December 3, 2001	Monday	Ramazan 17, 1422

KABUL: The Afghan doctors all knew the two Western photographers. For the past four days, they had visited the Kabul hospital regularly, walking the hallways, visiting patients in the wards. The atmosphere was congenial. Until Friday.

A doctor received a fax from an Afghan official that journalists could only enter the hospital with an approval letter. The photographers asked to stay for a few more minutes. The doctor pulled out a pistol, cocked it, and held it - with shaking hands - to their heads.

“It’s getting more and more crazy,” says Time magazine’s Anthony Suau, a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the photographers at the hospital. “Everywhere in Afghanistan is dangerous.”

With eight journalists killed - and one kidnapped on Tuesday - Afghanistan is now the deadliest place in the world to practice this profession, according to New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

The risks are rising now, in part, because the battle lines are vague. Anti-Taliban forces control all but one of the major cities, but the countryside is lawless. Bandits, scattered Taliban and Al Qaeda militiamen, and Northern Alliance forces roam the mountains and highways outside the urban areas. Journalists carrying cash, cameras, and other expensive equipment are tempting targets.

Most journalists feel a professional competitive pressure to test the limits of safety to get a story. They are aware of the risks. But covering one of the most important stories in a decade means, if inadvertently, sometimes crossing the line between observer and combatant. There are also indications that the foreign media are being specifically targeted.

Sitting atop a hill overlooking Kabul, the Hotel Intercontinental offers an excellent vantage point, and should be the perfect haven for journalists. But according to security men of the Northern Alliance, this hotel also may be a target. A rumour spread through the hotel - now full with foreign reporters - that an Afghan translator had tried to enter with explosives strapped to his body.

Though probably not true, the result is that all taxis and journalists’ vehicles are now being kept at the bottom of the long drive, requiring a 250-yard walk entering or departing the hotel. Translators - who are now required to produce two different documents to reach the hotel - are frisked at the door.

The rising risks are prompting many news organizations to reevaluate their priorities. The BBC, several major US television networks, and wire agencies pulled their correspondents out of northern Afghanistan after the death of a Swedish journalist on Tuesday night.

But those kinds of losses - that happen with even seasoned and careful reporters - are causing many journalists and editors to think twice before taking further risks in Afghanistan. A battle-front story for the French newspaper Liberation was held for a day - to the consternation of its correspondent here - because editors in Paris were concerned about the risks taken to get the story. Associated Press television - which suffered losses in Macedonia earlier this year - ordered its cameraman in Afghanistan to be cautious, despite complaints from clients that some footage was too far from the action.

Some correspondents wear bullet-proof vests. An AP photographer’s life was saved by his vest when he was shot in the chest during the Northern Alliance offensive to take Kabul. But many journalists here do not have them.

Despite the risks, the drive to find out what’s happening, to put a spotlight on events in Afghanistan, continues. Now the shop talk is of who will be first into Kandahar —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.