CamFest Speaker Spotlight: Dr Saleyha Ahsan

Broadcaster and PhD student Dr Saleyha Ahsan, co-convenor of the CRASSH ‘Healthcare in Conflict’ research network, will chair a panel discussion about healthcare workers and journalists in conflict zones following a film screening of her 2003 feature-length documentary, Article 17- Doctors in Palestine, in The challenges of delivering healthcare and telling the story in a war zone takes place on 21^st March.

How did you come to be interested in this subject?
I began my working life as a journalist.  That was always the plan since I was five years old, watching news of wars being reported by the likes of Kate Adie. I have always been drawn to stories in extreme situations. The first time I thought of the importance of healthcare and the media as close allies in a conflict setting was when I heard a BBC News report in the 1980s about the British surgeon Pauline Cutting caring for patients under siege in the Bourj al Barajneh refugee camps in Lebanon.  

I went on to work for the BBC as a reporter and then joined the British army as an officer after gaining a place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. I was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps as a non-medical support officer. I left the army to go to medical school and am a now an NHS emergency medicine doctor.  

In 2011 I did my LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian law at the University of Essex after which I spent a year in Libya during the war there. Part of my time was spent working as a doctor deployed with a surgical team under the Transitionary Government of Libya’s Ministry of Health. I had also secured a grant from the Commonwealth Broadcast Trust to report on and produce multimedia content about the situation and collaborated with the Guardian, documenting through film the narrative of healthcare workers in conflict situations. I then went to Syria in 2013 where I again worked as both a journalist and doctor, culminating in the BBC Panorama Saving Syria’s Children.

When did you first witness a conflict situation?
The first time was when I was in the army and was deployed on operations to the Balkans as part of the NATO stabilisation force (SFOR). That is what inspired me to be a doctor, after witnessing the work of military medics caring for injured Bosnian civilians. After starting medical school and then becoming a doctor, I was working in one to one situations with patients, but I was keen to talk about the wider issues of conflict that I thought would be of public interest.

I wanted to continue to tell people's stories.  I felt it was important that those stories were heard. That’s when I went back to freelance journalism and started filmmaking. As soon as I left the Army, I travelled to Kashmir with Channel 4 and Palestine with the BBC. 

What is your PhD about?
My PhD is on the impact of attacks against healthcare systems in armed conflict, which is something I have personally experienced in both Palestine and Syria. The film I am showing at the Festival will be the first documentary I made which is set in Palestine in 2003. I was a medical student at the time and was supported by my then University, Dundee, and the Duncan and Jordanstone College of Art and Design in the post-production phase.

It had its premiere screening at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, after which it was accepted by the Raindance Film Festival for its festival debut.  It was then distributed by the British Council, who took it to the Cannes Film Festival. At the time I was still a medical student and I was curious about how you deliver healthcare under curfew, which was the focus of the film.

What will the Festival event consist of?
The film will be shown at the festival and will be accompanied by a panel discussion, including Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum and international law expert Toby Cadman, which will discuss the situation for both doctors and journalists in conflict zones now and how it has become more dangerous over the last 20 years.

When I was making the documentary I knew about the international humanitarian laws protecting doctors and journalists in conflict situations as a result of my time in the army. Yet I saw that they were being deliberately targeted. While I was holding the camera I was shot at, as were the doctors I was filming.  The concern is that if there is no accountability or there are no measures implemented to uphold international humanitarian law, health workers and journalists will continue to be targeted.  

What can be done to address the problem?
There is growing awareness of the attacks on medical workers and journalists in recent conflicts, including in Gaza, Syria and Ukraine. Journalists and health workers are facing more and more challenges. Attacks against healthcare in conflict are not new, but perhaps we have reached a point in time where things are so extreme that change is needed. The situation has definitely got worse. Doctors can no longer pack a bag and head off to help out in conflict situations in the way they used to. Neither can journalists. Something has to be done with a wider conversation taking place and the festival event will discuss this.