strategic point.  Most of the fire was outgoing so after a few minutes, we began to move forward to see what was happening. Suddenly, the tide turned and the NTC were in retreat.  We ran to the pickup and dashed back to the safety point.

After gathering our thoughts, we headed back in, following a massive convoy of post-Apocalyptic trucks and cars, mounted with every sort of gun.  On reaching a major roundabout, they drew to a standstill and seemed to begin classing it as a safepoint.  Then the incoming fire began.  Coming from the Sirte police headquarters nearby, the roundabout was less than a kilometre away and everyone rushed to turn their vehicles around to return fire.  The sound was unbelievable with rocket launchers firing over our heads as anti-aircraft cannons tore through the foliage between where we were and the headquarters.  The expected clatter and whoosh of weapons was joined by other screeches and metallic tearing sounds as ultra-high speed cannons began firing.

As we worked our way between the trucks, the pro-Kadhafi started to fire on us from behind and a two seperate sprays of bullets zipped over our aheads and into the vehicles around us.  Everyone dived for cover with the advice to take cover behind the bulk of the car’s engine thankfully coming to mind at the right time.  Within a few minutes, the sheer amount of firepower unleashed on the police building was enough to silence the return fire and we were able to regroup and head to the safety point on the outskirts.

When I got back to the drop-off area, I downloaded my images and looked through them to find just how lacking they were in telling the story of what I’d just been through.  The thing about shooting this kind of thing is that it’s nearly impossible to capture the sights, sounds and chaos of what’s going on with a still image.  While I shot frame after frame of people shooting and returning fire, inevitably, they’d be someone in the foreground, walking across the shot, looking as though they were heading to the shops on a Saturday afternoon.  When I came out to Libya, I had no intention of covering the bangbang aspect of the story but due to the fluid way things were happening, I found myself putting my life in danger on the frontline. Not good.  Speaking to people who actually enjoy shooting this kind of thing afterwards, they all agreed that it mainly lends itself to video and that a strong action picture from a firefight is actually incredibly rare.

With my stress levels just about returning to normality, we jumped in the car to begin the long drive back to Misrata before nightfall due to security concerns on the roads.  Halfway along the journey, we were running low on fuel so stopped off at a garage in the middle of the desert to fill up.  Since the fighting began, Libya’s largest petrol company has been providing free fuel to the rebel forces as was the case here with journalists also allowed to take advantage.  Due to the high demand, rather than fill up the forecourt tanks, a man was standing with a hosepipe, straight out of the back of a fuel tanker.  On the end, was an empty water bottle, acting a funnel and when he turned the hose over to go into the vehicle’s tank, fuel was spilling everywhere freely.  Basically, it was a direct line to the whole reservoir in the truck.  Yikes.  I got out of the car on seeing this and casually sauntered away while filling took place.  On returning to the car, my initial relief at getting through the re-fuel turned to panic as I noticed that the guy doing the filling was actually smoking a cigarette.  My jaw dropped and I didn’t know whether to run away or towards the car.  I started waving frantically at him, gesturing for him to stop.  His response?  He smiled at me, took his cigarette from his mouth…

…and tapped the burning ash into the end of the main fuelpipe.

When they say that cats have nine lives, I hope humans have many more as I just managed to use up at least four in a single day.

*****

I have no idea why but, for some reason, this post went out without the part that I added onto the end before hitting “publish” so here it is as an update.  On returning to Tripoli, I decided that I wasn’t prepared to risk it again and so informed AFP that I’d be unable to cover the frontline stuff any more.  A beautiful girlfriend and the magnificent Max are two very good reasons as to why I’m not prepared to risk my life for a picture.  I’m based in the capital for the rest of the assignment.  Relax, Mum! 

*****

Part one of this assignment can be found here.

I was recently asked what my ideal situation would be, regarding how I’d like to work and after some thought I settled on having the freedom to spend longer on jobs that have a deeper back story without the need to feel that I was there at the start.  Speaking to Tom Stoddart recently, he stated that he really enjoyed covering the story after the “breaking news” teams had moved on to the next story and I agree that having the luxury to cover a story at my own pace sounds very tempting.

