Marc Beckman: Collin, it's great to see you. Welcome to Some Future Day. We've been talking for so long. I first met you, I believe you are in Syria and it's amazing to see you on the ground back in the United States. Why don't you take a second and explain to the audience who you are, where you're from, and then we could segue [00:02:00] into what you were doing in the Middle East.
Collin Mayfield: Alright, awesome. Uh, my name is Collin Mayfield. I am from the United States. Uh, particularly I'm from Alabama. It's where I, uh, grew up and lived for most of my life. And I am a, uh, I'm a freelance journalist. I mostly report on conflict. I've reported in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Myanmar, Nigeria. Haiti, a number of different places.
So for the past several years I have been working as a journalist covering conflicts in different parts of the world.
Marc Beckman: So these are like some real hotbeds across the globe. And I'm just curious, I've always wondered, like, what goes on in your head? You see something flaring up, um, you know, you're like, Oh, I got it. I got to get there. I got my gear. I got my camera. Like, how does that process work intellectually for you?
Collin Mayfield: It's different every time and a lot of it comes down to just paying close attention to the news [00:03:00] and Making a judgment call on what the best place to fly to, to report might be, uh, I mean, you know, we all know hindsight is 20, 20, but sometimes you can predict when something might happen and position yourself to be in the right place at the right time.
So for example, when I reported in Ukraine, I arrived three days before the Russian invasion. So I was in Ukraine at the very beginning of the invasion. And that's just because I. After looking at a lot of the evidence and statements from U. S. intelligence and seeing, like, the troop buildups on the Russian and Belarusian borders, it became kind of obvious that an invasion was going to come.
So I went there and I made the decision to go there. Or, with one of my more recent trips, I left the United States for Lebanon in October and I had been closely paying attention to that conflict for a while. I, uh, I reported in Lebanon last year, from March through May, [00:04:00] reporting on the, uh, Israel Hezbollah war there.
But back then it was just a, a low intensity conflict, not like it escalated last year. So, like, last September, after the Pager attack and the walkie talkie attack, uh, perpetrated by Israel, and then the assassination of, uh, Hezbollah's General Secretary, or Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, uh, I mean, that's when I decided to get to Beirut as fast as possible.
So, I mean, a really, a really, a lot of it comes down to just, uh, paying close attention to the news and then making a, a judgment call on where you think the best story may be that you can access.
Marc Beckman: So you're, since you're an independent journalist, you're organizing the entire trip on your own. So like, do you mind walking us through, it's September, you're. Presumably in your home state of Alabama, you see things flaring up in Lebanon. You make a decision you want to go, but then like literally what happens?
Like you're booking [00:05:00] a flight to where is it difficult to enter Lebanon? Do you have to
take some circuitous route? Like it's such an interesting part. Like, how do you get your feet on the ground first?
Collin Mayfield: So because of the war between Israel and Hezbollah and, uh, Israel invaded Lebanon in October of last year, October 1st. So at that point, I had known I needed to get a flight, but because, you know, there was an army invading the country, needless to say, most countries, or most airlines had suspended flights to Lebanon, and there was only one airline that was still flying, and that was the National Lebanese Carrier.
MEA Middle East Air. I mean, there are other carriers that were flying into Lebanon at the time too, like Iran Air. But obviously as a US citizen, I'm not gonna go to Tehran and get a flight to Beirut. So what I did was I flew on Qatar Airways from Atlanta to Doha, and then when I was in Doha, I got on a flight to, uh, Beirut with [00:06:00] MEA.
Uh, it was very few, very few people were on that flight, most of whom were Lebanese. And, uh, it um. Yeah, it was just, uh, it was the only airline flying in, you could, uh, you could see some smoke from Beirut as, as the flights are landing. So it's just a very, uh, very tense flight. And thankfully for me, MEA was still flying because otherwise it would have been very difficult for me to get into Lebanon.
I would have had to fly to Cyprus and, uh, you know, take a boat. Because obviously you can't cross the border that the Israelis control as the two countries were near, or not the two countries were at war, but rather a country was at war with a non state actor within another country. So obviously I couldn't cross the Israeli border, uh, couldn't cross the border of Syria at the time because the Assad regime is not very friendly.
