What I saw in the war
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0:01 - 0:04This is how war starts.
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0:04 - 0:07One day you're living your ordinary life,
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0:07 - 0:09you're planning to go to a party,
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0:09 - 0:12you're taking your children to school,
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0:12 - 0:14you're making a dentist appointment.
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0:14 - 0:18The next thing, the telephones go out,
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0:18 - 0:22the TVs go out, there's armed men on the street,
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0:22 - 0:24there's roadblocks.
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0:24 - 0:29Your life as you know it goes into suspended animation.
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0:29 - 0:31It stops.
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0:31 - 0:34I'm going to steal a story from a friend of mine,
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0:34 - 0:36a Bosnian friend, about what happened to her,
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0:36 - 0:41because I think it will illustrate for you exactly what it feels like.
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0:41 - 0:45She was walking to work one day in April, 1992,
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0:45 - 0:48in a miniskirt and high heels. She worked in a bank.
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0:48 - 0:52She was a young mother. She was someone who liked to party.
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0:52 - 0:53Great person.
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0:53 - 0:57And suddenly she sees a tank
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0:57 - 1:00ambling down the main road of Sarajevo
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1:00 - 1:04knocking everything out of its path.
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1:04 - 1:08She thinks she's dreaming, but she's not.
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1:08 - 1:10And she runs as any of us would have done
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1:10 - 1:14and takes cover, and she hides behind a trash bin,
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1:14 - 1:17in her high heels and her miniskirt.
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1:17 - 1:21And as she's hiding there, she's feeling ridiculous,
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1:21 - 1:24but she's seeing this tank go by with soldiers
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1:24 - 1:26and people all over the place and chaos
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1:26 - 1:31and she thinks, "I feel like Alice in Wonderland
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1:31 - 1:33going down the rabbit hole,
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1:33 - 1:36down, down, down into chaos,
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1:36 - 1:42and my life will never be the same again."
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1:42 - 1:45A few weeks later, my friend was in a crowd of people
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1:45 - 1:50pushing with her infant son in her arms
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1:50 - 1:53to give him to a stranger on a bus,
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1:53 - 1:56which was one of the last buses leaving Sarajevo
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1:56 - 1:59to take children out so they could be safe.
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1:59 - 2:03And she remembers struggling with her mother to the front,
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2:03 - 2:07crowds and crowds of people, "Take my child! Take my child!"
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2:07 - 2:13and passing her son to someone through a window.
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2:13 - 2:16And she didn't see him for years.
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2:16 - 2:19The siege went on for three and a half years,
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2:19 - 2:22and it was a siege without water,
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2:22 - 2:27without power, without electricity, without heat, without food,
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2:27 - 2:32in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century.
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2:32 - 2:36I had the honor of being one of those reporters
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2:36 - 2:38that lived through that siege,
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2:38 - 2:41and I say I have the honor and the privilege of being there
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2:41 - 2:44because it's taught me everything,
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2:44 - 2:48not just about being a reporter, but about being a human being.
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2:48 - 2:50I learned about compassion.
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2:50 - 2:54I learned about ordinary people who could be heroes.
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2:54 - 2:58I learned about sharing. I learned about camaraderie.
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2:58 - 3:01Most of all, I learned about love.
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3:01 - 3:07Even in the midst of terrible destruction and death and chaos,
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3:07 - 3:10I learned how ordinary people could help their neighbors,
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3:10 - 3:12share food, raise their children,
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3:12 - 3:16drag someone who's being sniped at from the middle of the road
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3:16 - 3:18even though you yourself were endangering your life,
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3:18 - 3:22helping people get into taxis who were injured
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3:22 - 3:24to try to take them to hospitals.
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3:24 - 3:27I learned so much about myself.
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3:27 - 3:31Martha Gellhorn, who's one of my heroes, once said,
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3:31 - 3:36"You can only love one war. The rest is responsibility."
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3:36 - 3:39I went on to cover many, many, many wars after that,
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3:39 - 3:42so many that I lost count,
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3:42 - 3:45but there was nothing like Sarajevo.
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3:45 - 3:49Last April, I went back to a very strange --
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3:49 - 3:53what I called a deranged high school reunion.
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3:53 - 3:57What it was, was the 20th anniversary of the siege,
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3:57 - 4:00the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo,
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4:00 - 4:04and I don't like the word "anniversary," because it sounds like a party,
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4:04 - 4:05and this was not a party.