When I was offered the chance to head to Libya to work on the unfolding story of a country finding it’s feet after over forty years under tight and often brutal rule, I couldn’t really say no.

Despite the idea of having freedom to look for my own features in this massive story, the nerves built as the day of travel got closer.  Coming as it did so soon after my last blog post on the fundraiser for a photographer who was killed covering the story, I didn’t want to find myself the subject of similar charitable endeavours.
The trip into Libya proved to be the expected welcome to North African life with an attempted bribe situation at the Tunisian border (Euros? Yes, I have plenty thanks. Euros? Why do you ask?  Euros? No.) and my taxi driver who turned out just to be some random bloke with a car trying (and failing) to charge me the equivalant of £280 for my journey.
The hotel that I was assigned was reportedly strongly pro-Kadhafi ahead of his political demise and appeared to be making up for their loss by tearing the world’s media’s daily food allowances to shreds.  A few days before I arrived, there had been no running water for the guests and, rather dubiously, the day they drained the swimming pool, the kitchen started serving pasta (or “elastopasta”, as I decided to brand it, due to the strong possibility of finding a verruca plaster in your carbonara).  All this for a mere £145 a night and £35 per dodgy buffet.  War is hell.  The only sign that I was in a warzone on that first night was the guy sat on a table nearby with twin 7.62 calibre bullet belts acroos his shoulders as he tucked into the trifle.

By way of getting to know the location/see the sights, I headed into town with AFP video journalist Paul Barber and discovered our first features including young Libyan art students painting anti-Kadhafi murals on city centre walls and the obligatory tour of Tripoli’s new theme park (AKA the Colonel’s massive compound Bab al-Azizia), complete with a web of underground tunnels and bunkers.

Arriving as we did a few weeks after the initial rush, souvenirs were scarce on the ground but a chandelier had been helpfully smashed to smithereens, carpeting the floor with fake diamond crystals.  It beats a postcard, I guess.  The sprawling compound has now become a hub of social activity with some coming to celebrate the political change while others just enjoy the green open spaces.  Walking among the rubble and debris, a Libyan man walked over to me and, in the broadest Yorkshire accent you can imagine, told me he was “dead chuffed to be here”.  My heart sang.   The other odd discovery was a copy of the free catalogue from the British cosmetics store “Lush Times“.  Already known by men around the world as “that place that smells a bit like chemical warfare in the local shooping centre”, I personally think they should bring out a bathbomb in his honour but I’m not sure how tasteful that would be…

Communications in Libya have proved massively problematic with British phone carriers unable to roam on local networks and most stores in the city closed.  Aside from using satphones such as the Thuraya, the only other way is to buy on the black market which, at best, gets you a £2.50 sim card for £60 and at worst gets you a sim card taken from someone who is missing or dead.  Journalists I spoke to talked of receiving calls at all times of the day and night from relatives, asking in Arabic for news on the phone’s original owner.  A lovely touch to the working day.

Travelling around in Libya is done with the help of local drivers and fixers who use their abundant local knowledge to get you to the places and people you need to see.  Having a good fixer can really make or break your day as became clear as I worked my way through the regular guys we were using.  While one man was straight on the phone after every request, sorting and arranging before rushing me to exactly the right spot, another guy took sanctuary under the nearest tree until it was time to go home.  The roads in Libya can prove quite an electrifying experience too with most feeling like that patch of “no man’s land” after a toll booth where there are no road markings and everyone just floors it in all directions, the difference being this is all of the time, on all of the roads.

To break the boredom for those journalists who have been in Libya for months, the jobs are divided up on a rotational basis.  This means that for me for every day that I get to spend in the capital chasing feature ideas, I have to balance that with a day on the front line.
120km due South of Tripoli is one of the few remaining strongholds of the pro-Kadhafi loyalists, Bani Walid.  Made up of 52 villages combined into one town, the place itself is stuck right in the middle of the desert.  Reachable only by a handful of roads, the area is filled with heavily armed soldiers and snipers so is a decidedly dangerous place to be.  On the first day that I arrived, I bumped into a colleague from the London bureau who had just returned from here after a group of media trucks came under fire from soldiers on the hillside.  While it’s now thought that they were firing at the NTC positions over the heads of the journalists, it still made for a hell of a scary experience for them.

