Afghanistan
Afghanistan: the forgotten war?
Is Afghanistan at risk of being forgotten by the outside world? Not at the moment, you might think, what with lots of print generated each day at the hands of foreign reporters. Obama, too, is considering his own surge of resources to the country, and it seems the larger newspapers on both sides of the […]
John D. McHugh – Combat Outpost
John D. McHugh drops us a line to tell us that his latest report from Afghanistan for The Guardian is up on the site. John has been filing multimedia reports from the frontline in Helmand over the past year. As he says in his email, This is without doubt the most difficult and dangerous place […]
LIVE – Sean Langan and the Taliban
Click To Play Sean Langan will be talking about his Taliban kidnap experiences with award-winning foreign correspondent Sam Kiley at the Frontline Club tonight. Sean, a Frontline Club member and Channel 4 Dispatches journalist, was kidnapped in early 2008 and held hostage for three months. We start at 7pm GMT / 11am PST Fri 30 […]
Dinner Briefing: Threats, response and reconstruction – Afghanistan in 2009
In the first of a new strand, this off-the-record background briefing on Afghanistan, will be followed by a 3-course dinner plus wine. Arriving at 7pm, guests will be given a glass of wine as they sit and listen to the discussion. Following this, they will be served dinner and afterwards will get a chance to […]
Major TV channels pulling out of Iraq
The United States three mainstream broadcast networks, namely ABC, CBS and NBC, have stopped sending full time correspondents to Iraq. At the same time the channels are trying to bolster their numbers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Americans like their wars movie length and with a happy ending,” [said Mike Boettcher, a Baghdad correspondent for NBC […]
Peter ter Velde talks to the Taliban
Dutch journalist Peter ter Velde talked to Taliban fighters in the northern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan where “several hundred” Dutch soldiers are based, Peter ter Velde, a reporter of NOS public television, met the fighters close to Camp Holland, NATO’s main military base in Uruzgan. He spoke to the six Taliban just before a roadside […]
The burqa theory of reporting Afghanistan
Soraya Sarhadd Nelson, a reporter with NPR, found out the only way to get to a story about the judiciary in Afghanistan was to don a burqa and head into Kunar province. Even then, things didn’t go smoothly, “Put on your burqa and don’t speak English. They can’t know you are American or we’ll all […]
Blurred Edges
This weekend as part of the extended Eid festivities I decided to go on a trip. With some friends and a warm patu, we drove all the way down to the south of Dand district, to the point where the flat plains and cultivatable land meets the desert. You can see where I went on […]
Live from Kandahar
Frontline blogger Alex Strick van Linschoten will be experimenting with some live video broadcasts using Kyte.tv from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Although as Alex says in an email, they’ve sped up the GPRS data connection ($20/month for unlimited data!) in Kandahar…so i can now stream live shows (sort of – it’s more like it can […]
Dawa Khan Meenapal talks of Taliban kidnap ordeal
Dawa Khan Meenapal, RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent, talks to the radio station about his recent kidnap ordeal at the hands of the Taliban in Zabul Province on the road between Kabul and Kandahar. During his captivity he says he was treated fairly and that his captors were listeners (and fans) to his reports, I […]
A foreigner in my own land
Sean Langan writes in the Guardian about his life reporting foreign conflicts beginning in 1998 before his kidnap in Afghanistan earlier in 2008. He talks about that feeling – reverse culture shock – common to anyone who has lived and worked abroad for any length of time, Over the past 10 years I have spent […]
Aziz Popal tells his kidnap story
Aziz Popal, a Kandahar-based reporter with Hewad TV in Afghanistan, was kidnapped by the Taliban last week and released three days later. He talked with Graeme Smith from The Globe & Mail about the ordeal, “I’m shaking as I’m telling you the story,” Mr. Popal said by telephone last night. “They didn’t beat us. But […]
Panicked Solutions
I wrote this oped with a colleague of mine in the hope it might get some coverage and – in part – help to stop the long march towards tribal militias that are being proposed as a ‘solution’ for Afghanistan. Nobody took it, so we thought we’d put it up here…
Gregory Warner talks chicken
Gregory Warner headed to the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan to work on a story about smuggling. He hooks up with his Afghan fixer, the oddly named JD, and the smuggling story soon becomes a story about a chicken and an amulet. Head over to This American Life and listen to the first fifteen minute […]
Taliban free two kidnapped journalists
Dawa Khan Menapal of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Aziz Popal, who worked for a local TV station in Kandahar have been released after three days in captivity, Militants kidnapped the two in Ghazni province on Wednesday as they were driving on the country’s main Kabul-Kandahar highway. The Taliban’s high council ordered the pair released […]
Fung’s Afghanistan fixers released
Shokoor Feroz and his brother Qaem Feroz, who were working with CBC journalist Mellissa Fung when she was kidnapped on October 12, have been released by the Afghan authorities. The brothers were arrested by the National Directorate of Security soon after Fung’s kidnap. Reporters without borders have released a statement applauding the release of the […]
Capturing casualties in Afghanistan
‘The soldier keeps shouting “Sir!” as he deliriously looks around “Don’t take my legs,” he appeals. “Have I got my legs?” He doesn’t believe the doctor who reassures him.’ This is an extract from the diary of artist David Cotterrell who observed the work of British military medical staff at Camp Bastion last year. Published […]
Call to free Afghan fixers
Reporters without borders have called upon the Afghan government to free the Afghan fixer and driver who were working with Mellissa Fung when she was kidnapped outside Kabul. The brothers, Shokoor Feroz and Qaem Feroz, were picked up hours after Fung was kidnapped and remain in the custody of the Afghan intelligence agency, the National […]
Kidnapped journalists – one rule for staffers one for freelancers?