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4:05 - 4:09It was a very somber gathering of the reporters
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4:09 - 4:13that worked there during the war, humanitarian aid workers,
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4:13 - 4:17and of course the brave and courageous people of Sarajevo themselves.
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4:17 - 4:20And the thing that struck me the most,
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4:20 - 4:21that broke my heart,
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4:21 - 4:24was walking down the main street of Sarajevo,
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4:24 - 4:28where my friend Aida saw the tank coming 20 years ago,
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4:28 - 4:34and in that road were more than 12,000 red chairs,
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4:34 - 4:36empty,
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4:36 - 4:38and every single one of them symbolized
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4:38 - 4:42a person who had died during the siege,
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4:42 - 4:46just in Sarajevo, not in all of Bosnia,
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4:46 - 4:49and it stretched from one end of the city
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4:49 - 4:51to a large part of it,
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4:51 - 4:55and the saddest for me were the tiny little chairs
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4:55 - 4:57for the children.
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4:57 - 5:01I now cover Syria,
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5:01 - 5:04and I started reporting it because I believed that
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5:04 - 5:06it needs to be done.
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5:06 - 5:09I believe a story there has to be told.
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5:09 - 5:13I see, again, a template of the war in Bosnia.
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5:13 - 5:15And when I first arrived in Damascus,
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5:15 - 5:18I saw this strange moment where people
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5:18 - 5:21didn't seem to believe that war was going to descend,
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5:21 - 5:23and it was exactly the same in Bosnia
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5:23 - 5:26and nearly every other country I've seen where war comes.
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5:26 - 5:28People don't want to believe it's coming,
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5:28 - 5:32so they don't leave, they don't leave before they can.
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5:32 - 5:34They don't get their money out.
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5:34 - 5:37They stay because you want to stay in your home.
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5:37 - 5:42And then war and chaos descend.
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5:42 - 5:45Rwanda is a place that haunts me a lot.
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5:45 - 5:51In 1994, I briefly left Sarajevo to go report the genocide in Rwanda.
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5:51 - 5:56Between April and August, 1994,
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5:56 - 6:01one million people were slaughtered.
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6:01 - 6:06Now if those 12,000 chairs freaked me out
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6:06 - 6:08with the sheer number,
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6:08 - 6:11I want you just for a second to think of a million people.
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6:11 - 6:14And to give you some example, I remember
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6:14 - 6:19standing and looking down a road as far as I could see,
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6:19 - 6:25at least a mile, and there were bodies piled twice my height
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6:25 - 6:27of the dead.
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6:27 - 6:30And that was just a small percentage of the dead.
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6:30 - 6:32And there were mothers holding their children
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6:32 - 6:36who had been caught in their last death throes.
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6:36 - 6:39So we learn a lot from war,
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6:39 - 6:41and I mention Rwanda
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6:41 - 6:45because it is one place, like South Africa,
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6:45 - 6:49where nearly 20 years on, there is healing.
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6:49 - 6:53Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians are women,
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6:53 - 6:55which is fantastic,
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6:55 - 6:59and there's also within the national constitution now,
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6:59 - 7:02you're actually not allowed to say Hutu or Tutsi.
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7:02 - 7:06You're not allowed to identify anyone by ethnicity,
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7:06 - 7:11which is, of course, what started the slaughter in the first place.
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7:11 - 7:14And an aid worker friend of mine told me the most beautiful story,
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7:14 - 7:15or I find it beautiful.
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7:15 - 7:20There was a group of children, mixed Hutus and Tutsis,
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7:20 - 7:23and a group of women who were adopting them,
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7:23 - 7:27and they lined up and one was just given to the next.
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7:27 - 7:30There was no kind of compensation for, you're a Tutsi,
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7:30 - 7:33you're a Hutu, you might have killed my mother,
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7:33 - 7:35you might have killed my father.
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7:35 - 7:40They were just brought together in this kind of reconciliation,
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7:40 - 7:44and I find this remarkable.
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7:44 - 7:47So when people ask me how I continue to cover war,
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7:47 - 7:49and why I continue to do it,
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7:49 - 7:50this is why.
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7:50 - 7:54When I go back to Syria, next week in fact,
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7:54 - 7:58what I see is incredibly heroic people,
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7:58 - 8:00some of them fighting for democracy,
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8:00 - 8:04for things we take for granted every single day.