Thankfully for me, the situation has improved due to increased security around the town and the checkpoint that media are allowed to get to being moved further away from town.  While it’s safer, it also means that there is a distinct possibility of death through boredom.  Located in the bottom of a valley, the checkpoint becomes a little media village as each day wears on with the bigger crews having vans and tents while the rest of us search desperately for shade from the midday sun.  All that’s left for the media to do is photograph the soldiers on guard and the families fleeing the threat of attack.

Having got the guns and bullets out of my system within a few hours, the first day there provided a little bonus when journalist Dominique and myself (AKA The Kickass Katiba) were invited to sit with a group of fighters as they ate.

After shooting a few portraits of them, a senior figure in the NTC army arrived with a briefcase full of money and started to pay the troops right in front of us, underneath a bridge on a dried-up riverbed.  With the fighting dragging on longer than hoped, the fighters are struggling to survive with families at home in need of income so supporters have raised money by selling their posessions and sending the funds to the frontline.

While the money was a welcome sight, it was heartening to see that a good percentage of those that were paid simply gave the home addresses of their families and parents, asking for the money to go straight to them.  One guy said he’d only need a tiny part of the cash as the NTC were providing everything he needed; “food, a bed and cigarettes”.

On returning to the hotel in Tripoli, we were alerted to shouting in the lobby and fearing the worst, dashed down to find what passes for normality in the midst of this fractured society; a literal shotgun wedding (or an AK-47 one if you want to be picky.)  Here’s to the next eleven days!

Foreign jobs often drop out of the blue with no warning as happened a couple of weeks ago with a trip to Afghanistan as the pool photographer for British Prime Minister David Cameron.  Never having been to any war zones before (however securely protected), I was actually quite excited before going.  Knowing that I would be the only photographer on the trip added a few nerves to it too as I’d be using a Bgan satellite terminal to transmit my images while working in a whole new environment.  As is the way with these kind of trips, the photographs were shot by one agency and shared on a pool basis between all of the other agencies that had put their names forward to send a photographer.  With the rotational system landing on AFP, I was picked and off I went.

One of the most memorable parts of the two-day trip was the variety of transports that we took, ranging from a private business-class plane from the UK that was last used by Tom Cruise to an Apache helicopter over the streets of Kabul.  With Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Suite at Heathrow providing an array of magazines and biscuits including, I kid you not, “What Pool and Hot Tub” magazine, the 8 hour flight in the back of a Hercules transporter plane was never going to quite match up.

Unfortunately, this was never going to be the fulfilling assignment that I’d hoped for as the schedule essentially said “run, shoot, fly, run, shoot, fly…  Repeat until asleep”  On landing in Camp Bastion, while the text journalists headed into the camp to settle in and have a poke around, I was straight onto a Chinook and off for a day of handshakes, long-distance walking shots and general hurrying.  Covering these kind of jobs certainly gets you up to speed on your backwards running and obstacle detection abilities.

Logistically, I quickly became very grateful for the advice from AFP colleague Carl de Souza that I should ditch the 300mm that I had planned to take.  When carrying my backpack, beltpack and cameras, I’m usually pretty heavy but adding a Bgan transmitter, helmet and body armour just makes it ridiculous.  All previous ideas of taking time to play with feature ideas and lens choices quickly became “get it sharp and all in the frame before the helicopter starts it’s engines again”.

After visiting two mid-point bases between Camp Bastion and Lashkar Gah, it was time to head back to base and transmit.  As was crushingly predictable, this was problematic with no uploads seeming to transmit via satellite and only two network cables for a room full of journalists.  With the transmission taking way longer than normal, the offer of the evening meal in with the soldiers and PM came and went.  Thankfully, one of the soldiers in charge of dealing with the media offered pizza and soon enough, a stack of branded boxes arrived from the on-base branch.  I’d heard that there were regular stores on the military bases before but to call out for Pizza Hut while in the middle of the Afghan desert was decidedly surreal.

After a night of inhaling dust in a room heated to sauna-like temperatures by what sounded like a jet engine, it was off into the skies again.  Tuesday’s schedule involved a visit to a MERT base, a visit to a post office on a military base and then on to Kabul to meet with President Karzai.

