From the Frontline: October 2008 Archives
Oliver Poole gets reverse culture shock
Oliver Poole, author of Into the Red Zone and Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent, talked to students in Oxford earlier this week. Snippets of his chat appear in Cherwell and he talks about that oddest of feelings of reverse culture shock felt by many war correspondents when they head back home,...more
Craig Swan on cold nights in Helmand
Craig Swan talks about life working in Helmand province in Afghanistan. The former BBC foreign correspondent now lives in the Spey Valley in Scotland and still hankers for the life overseas, although he admits it isn't all rosy, "As the producer in charge, it was my job to negotiate with...more
Live event: The Rise of the British Jihad
[video:bliptv:1421662] Tonight at the Frontline Club we will be discussing the rise of the British Jihad. We start at 7.30pm UK time and we'll be streaming the event live on the Frontline Club channel so please come and join us online if you can't make it to the club in...more
War is a narcotic
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges talked to students at the University of Maryland this week about war and his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He calls war a narcotic, "I think war is the most powerful narcotic invented by mankind," Hedges said. "War...more
Journalists at Liberia Truth and Reconciliation hearings
This week Robin White, the former Editor of the BBC World Service's daily English programmes for Africa, testified at the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Thematic hearings following the war in Liberia, [White said] he had no knowledge whether his interviews of rebel leaders during the Liberian conflict helped...more
Live from the Baghdad embed
Eric Owles, a journalist embedded with US forces in Iraq, answers questions from readers on the New York Times Baghdad Bureau blog. The post is part of a series of embed posts on the NYTimes blog Q. Are you given special training ( Boot Camp for Journalists?) so that you’re...more
Understanding Congo
[video:youtube:NC8GzpcVY_o] Fred's put together an excellent post detailing the background to the conflict in North Kivu in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The situation in Goma is tense, as can be seen in the Sky News report above. To get a flavour of how this feels on the ground...more
Five car bombs hit Hargeisa and Bosasso
A total of five "VERY VERY BIG" car bombs have reportedly hit Somaliland. Three targetted the Puntland Intelligence Service in Bossasso, another at the UNDP office and one at the Elections Commission. The two other bombs reportedly targetted the Ethiopian embassy in Hargeisa' Somaliland. There are unconfirmed reports that...more
Reuters report from Goma
[video:youtube:kirA-0BEDU0] Marlene Rabaud and Nina Schwendemann have put together an excellent report on the situation in Goma. It dates from yesterday and this story is moving fast, but it's still worth a look. The ten minute report frames this week's violence in Goma in the recent past relating it to...more
Taxi ride Namibia style
BBC News website reader Henk Dop took this photo in central Namibia where he says Toyota Hilux 4x4 vehicles are popular....more
Somalia kidnap deadline looms
The ransom deadline reportedly set by the kidnappers of journalists Amanda Lindhout, Nigel Brennan and their fixer Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi and driver Mahad Clise looms today reports the National Post. The kidnappers are reported to have asked for $2.5 million, but "a travel writer who met Ms. Lindhout last year...more
Thousands flee as Goma flares
[video:youtube:3sRxXiBNQSI] Michael Kavanagh is one of a small group of journalists in Goma, the provincial capital of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on the border with Rwanda. Violence flared yesterday when protesters pelted the UN compound in Goma with stones, "We're on alert," Murthy said. "We're not sure what's...more
David Loyn talks 200 years in Afghanistan
[video:brightcove:1847310960] David Loyn talked about the 200 years of intervention in Afghanistan at the club last week. If you missed the talk, click the video above it's well worth watching or listen to the event in iTunes. In The Independent Kim Sengupta follows up with a discussion on engaging with...more
The Frontline Burger
They come from far and wide to eat the Frontline Burger. I spotted the Economist's man in Tel Aviv tucking in during this sitting along with two other club regulars. And at £7 a meatpacked pop, who can blame them....more
Working in Kabul
Kitty Dimbleby describes the quite ridiculous reality of working as a foreign correspondent in Kabul. It makes you wonder just what the value of the old parachuted in foreign correspondent really is - and what great expense it costs - when they can't even get to the people to...more
Nick Meo hits back
Nick Meo, who reported from outside Kandahar moments after an IED attack one week ago, has been coming in for a bit of stick since the report. He hit back earlier this week in the Telegraph with his side of this argument from the frontline, For writing about this, the...more
Life for Pervez Kambaksh
Kim Sengupta, Independent journalist and Frontline Club regular, follows up on the court case of Pervez Kambaksh in Kabul. Kambaksh was originally sentenced to death for downloading information about women's rights from the Internet. This week he was sentenced to life imprisonment, "I was, of course, hoping to be...more
Croatia Car bomb kills Nacional editor
Ivo Pukanić, the editor of the Nacional Magazine, and the publication's marketing executive Niko Franić, were killed when a car bomb exploded in the coutyard of the magazine's offices on Palmoticeva Street in central Zagreb yesterday evening, “I heard a terrible explosion and shaking, at first I thought it...more
CBC staff protest war reporter lay off
