Frontline Club bloggers
The Liberal Democrats: Strident change or Trident tweaking?
So the Liberal Democrats want to scrap, replace, consider replacing…hang on a minute, let’s find the manifesto…"commit not to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system on a like-for-like basis" if they are voted into office. And I would be very surprised if the Trident issue fails to make an appearance in tonight’s leaders’ debate. After […]
Livestock and Too Many Smoking Barrels.
As predicted in the post on Somali Victory in the World Cup, K’naan did indeed wave a couple of Juno awards. He won both Artist Songwriter of the year 2010, his manager Sol Guy breaking the news on his Twitter page. While K’naan fans in the diasporas will no doubt be celebrating, no one in the […]
Social media for social change comes to the Caucasus
Tbilisi, Georgia, and a conference on using social media for social change. Nothing new in that for many people reading this blog, perhaps, but low Internet penetration thanks to high costs and slow connections makes the situation somewhat different in the South Caucasus. A 4 mb/s connection in Georgia, for example, costs around […]
Are you going to vote on the basis of defence policy?
Heard your local parliamentary candidates talking about defence policy and their parties’ plans for the defence industry recently? You might have done if you live in a constituency with specific military or defence industry links. Dorset South, for example, includes Bovington Army camp and the MP for South Ribble notes that his constituency in Lancashire […]
Georgia Mourns ‘Hero’ Kaczynski
Lech Kaczynski may have been a controversial figure in his native Poland, but here in Georgia, he was seen as a great and principled leader, and many people are genuinely upset by his death in a plane crash on April 10. That’s because of Kaczynski’s robust support for this country during and after the war […]
Whir of helicopters drowns out some serious defence questions
This post you’ll note is a little off topic. That’s because I’m really writing it for Talk Issues, a new group blog set up to look at the issues that matter in the imminent General Election here in the UK. Hopefully, I’ll be dipping into this mode occasionally to write about defence policy. So here […]
My Pakistan Reading List
I move to Islamabad on Wednesday to become The Telegraph’s Pakistan correspondent. Here is my current reading list: In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf – currently still sitting in a warehouse somewhere, and I fear this won’t arrive in time A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif – novels tend to have […]
Rules of the Game- Detention, Deportation, Disappearance
Rules of the Game by Asim Qureshi “The Rules of the Game belongs to those who have suffered the most throughout the ‘War on Terror- the victims and their families.” This opening line of the book gave me goose bumps since exactly eight years ago today, the ‘War on Terror’ came banging on my door […]
News from America, 130-year old
There was a beautiful Azerbaijani newspaper Akinchi (The Cultivator) published between 1875 and 1877. So what did The Cultivator wrote about America then? Below are some excerpts published in Aynur Bashirli’s In a Spotlight of Free Press: New York Times about Azerbaijan and translated here by me.
Reporting the Moscow Metro bombings
ПоÑмотреть на ЯндекÑ.Фотках (Link to Tatiana Krasnova’s album) Two female suicide bombers were believed to be responsible for the deaths of 38 commuters in Moscow at rush hour this morning. Russian officials say that 60 people were also injured in the attacks at Lubyanka and Park Kultury Metro stations. There are more details here […]
BBC Azeri: Social media and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict transformation
When Arzu Geybullayeva and I first started to use blogs and social networking sites to connect a growing number of liberal, tolerant and progressive Armenians and Azerbaijanis despite the still unresolved conflict between the two countries over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, I don’t think we ever could have imagined where it […]
On Expenses
I know no-one will believe me when I say this, but I’ve never been very creative with my expenses. In fact my first ever claim, at The Press and Journal, was returned by my news editor for "letting the side down". A swift tutorial in high teas, good dinners and elevenses followed. A new claim […]
WRL: New media, Afghanistan, Iraq and Al Qaeda
A few bits and pieces I’ve spotted recently: 1. Leveraging New Media (pdf): A US military report on the Israeli Defence Force’s use of new media in the conflict in Gaza re-published in the Australian Army Journal. It’s from the middle of 2009 but I’d not picked it up before. It’s authored by Lieutenant General […]
Embedded journalism in Afghanistan
Yesterday, I travelled up to Coventry for a conversation about embedded journalism in Afghanistan. It was hosted by Coventry University and the BBC’s College of Journalism. I’m not sure I ever really understood the question that was supposed to frame this debate: "Afghanistan: Are we embedding the truth?" (Answers on a postcard etc…) But as […]
‘A sort of extreme camping trip with people trying to kill you’
Cameraman Stuart Webb describes his experience of being on patrol with the Coldstream Guards in Afghanistan. He was working for Channel 4 News with Alex Thomson. The pair came under fire as they moved along a ditch with the Guards… "As-live" Twitter reportage Alex Thomson’s report from Babaji in Helmand was broadcast on Channel […]
Journalism doesn’t pay, so what?
I never thought about making money when I set up Kigali Wire. From the beginning it has always been an experiment and it remains so. I never thought about making money when I shot my first photojournalism essay – which is in dire need of an editor’s hand… forgive me, it is my first bash […]
War reporting fail
A Georgian TV channel caused panic at the weekend after a mock up news report suggested Russian troops had invaded the country and President Saakashvili had been killed. Many viewers had missed a warning that went out before the broadcast. The video below is Russia Today’s report on the biggest (non)-story so far this year:
Round up: Marjah; war reporting; Facebook and the IDF.
Fighting the Taliban in Marjah, Afghanistan. There was an interesting little sub-plot in this article in The Times about the aim of protecting and winning over the population in a counterinsurgency operation. On the one hand these US Marines were being asked to exercise some level of restraint: "The new rules of engagement, dubbed “Courageous […]
Somali Victory at the SA World Cup
In recent years Somalia has often made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Piracy, poverty and lawlessness have cast a long shadow over the Horn of Africa. Two generations of Somalis have been scattered forming a diasporas across the world. Many still live in refugee camps in Ethiopia, Yemen, Kenya and as far away […]
New Travelling Companion Needed
My travelling companion for the past four years is slowing down. Sluggish in the mornings and quick to tire in the afternoons, my Sony Vaio is not the machine it was. Not even a new battery has put a spring in its step. So it’s time to find a new laptop. I want a 13.3in […]
Michael Yon to embed with the Gurkhas later in the year?
Independent journalist Michael Yon, whose vivid dispatches from Frontline military embeds have proved popular both in the United States and Britain, has said that a return to covering British forces in Afghanistan later in the year is a strong possibility. A few weeks ago, on his Facebook fan page (one of those new news sources […]
Department of Defense switches default policy on social media to ‘open’
As of last Friday, all US servicemen have been able to update social networks like Twitter and Facebook from non-classified military network computers. The announcement by the Department of Defense is the first time a single policy has been used across all branches of the Armed Forces and effectively reverses a Marine Corps ban on […]
Foreign Fishermen Still Plundering Somali Waters
Kenyan fisherman. Photo by David Axe. by DAVID AXE When the Somali government collapsed in 1991, so too did Somalia’s ability to police its waters and regulate foreign vessels. For corporate fishing fleets from Asia and Europe, that meant rich shark and tuna fisheries suddenly wide open for exploitation. And boy did they exploit. Tales […]
No Borders Here – communication between Armenia and Azerbaijan
With the conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh still unresolved, journalists and civil society activists in Armenia have few opportunities to meet with their Azeri counterparts, and vice versa. But increasingly, blogs and social networks offer new possibilities for dialogue across a cease-fire line in place since 1994. Other online tools offer immediate audio […]
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 […]