By February 2012, however, the Libya story held less interest for the rest of the world, and Shelton took her first trip to Syria. Among other stories, she reported on the treatment of prisoners by rebel groups, and dispatched several video reports on government airstrikes against civilians, frontline tactics and rebel sniper missions. By May, she had made Syria her principal focus.

GlobalPost put her on staff in its category of “senior correspondent.” This meant she filed principally for GP, and received a regular salary. It also meant she was subject to their rules: take hostile environment training; consult before traveling to a conflict zone and secure agreement to pursue a story; and contact GP editors at least twice a day to confirm safety. Shelton found an apartment in southern Turkey, just over the border from Syria. But she was rarely there. Most of her time was spent on the road.

Syria had imploded during the 2011 Arab Spring, and settled into a civil war between President al-Assad, whose government cracked down with ever-escalating violence, and rebels led initially by the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). In February 2012, international attention was focused on regular Syrian army attacks on the city of Homs which killed hundreds of civilians. Over the next several months, an Arab League monitoring mission failed, and a United Nations ceasefire, brokered by envoy Kofi Annan, came to naught as the Syria government prevented access to battlefields or opposition forces.

Shelton, like other Western journalists, tried repeatedly to obtain a visa from the Syrian government but, denied, resorted instead to crossing the border into Syria from Turkey in order to report on rebel activities. A GlobalPost colleague, James Foley, was also covering Syria, though the two never covered a story together. The FSA welcomed Western media and was able to provide relatively safe passage to areas of interest. Shelton established a base of sorts in Aleppo, where she stayed with a couple. She had met the husband in early 2012 in Idlib, become friendly with his family, and attended his wedding.

Shelton produced a wide variety of video and print stories, and took photographs. ^[12] For example, she filed a story in June 2012 from Jabal al-Zawiya on how rebels obtained funds to buy arms. She followed the breakdown of the UN-brokered ceasefire. She wrote about measures the government took against medical workers who treated rebel wounded. “It was rare that she would spend more than two, three weeks at a time in Syria,” recalls Gelling. “But there were a few times when she was there for a month maybe.”

One of the global community’s growing concerns was that President al-Bashar might resort to using chemical weapons that Syria was widely suspected of having. Syria was not a signatory of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlawed the production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons. In late July 2012, the Syrian Foreign Ministry for the first time admitted that the country did have chemical weapons. The ministry did not elaborate, but US intelligence reported that Syria had supplies of mustard gas, blister agents, sarin, and VX nerve gas. All could be delivered variously by aerial bombs, ballistic missiles or artillery rockets. On August 20, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies confirmed that Syria was stockpiling ballistic missiles, including long-range Scuds.

Red line. That same day, US President Obama warned Syrian President al-Assad not to cross a “red line.” Without stipulating what exactly the consequences would be, Obama said:

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. ^[13]

From that day, observers inside and outside Syria were on the lookout for Syrian government use of chemical weapons, especially against civilians. While the Syrian government had no interest in involving the US, the rebels perversely began to hope for such use because it would draw the US into direct participation in the conflict on the rebel side.

Meanwhile, on September 7 Shelton found herself in the crossfire when a shell exploded close to her on the frontline in Aleppo, killing three rebels. Shelton could easily have been among those hit. Her report on the attack, which included her video of the entire incident, attracted global attention. ^[14] She had spent several days before the attack interviewing the three victims and their associates. ^[15] On September 24, she produced another powerful piece about one hospital’s experience of the war. ^[16]

© Tracey Shelton for GlobalPost, 2012
Shelton photographs firefight in Aleppo

Indisputably, the war was getting worse. Tens of thousands had already died—civilians, rebels and Syrian military. Millions more were displaced to refugee camps both domestic and across the borders in Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. It grew harder for reporters to travel even in rebel-held zones and the dangers were mounting: 33 journalists died in Syria in 2012 alone. The rebels themselves were splintering into smaller, often more militant, groups.

Kidnapping . The peril to journalists hit Shelton with unexpected force when, on November 22, 2012, her colleague James Foley was kidnapped in Syria. For the next three months, she made it her primary business to find him. Occasionally, she thought she had succeeded. “There were times when we were preparing—oh yeah, Jim’s going to come and stay at my place tonight when we pick him up from the exchange, all that kind of stuff,” she recalls. But the promising leads petered out and then stopped. Meanwhile, the war ground on—and the fear grew that either side would soon use chemical weapons.