Frontline Club bloggers
Lunch in Kisumu
Fish and chips at Kisumu’s Imperial Hotel. With condiments So Friday saw me in Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and I’m a great believer in the Catholic/Luo tradition of taking fish for my lunch on such occasions. OK so it wasn’t exactly Superfish, or as tastable as Omdurman’s fish breakfast, but the tilapia […]
Devils and Details
George Clooney’s people have still not contacted my people over the great “Put Up or Shut Up” debate he proposed last year. George has now at least been to Darfur (albeit for about 24 hours before being struck down by diarrhoea and having to be smuggled back to the comforts of the Rotana Hotel in […]
US Milblogs from Iraq
After the closure of Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Journal, what’s been filling my milblogging void? Well here are some of the ones from Iraq that I’ve been reading recently. Fobbits Need Ice Cream Too. A National Guard Infantry soldier describes life running convoys into Iraq from Kuwait in the best of irreverent styles. “Our battalion […]
Gissa Job
So I know no-one wants to read yet another post about the future of journalism but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. In particular the future of one particular journalist. After four years reporting on this part of the world it has come to my attention – and possibly the reader of […]
Video: Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard’s daily hassles
Traffic, protesters and street vendors are some of the biggest daily headaches for Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard. This video corresponds to a profile of Mayor Ebrard written by Ken Ellingwood. “Marcelo Ebrard has turned this balmy city into an ice skaters’ wonderland. He’s conjured sandy beaches far from the sea. He’s made hordes of […]
Saddam Hussein’s nephew blogging?
This is the sort of post that comes with a significant disclaimer – I can’t entirely verify the authenticity of the blog. But I thought I’d point you in the direction of a blog whose author claims to be one of Saddam Hussein’s nephews, Al-Hussain Arshad Yassin. In this post Al-Hussain offers a defence of […]
Nick Meo in Kandahar IED incident
[video:youtube:1GegGPTSAqg] Nick Meo, Telegraph foreign correspondent, reports from Afghanistan a few seconds after an IED exploded a truck he was travelling in just outside Kandahar launching it into the air and turning it upside down. Nick filmed the aftermath of the attack in the clip above, The Cougar was meant to clear a way along […]
Judge Mental
Kenyan judge accused of road rage stabbing My favourite line being “It is a self-inflicted injury. He was very drunk,” Kariuki said. “I am a judge and cannot engage in something like that.”
Somalia Journos’ Kidnapping: Inside Job?
Two months ago two foreign journalists and their Somali colleagues were abducted while reporting on refugees outside Mogadishu. Aussie Nigel Brennan and Canadian Amanda Lindhout and as many as three Somalis were grabbed on the heavily traveled Afgooye Road, apparently under the noses of Ethiopian troops. My friend Mohamed Omar Hussein, a reporter in Mogadishu, […]
Tablighi Jamaat
The yearly general and regional ‘conferences’ of the Tablighi Jamaat are perhaps the most undercovered big events that go on in Afghanistan. Last year I went to the general meeting in Kabul, a 4-day event that over 10,000 people attended. Not a single report was written, be it foreign media or Afghan media. Now to […]
A Load of Garbage
World piracy map produced by the International Maritime Bureau Al Jazeera, I see, is furthering its reputation for impartial and balanced reporting from the Muslim world with this corker on the pirates… Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return […]
“4-nil and it’s started to rain”
Not much has happened in Kandahar since I last wrote – not on a grand scale, anyway. It seems the dead need to line up in the dozens for international media to take note. Today an attack on a USPI convoy killed several, but it will undoubtedly not be deemed newsworthy enough for anything more […]
Video: Recovering drug addict tells his tale
Rodrigo Sonck realized that he had to do something about his coke habit when he took a beating from drug thugs. We caught up with him at an addiction recovery center in Huitzila, in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, where he had been for a month. Married with two children, Sonck and around 25 other […]
A winnable war?
