Sir, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the court today. I have been asked by the eight other sureties to speak on their behalf as well as my own.

We appreciate that the court wants to know what the sureties may have privately or publicly done to encourage Mr. Assange to submit to the British police since he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy on 19th June.

As we know, this hearing descends from a lengthy extradition challenge in highly controversial circumstances that include attacks by senior U.S officials on Mr. Assange personally and the organization WikiLeaks.  People throughout the country, indeed throughout the world, are divided about Mr. Assange’s work as a journalist and publisher and the various legal claims against him. This has stimulated valuable public debate and a very great deal of critical media attention - including from professional rivals of Mr. Assange.

Should I, or other sureties, publicly urge Mr. Assange to abandon the Ecuadorian Embassy it would undoubtedly be reported by the press in a manner either to discredit him, or to discredit us. It would undermine Mr. Assange but we don’t believe it would do anything to extract him from the Ecuadorian Embassy. It would certainly be a very public betrayal and in our view, importantly, it would also betray the public.

Yesterday, mindful of our responsibilities as sureties and concerned to establish the extent to which we truly are able to influence this matter, we visited Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Mr. Assange explained that the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had investigated and found that his fears of persecution by the United States and others were not unreasonable, granted him political asylum and formally found him to be a political refugee under Ecuadorian law and international conventions. He explained that as a result the Ecuadorian government had assumed its legal obligations to protect him and was not able to abandon these obligations.

Mr. Assange explained too that even since he was granted political asylum on August 19, the Pentagon had continued to make threats against him and his organisation. Only last Friday Pentagon spokesman George Little demanded through the U.S. based ABC News that WikiLeaks destroy its publications (1), including the Iraq War logs, which revealed the killings of over 100,000 civilians (2). Little said “continued possession by WikiLeaks of classified information belonging to the United States government represents a continuing violation of law” and was a “law enforcement matter”. The Pentagon also again “warned Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks” against “soliciting” material from U.S. military whistleblowers.

Mr. Assange told us that on the 30th June the U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd told AFP that its investigation into his organisation continues (3) and I have seen many media reports from the U.S. press this year which speak about litigation Mr. Assange and others have taken in relation to it. I have seen extracts of court records from earlier this year show that the FBI investigation against Mr. Assange’s organisation has reached at least 42,135 pages. (4)

I have examined both original press stories at ABC News and AFP and they agree with Mr. Assange’s statements.

Mr. Assange is convinced that he faces serious risks in U.S. custody and that it was necessary to apply for political asylum to a country that was not in a military relationship with the United States. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez has found that Mr. Assange’s alleged source, the young soldier Bradley Manning, has been kept in conditions formally amounting to torture (5).

We cannot know what the future holds for Mr. Assange with certainty, but we cannot disregard the risk to Mr. Assange should he leave the embassy; the risk that he may end up in the United States prison system under unjust conditions as a result. In the United States many senior figures have called for his assassination and demonized him as a terrorist or traitor. This question has been looked at by the Ecuadorian government whom have consequently awarded him asylum.

It was clear to us that the Ecuadorian government is negotiating with the Swedish and British authorities, looking for a solution. Only last Thursday William Hague and his Ecuadorian counterpart Mr. Ricardo Patiño formally met to discuss Mr. Assange’s situation at the United Nations General Assembly. The proposals being made seek to satisfy British legal requirements, by having Sweden finally agree to interviewing Mr. Assange outside of Sweden or by protecting Mr. Assange from extradition to the United States.

We are hopeful that these discussions will be fruitful. Mr. Assange expressed concern about the risk of forfeiture that the sureties face, however it was clear from our visit that sureties do not have the power to meaningfully intervene in this matter. This has become a matter between the Ecuadorian, British, Swedish, U.S. and Australian governments.

The sureties have put a huge amount of effort over an unexpectedly long period to support the legal process.

Mr. Assange stayed with my family for 13 months. Along with my parents we worked tirelessly to ensure that Mr. Assange was able to comply with his bail conditions and attended court as required.

Mr. Assange does not have a UK driving license but had to report to a local police station daily as part of his bail conditions, for over 550 days. During the almost 400 days that he that he stayed with us the burden of complying with the court’s rigorous conditions of driving him to the police station to comply fell on my family and two other sureties, Joseph Farrell and Sarah Harrison.