I’ve been mulling this over since I first heard about the kidnapping of Mellissa Fung in Afghanistan some weeks before it was finally reported and she was set free. Ever since I first started blogging about “the world of foreign correspondents, war reporters, life on the frontline and the job of journalism” for the Frontline […]
Peshawar off limits to foreign correspondents
Sami Yousafzai has reported from the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. However, he says he’s never been in more danger. The Afghan journalist, who was attacked along with a Japanese journalist last week, spoke about safety from his hospital bed this week, “I think divine intervention saved me. The gunman […]
Letter to the New President
I received this letter from a good Afghan friend of mine recently. As you can read in the short biography below, Orzala was involved for a long time in founding and building an organisation called HAWCA, one of the few local NGOs whose work I have always been genuinely and uniformly impressed by. She wrote […]
The BBC speaking to the Taleban
Last Thursday, the BBC World Have Your Say radio programme built their show around a discussion with a Taleban spokesperson. Through the BBC’s Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner, and a translator, listeners from around the world could put their questions to the Taleban. There was much debate on the programme and on the World Have Your […]
The only Twitter user in Kanadahar?
Is Alex the only Twitter user in Kanadahar? I think he probably is. Frontline blogger Alex talks about his life, his work and Twittering from Kandahar on the Tech Radar blog. “Get yourself set up with a Twitter account. It’s a nice, low-cost way of letting people know if you get into trouble or are […]
Giorgos Koiliaris dies after Afghan car crash
Greek TV war correspondent Giorgos Koiliaris has died from injuries he suffered in a car crash in Afghanistan last month, Giorgos Koiliaris had worked for several newspapers and radio stations before he started working for the NET broadcaster. The 53-year-old specialized in reporting on wars from around the globe, beginning in Lebanon in the 1980s. […]
Beverly Giesbrecht kidnapped in Pakistan
Beverly Giesbrecht, a Canadian freelance journalist also know as Khadija Abdul Qahaar, was on a commission with Al-Jazeera when she was kidnapped on Tuesday. According to a report by AFP the 52 year old was seized at gunpoint in Bannu district of Pakistan which borders Afghanistan. "The government of Canada is aware of the kidnapping […]
Two journalists shot in Pakistan
An Afghan journalist and a Japanese journalist were shot in the Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar today. Motoki Yodsukura 四倉幹木さん, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, was shot in the foot and is said to be in a stable condition. However the condition of Abdul Sami Yousafzai, the Afghan journalist, is said to […]
Massive explosion in Kandahar
Frontline blogger Alex was in Kandahar when a “huge explosion near Kandahar stadium” went off. I caught up on this a bit late as I’ve been training all day, but Alex had the wherewithall to poke his head on to the balcony, snap some shots, send a series of messages to Twitter, upload a picture […]
Mellissa Fung swapped for prisoners?
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied Mellissa Fung, the CBC journalist kidanpped by the Taliban a month ago, was released in exchange for Taliban leaders at the weekend, “There have been continual reports about ransoms or money being paid. That was not done in this case,” he told reporters in Ottawa following a first ministers […]
Mellissa Fung free
[video:youtube:goSQuxkfKwU] Mellissa Fung, a 35 year old journalist with CBC, who was kidnapped in Kabul four weeks ago was released today. She says she was kept in a cave for the first three weeks, “They kept me blindfolded, but not the whole time,” she said. “They chained me. . . . Just my hands and […]
Daniel Bennett on the Nick Meo brouhaha
Frontline blogger Dan is doing a great job trying to get to the bottom of a rather confused story relating to Nick Meo’s report on a bomb explosion just outside Kandahar recently. I recommend you go and read through both Dan’s posts on this. Start with the summary of the debate that continues to rage […]