So at that time, Lebanon was essentially like an island. I mean, you, [00:07:00] there's no border that you could cross at the time. So you only could fly in or take a boat from Cyprus. So, uh, uh, fortunately for me, I was able to get a, get a flight.
Marc Beckman: So, so you're flying in on MEA, you see smoke coming up from Lebanon, you're landing in. Beirut or the Beirut area and you're holding an American passport, right?
Collin Mayfield: Yes.
Marc Beckman: And what's going on in your mind? Like, as you're getting off, preparing to get off the plane, are you concerned about getting through customs?
Collin Mayfield: No, because I've, I've been to Lebanon a few times. Uh, I mean, I had my body armor, but there was a full scale war happening and the capital was getting hit with airstrikes every day. So the customs agents, they could not have cared less about my body armor. And uh, when they found out I was a Sahafi journalist who was there to report on the bombing in Beirut, the, uh, the customs official seemed pleased to let me pass without any issues [00:08:00] whatsoever.
Marc Beckman: Amazing. So you have body armor. What does that mean exactly?
Collin Mayfield: I rarely wear it, to be honest with you. Um, I have a plate carrier with level 4 plates, so, uh, enough that I could get shot and be fine. Um, they're ceramic plates, so the bullet would shatter and embed into the ceramic, whereas steel plates are an inferior form of body armor because the bullet will, it's called spalling, the bullet can like ricochet and break apart, and you could survive getting shot in the chest wearing steel plates, but you might die because a bullet A lead bullet.
fractures apart and a piece of it goes through your throat. So I have my ceramic plates that way if they get shot the bullet will like embed into the plate and I won't have to worry about ricochets. And then I also have a ballistic helmet. But, uh, I seldom wear it. I mean, I wore my armor in Ukraine and I wore it in Nigeria a few times.
I'm in, I'm in, [00:09:00] uh, in Haiti a few times, but I, I didn't really have much of a reason to wear it in Lebanon. I mean, there were a few instances that I did when I was on, like, Hezbollah press tours, for example, in Dahiya, which is there, uh, it's a very Uh, it's a, it's a suburb in Beirut that's widely considered to be Hezbollah's administrative capital.
It's where the Israelis focused the bulk of their bombing within the Beirut area. So, when I went to Dahiya, I wore my armor a couple times, but eventually I gave up on that because, I mean, at the end of the day, if an airstrike hits you, you're Plates are not going to protect you. And I didn't wear body armor the entire time I was in Myanmar.
And there, I was actually in firefights. So sometimes it's just more weight than, uh, than it's worth
Marc Beckman: Is body armor expensive?
a few hundred dollars.
Okay. So you got your body armor, you got your, um, photography equipment, you're coming off the plane, no problem getting through customs. [00:10:00] And where do you go first? Do you check into a hotel?
Collin Mayfield: Uh, a colleague and I had rented an apartment on Airbnb. So we, we booked an apartment in a Christian neighborhood called Mar Mikael. And what a lot of people didn't understand about the Israel Hezbollah war, when people would see pictures of Beirut. That the Associated Press or New York Times or whoever is showing, people see these pictures of Dahiya, a suburb of Beirut that's been very heavily bombed, and they'll assume that the entire city looks like that, whereas in actuality, I mean, the city of Beirut is very divided, so some Christian neighborhoods like Mar Makhail or Jemezi or Ashrafieh, you really couldn't even feel that the war was going on, I mean, there was no destruction, no radical Political posters.
I mean, for the record, those Christian neighborhoods are mostly supporting, uh, the opponents of Hezbollah, the Lebanese forces, which is a right [00:11:00] wing political party and former militia. But, meanwhile, in Dahiya, it's completely different. Everything's rubble. There's Hezbollah flags everywhere. So, I was in this one Christian neighborhood that was a couple of kilometers away from the bombing, but it felt a world away.
It's just a completely different atmosphere, it's really a tale of two cities, to say the least.