My experience is similar to that of Ms. Saunders, who hosted Mr. Assange after my family did. We cannot believe that this does not argue against forfeiture. We worked very hard indeed to make this work.

It is very difficult to see how we could have prevented Mr. Assange from seeking political asylum in London. Mr. Assange says he did not tell us of his decision because to do so would have placed us in legal difficulty. We could not have expected it. Such a thing is unprecedented for a surety.

We understand that this court wants to focus on the Swedish extradition against Mr. Assange, but we as sureties, who have acted out of principle to release Mr. Assange from prison, cannot honestly ignore the wider aspects of Mr. Assange’s position, including his status as a political refugee. 

The British government decided not to enter the Ecuadorian embassy after 19 June to apprehend Mr. Assange, though he informed them immediately that he was there. British law cannot, or chooses not to, reach Julian Assange and there are very many in the world, and this country, who think that it shouldn’t be able to.

The fact is that Mr. Assange has secured sanctuary as a political refugee in a country with which Great Britain has an established and normal diplomatic relationship.

How can this fact have no legal standing? Britain appears to recognize many U.N. and E.U. rights concerning asylum, refugees, political persecution and diplomacy. Everyone has the right to apply for asylum. What flows from these rights, in relation to Mr. Assange is still being discussed at a diplomatic level and may end up in the international courts. As sureties we can’t understand all this, but we do understand the situation is complex and there are risks to Mr. Assange’s welfare.

We believe that everybody in this court and indeed all of the sureties who may not be here today, are all convinced that they have done and are doing the right thing. We don’t see how justice is served by punishing us for having done our best to serve the public interest in this complex and challenging case.

We submit that the sureties are wholly blameless, that we have worked assiduously to help Mr. Assange to meet the requirements of the court. 

We all want Mr. Assange to be able can clear his name and have done everything with our diminishing influence to see the current impasse resolved and justice served.

We never envisaged when we agreed to become sureties that the matter would become a diplomatic argument and it is clear that this needs to be resolved at a governmental level. 

We request that sureties in this case be treated gracefully, in a manner that reflects the impossible position that we are in. 

In this unique, this quite exceptional case, complying with what this court seems to expect from us; to all publicly urge Mr. Assange to abandon the sanctuary that he has found in the Ecuadorian Embassy, would see us acting against a man whom we and others judge to have understandable fears about his ultimate treatment in the United States if he abandons his asylum.

That would render us mercenary and contemptible individuals of great weakness of character. It cannot be the right thing for us to do.

END

1 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/are-troops-talking-to-assange-communicating-with-the-enemy/

2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq

3 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hKgeAFt-Jvt45zkBjEpqF4DWDS-A

4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/29/julian-assange-ecuadorean-embassy-statement

5 http://www.eurasiareview.com/18032012-bradley-mannings-detention-treatment-or-torture-interview/

From: Vaughan Smith
Date: 22 June 2012 10:28
Subject: Re: CNN interview request

Name, do you feel that what you promised in your email below is
close to what happened during the live with Max Foster last night?
Though it was inconvenient, I came to CNN because as a journalist I
feel a responsibility to address issues of public concern when asked
to do so. I know Julian Assange well and it is right that he has some
support in the western media. But that doesn't make it appropriate to
beat me up as a token disbursement towards balanced journalism on
Julian's bid for political asylum.
I was grateful for the opportunity to get one full answer out, but how
was it reasonable for Max to keep interrupting me before I could get
out a response to his question on whether the Swedish girls were being
denied justice? I wasn't being evasive. It is an important question
and I was clearly trying to answer it.
Interrupting in this way is meant to distract and seeks to disrupt a
respondents ability to deliver a useful answer. It is aggressive and
in this case favoured contest over enquiry. Do you, or Max, or your
team at CNN think that this indulgent use of gladiatorial journalism
was really the best way to inform your viewers? Or are you comfortable
with the illusion of dashing journalistic attendance it delivers?
Well in truth it takes no courage to reinforce public sentiment
against a man who believes that he is running for his life.
Regards, Vaughan

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2012/06/21/ctw-intv-assange-friend-on-his-fear-of-extradition.cnn