As David Cameron wrote a surprisingly long “Fax Bluey” of Christmas thanks to all military personnel serving in Afghanistan, one of the few unusual pictures of the trip presented itself, thanks to a well-placed soft porn calendar.  Aside from this, the day was a deja vu of meetings, introductions and inspections.  The problem with these type of trips is that the thought and preparation is put into the logistics of getting around and little is focused on if the content that the location provides will work as an image.  On a number of occasions, I was nudged by the Downing Street media team as I was “missing a shot”, when in fact it was simply another opportunity to photograph the Prime Minister walking across some tarmac with a soldier.  A couple of opportunities for pictures appeared but these were noticeable for their rarity.  It’s a real shame as the fear of having a possibly embarrassing moment being captured results in such close supervision regarding angles and proximity that the iconic “happy accidents” are never allowed to occur.

The final visit before heading to Kabul was to a training base for new members of the Afghan Security Patrol with what was possibly the fastest visit of the whole trip.  I think I could have possibly held my breath for the length of time we were on the ground but it managed to give me one of my other favourite frames, below.  On landing, we were taken straight through to a training yard where the latest graduates were lined up, ready to meet the PM.  What may look like a somewhat motley crew contained a bit of a surprise in that the chap second from the right with the false hand is currently the Afghan security force’s top sniper.  Yup, you laugh at that ‘tache and he’ll pop a cap in your dome from a mile away.

Tuesday concluded with a day where, if the military gave out air-miles, I’d have enough for a nice weekend away.  Flying from Bastion to Kabul on a Hercules and into the Presidential Palace on an Apache helicopter, a wonderful grip and grin followed by a sparkling press conference in an artificially-lit room was the extent of the Kabul leg.  A planned stop-off at the British embassy to edit and transmit pictures was shortened to 15 minutes, leaving no time to transmit any images at all.  Somewhat frustrated, it was back on the Apache then onto the Hercules for the first stage of the flight home.

With the images un-filed, I sat on the Hercules for three hours as we left the country fuming over how I could manage to transmit while changing to the commercial flight to the UK.  With this ruled out, I reverted to dumping the images onto a memory stick and handing it to embassy officials during the cross-over.  The biggest headache of the trip though was the security embargo in that, despite flying out on Sunday night, no word or image of the trip could be released until 5am on Tuesday morning.  This resulted in a situation where the journalists could file their copy and have the words sat on the page ready to publish while AFP had to hold the images back until way after the publishing deadlines.  Due to this, a handful of my earliest pictures that I took of the PM with the machine gun eventually made the newspapers on the Tuesday but by the following day he was home and the story was quite literally yesterday’s news.  Damn this speeding news cycle!

As I walked out of Heathrow airport and climbed into the back of a taxi, the driver asked where I’d flown in from.  Where to begin…

My last day has arrived and it’s time to head back to sunny London town.  Ahh, I can just imagine it now; friendly faces in the street, bidding good morning to each other as they head to the park to bask in the glow from the mid-morning sun..

My time here’s been a fantastic experience, thanks to the top bunch of people based out here both within the AFP bureau and out on the streets of Israel and the West Bank.  It’s been great fun getting to meet them all and to see how this part of the world works.  I have a feeling that I’ll be sat back in England, following Israeli politics with no-one to share my enthusiasm!

..and at the end of the trip when your expenses get handed over, it’s nice to see that you’ve made a real impression on everyone with the bureau, even the accounts department.  How did she know my alter-ego?

Israel.  It never likes doing anything the easy way, it seems.  As expected, yesterday proved to be a mammoth 22 hour shift, ending in Tel Aviv at the Likud party base for what was supposed to be Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory speech.

But as has become increasingly familiar out here, things didn’t go according to plan and as the polls closed at 10pm, the published exit polls sent shock-waves through the room.  Rival party Kadima were ahead by two seats. Supporters did their best to keep spirits up with bursts of “Bibi” chants and flag waving but things weren’t looking good.

Supporters who’d arrived with the sweet taste of victory in their mouths began to sense the discount burger taste of defeat.