Marc Beckman: But your Airbnb, the view was in clear sight of
Collin Mayfield: No, you couldn't see the ongoing bombing because, uh, Beirut is a very hilly city, and from like Mar Makhail, you would not be able to see Dahiya, it's too far away, and there are too many hills in between. But, uh, we could hear them, and some of the airstrikes were loud enough that you could feel them. I remember there was one day I was taking a nap, and I was Woken up when I, uh, when I felt like the shockwave, but, uh, I mean, in general, though, most of the, [00:12:00] most of the strikes were very, um, I mean, they were far away in Dahiya.
There were nowhere near the neighborhood that I lived in, although eventually I did, um, I did move to a different apartment building and. Uh, this was in a different neighborhood, a neighborhood called Hamra in a different part of Beirut. And there was one airstrike in Hamra while I was there, but it was about, I want to say, a kilometer and a half from my apartment, so it wasn't particularly close.
Marc Beckman: So Collin, let me ask you. So getting back into the psyche of the journalist. So what's your goal now? You got your, you got your Airbnb, you're all set up. You're in, in Beirut, you know, there are other news outlets and journalists in the area, Western and beyond. So what's your point of difference as an independent journalist?
What's your goal? What are you trying to capture that would distinguish your experience from the other journalists? What, what is the news that you're trying to find?
Collin Mayfield: [00:13:00] I, I don't know. As far as, that's, that's, that's a difficult question, because some conflicts are a lot more covered than others, and some places I've reported, like, Myanmar, for example, I was one of the few foreigners who, who has been to Chin state and I spent a couple of months in that part of Myanmar reporting.
So I was the. only foreigner in Chin State while I was there, whereas Beirut, I have dozens and dozens of Western friends who live there. So I, I had a lot less to add to the conversation with regard to the Israel Hezbollah war, but I was trying to come at it, uh, from I, I just, I, I'd like, I don't want to sound pretentious or anything, but I, I, I feel like with my work, I just want to educate people about misconceptions that there may be.
Uh, I, I want people to know that I'm not necessarily coming from, uh, I'm not coming [00:14:00] from a big name legacy outlet. Uh, I have my own personal biases that I'll keep to myself, but I, I try not to show those to anyone. But I, I'd say that my main goal is just. I don't know, really just to educate the average person.
I mean, my, a lot of my reportage is not for the expert. A lot of it is for a younger person who might not have paid close attention to said conflict and they're wanting to learn about it from a beginner's level. I like to think that I'm able to explain the history of why something's happening and the events on the ground without making it too difficult to understand.
Marc Beckman: Okay. So that's interesting. So let's break it down from your perspective, um, during this last conflict in October, like for example, your first day, uh, when you go out and, and start shooting, what is it that you went to cover? Let's, let's break down, I guess, your experience in [00:15:00] Lebanon during this time period.
Collin Mayfield: So immediately upon getting to Beirut, I just had to kind of get my bearings and figure out exactly where I was going to go. And keep in mind at this point, Uh, I mean, I think a brief timeline might be in order. So as we all know, there was the October 7th attack in 2023 when Hamas, uh, crossed out of the Gaza Strip and started attacking within Israel.
Now, uh, up in Lebanon, uh, Hezbollah decided that they were going to launch rockets at Israel in solidarity with their ally, Hamas, I mean, their words, not mine. And, uh, so after that there was this low intensity conflict and. When I was in Lebanon in March through April, you know, this low intensity conflict had not been going on for very long.
It, um, it had only been a few months at this point, uh, [00:16:00] and there were only a few hundred thousand people displaced at the time. Uh, when I got there later in October, after Nasrallah was assassinated and after the Pager attack, um, it was, it was immediately different. Uh, at this point. It was a full scale war.
So several hundred thousand people nearing a million people had been displaced mostly from the south and Becca Valley. So there were IDPs internally displaced persons all across the streets of Beirut. Uh, I, I remember those first couple of days when I returned in October, I went to Martyr Square, which is near the city center, and it's, uh, very famous for being the backdrop of the 2019, uh, revolution. I, when I was at Martyr Square, there were a bunch of IDPs from the South and IDPs from neighborhoods like Dahiya, uh, These Shia areas with a very heavy Hezbollah presence, so these, these IDPs were all over [00:17:00] the city and you'd just see them congregating in tent villages on the sides of roads and in public squares.