> Hi Vaughan
>
> So, after a chat with my producer, we are very keen to accommodate your request to talk about the wider political issues in Julian's case. Although we will need to start off the interview asking about Julian's asylum case and your relationship with him - to set the scene for our viewers - we will then move the discussion to talking about the wider political issues. On a day when Ai Weiwei is back in the headlines and due to give CNN his first on screen interview since his detention tonight, it will be an interesting comparison to make, raising issues about the concept of the western dissident (as you said) and whether they are recognised/tolerated. We would also like to discuss the change in Julian's public image: how he has gone from a champion of free speech to a fugitive in the public eye and whether this image reflects the majority opinion of his work (particularly outside the 'Western' world).
>
> Although time will be tight as ever, I will make sure Max gives you at least one question on this wider context at the end of the interview, to give you the opportunity to share your views on this.
>
> How does this sound? If you're still concerned I can get you on the phone to Max briefly this afternoon so you can explain directly to him what point you would like to make.
>
> In terms of timings we would ideally like to do this live as we are expecting news from the Ecuador government later in the day, which might date any interview we do with you earlier. We would need you here for 8.50pm -- I think if you can leave the Frontline Club by 8.30pm the Bakerloo line might be the quickest way to get down here. I'm happy to get you a car for afterwards if needs be.
>
> Let me know your thoughts.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Name

Vaughan's new film, Blood and Dust, is below for those who didn't catch it on Al Jazeera's People and Power strand. 

If you want to see it on a large screen we will showing it at the Frontline Club on 6 March. Followed by a discussion about how war is represented by the broadcast media.

Vaughan writes:

I have done a fair number of military embeds in Afghanistan over the last few years but was concerned that I hadn't filmed the suffering of war, just its machinery.

This being a grevious ommission I went back last winter to film US army air ambulances, 'Dustoff' helicopters, flying over Marjah in Southern Afghanistan. The pictures are strong and show both US marines and Afghan civilians being lifted off the battlefield in equal numbers.

I have been pretty busy since returning from this trip last year, what with Julian Assange coming to stay and all that that means. It is very much thanks to the Al Jazeera documentary chaps, John Owen, Diarmuid Jeffreys, Neil Cairns and last but certainly not least because he did the video editing, Ross Birkbeck, that I got it out at all.

I have worked with Al Jazeera on this because I couldn't find another news broadcaster in Britain that would show the film without cutting out the stronger images. I have huge respect for the way Al Jazeera as a broadcaster engages the world while many others appear to retreat from it.

Above is a preview of Vaughan Smith's dramatic new film BLOOD AND DUST recording life and death with an American helicopter medevac unit in Southern Afghanistan.

'These Medivac teams, US military air ambulances, are amoungst the only soldiers that go to war to save lives and they are very good at it.'

See BLOOD AND DUST on this week's PEOPLE&POWER on Al Jazeera English from Wednesday, February 16, at the following times GMT: Wednesday: 2230; Thursday: 0930; Friday: 0330; Saturday: 1630; Sunday: 2230; Monday: 0930. http://bit.ly/eJOYcN

Vaughan's description of making the film:

I have done a fair number of military embeds in Afghanistan over the last few years but was concerned that I hadn't filmed the suffering of war, just its machinery.

This being a grevious ommission I went back last winter to film US army air ambulances, 'Dustoff' helicopters, flying over Marjah in Southern Afghanistan. The pictures are strong and show both US marines and Afghan civilians being lifted off the battlefield in equal numbers.

I have been pretty busy since returning from this trip last year, what with Julian Assange coming to stay and all that that means. It is very much thanks to the Al Jazeera documentary chaps, John Owen, Diarmuid Jeffreys, Neil Cairns and last but certainly not least because he did the video editing, Ross Birkbeck, that I got it out at all.

I have worked with Al Jazeera on this because I couldn't find another news broadcaster in Britain that would show the film without cutting out the stronger images. I have huge respect for the way Al Jazeera as a broadcaster engages the world while so many others appear to retreat from it.

More to follow, including a link to the film online for those that miss its broadcast. Vaughan

Vaughan Smith argues that news management by the military is a risky business. Smith founded the Frontline Club in London in 2003 and during the 1990s he ran Frontline Television News. He filmed the only uncontrolled footage of the Gulf War in 1991 after bluffing his way into an active-duty unit while disguised as a British army officer.

So-called "embedding", the term for the practice by which journalists have been allowed to accompany allied troops in the Iraq and Afghan wars, is not just a way for the military to manage information but is an unspoken compact with the media that helps sustain the conflicts themselves.