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8:04 - 8:07And that's pretty much why I do it.
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8:07 - 8:12In 2004, I had a little baby boy,
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8:12 - 8:15and I call him my miracle child,
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8:15 - 8:18because after seeing so much death
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8:18 - 8:22and destruction and chaos and darkness in my life,
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8:22 - 8:26this ray of hope was born.
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8:26 - 8:30And I called him Luca, which means "The bringer of light,"
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8:30 - 8:35because he does bring light to my life.
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8:35 - 8:39But I'm talking about him because when he was four months old,
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8:39 - 8:43my foreign editor forced me to go back to Baghdad
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8:43 - 8:47where I had been reporting all throughout the Saddam regime
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8:47 - 8:49and during the fall of Baghdad and afterwards,
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8:49 - 8:53and I remember getting on the plane in tears,
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8:53 - 8:55crying to be separated from my son,
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8:55 - 8:58and while I was there,
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8:58 - 9:00a quite famous Iraqi politician who was a friend of mine
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9:00 - 9:03said to me, "What are you doing here?
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9:03 - 9:05Why aren't you home with Luca?"
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9:05 - 9:09And I said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004
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9:09 - 9:13which was the beginning of the incredibly bloody time in Iraq,
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9:13 - 9:16"I have to see, I have to see what is happening here.
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9:16 - 9:17I have to report it."
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9:17 - 9:21And he said, "Go home,
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9:21 - 9:24because if you miss his first tooth,
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9:24 - 9:27if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself.
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9:27 - 9:31But there will always be another war."
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9:31 - 9:35And there, sadly, will always be wars.
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9:35 - 9:39And I am deluding myself if I think, as a journalist,
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9:39 - 9:41as a reporter, as a writer,
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9:41 - 9:46what I do can stop them. I can't.
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9:46 - 9:48I'm not Kofi Annan. He can't stop a war.
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9:48 - 9:51He tried to negotiate Syria and couldn't do it.
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9:51 - 9:55I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person.
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9:55 - 9:57I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor,
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9:57 - 10:00and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've felt
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10:00 - 10:03to have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them.
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10:03 - 10:07All I am is a witness.
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10:07 - 10:12My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless.
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10:12 - 10:16A colleague of mine described it as to shine a light
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10:16 - 10:18in the darkest corners of the world.
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10:18 - 10:21And that's what I try to do.
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10:21 - 10:24I'm not always successful,
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10:24 - 10:27and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating,
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10:27 - 10:29because you feel like you're writing into a void,
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10:29 - 10:31or you feel like no one cares.
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10:31 - 10:33Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia?
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10:33 - 10:35Who cares about the Congo,
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10:35 - 10:38the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
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10:38 - 10:40all of these strings of places that
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10:40 - 10:44I will remember for the rest of my life?
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10:44 - 10:47But my métier is to bear witness
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10:47 - 10:50and that is the crux, the heart of the matter,
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10:50 - 10:53for us reporters who do this.
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10:53 - 10:56And all I can really do is hope,
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10:56 - 10:59not to policymakers or politicians,
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10:59 - 11:01because as much as I'd like to have faith
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11:01 - 11:04that they read my words and do something,
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11:04 - 11:07I don't delude myself.
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11:07 - 11:11But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I said
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11:11 - 11:15or any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast,
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11:15 - 11:17if you can remember the story of Sarajevo,
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11:17 - 11:21or the story of Rwanda,
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11:21 - 11:23then I've done my job.
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11:23 - 11:25Thank you very much.
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11:25 - 11:33(Applause)
- Title:
- What I saw in the war
- Speaker:
- Janine di Giovanni
- Description:
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Reporter Janine di Giovanni has been to the worst places on Earth to bring back stories from Bosnia, Sierra Leone and most recently Syria. She tells stories of human moments within large conflicts -- and explores that shocking transition when a familiar city street becomes a bombed-out battleground.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 11:53
Dewi Barnas commented on English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for What I saw in the war | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |
Dewi Barnas
Hi, I was just reviewing this talk in Indonesian, and I think on minute 5.28 it should be "they don't leave before they can't" -- instead of "before they can". Could someone look into that? I'm afraid the translation in other languages have also been made to as "they can".