So it was very clear when I got back that the stakes were a lot higher, just given the sheer numbers of displaced people that were just on the streets in Beirut. And. It was also a lot more tense this time because there's this constant Israeli drone. There's an MK that was flying above and, uh, those MKs can fly at a much higher altitude than these were flying.
And the popular consensus was that it was a psychological tactic to make things uncomfortable for the civilians in the area. But, uh, Like, nevertheless, just that constant 24 7 sound of the drone buzzing and the occasional airstrike and the hundreds of people just in the streets, it was, it was, it was very stressful immediately and not like the Lebanon I had been to previously.
Marc Beckman: So [00:18:00] did you have a chance to connect with any senior leaders with Hezbollah or interact with any, um, anyone within Hezbollah where the, uh, conversation was substantively, um, Like eye opening to you where you were able to see something different. Remember, like you're talking about reporting the news in a way, uh, that is, uh, truly factual and, uh, different perhaps than what we see here in Western, uh, mainstream media.
So did any of those conversations with a member from Hezbollah, um, show you something and give you the ability to report something different, uh, or unexpected?
Collin Mayfield: The issue with Hezbollah is it's such a secretive organization, it is, it's incredibly difficult to arrange interviews with members of Hezbollah and to speak with them. It is possible, and I have been able to meet members of Hezbollah, but interview questions, I mean, [00:19:00] they, they never would give anything Substantial, you'd get a lot of repeat answers, you know, resistance.
Good is real bad. The same things that we'd hear all the time from different members of Hezbollah. Very few people told us much that was unique. There was very little that we learned that we didn't already know, which I mean, from a security standpoint, that makes sense. I mean, you don't know. want to be spouting secrets out that that way your enemy could maybe hear them.
But it made it frustrating. Hezbollah is a very difficult group to try and photograph and, and work around. It was, it was quite the obstacle. Uh, I, I just remember there, there were a number of times that You know, we were told to delete photos that we had taken, or not to take photos of things, or there were times when we'd go to airstrike sites, and what you don't see in any of these photos at these airstrike sites [00:20:00] are the dozens of armed Hezbollah members just standing off to the side, out of frame, that you're not allowed to photograph, the ones who tell you that you can't photograph the bodies, which I found interesting, because in, you know, in Gaza, they're So eagerly showing off their dead.
Whereas in Lebanon, uh, Hezbollah was very strict about not letting people photograph any corpses whatsoever. Uh, I remember I was at a, at a funeral or I was at a cemetery where a Hezbollah member was being buried. And I saw an Iranian cleric who I took a photo of, and then some Hezbollah members came up to me and made me delete it and.
While that is frustrating, um, I'm often reminded of Mao's quote that, uh, political power comes from the barrel of a gun, and when a bunch of heavily armed Hezbollah guys tell you don't photograph something or don't, uh, or delete this photo, you'd probably be wise to do that.
Marc Beckman: Have you seen colleagues of yours, um, ever push back [00:21:00] on that and, and were there repercussions?
Collin Mayfield: I mean, they just won't let you access things, they'll just kick you out, they'll force you out. Um, I never saw any instances of people, like, getting violent towards my colleagues or colleagues refusing to delete photos, but, I mean, it's just, you're not exactly in a position where you could refuse to delete a photo.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, so what was like the biggest image that you remember in your mind that you were not able to shoot because of the, um, the force that Hezbollah carries when they, you know,
Collin Mayfield: I remember, I remember there was this one airstrike I was photographing the aftermath
I remembered seeing a, uh, body being pulled from the rubble and immediately the Hezbollah guys were yelling at us to put our cameras down and like covering up our cameras and [00:22:00] my suspicion and this is this is just my personal opinion and conjecture. My suspicion as to why we were not allowed to photograph any corpses is that, uh, Hezbollah would not like some foreign OSINT analyst to be able to determine how many bodies were civilians versus how many bodies were militants.