It is easy to find British journalists like myself who criticise the practice of embedding but jump at every opportunity to accompany British troops at war. Space with the British army is at a premium and so if you can get there you won’t face too much competition. Compared with other foreign trips it is relatively easy to acquire strong stories supported by exceptional pictures. One can win awards.

Embedding costs very little money. The military provide food and tents. The press can often use military communications and the British army will fly you out and back for free. As an independent video journalist, I should make a profit on an embed. The army will also lend you a flak jacket and helmet. Even better, the soldiers will protect you from danger and deliver excellent first aid if they don’t. The risks are less than they appear. Easy pickings really.

It’s not just me being careful with the pennies. News budgets are at an all time low and foreign news acquisition is increasingly priced out of reach. Reporting foreign stories is much more expensive than covering domestic ones. As news organisations have tried to realise their duty of care the cost of covering foreign conflicts has further increased. Reducing risk is very expensive, often requiring extra insurance, equipment and the retention of bodyguards or other safety personnel.

Most now rely on cheaper wholesale agency material and whatever they can source from locals or other non-media sources. This includes material filmed or reported by army combat camera teams and blogs by military press officers. There are too few sources of information and even fewer reliable ones. But agency material, being shared with competitors, doesn’t promote the news brand nearly as well as the correspondent or television network reporter, so the opportunity for a newspaper or broadcaster to get people out on an action-packed foreign story on the cheap can be irresistible.

Army management of news output
While it is true that journalists have been accompanying armies and navies in wars for at least 150 years, in the past the military has been better at denying access rather than using the press to get their message out. Allied forces are now very sophisticated in managing news output. The effort is well funded and employs many ex-journalists. Lots of reporters have no difficulty crossing over from journalism to PR, leaving a trade that seems to lose its calling as quickly as it loses its funding.

The sign on top of the British media office tent in Camp Bastion in Helmand, Afghanistan, says “Media Operations’. As soon as you walk through the door as a journalist you understand that you are a sort of target, albeit treated much more gently than the Taliban. It is not about public accountability. News management has become an integrated part of the war effort, aiming to maintain public support for the conflict nationally, while winning the information war abroad.

Embedded journalists are normally accompanied by press officers during their visits. Servicemen or women trained in press management. The stakes are high for the press officer as getting it wrong can ruin their military career. With the British army, both sides are guided by a publication called the Green Book that lays out the rules of the press embed. It was put together by the Ministry of Defence, but in consultation with media organisations. It delivers editorial independence for embedded journalists subject to the needs of operational security. It also includes the reasonable provision in my view that the names of casualties should not be revealed until their next of kin have been informed. The conditions set out in the Green Book are progressive when compared with the restrictions that the press experienced, say, in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s or the Gulf War of 1991.

When soldiers and journalists bond
Press officers normally work hard to help journalists get stories on their embeds, organising transport and interviews. It would be hard for most of the media to find their way around these battlefields without them and a good working relationship normally develops. Journalists often develop strong relationships with their subjects. Those bonds can be strongest during a tough assignment when discomfort is shared and embedding often puts reporters with frontline troops under stress.

Certainly, having journalists embedded into units where they can get to know soldiers and share their experiences rewards the military with friendlier reporting. But the primary control exerted by the military is through determining who actually gets embedded. Unfavourable reporting is not often rewarded with further opportunity.

The military cannot reasonably be expected to take all the journalists that might want to accompany them. Thousands of journalists descended on Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001. The numbers are far too great. There have been instances when more journalists have applied to go to outposts in Afghanistan than there are soldiers stationed there. But numbers are kept very low, particularly when the military are feeling sensitive about what is happening. Whole operations can go unreported by independent journalists on the ground.

During the recent Operation Moshtarak, in Helmand in February 2010, there were only about 10 members of the press with the whole British force in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence will often favour popular commentators, like Ross Kemp, over critical journalists, or try to develop a relationship with tabloid newspapers when it thinks that favourable coverage can be widely achieved.

Valuable pool places to regional newspapers
Valuable places are given to regional newspaper reporters who are less likely to be critical, often there to do soft stories on a military unit local to the paper. Even regional newspapers can afford to send correspondents on embeds. But journalists are not allowed to bring their own vehicles, and being compelled to rely on the military for logistics makes it impossible to access the local population independently. If the military don’t want you somewhere, you are unlikely to get there.

