An indomitable spirit in forsaken lands

An indomitable spirit in forsaken lands
Canwest News Service
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Byline: Don Martin

Source: Canwest News Service

OTTAWA - She was fearless while training for Kandahar, regularly becoming a mock casualty of staged battles or from stubbornly defiant attempts to rescue Afghan children in setup scenarios.

Her instructors could only shake their heads as she charged into make- believe danger.

But there was no way the retired military officers could have prepared CBC television reporter Mellissa Fung for a brutal roadside kidnapping outside Kabul and four weeks as a hostage held by unknown Afghan criminals.

The petite bundle of journalistic energy was freed Saturday, ending intense and secret negotiations involving CBC management, military professionals and Foreign Affairs diplomats backed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's personal call on Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for security assistance.

The horrific experience will be Mellissa's story to tell when she's ready, but having her freed will allow a lot of family and friends to sleep easy again. A happy ending was sometimes in doubt as reports from the situation rooms varied from optimistic to grim silence.

We became close friends during our first (and my last) media embedding with troops in Kandahar, meeting the same day three Canadian soldiers were killed in late June 2007 to start a bloody six-week carnage that included the worst single-incident casualty count of Canada's mission.

This much was readily obvious about Mellissa.

That thin 5' 3'' body of hers was always an illusion of feminine fragility. It actually framed a rambunctious hard-nosed newshound who was bored silly when kept on the military base. This, she'd moan as we sipped iced cappuccinos outside the airfield's Tim Horton outlet, is not the true story of Afghanistan.

Her idea of covering the military mission for Canadian viewers wasn't limited to poignant ramp ceremonies held across the road from the media tents, but to jump aboard LAVs with troops or to venture out with interpreters to find struggling Afghans coping in their daunting natural element.

She reluctantly wore the loathed burkas, which she considered a sign of female persecution, and only applied makeup under duress for live television hits. Her only fear, she confided to me, was getting scooped by close friend Paul Workman, a veteran CTV correspondent. That rarely, if ever, happened.

But that derring-do approach by a devil-may-care personality would lead Mellissa to the most horrific undercover assignment of her career as a national correspondent most recently based in Regina.

She was invited to tour a refugee camp north of Kabul for a look at the difficult living conditions outside the capital, an invitation she eagerly accepted. If this is the case, it's a no-no. It's up to journalists to initiate meetings off the base and leave the rendezvous time open-ended to discourage precisely the sort of planned grab that appears to have happened to Mellissa on the Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm not sure why she went, even though the area was considered reasonably safe by Afghanistan standards. Kidnapping is widespread outside of the capital city amid increasingly brazen grabs by desperate Afghans who see foreigners as easy marks for extortion.

This is partly why you haven't heard about Mellissa's kidnapping, even as some journalists squirm at the ethics of suppressing what is clearly a major news story.

Media outlets around the world have voluntarily refrained from telling the story not only because negotiations for Mellissa's release were at a critical life-threatening stage, but to prevent the profession from becoming an even juicier target for kidnappers.

With her release, the real story can now be told. By her.

But if I know anything about Mellissa Fung, she'll step into the national news spotlight wondering what all the fuss is about, apologize for causing everybody so much trouble and demand an update on her beloved Ottawa Senators.

Once that's settled, she'll hit the gym for an intense workout and sit down with friends to catch up on news over a bottle of 15-year-old single malt.

The great unanswered question is whether an experience that ranks as every journalist's worst nightmare has changed the sparkling personality of lovable Mellissa Fung.

I sure hope not - with one notable character alteration. May the desire to tell the real up-close stories of Afghans caught up in the swirl of an unwinnable insurgency have left her system for good.

Calgary Herald