Kurdish journalist wins France’s top journalism award

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish journalist in France, who was recently seriously injured covering the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, has won France’s top journalist prize for his work in northeast Syria.

Allan Kaval, who reports for France’s Le Monde, received the 2020 Albert Londres Prize for his coverage of the war in northeastern Syria last year.

Kaval was heavily injured in October 2020 while covering the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He is still undergoing treatment in France and will have to learn to walk again and recover before he can return to work.

Read More: French Kurdish journalist injured in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Kaval told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday that he received the prestigious award for several articles he published about events in northeast Syria during the Turkish military incursion against Kurdish-led forces in October 2019. Specifically, his reports on the hundreds of foreign Islamic State fighters in the custody of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria during the Turkish offensive.

The Syrian Kurds have repeatedly called on foreign countries to take back imprisoned foreign fighters and families, warning that the captured extremists could flee.

Many of them have been repatriated in recent years.

Kaval’s reports focused on the condition of foreign Islamic State fighters in the Hasakah prison last year. He told Kurdistan 24 that most of his articles were about the foreign fighters in Baghouz and “the situation they were in.”

“The reports also focused on the difficulty the local [Kurdish] administration had with the prisoners without the help of the Coalition at the time,” Kaval added.

Kaval said winning the Albert Londres Prize means the work he has done since 2014 in the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Syria, where he covered “different aspects of the Kurdish issue,” has paid off.

Kaval also noted the achievement would not have been possible without the “tremendous help” from colleagues and friends working in those areas. He praised those who helped him and all the fixers he had worked with in the region for their expertise.

“I want to thank all of them, and I wish to be back in Kurdistan soon to thank all my friends once I am better to celebrate [the award] with all of them,” he said.

Some of the cities across the Greater Kurdistan where Kaval has worked include Diyarbakir, Cizre, Nusaybin, Silvan, Van, Sulaimani, Erbil (Hewler), Kirkuk, Duhok, Shingal (Sinjar), Qamishli, Hasakah, Girispi (Tal Abyad), Serekaniye, Manbij, and Raqqa.

Kaval’s work in northeastern Syria has also won him the prestigious Bayeux award for war correspondents and the Ouest-France Jean Marin Prize.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany