Former war correspondent: “Don’t be afraid of the bullets”

Laura Kasinof, an author and freelance journalist who has had work published by The New York Times, addressed a small crowd Wednesday night on CU’s campus about her recent work in Yemen and Egypt.

Kasinof made the presentation to promote her book, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets: An Accidental War Correspondent in Yemen.” The book recounts her experiences as a relatively inexperienced freelance journalist in Yemen in 2011 and 2012.

The Arab Spring was a series of revolutionary movements in the Middle East that began in Tunisia at the start of 2011. Massive demonstrations spread quickly throughout the Middle East to countries discontented with their leadership’s autocratic rule, resulting in violent government action. These demonstrations moved to Yemen in January of 2011, where Kasinof was working for an English-Yemeni newspaper, The Yemen Times.

Kasinof opened her presentation with a video made up of clips from one of the first and most violent protests in Yemen. The video depicted the march on Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh resided. The demonstrators in the video were entirely peaceful — which Kasinof said was surprising considering that Yemen has the second most guns per capita in the world, following the United States — but the government, on the other hand, fired into the crowd.

“When you witness violence over and over again, your mind creates a wall where you don’t feel sad or feel afraid,” Kasinof said, describing the desensitization that happens to journalists working in war zones.

Kasinof moved to Yemen after working as a journalist in Egypt shortly before the protests broke out. She said she knew little about the country before moving, but was quickly picked up by The New York Times as a freelance journalist and began publishing articles detailing the revolutionary experience in Yemen.

As a rookie correspondent in Yemen, she collaborated with a small group of colleagues, all in their 20s at the time. With Yemen being a relatively unknown country to the rest of the world, the news media focused more on the rest of the Middle East. This left Kasinof and her small contingent as the leading source of information coming out of the country.

“We felt like we controlled all the news leaving the country,” she said.

Kasinof also took time to give tips to aspiring journalists planning on trying their hand at being a foreign correspondent.

“It has been an eventful, crazy and heartbreaking time for journalists working in the Middle East,” Kasinof said, cautioning those who enjoy “chasing bullets.”

While she did say she had feelings of accomplishment from working in Yemen, she also warned that working in a conflict zone is an incredibly arduous experience.

Kasinof left the country in 2012, returning to the United States after publishing a number of articles describing the Yemeni movement for The New York Times. Her work can be found at http://laurakasinof.com/.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Oliver Brady at oliver.brady@colorado.edu.