Frontline Club bloggers
Al Shabab Rallies Troops for Mogadishu Defense
Al Shabab. AP photo. by DAVID AXE On Friday Sheikh Moqtar Robow Abumansor, a top military leader in Somali Islamic group Al Shabab, declared war against the U.S.- and U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. This at a time when the TFG and peacekeepers are clearly planning for a […]
Georgia-Russia War: The Movie Trailer
As shown on TV here, this is the trailer for veteran Hollywood action movie director Renny Harlin’s take on the Georgia-Russia war, starring Andy Garcia as Mikheil Saakashvili (with a rather peculiar accent). The feature film, which is due out later this year, has been described as an "anti-war" movie, but it was financed by […]
A Georgian Oppositionist’s Russian Gambit
Is a politician who signs a friendship pact with the people who recently invaded your country a traitor? That’s what the government here in Georgia has been saying after a former prime minister turned opposition party leader started hanging out in Moscow with Vladimir Putin and his cronies recently. On his latest visit to Russia […]
World Politics Review: Somali Forces Prepare Counter-Islamist Offensive
AMISOM peacekeepers. U.S. Army photo. by DAVID AXE Forces belonging to the U.S.- and U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia have mobilized for a major offensive against Islamic militants who control much of southern and central Somalia. On Friday, a local journalist who spoke with World Politics Review reported seeing government forces, as […]
Afghanistan: “A solution is going to look somewhat ugly”
The important international voices have been ‘on message’ about Afghanistan recently in time for a new British-led NATO offensive in the area around Marjah in Helmand province. At the London Conference last month there was talk of "turning the tide"; NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen believes there is new momentum in Afghanistan; and US […]
Counterinsurgency blogged: A 30-day tour of Afghanistan
This looks like an interesting new blog which apparently kicks off today. US Tech Sergeants Ken Raimondi and Nathan Gallaghan are going to travel through five regional commands in Afghanistan blogging and vlogging along the way. Unsurprisingly, they think the story of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan isn’t being covered by the media: "We want to show […]
New Media training for Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists in Tbilisi, Georgia
Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, seems to be attracting me a lot these days and not least because it’s the only place in the South Caucasus where Armenians and Azerbaijanis can meet. With a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan as elusive as ever, and with some still expecting a new war within the next five […]
“China’s Unnatural Disaster” censored in Chinese media
The film we’re so excited to have in our Frontline Russia collection, and that has already been screened in the Frontline Club in London, "China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province" earlier this week was nominated for Oscar! A couple of days later a news came that the Chinese government continues to be quite […]
The future begins with ‘C’
Ok, here at Frontline we don’t know exactly what will happen in the unpredictable worlds of journalism and warfare over the coming years. But we can reveal how everyone will be describing the future. Military and media experts have gazed into their respective crystal balls (or maybe they’re sharing the same one due to respective […]
Pro-gov’t MP: Designate birthday of President’s mother as Mothers’ Day in Azerbaijan
For 70 years, Soviet Azerbaijan celebrated 28 April as a national holiday – it was conceived as the victory of revolution in the country, the date of its Sovetization and liberation of workers.
Democracy is … POSSIBLE
Despite the arrest and conviction of one of their co-founders, Adnan Hajizade with an apparently trumped-up charges, OL! Youth movement has released a new video telling that they are still in and not disillusioned in their quests.
