On Tuesday 6th December, politicians and journalists met at the Frontline Club to talk with Nujeen Mustafa about her book The Girl From Aleppo and to discuss the West’s response to the Syrian Crisis.

The brutal end of the city’s siege has seen the remains of Aleppo broadcast around the globe. When asked how she felt about these images she replied “relief… but it still hurts.”

Nujeen, who has cerebral palsy, traveled as a refugee across Europe in a wheelchair. She was turned away from borders and the stigma of being a refugee fell heavily on her. However, in her characteristically understated way, she refers to her portrayal as a danger to host countries as “annoying”.

The misrepresentation of refugees was at the forefront of the evening’s discussion. Christina Lamb, Sunday Times Foreign Correspondent and co-author of Nujeen’s book, mentioned that a major difficulty in reporting the refugee crisis was stopping stories getting lost in the vast numbers: “thats why I wanted to tell Nujeen’s story…she wanted people to know that refugees are just like us.”

In the Syrian conflict, control of the message is all important.

Lamb said that the Syrian state had “created their own narrative”. Assad, whom Lamb interviewed last month, was confident of winning the conflict, stating that between him and Al-Nusra, Syrians would be prepared to settle for him.

Andrew Mitchell MP believed that the conflict would end in one of two ways. Given that no military victory was possible, the war was “bound to … end in negotiation”. He added that there was a silver lining in Trump’s election in that, together with Putin, they might be able to reach an agreement in their efforts to unite against ISIS.

This was small comfort to much of the panel. Journalist and analyst Mina Al-Oraibi found it hard to believe that a populace pitted against such violence would accept a brokered peace so willingly: “Our greatest hope for a resolution is that Trump can make a deal with Putin? … How do you tell Syrian’s that?”

Indeed, it is Assad’s forces that is the greatest threat to civilians. The Syrian Network For Human Rights placed 93% of civilian deaths in the hands of Assad’s forces. Lamb backed this up: “I never met a single Syrian refugee who said they were leaving because of ISIS.”

The panel agreed that the crisis highlighted problems within organisations like the UN. Echoing words that he later used in parliament, Mitchell said “the international rules based system is in great jeopardy at the moment”. This comes at an important time, when the world needs more multilateral cooperation whilst nationalism is on the rise. These final statements matched Nujeen’s own: Many people “only think about the differences, not what we have in common. Which is everything I suppose.”

Mahboba, age 7, stands against a bullet-ridden wall waiting to be seen at a health clinic suffering from has a disfiguring skin disease called Leishmaniasis which is a parasitical bacterial infection transmitted from tiny sand fleas.

Interviewed by her friend and fellow reporter, the Sunday Times‘ roving foreign affairs correspondent Christina Lamb, Bronstein provided the audience an insight into daily life in Afghanistan. Spanning the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks in New York, the country her photos showed was harrowing; a baby suffering from severe malnutrition, women widowed by war, heroin addicts huddled around a mass of burning clothes.

’A lot of these stories are hard, none of them are easy, none of them,’ Bronstein shared, ‘but they’re stories I feel it’s very important to tell.’

But underneath the worsening terror of war, life in Afghanistan goes on. People get married, they celebrate Afghan new year, children play football; conflict has become part of daily life. ‘Kids are gonna be kids (…),’ Bronstein said, ‘they’re not going to stop practising cricket on a Friday afternoon’. Her photographs and words share this side of the country too. Her work is deeply human, capturing incredibly expressive faces, from the tortured loss of a mother watching her child die, to the toothless joy of an old man atop a hill overlooking Kabul.

Bronstein’s work in Afghanistan captures a country living at both extremes. When she first arrived in the country in 2001, the walls ‘were all bullet ridden’. But ‘the mountains are gorgeous, the landscape is exquisite,’ she remarked, ‘and so are the people’.

Her work focuses strongly on the experiences of women living in a still deeply conservative Afghanistan. As a female photographer she has been able to get much closer to their stories than her male counterparts, in many cases behind the burqa. All of the women’s stories she has documented, Bronstein said, has been about ‘getting access, getting inside of the home’. But, she noted that her work was still limited by the question of ‘what will the man allow me to do?’