And it's worth noting that the Lebanese Public Health Service doesn't distinguish between the deaths of civilians and militants, and that's incredibly frustrating. So that's, that's one of my suspicions as to why we weren't able to photograph it. And then there was another instance where we were, uh, photographing a strike that was near to the Rafiq Hariri airport and, uh, we were told to leave.
And the rumor that we heard was that there were some other people who were going to be coming afterwards to investigate the site. So presumably some higher in command was coming.
Marc Beckman: Who do you think it was?
Collin Mayfield: I have no idea. I couldn't tell [00:23:00] you.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. What was like the most, um, shocking image that you shot that like really shocked the conscious? Like what was the, in Lebanon specifically,
like what, what really, uh, was like the most horrific imagery that you brought to life?
Collin Mayfield: Well, again, I mean, as far as horrific imagery goes, it's. It's a lot harder in Lebanon to access things. I mean, again, Hezbollah is very secretive. It's difficult to get places. Uh, I mean, I don't, I'm not aware of very many people that went to the South who went to the front. I mean, it was doable, but it's very difficult and it'd be very well connected to go to the South where there was that front line with Israel.
But, uh, one image I took in Lebanon that stands out to me. Very much was this little baby named Ivana, who was, uh, from the south and she was, uh, she was wounded in an artillery strike, uh, and an Israeli artillery strike that hit her home and she was [00:24:00] taken up to Beirut, to this, uh, hospital in this place called Jaitawi, where I met her and, uh, Yeah, that little girl was a media star.
I saw so many different newspapers photographing this one child that was wounded, but uh, fortunately she recovered and I visited her a few times in the hospital and that was one that stands out to me a lot, just uh, seeing this young girl covered in little burns and bandaged up.
Marc Beckman: So
you visited her in the hospital because
you're compassionate not to get the, the, the photograph. Correct?
Collin Mayfield: I mean, I did take the photograph, it is, I'd like to think I'm compassionate, but it was for the story. I wasn't. Exactly doing volunteer work at the hospital. I, we did, I did go there with colleagues to, uh, meet her and her family and talk to them about their experiences during the war.
Marc Beckman: Got it
So Collin, I know that you're not in the work of doing portraits, but the fact is that you have shot some [00:25:00] really, really interesting people. You got closeups of incredible people who are in the mix of all of this. How did you do that? How did you get in front of them?
Collin Mayfield: Well, oftentimes I will just like check the websites of different militant groups and see when they're going to be press releases or press conferences. Uh, other times I will arrange with what's, with what's called a fixer. And, uh, in journalism, a fixer is basically like a point of contact who can help you to get access to something.
So if I wanted to access somebody in Hezbollah, I would go to. My fixer, who's somebody who works with journalists, and their entire job is just to coordinate between a journalist and the militant group that, you know, needs to be covered. So I would just contact fixers, and they would set me up to, to put me in the positions where I would need to be to either meet or You know, photograph these important figures.
So, I mean, a [00:26:00] lot of it I found out about through press releases, through social media, planned protests, all sorts of, all sorts
Marc Beckman: Collin, who pays the fixer?
Collin Mayfield: Uh, uh, fixers are, so fixers are journalists. So it's not like any, it's not like, so the way it works in journalism is a journalist pays a fixer for translation and for.
Making arrangements, but all of that money, like that's the fixer's income, like that money is not going toward any militant groups, that'd be unethical on so many, so many ways, but Yeah, so, newspapers and journalists will pay their fixers who in turn help set up the access that the journalists need to get the story.
Marc Beckman: Interesting.
Collin Mayfield: So, uh, yeah, so be it at, be it me like finding portraits to take at, at protests or just, you know, [00:27:00] hearing from press releases that there's gonna be like a press conference and, uh, it was actually at, at protests and press conferences that I got, uh, I got two different portraits that are, uh, of note.
One, uh, It was a man named Fatah Sharif and another, it's a man named, uh, Mohamed Afif. Those are both men who I took portraits of in Beirut and both of them were, uh, later assassinated by Israel. So there've been, uh, there've been two people I've taken portraits of who've later been, uh, later been assassinated.
