News
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 […]
Iraq embeds at all-time low
CNSNews reports that the number of embedded reporters working in Iraq is at an all-time low, There were just 39 embedded reporters covering Iraq in September 2008 compared to 219 in September 2007, a decline of 82 percent. link
From warzone to psychiatrist
Paul Watson’s book Where war lives is reviewed on the Bloomberg site. Watson, who started out as a metro reporter on the Toronto Star, took his holidays in war zones. He ended up reporting from Eritrea, Angola, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan receiving the Pulitzer prize for his “Black Hawk Down” picture of a mob […]
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.”
The My Lai tapes
The BBC is re-broadcasting the two part radio documentary, the My Lai Tapes which tells the story of what happened on that day in 1968 when soldiers from the US Army slaughtered villagers in My Lai, “The first time the Americans came, the children followed them,” one villager says. “They gave the children sweets, then […]
Cool down in Kabul
In Kabul, blazing hot, need to cool down, head to the local ice cream parlour and order yourself a Shir Yakh. No idea if it tastes any good, but SBS reporter Yalda Hakim got to try one as she returns to her birthplace, Kabul and blogs in words, pictures and video what she finds there, […]
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 […]
Grim outlook for BBC says John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor and Frontline Club regular, John Simpson, was talking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival when he turned on his paymaster of the last 42 years, “The future? Well, I don’t think that it’s going to look very good for the BBC. I think the BBC we have known, for good or worse, […]
$1 million Baghdad security budget
Peter Morello of University of Missouri-Kansas City (UKMC), Matthew Schofield of The Kansas City Star and activist Mike Murphy held a roundtable at UKMC to discuss the war in Iraq and the nature of reporting conflict, issues around embedding and the sheer expense of it all, “It’s become expensive to have reporters in different countries,” […]
15 day threat to Somalia kidnap victims
According to a report from Press TV Iran’s correspondent in Mogadishu, the two journalists kidnapped in Somalia on August 23 – Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan – will be killed if a $2.5 million ransom is not paid within 15 days. The National Union of Somali Journalists released a statement calling for the release of […]
In search of the Taliban
John D. McHugh’s latest multimedia report for the Guardian finds him in Logar province with the US-Afghan mission in search of the Taliban. A US army captain, with a price on his red head, gives his views on the challenges they face. John also has an audio slideshow up on The Guardian, The Seray combat […]
Walter Astrada wins International Photography Award
Argentinian photographer Walter Astrada has won the Single Image category of the BJP’s International Photography Award for the image above of highlighting femicide in Guatemala, ‘Most of the bodies I take pictures of was the same. Not in the case of Maira. She was not only shot but it was 16 shots. It’s a lot.’ […]
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 […]
War reporter Arnold Karskens wins Clara Meijer-Wichmann medal
Radio Netherlands reports that the Dutch war correspondent Arnold Karskens has won the 2008 Clara Meijer-Wichmann medal, The Dutch Human Rights League and the J’Accuse foundation. Since 1988, the medal has been awarded to people or organisations in the Netherlands who have demonstrated a commitment to human rights. The organisations praised Arnold Karskens for presenting […]
Journalist Diyar Abbas gunned down in Kirkuk
Diyar Abbas Ahmed, a journalist with Eye Media in Iraq, was reportedly gunned down in the northern city of Kirkuk on a day of attacks across the country killing at least 19 people, The worst single attack was in Baghdad’s mainly Sunni quarter of Dora where a car bomb blast at a crowded market killed […]
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 […]
Question over death of Gerda Taro
Gerda Taro was the first female war photographer. She photographed the Spanish Civil War. We’ll be celebrating her work at the Frontline Club on 17 October. Writing in the New Statesman Robin Stummer believes the pictures the 26-year old later became famous for are what led to her murder, According to the German academic Irme […]
Journalists held in Syria
The two journalists who were reported missing in Lebanon yesterday are reportedly being held by Syrian Immigration authorities according to Al-Jazeera, Two Americans reported missing by the U.S. embassy in Lebanon are being held in Syria for entering the neighboring country without visas, Arab media reported on Thursday. Doha-based Al Jazeera television said Holli Chmela, […]
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 […]
Welcome to Khartoum
[video:youtube:uA3FOuo8iDo] The reassuring voice of air traffic control as you land in Khartoum International Airport courtesy of Blake Evans-Pritchard, “I must apologise for the time it took for us to taxi across the runway,†announced the pilot once we had touched down in Khartoum’s airport – already, his voice was dripping with sarcasm. “There were […]
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 […]