In Israeli politics, it’s often the case that there is no definitive winner on the night but usually, the polls are reasonably accurate.

Hours after the initial results were reported by the tv networks in Israel, “Bibi” took to the stage and with an Oscar-worthy performance managed to show little sign of upset and even claimed victory, albeit for the right-wing if not his own party.  As Yisrael Beiteinu‘s far-right policies had grown in success, the left-wing Labour party had now been pushed into an unprecedented third place in the polls.

Surrounded by members of his team and party, Netanyahu did his bit, thanked his crew and wrapped up his speech.  Before he’d left the stage, supporters were already leaving the building.

Looking down, I noticed scraps of paper that looked like the ballot papers from earlier in the day and had to ask a photographer next to me what the paper said.  Discovering they were Likud party papers, soon every photographer was monstering the poor cleaner who was just trying to get home.

With victory so strongly predicted for previous weeks, many in Israel’s politics will be left wondering what went wrong for Likud and what happens now.

On your marks.. Get set.. Vote!

As a little recap, election day in Israel is here with current polls suggesting a tight race between the hawkish former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, with the far-right expected to make major gains.  Following “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza strip and continued threats from neighbouring Iran, some parties are playing on the fears and insecurities of many Jewish voters.

5:30am alarm call.  Ouch. First call of the day was to head out to the settlement village of Nokmid; the home of far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman.  Located right in the middle of otherwise Palestinian-controlled land, the village has armed security guards as you enter and has managed to create a strong suburban atmosphere, despite being surrounded on all sides by the desolate lunar landscape of the West Bank.

With the polling station in order and the ballot box secured, the doors were opened for the small community to cast their votes.

At 8:30am, Lieberman arrived with his heavy security escort and cast his vote.  As expected, any sense of organisation in the media disappeared as people pushed, pulled and slowly crept/collapsed forward.  After a short speech in Hebrew (which I’m sure was full of messages of peace, love and unity), he headed one way and I headed the other, back into Jerusalem.

A quick liberal spraying of superglue to the screws on my very very annoying 70-200mm lens and a belly-full of pizza from the giant stack of 12 large Dominos delights in the office and a quick chance to go through my edits from this morning.

In an hour, I head to Tel Aviv for a long night of vote-count fever and a chance to complete my set of covering all four of the main political parties.  Maybe this kid’s got the right idea..

Friday?  That makes it tear-gas o’clock..  Today, I joined up with Abbas once more and headed to the village of Billin to cover the latest round of weekly clashes with the Israeli Defence Force soldiers.

Different to last week, the routine at Billin is to approach the wall along a dirt track until you reach the barbed wire-topped fence that marks the controversial line between the West Bank and Israel.  Once there, the locals try to cross through the gate, waving flags, to which the IDF soldiers react with the ever-popular cocktail of tear gas and flash bang charges.  I’d actually managed to forget what the gas tasted like until the first cloud hit us before I’d had chance to get my mask on.  Yum.

It seems that I must have some kind of Israeli homing beacon attached to me somewhere as, again, a soldier decided to take a shot at me.  Now, I’m glad to say that this will be my last gas-filled protest of the assignment as this was decidedly close.  After a few minutes of the first charge being fired, I heard a shot so ducked and immediately heard something whistle very loudly over my head.  At this point, everyone around went “woahhh!” in a 3d cinema-audience stylee.  Apparently, if I still had a head of hair, the tear gas canister would have given me a nice centre parting, passing 20cm over my head.  Okaayyyy..

Aside from that little wake-up call, this weeks protest was less dramatic as the troops didn’t come through onto Palestinian land so after everyone had received a few good lungfuls of chemicals, the group started to fade back into the village.  With a few remaining youths continuing their slingshot fire, we headed back to the car and off in search of drinks to wash away that marvellous taste I’ll miss so much.  I wonder if it’s available as a roll-on?

On Tuesday, I had the chance to go to a Ger Hassidim wedding in central Jerusalem with AFP photographer Menahem Kahana.

Living in North London, I’m used to the sight of members of the Hassidic Jewish faith and their particular style of Spodik hats and long black coats but to find myself in among hundreds of men and boys as they celebrated a wedding within their community was really something special.