Staff at the Canadian TV channel CBC are up in arms at the laying off of 26 correspondents including reporting "icons" Patrick Brown and Don Murray, "These are journalists who in many ways defined foreign reporting at CBC in the past few decades," says [a letter to network president Hubert...more
Press freedom report 2008
The 2008 Press Freedom Index was published on Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders. You can see a full listing of the rankings here, “The post-9/11 world is now clearly drawn,†Reporters Without Borders said. “Destabilised and on the defensive, the leading democracies are gradually eroding the space for freedoms. The...more
Jonathan Elendu held in Nigeria
Jonathan Elendu, an online journalist based in Michigan, has been detained by security forces since he arrived in Nigeria on October 17, say Reporters Without Borders. Elendu publishes the online publication Elendu Reports. The journalist recently wrote about the economic and ecological disaster happening in the Niger delta and...more
The places we live
Jonas Bendiksen publishes the latest Magnum in Motion project today. Called The places we live, the project focusses on people who live in four slums across the world; from Caracas to the large Kibera slum in Nairobi, the Dharavi slum in the suburbs of Mumbai and the Indonesian capital...more
Working as a female journalist in Afghanistan
Farida Nekzad, who earlier this week received the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism award, talked to US News and World Report about her work as a journalist in Afghanistan, Was there ever a time when you reconsidered your decision to stay and report in Afghanistan? There was a...more
Dutch journalist killed by cluster bomb
[video:youtube:B-epO3SDVYg] A Dutch government investigation has found that a Russian cluster bomb killed a television cameraman in Georgia in August, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. Russia denied using cluster munitions during its brief war with Georgia in August, but human rights groups say both sides unleashed the widely denounced weapons....more
Live event: Russia Resurgent
[video:bliptv:1385516] Russia is up for discussion at the Frontline Club in London tonight. Join us as we debate all these issues and more with Edward Lucas - author of The New Cold War and Alexei Pankin, a respected Russian journalist. Bridget Kendall, the BBC's Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent, will chair...more
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...more
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...more
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...more
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....more
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...more
Live event: The Life and work of Gerda Taro
[video:bliptv:1377040] Gerda Taro, the pioneering photojournalist famed for her dramatic photographs from the Spanish Civil War comes under the spotlight tonight Friday 17 October. Irme Schaber, writer and lecturer on the history of exile photography, photojournalism and print-media, will be talking about Taros' work at the Frontline Club. As usual,...more
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...more
$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...more
Richard Bourne on Lula of Brazil
[video:bliptv:1362360] Last night author Richard Bourne discussed his latest book, Lula of Brazil, at the Frontline Club. You can watch the discussion above, President Lula of Brazil has a life that reads like a film script. The child of a dysfunctional family, his early life was one of poverty and...more
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...more
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...more
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...more
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...more
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...more
LIVE event: David Loyn - 200 years of intervention
[video:bliptv:1348259] Afghanistan is the subject for tonight's discussion at the Frontline Club. As usual, if you can't make it to the club in person, please come and join us on the Frontline Club live channel. We start at the slightly earlier time than usual at 7pm UK time, Thurs 9...more
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,...more
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...more
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...more
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...more
Zimbabwe - There is no freedom after expression
Memorable quote from Davison Maruziva, the editor of the Independent Zimbabwean newspaper, in the IHT today, Davison Maruziva says there's plenty of freedom of expression in Zimbabwe. Problem is: "There is no freedom after expression." link The article goes on to discuss the state of the media in the beleagured...more
Niger RFI journalist released
Moussa Kaka, a local reporter for Radio France International (RFI) in Niger, was released from prison yesterday after spending over a year in prison. The charges against him have been "downgraded". He was originally charged with "complicity in plotting against state authority". He will now face charges of being...more
Ben Anderson on 24 hours in Helmand
[video:liveleak:89a_1223425254] Ben Anderson talks about his BBC reports from Helmand province in Afghanistan with VBS TV. Part 1 is above and here's more on the series, "This series is about 24 hours in Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province. More..I was with the Queen's Company, British soldiers who normally guard Buckingham...more
The importance of photojournalism
Joanna Pitman discusses the changing nature of photojournalism in The Times in an era of cameraphones in every other pocket and soldier-generated content from the frontlines of every other war, “People like Philip Jones Griffiths and Larry Burrows made amazing bodies of work in Vietnam,†says the photojournalist Tom Stoddart....more