So that is Fatah Sharif. He was the leader of, uh, Hamas in Lebanon. Uh, according to the IDF, he was a liaison between Hamas and Hezbollah, coordinating Hezbollah activities within Lebanon. And, uh, While he wasn't doing that, he was employed at UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
So, he was an UNRWA school teacher and then principal. [00:28:00] So, Fatah Sharif made some statements on Facebook
Marc Beckman: Did he tell you that Collin? Did he tell you he was employed there? Did you see his ID?
Collin Mayfield: No, it's, it's, I, I met him at a protest. So, it's like, it's known that he was an UNRWA employee. Uh, Yeah, he was an UNRWA employee, he was a principal at an UNRWA school, and these pictures right here are at a protest at the UNRWA office in Beirut. So he was suspended, and While I was at the protest, everyone was saying things, there were chants of things like nationalism is not a crime, don't punish our national identity, and everyone downplayed to me what he did.
Everyone I spoke to was like, oh, he just made some pro Palestine statements on Facebook, and that's why the UN fired him. And the more you look into it, the more you find out that those Pro Palestine statements were statements in support of Hamas, and then it turned out that he was a member of Hamas, because when Israel assassinated him on September 29th, [00:29:00] and the IDF said he was a member of Hamas, in general, I like to double check things, so I went to the Hamas website And Hamas put out a, a press release, uh, mourning Fatah Sharif as one of their commanders.
And if, uh, if the IDF and Hamas are saying the same thing, it's, it's probably true. So, uh, so he was killed, uh, September 29th. So, uh, and that was after Nasrallah was killed, uh, you know, shortly before I arrived in Lebanon. And, uh, it was in that period in mid September where Israel was really escalating what had been a low intensity conflict.
And then in September of last year, the Israelis really intensified their bombing across the country, and they targeted a lot of Hamas and Hezbollah and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other, like, militant groups based in Lebanon were targeted in this, [00:30:00] like, escalation in September. So it was like after this man's death and after Nasrallah's death and, uh, then the invasion on October 1st that I was able to, to come to Lebanon.
Marc Beckman: It's kind of interesting because it's obvious then, you know, you say it and show, uh, how obvious it is that this individual was working for the United Nations and Hamas.
Collin Mayfield: Well, he was working for Hamas secretly. Nobody knew he was working for Hamas until after he was assassinated. And then we all learned that he was in Hamas, so he was suspended without pay. And the UN was saying that they were investigating him while he was being suspended. But, uh, I don't think that they had any idea how deep.
Into Hamas, he was until after he was assassinated,
Marc Beckman: so he was a school teacher.
Collin Mayfield: uh, uh, well, a teacher first and then a principal
Marc Beckman: Wow. That's some school.[00:31:00]
Collin Mayfield: and then, uh, so then later after I got to Lebanon, um, I was in Dahiya, which as we've talked about before, is widely considered to be, you know, Hezbollah's administrative center, uh, it's where I've met with members of the, of the group many times, or not many, but a few times. And, uh, it was in Dahiyya where I went to a press conference that Hezbollah was having and, uh, the Hezbollah spokesperson there who was speaking was a man named Mohammed Afif.
And about five days after I saw Afif at this press conference where he said that Hezbollah, its capabilities haven't been depleted yet and that Hezbollah could still continue fighting with Israel, which Turned out, you know, not past a couple weeks, but, uh, nevertheless, uh, that was Afif's last out ever press conference, and he was assassinated about five days later in Beirut while meeting with some Syrian [00:32:00] Baathist party officials at, like, the Baathist, uh, party office.
Marc Beckman: So is your image, the last like public
Collin Mayfield: Uh, no, there were other people at that press conference,
Marc Beckman: Collin, thank you for bringing us into this fascinating, yet very harsh reality. Hezbollah. Indeed, this region along the Israeli Lebanon border will remain hostile for years to come. Be sure to join me and Collin next week on Some Future Day, when we dive deep into the world of Syria, Al Shara, HTS, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.
And once again, be sure to watch these episodes on YouTube, where all of Collin's striking imagery can be viewed. I promise you, these photos are one of a kind.[00:33:00]