With males and females directed in opposite directions on arrival at the venue, the chaps all filed into a large outdoor yard next to a religious centre where a huge PA system pumped out a looped segment from a traditional wedding song.  Although it soon became tiring to listen to, it beat Celine Dion for wedding music any day.

At first, it has to be said that it’s quite a daunting experience as there certainly weren’t many happy reactions to me when they saw my regular clothes and cameras but hopefully the kippah loaned to me by Menahem gave me some credit points.

Wandering round the area, we stumbled across five brothers who were deep in discussion but seemed happy to be photographed as they talked and as we both took pictures, I could see that this was breaking the ice a little among the other men.  After this, my confidence had increased and everyone else relaxed a little so I could start actually taking pictures!

As some of the group held hands and danced in large circles, others queued to access the building for a chance to meet the Rabbi.  This seemed to be quite a popular idea as towards the end of the day, the orderly queue became a little more frantic with old guys clambering over railings to jump the line.  This was the only part that I was asked not to shoot and, thanks to them allowing me to shoot the rest of the event, I respected their wishes (although it was amusing to watch..)

As the afternoon drew on and the guests filed out from the building, thirsty kids queued for soft drinks from a long table near the exit as the men gathered up their belongings.  The Police arrived and again closed the roads as the tide of black hats made it’s way back home.

After a morning of inter-photographer violence in the Yehuda market place in Jerusalem as Benjamin Netanyahu visited, a quick tally of damage showed no physical damage to me but a rather deformed pair of sunglasses.  With a quick edit out of the way, a decision was made to head into the West Bank to Bethlehem for lunch.  Yes, I know.  Insane, isn’t it?

Making our way through the streets of the West Bank, the technique involves driving at a constant speed and in no way stopping near any security officers or police.  This is down to the fact that Israelis are forbidden to enter this area and even though everyone had passports of varying nations, it’s better just to avoid having to go through the motions of showing documentation etc.  It would be easy to blend in if it wasn’t for the yellow Israeli license plates on the car.  Ahh.  Thankfully, we arrived with no problems at the Abu Shanab restaurant on (wait for it..) Manger Street.  The food was unbelievably good with a whole table full of dips and pickles and sauces and.. erm.. just “stuff” for starters followed by lamb cutlets and lamb kebabs.  Awesome.  If you ever go to Bethlehem, go to Abu Shanab.  Anyway, religion..

With a belly full of lamb, it was time for a gut full of religion so I headed up the road to the Church of the Nativity and the epicentre of many of the world’s religions.

Now, as you may have picked up over the course of these blog posts, I’m not a religious man.  If anything, I’ll admit to being quite anti-religion in many ways.  I disagree with anything that has caused so many rifts, wars and unhappiness over the years while going under the name of peace.  However (and it’s quite a big however), I have great respect for those who follow religion on a personal spiritual level, subscribing to the “peace to all and help one another” kind-of-thing and it is with this in mind that I headed into the Church.

Like many people, I grew up with religious hymns in school and even used to read a children’s Christmas edition of the bible that essentially cut out all the waffle and just went for the kid-friendly manger/mini-donkey/Wise Men bits when I was feeling all festive as a nipper.  The places that were featured always seemed more like another planet, never mind another country so when you actually walk into the Grotto of the Nativity (not a Santa in sight, I might add..) and see the point on the ground were Jesus was supposed to have been born (below) followed by the manger where he slept, it’s impossible not to feel awe-struck.

Luckily for me, a large group of tourists was just leaving as I arrived so I managed to get a few minutes between coach-loads to wander around the different chambers and crypts alone.  The manger itself (below) is surrounded by marble, covered with hundreds of tiny crosses, carved over the centuries by the worshippers who visit the site.  As hard as I searched, there was no “Jesus was here 1AD” to be seen though.

It was interesting to see how many people were crying as they sat around the Grotto area but apparently this is all very normal.  While up to this point I thought that the “Jerusalem Syndrome” referred to the need for every driver to beep their horn just as the traffic light turns from red to amber, it seems that it’s actually a recognised phenomena.  Having only seen one real casualty of this so far (a man dressed as Jesus, walking through the market) I can’t say I’ll be ditching my jeans for a white smock just yet.