The Zimbabwean profiled on BBC
Wilf Mbanga and his wife Trish, who produce The Zimbabwean weekly newspaper from their home in Southampton, UK, are profiled by BBC South's Inside Out programme this week. Wilf is a regular at the Frontline Club and he took part in the Zimbabwe debate earlier this year. The BBC documentary...more
Like Eating a Stone
Wojciech Tochman, a Polish journalist, chronicles the aftermath of war in Bosnia in his book “Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia†translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Matthew Price reviews the book for the New York Times, If Tochman is sympathetic to Bosnia’s Muslims as they struggle to make...more
Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani speaks of imprisonment
Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani, a journalist and former editor of Yemeni political weekly newspaper Al-Shora, speaks about his five month imprisonment with The Yemen Times. He was arrested in June, 2008 on "fabricated terrorism charges". He also won the Amnesty International Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat during the same...more
RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Awards 2008
[video:google:4851574881284968082&ei] Global Voices rounds up the blogosphere's reaction to the second anniversary of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Awards 2008 was a private event at the Frontline Club to commemorate Anna's life and recognise those women working on the frontline around the world....more
Warlord jalied for BBC killing
Mukhiddin Olimpur, the BBC's chief Farsi language correspondent in Tajikistan, was murdered in 1995. Nasrullo Sharifov, a rebel warlord, was jailed for 15 years today for murdering the journalist, "Sharifov was directly involved in the murder and confessed during the investigation and court hearings that he personally fired twice at...more
James Nachtwey to unveil global project
[video:youtube:AGKZhNK_pHw] James Nachtwey recieved the 2007 TED Talks prize just over a year ago. You can see his acceptance speech in the video presentation above. At the end of his speech he said, "I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to...more
Women in war
UALR Public radio tells the stories of five women in five different wars. The audio broadcast begins with a female war reporter, Carolin Emcke is a war correspondent and the author of "Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter." She tells Steve Paulson that what war survivors ask...more
LIVE tonight: Abdul Bari Atwan - From the Refugee Camp to the Front Page
[video:bliptv:1322728] Ian Black, Middle Eastern editor for The Guardian, will be in conversation with Abdul Bari Atwan tonight - Thu 2nd October, 7.30pm UK time/10.30am PST. As usual, we will be broadcasting the event on the Frontline Club live channel, so if you can't make it in person do please...more
It's split
[video:youtube:KTkqosRiyYo] Roy Greenslade points us to a FOX News election straw poll taken in what looks like your average American diner in Northeastern Pennsylvania. "It's split," says the journalist. Really?...more
Chris Wattie talks Afghanistan
Chris Wattie, National Post senior national reporter and author of Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, The Taliban and the Battle that Saved Afghanistan, talks about time in Kandahar with Canadian soldiers, In an enlightening interview, Wattie describes his experience in combat with Canadian soldiers, and tells the stories that most...more
Patrick Cockburn on his son and schizophrenia
Patrick Cockburn talks candidly about his son's schizophrenia in the Daily Mail today. The Frontline Club regular blames a strong form of cannabis known as skunk for his son's illness, I blame cannabis for what happened to Henry. He says he smoked a lot between the ages of 14 and...more
BBC turned back by militia in South Ossetia
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and the TV crew he was travelling with were turned back by armed militia men as they attempted to enter South Ossetia. Click the image above to watch the footage....more
Live tonight: Countdown to November 4
[video:bliptv:1320615] We'll be discussing the US Election at the Frontline Club tonight. The event is fully booked, but as usual you'll be able to watch the event on the Frontline Club live channel if you can't make it to the club in person. Taking part will be; James Naughtie, presenter...more
How does Sarah Palin form her world view? Easy, she doesn't
[video:youtube:wBttm2hOhhY] I'm not sure this blog can take another dose of Sarah Palin, but here goes. Click the above clip forward on the video above to the 3 minute mark to discover exactly how the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in one of the most important US elections ever forms her...more
Soumya Vishwanathan shot dead in Delhi
Soumya Vishwanathan, a TV journalist with the Delhi-based Headlines Today, died after being shot in the head in her car after returning from a late night shift last night, Police said they got a call from an autorickshaw driver about the incident at 3:41 am. “Her Maruti Zen had hit...more
Threat to Iraqi journalists
Magda Abu-Fadil writes on The Huffington Post about the Iraqi journalist hotline set up recently after the killing of four staff from the Al-Sharqiya TV station in September, 2008, A ministry spokesman said hotlines would be established between various police departments, government agencies, intelligence services, swat teams and journalists to...more
The disappeared in Mexico
Monica Campbell and Maria Salazar publish a special report for the Committee to Protect Journalists on the dangers facing journalists working in Mexico. 21 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000 and seven reporters have vanished in the past three years. The report suggests the disappearances are either a...more
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