Stephen Franklin: The wandering story-teller

Stephen Franklin unfurls a map across borders with stories of war, love and lost friends.

Acclaimed journalist Stephen Franklin has a grasp on how conflict reveals itself locally and across borders in both print and digital media; so far, he has covered five wars and three revolutions.

It is not the span of his career or the accolades for his work that make the Pulitzer finalist Franklin stand out, it’s how he takes readers to often misunderstood countries through stories of ordinary life in circumstances extraordinaire. Franklin whittled away during the war in Afghanistan and carved out unusual stories — young girls eager to study or the story of Abudullah Walih who cherished a language taught to him 30 years ago by a Peace Corps volunteer.

During his short trip to Pakistan recently, he began to mull over how he would respond if asked to write about Pakistan. “There is a war inside your country, I see this when I read your newspaper. American newspapers really need to tell this story,” Franklin explains what he finds missing in the global news narrative about Pakistan.

Stephen Franklin in Lebanon during one of his assignments. COURTESY: STEPHEN FRANKLIN

Franklin started as a journalist in Washington DC in 1966 and eventually ended up at the Chicago Times as their foreign correspondent. Over his career, Franklin progressed from paper to paper and travelled back and forth between the United States, Turkey, Eygpt, Israel and Lebanon, to name a few countries. In addition to wartime coverage, Franklin (with the benefit of Spanish) traversed Latin America, covering labour unions, flower pickers and the risky illegal migration which moves women from Guatemala to Mexico.

“Some people like listening to nice music, I like listening to nice countries,” says Franklin, explaining his wanderlust. “My wife says I fall in love every time I go to a new city.” Sitting in front of Franklin, it is easy to imagine him, with his shock of grey hair and a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth, blending into the background in any situation. Given his appetite to find troubled spots in the world, this is a useful characteristic.

A general view of Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 31, 2010. REUTERS

When it comes to Pakistan, he says, “when you cover conflict, there are certain players you always look at. So what you need to understand in Pakistan is: who are the major opposition groups and who are the people fighting the government? I need to hear their voices, how powerful are they? What is the role of the government? What is civil society saying?”

Looking at the American media, an important voice considering the sensitive relationship between the two countries, he touches on how outsiders might perceive Pakistan, “There are tremendous stereotypes about Islam and there is a lot of Islamophobia.”

Franklin’s contact with Islam was nearly accidental, but has helped him understand things a lot better. In a Detroit community college, an Arabic language class turned out to be a course to teach the Quran to American Muslims — and hence, the journalist-turned-trainer now understands the nuances of a religion practised by nearly 24% of the world.

He adds that understanding the religion is critical if one wants to do justice to a country. “You need to see how people practise Islam here, how do Pakistanis feel about their faith? I would like to learn how Islam has grown and developed in Pakistan.”

Franklin immerses himself in his surroundings on assignment, and having learnt Arabic has helped him tremendously. Each time a crisis would erupt, editors at the Chicago Tribune would ask Franklin to go despite short notice. “They would ask me to go to Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kuwait. Because I could travel without a translator, they could use me. And then I went to cover the war in Afghanistan.”

A US soldier from the 2^nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion on an early morning patrol in Zhari district in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, November 22, 2010. REUTERS

A few weeks after 9/11, Franklin travelled from Moscow to Tajikistan and late one night, across the Amu River into Afghanistan’s hills, with no headlights on so the Taliban would not see them. During his time there, he lived with the Northern Alliance (NA) or the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan. White House photographer Pete Souza was also with him. “It was maybe the best reporting experience of my life. I had a satellite phone, which I’d connect with my computer and if it wasn’t raining, I’d stand in the middle of the road and pray that my computer would catch the satellite flying over the Indian Ocean so I could send my story.”

Without connectivity, Franklin and Souza were limited to knowledge passed on by a Dari translator and whatever Franklin picked up from the Turkmen among the fighters and warlords. “We had no idea if the Americans were there. We were close to Taliban lines and every day there was powerful bombing — terrifying. All I knew was that the Taliban were fighting.”

Encounters with the Taliban were not restricted to Franklin’s pen, as danger comes with the territory of reporting. “We were in a village surrounded by the Taliban, and one night a group of my fellow journalists decide to go to the frontline with the NA. I advised against it as the fighters were untrained,” Franklin recalls. All five of his friends were killed that night in an ambush.

It is hard, even for Franklin, to use the right words to describe the rise of religious extremism. It’s not a simple story, “In some places, the failure of countries drove people apart. Some battles started because of the oppression of Islam in the country, others because of a sense of righteousness.”

But he gently reminds his audience not to fall into the trap: “Is this happening in all Muslim countries? No. Be very careful. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world from Indonesia to Nigeria and across the United States.”

Franklin appears unscathed given the wars he has covered. He has faced the wall expecting a bullet to the head. In the process, he has lost friends but found the right words, wounds and wisdom.

Halima Mansoor is a sub-editor for The Express Tribune Peshawar desk. She tweets @Hmansoor

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, December 8^th, 2013.