Unfortunately, even if American and European journalists could have all the access they wanted to the military, these days they would deliver less than we need from them. The news industry does not look like it did in the 1960s during the Vietnam war. Most war reporters these days don’t really know much about war, in the way that say, sports journalists know about sport. War reporters are rarely students of conflict nor are they normally 'defence' correspondents who might need to develop a broader knowledge of military affairs.

Over the last two decades the news industry, particularly television news, has developed a culture that rewards the more self-obsessed operators, pushing them to lead their reporting from a personal perspective to make it more accessible to the audience. Reporting becomes as much about promoting the correspondent, the brand representative, as telling the story. As the industry gets starved of funds the reports get weaker and the branding stronger.

The military and their political masters believe that images of dead or wounded allied soldiers, particularly, have the potential to sap public support for the war at home. The lesson from the conflict in Somalia in 1993, when pictures of dead US soldiers being paraded around Mogadishu were shown around the world, was that such images also risk delivering a propaganda victory to the insurgents abroad.

Casualties – the most sensitive issue
This makes allied casualties the most sensitive issue after operational security to the military. With the British army you are prevented from filming dead soldiers and will only be allowed to film or broadcast pictures of wounded soldiers if you have their permission. There are obvious practical difficulties getting this sort of permission from soldiers who suddenly find themselves in agony and struggling to stay alive. Most soldiers say no if they are fit enough to address the question, which is not easy to ask in the circumstances. Doing so invites a negative answer, which of course is why the requirement is there in the first place.

In theory a cameraman or photographer is allowed to film first and ask questions later. But attempting it will seriously raise the pulse of your military minder and soldiers you hadn’t noticed before suddenly become remarkably poor at keeping out of the way of your shot. As a consequence, embeds rarely show the suffering of war but instead offer up a dramatic but sanitised version of it. One that most journalists sex-up to present themselves as well as possible and in doing so normally treat the domestic audience to comforting messages of heroism and military strength.

Limiting the public's real understanding of the cost of the war in human suffering actually betrays those unfortunate young men who become its casualties. Many are teenagers and some lose multiple limbs. A public that is poorly informed is unlikely to show these men the compassion and respect that they deserve. For all the proximity of the journalists and the cameras, the reporting has been contained, serving to distance the audience from the reality of war and any great feeling of ownership of it. The wars merge into the background and go on and on.

The current Afghan war has lasted for longer than the US military engagement in Vietnam in the 1960s and appears to a significant number of clued-up observers to have no greater prospect of success. But the US and the British public remain firm. British reporting is heavily informed by the tragedy of dead servicemen coming through Wootton Bassett. But it is not an image the soldiers who come home unscathed identify with. They are mystified when those they meet feel sorry for them. They do not see themselves as victims in the way that the press portrays them. They want public empathy; they get – to their dismay – public sympathy.

Presenting war to fit the grand, Hollywood-esque narrative
It is easier to ignore a war if it is soldiered by hero-victims. But the soldiers are us. They are our professional killers who sometimes enjoy it. But we want more distance from it than that. So we manufacture something else that doesn’t seem to require us to take any responsibility. An eroded and underfunded news industry compresses, simplifies and pasteurises, presenting war to conveniently fit into a grand narrative that owes more to Hollywood than the real experience.

Perhaps all parties – politicians and the military, the media, campaigners for forces support groups like Help for Heroes and even the public themselves – have an interest in sustaining this comforting way of seeing it. But news management is a risky business. Though it might maintain a level of support for the war that support becomes more brittle for the deception.

Every now and then a particularly disturbing story breaks through that becomes more shocking for being unexpected and is amplified for running contrary to the narrative the nation is being fed. Faith in our armed forces is imperiled. On the whole, generals, admirals and air marshals have enjoyed considerable public respect in Britain since the 1930s. There are signs that this is eroding.

News management, or spin, creates cumulative damage to us all by undermining our trust in the institutions that engage in it and subverting the quality of our conduct more widely in society. We are paying for these wars with more than blood and treasure.

 This piece also went out on PBS Newshour. They ran it with few changes but here is the link to that version as well...I think the subtiles look nicer. I will be working on longer director's cut this weekend and will link them here.

They are now in Nadi Ali, in Helmand province, Afghanistan. I was there for a month, but my computer got waterlogged and so I haven't posted anything to my blog from there so far. However, I am going to push out my material here over the next couple of weeks.

