In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin

In September 1999, Marie Colvin and two other reporters were the only ones to stay in East Timor. The territory was under siege from Indonesian militia, who were invading it following the end of Portuguese rule in 1975. They were the only ones willing to stay and cover the humanitarian crisis that was strangling the civillians. It was reported that up to a third of the entire population had been killed by soldiers or died from disease or from famine.

The United Nations peacekeeping forces were preparing to leave the region. This would have left East Timor completely defenceless to a full-scale Indonesian invasion. Across the world, human rights activists were well aware of the scale of the crisis, but Colvin had a unique ability to translate the statistics of a conflict into a portrait of the tragedy these conflicts caused in individual lives: the mothers who mourned their children; the children who, if they were still alive, squabbled over vermin to feed themselves.

Before reading this book, I thought I had a good grasp of the purpose of a war correspondent: to report on conflicts in far-reaching corners of the globe, to help people like me understand what is going on in these conflicts, and how it affects people. But I never understood that it could actually have an impact on government policy and foreign policy. Marie’s investigative work in East Timor was credited with helping to save 1500 lives in the region, as her heartfelt reporting piled pressure on the international community to continue their peacekeeping efforts in East Timor.

I was also under the impression that a war correspondent would enter a warzone, complete their report, and flee to a safe region at the earliest possible convenience. Colvin alludes to several other reporters doing just this, but she threw herself right into the heart of the danger, at times with reckless abandon, to make sure she could accurately report on the hard reality of whatever conflict she was covering. Being at the forefront of the story is one factor here, though there is another factor: the pressure that her long-time employer, The Sunday Times, places on her. Colvin spends 27 years of her career reporting for the UK-based newspaper, and we learn about how the culture evolves in that time to become a higher pressure environment where correspondents are encouraged to produce stories faster and faster.

In 2001, covering a conflict in Sri Lanka, Marie walked for several days through jungles with guides to avoid government soldiers, when the group was ambushed. It was here that she lost the vision in her left eye, which was pierced by shrapnel from a grenade that was thrown in the melee. We also learn about some of her peers and contemporaries, several of whom also lost their lives while on reporting duties.

The author of the book, Lindsey Hilsum, was herself a contemporary of Colvin, although not a close friend. I think she is uniquely positioned to write such a book: she understands better than most the strain that Colvin’s job has on someone’s mental health, and on their personal relationships; yet she has enough distance from her to give us an account of her life that is not clouded by emotion. Hilsum’s writing is often factual, and she refrains from writing in the first person, or giving her own opinion too much. Instead, interspersed in the prose are excerpts from Marie’s diary, which she had kept from a young age until her death. This gives us a real insight into her evolution as a writer and also into her struggles with alcohol and with an eating disorder which are only exacerbated by the stress she is under as a journalist.

We learn about Colvin’s two troubled marriages, both to fellow war reporters, as well as a string of relationships and flings she had during the course of her life. It seemed to be that it would be difficult to have a relationship with anyone outside of that world: how would you explain to your partner that you wanted to be alone in a hotel, bombs falling around you, instead of at home safe with them? In fact, Colvin’s journals seem to describe the opposite: that being with someone in the same position as you, perhaps under siege or under attack, heightens the emotions involved and brings you closer together.

I got the feeling as I continued to read that Colvin’s death was inevitable. Entering Syria on the back of a motorbike, having been denied a visa to enter the country, she found herself reporting from a temporary media centre within the city of Homs, which was under siege. In fact, it is suggested that the Syrian government deliberately targeted this building because of the satellite communications that were coming from it – Colvin made a broadcast to both the BBC and CNN on the 21st of February, 2012. Her hope was that, like in East Timor, reporting on the brutal conditions would put pressure on governments to send humanitarian aid. Sadly, Colvin never found out what would happen next: the following day, both she and a French photojournalist were killed by a shell directed at the media centre.

The book left me wondering about the influence a single journalist, or indeed, a single person, can have on geopolitical events. In East Timor, Colvin’s personal actions are presented as a triumph. It made me feel optimistic about the world, hopeful that a single person’s actions can save lives and influence policy. I do not doubt that her work made a significant improvement to many people’s lives, and attracted humanitarian aid that saved many lives. However, it also makes it clear that this can come at a significant cost. Marie Colvin died before her years, having seen many of her friends and contemporaries reach the same fate, and leaving behind her siblings and her mother. It’s a sobering note to end the book on, and it left me wondering whether that level of personal cost is an inevitable part of trying to make that kind of difference at all.