Indo-Pakistan Cricket Spat
Everyone can recall the torture of being picked last for teams at school. The stock response is to blush profusely, shuffle along in the wake of the captain that doesn’t want you and never turn up to gym class again. In the relentless tit-for-tat relationship between India and Pakistan, team selection takes on a different […]
‘Tweetwife’ application reminds US Admiral to use Twitter
The United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says his wife, a regular Twitter user, reminds him to tweet. Admiral Mike Mullen believes Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook are important forms of communication which enable him to stay in touch with younger members of the US military…(or at least that […]
Saving Darfur
My book is all set for its launch next month, which is one of the reasons why my Middle East blog has been a little quiet. Over at South of West though I’ve updated things with a bit more on the book, some endorsements and a list of events to promote Saving Darfur. This year […]
Somali Insurgents Claim Yemen Boost
A.U. tanks in Somalia. Photo via Somali Weyn. by DAVID AXE A spokesman for the Somali Islamic group Al Shabab told reporters his forces have been bolstered by fighters from Yemen. “We have received fighters from the Arabian Peninsula — I mean in Yemen — to bolster our fighters on the ground,” Sheikh Ali Mohamoud […]
Documentary: From Home to Home
An ethnic Azeri originally from Armenia reads aloud the Armenian inscriptions of the tombstones in his village in Azerbaijan. An ethnic Armenian from Azerbaijan videos the Azeri graveyard in his village in Armenia, speaking over the tape in Azerbaijani before sending it off to the families of those that used to live there instead of […]
Mountain minefield rescue at night in Iraqi-Kurdistan
I couldn’t leave him there. He was going to die. Over a hubbly bubbly and sweet chay in Dohuk this week I met Faris Zubair Ali – a highly experienced deminer and Operations Manager for the Iraqi Kurdistan Mine Action Agency. My co-producers Karlos Zurutuza and Borja Portuondo had interviewed Faris and his team at […]
A view of ‘peace building’ in Afghanistan
‘Captain Cat’ has been updating a blog in an attempt to "document some of what goes on under the label of peace building" in Afghanistan. There are plenty of interesting insights in the Captain’s dispatches and the blog is well worth latching on to, if you haven’t already. Here are a couple of recent posts […]
Rupert Hamer ‘died for the truth’
The Telegraph’s defence correspondent, Sean Rayment, pays tribute to his Sunday Mirror colleague, Rupert Hamer, who became the first British journalist to be killed in Afghanistan earlier this month. "Rupert and I had many conversations about whether reporting from Afghanistan was worth the risk, especially for those of us who had families. But Rupert was […]
Frontline Club: blogging and social media training
Cross-posted from my now rather inaccurately named Mediating Conflict blog, this is just a note to let you know that I’ll be running the Frontline Club’s blogging and social media training course on 1 and 2 February 2010. Hopefully it will be great fun and a really good way to get yourself started in online […]
24/7 media world undermines use of force, says UK Minister
The Armed Forces Minister, Bill Rammell, delivered a speech yesterday in which he expressed his concern that the information age had fundamentally altered the conditions in which Britain could "project power" in the world. Talking at the Institute of Public Policy Research, Rammell noted that there were many positive benefits from the development of "access […]
The Unbreakable Phone, erm
Rather predictable, I guess. This is what happens when you challenge someone to test your "unbreakable" phone on the telly. But I’m pleased to report that my Sonim is still going strong despite plenty of spills and thrills…
Defence correspondent Rupert Hamer killed in Afghanistan
The Sunday Mirror’s defence correspondent, Rupert Hamer, has been killed in Afghanistan while embedded with US Marines. Photographer Phil Coburn also suffered serious leg injuries when the MRAP vehicle they were travelling in was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device on Saturday. One US Marine was killed and five others were injured in the attack […]
Aid and Activism for Gaza
I spent five years living and working in Africa. The more time I spent there the more I became interested in the debate about how to best fix the problems of its many troubled nations. In particular, how do the different roles of humanitarian aid and advocacy fit together? The complementary but sometimes contradictory […]
Was CIA bomber a jihadi blogger?
That’s the question being asked by the frighteningly excellent jihadica.com. Citing an Al Qaida statement, they say: Abu Dujana al-Khurasani (real name Hammam Khalil Abu Milal) ‘the famous propagandist and writer on the jihadi forums,’ carried out the attack in Khost which left at least eight Americans dead. The news that the suicide bomber was […]
Reaction on the blogs to US intelligence in Afghanistan
The other day Major General Michael Flynn (et al) published a report which highlighted some fundamental failings of US intelligence operations in Afghanistan. US intelligence, he argued, is overly focussed on the enemy, unable to answer basic questions about local political, economic and cultural dynamics and is "only marginally relevant to the overall strategy". He […]
Peaceful coexistence in the South Caucasus
With few expecting a breakthrough in negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the long-standing conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, if the likelihood of ethnic Armenians and Azeris ever being able to live together in peace again seemed remote, you’d be wrong. A recent working visit to Georgia, the third of the […]
Azeri Ambassador proposes to rename Kazakhstan’s capital in favor of Nazarbayev
Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan Latif Gandilov suggested to the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to rename its capital Astana into Sultan-Ata (“Father Sultan”), Interfax-Azerbaijan reported.
Golden Balls of Joy
This was my Christmas Eve feast. And a new challenge is unveiled – the hunt for the best felafel. So far Afteem, just around the corner from Manger Square in Bethlehem, is in pole position. The fat, golden balls arrived fresh from the fryer, the outside crisp and crunchy and the inside was soft and […]