My first piece is about 2 Section of 6 Platoon, C Company, 1 Royal Anglians. They patrol out of Patrol Base Paraang on the southern edge of a village in Nadi Ali district called Kushal Kalay. They are tasked with keeping the Taliban out of Kushal Kalay so that other soldiers can more safely clear it of IED's. The section commander is 22 years old.

The story was on Channel 4 News last Saturday evening. You can watch it above or follow the link. As Nico Pitney comments on the Huffington Post,

One hesitates to extrapolate much from one brief glimpse into the fighting in Afghanistan. But this clip does give some sense of why the world's most advanced militaries are so challenged by these Taliban fighters. link

I plan to put up an extended version over the coming days. But next is another film going out on Channel 4 News, probably tonight, Thursday 18th February so keep watching this blog for more.

Managing correspondents in the field has become very much more complex, not least through the expansion in the size of the international press over the last two decades. Less than 500 journalists applied for accreditation for the first Gulf War. By 1998 more than 2,500 journalists were seeking to follow NATO into Kosovo. The huge demand for the limited number of “embed” places available with the British Army in Helmand allows the Ministry of Defence to choose journalists they prefer. link

Here's some great news. Club founder and journalist whizz of the old school, Vaughan Smith, is up for a gong at the inaugural Media Guardian Innovation Awards, or MEGAs, for his live blogging, video reports, twittering and picture taking from the frontline on this very blog. He is up against two other blogs in the Independent Blog category, not bad for a first time blogger :) Vaughan blogged his every move and filmed the moves of those around him in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The blog culminated in a 16 minute report for BBC Newsnight. Very well done to Vaughan. The awards will be announced on 6th March at a ceremony in London. And we hope to win...

This is the full 16 minute documentary that originally aired on BBC Newsnight on 26 September, 2007. It's available for download on Google Video. My original text from the evening that I returned from Sangin:

I have been out on operations with Colour Sergeant Jim Bastin of the Inkerman Company and a platoon of the 3rd Kandak of the Afghan National Army. We left the base in the middle of the night for a long walk through the Green Zone to mount an attack as the reserve platoon of A Company of The Royal Anglians.

The Green Zone is the area on either side of the Helmand River, which runs vertically through Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan. It is fertile and wet and very heavy going to walk through at night. There are tall plantations of corn, vegetables and fields of hemp, all irrigated by streams and a multitude of channels dug by the farmers.

After a difficult walk we arrived at the start point of the operation and began what the military call an “advance to contact”. This means that the soldiers moved forward looking for the enemy, or rather waiting until they fired at us and then trying to eliminate them. By 8am the Taliban obliged.

The fighting went off and on all day as the British and Afghan soldiers moved from compound to compound. The Taliban would fire at us and normally run before soldiers were able to get there. The Taliban had prepared escape routes and most of the time they manage to carry their wounded and dead away. When The Royal Anglians commander ordered CSgt Bastin to clear 2 compounds with his Afghan force, I went with him. We found some clothes covered in blood but couldn’t find a body.

By midday it was baking and we were exhausted. Most of the British soldiers were carrying at least 70lbs in weight and had to fight and run with it on all day. They carried food and water, lots of water, and then weapons, ammunition, radios and all the other paraphernalia that modern war requires. This is typical of the fighting that is happening in Helmand now. The British Army’s 12 Brigade, which is currently on tour there, has been battling hard to regain control of the Green Zone and the Taliban have not been giving it up easily.

My trip was made less comfortable by the diarrhoea that I have contracted and can’t seem to cure myself of. It was hard going but then at 44 I was the oldest man on the battlefield. There could of course have been an older Taliban there, but that is unlikely because the average lifespan in Afghanistan, I am told, is 42.

“When we started off we wanted to have complete independence, we were paying for our own trips and we were risking our lives as well as our livelihoods but there was a problem – the only place we could get our video out and get an income was through television. That has changed.” link

Twenty years ago I left the Grenadier Guards to become a freelance cameraman. Three months later I was in Southern Afghanistan filming Afghans shelling Russians at Kandahar's Airport. I could not have then imagined that Afghanistan's wars would drag on this long and that the Grenadier Guards would one day end up fighting in Afghanistan. link

We have an extraordinary film from video journalist Vaughan Smith. If you want to know what life is like for soldiers in Afghanistan this is the nearest you'll get to it. link