“There’s no such thing as a winnable war; It’s a lie that we don’t believe anymore” Music is not my specialist subject but these lyrics have been popping into my head over the past couple of days. Sting, of course, was singing in the context of the Cold War, but after these comments made by […]
Urban Hunger in Nairobi’s Slums
John Kilonzo and his wife Lucia Kamene with their young daughter Esther in the miserable slum of Mathare In his tiny one-room shack in a Kenyan slum, John Kilonzo and his family are the new faces of urban poverty – squeezed by rising food prices and trapped by disease. Hunger is stalking Nairobi’s shanty towns […]
Bad Voodoo’s War @ The Frontline Club
Friday night I made my first visit(!) to the Frontline Club. I was going to watch a screening of a film called Bad Voodoo’s War directed by Deborah Scranton. Deborah, who’d never met me before, very kindly agreed to put me on her guest list for the event. So I’ve got to say nice things […]
Pirates Smuggle Somalia on to the Agenda
Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow It has become fashionable among some of my colleagues in Nairobi to express irritation at the level of interest the world is showing in Somalia’s pirates. The argument is generally expressed by pointing out that Somalia has been a mess for 17 years, stands on the brink of a major […]
Warfare in virtual worlds
Last week, I was speaking on a panel at a departmental conference about new media and war. It was great to meet Tim Stevens, one of my co-panellists, who gave a fascinating talk on violence and warfare in ‘virtual’ worlds like Second Life. I put virtual in inverted commas because one of the points Tim […]
Following The Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan
Michael Yon is an independent journalist who has undertaken a number of embeds with British and American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September, he spent some time with the Parachute Regiment in Helmand Province and his three blog posts are well worth a read. Part One gives you an insight into 2 Para’s life […]
Vaughan Smith up for Rory Peck Award
[video:google:8548112614184247543&ei] The shortlist for the Rory Peck Awards 2008 is now out. Among the contenders in the “Features”category is Frontline Club Founder Vaughan Smith for the blog he wrote from Afghanistan in 2007. You can see the edited footage he put together for BBC Newsnight in the video above. Good luck Vaughan. Here is a […]
Far From the City
In case you were wondering what’s happening outside the city in the districts, here’s a story and a half. Ghorak district is north-west of the city, and not especially important in itself. Off the top of my head, it was the first district that the Soviets abandoned during the 1980s when they started their slow […]
Guilt by Emigration
Ugali and cabbage. Mmmm For much of the 1980s I simply refused to smile. My country was being wrecked by Thatcherism, the pits were shut down and four million people were thrown on the scrapheap. The least I could do as I caught the bus from Royal Tunbridge Wells to my school (best A-level results […]
An Abomination
Jerome Corsi at the airport yesterday. AP Two things you don’t do in Kenya right now: Criticise Barack Obama when the country is in the midst of Obama mania; suggest Raila Odinga is an extreme socialist who rose to the position of prime minister on the back of violence conducted by radical muslims. Jerome Corsi, […]
Bajo Juarez campaigns for the dead women of Ciudad Juarez
“She said some words to my mother that I’ll never forget: ‘Don’t be scared, but they just said on TV that they’ve found a girl that fits Alejandra’s description. We still don’t know if it’s her. Don’t be frightened but call and ask,’†said Maria Luisa Garcia, who stayed outside to speak to their neighbor […]
Back in Kandahar
Amniat kharab day. Hokumat kharab day. Taliban kharab day. Security is messed up. The government’s messed up. The Taliban are messed up. I was trying to have a conversation with old colleague of mine from Kabul on the plane down to Kandahar. He’s originally from there, of course, but now lived and worked in the […]
Ethiopian Famine Averted
Among many of the titbits of useful advice I picked up as I worked my way through Britain’s regional newspapers was one that has caused me no end of trouble. “Rob,” one of the old hands at The Herald (I should point out this is a Scottish national paper – not a British regional paper) […]
Mexico memory march turns violent
Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets yesterday to demand justice for the victims of a mass-killing by Government troops on the night of October 2nd forty years ago. Survivors of that bloody night and Mexicans who had not been born then joined forces, chanting “Dos de octubre! No se olvide!” (Oct. 2! Don’t forget!) […]
Marchers remember the dead of October 2nd 1968
Hundreds of students and other Mexicans congregated on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, Thursday at 3pm, to march in memory of the hundreds who died that night 40 years ago. These protesters (above) carried a banner that said “Terrorists!” presumably in reference to the Mexican authorities, who have failed to punish those responsible for […]
Mexico to remember massacre 40 years later
Today, people of all ages will march in memory of a massacre that took place forty years ago in Mexico City – an event that remains one of the darkest in the country’s recent and bloody history. On October 2nd 1968 the country was gearing up for the opening of the Olympics here in Mexico […]
Shooting the Messenger Again
Andrew Mwangura, piracy expert, in Mombasa The Kenyan government has already slagged off journalists for reporting on piracy, the UN’s special representative has accused us of passing on pirate propaganda, and now it’s my old pal, Andrew Mwangura, who is getting it in the neck. For the past decade or so he has been monitoring […]