Afghan women in burqas walk in front of the Darulaman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan on February 3, 2002 on a breezy winter day. The palace lies in ruins, it once was the materpiece of Kabul built by King Amanullah.

But despite the more joyful moments captured in her work, both Bronstein and Lamb seemed despondent about Afghanistan’s future. With the Taliban resurgent, ISIS gaining a foothold, and a crumbling political process, they saw little to have hope in. Sharing the stories of colleagues and friends she had lost in recent years, Bronstein painted a picture of a country gripped by insecurity. And, as Christina Lamb pointed out, ‘The second biggest group of refugees after Syrians are Afghans – they’re not leaving the country because things are good in Afghanistan.’

On the publication of her new book Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear, Paula Bronstein will join us in conversation with Christina Lamb to discuss her expansive work that intimately captures everyday life in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the 14-year US-led invasion and its enduring legacy.

Paula Bronstein is an American photojournalist and a multiple nominee and award-winner of international contests including The Pulitzer, Pictures of the Year International, and The National Press Photograher’s Association. Previously a senior staff photographer with Getty Images and for major US newspapers including The Hartford Courant and the Chicago Tribune, she is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand as a freelancer represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Christina Lamb is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times. She has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa, first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala. Her new book Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, is based on two decades of reporting from Afghanistan.

Photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

On Tuesday 28 April, veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb joined an audience at the Frontline Club for an insightful discussion on her latest book, Farewell Kabul, which encompasses her experiences over 27 years of reporting from Afghanistan.

The evening’s chair Sarah Montague, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, began the discussion by asking whether the Western military intervention had resulted in any notable achievements on the ground in Afghanistan.

Lamb responded that there had been a number of superficially positive developments since the intervention: schools were built, the health system improved and, while in the 1980s Afghanistan was largely cut off from the rest of the world, Afghan people are now able to contact each other via Facebook from remote villages.

On the other hand, the Taliban remains undefeated, with attacks carried out regularly throughout the country. More worryingly, Lamb commented, is that decades of Western intervention in the region has left Pakistan significantly more unstable. As “a massive country with lots of military groups,” Pakistan will continue to pose an increasing threat to the West.

For Afghanistan in 2001, the future seemed bright, it was considered a model of intervention by the US and the UK, with early action costing a relatively small amount and with little loss of life. Now 14 years on, the war is estimated to have cost roughly one trillion dollars.

Lamb argued that the intervention also faltered on a political level. “People didn’t know why we were there. Politicians failed to convince the public, and they completely failed to explain themselves to Afghans on the ground.”

The needs of locals were disregarded. “The people I talked to cared about feeding their children,” she said. “Nobody mentioned an election.”

“We built schools. Now there is a generation of educated people without jobs. No wonder then if they pick up a gun to fight with the Taliban. Many see Ashraf Ghani [the current president] as a figure of hope. They might get disillusioned.”

On the rights of Afghan women, Lamb said: “Many of those who we lifted up and made role models are now in hiding, feeling they were misused by the West. Nine out of ten women still suffer some form of abuse.”

How is history going to judge Western intervention in Afghanistan? “It’s hard to see it as a success. I don’t think anybody would feel safer there today than at that time. Even in Kabul, which used to be a safe bubble, there is a feeling of fear.”

Lamb was just 21 when she first went to Afghanistan, and stated her intention to continue to visit despite the decrease in media interest. When pitching stories, editors often respond to her that the world has moved on.

“We now have correspondents in Yemen, Libya, Syria… once it was just Afghanistan.

“It worries me that we would forget about it. Look at Libya: we toppled Gaddafi, declared it a success, and now it’s chaos. If you do these things, you have to see them through.”

Lamb brought the discussion to a close with a quote from Farewell Kabul on the withdrawal of US troops: “It felt like that moment before the shadows expire and the day is over, but no one knows what the night will bring.”

For over two decades, Christina Lamb has reported from Afghanistan, with unparalleled access to all key decision makers. She has developed an extensive understanding of the country, its people and the ongoing conflict.

In her new book Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, she offers her final analysis of the realities of Afghanistan. She tells the story of well-intentioned men and women going into a place they did not understand, thinking it was the right thing to do, and how it became a conflict that everyone wanted to exit.

Christina Lamb will be joining us in conversation with BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter, Sarah Montague, to give her personal account of the longest war fought by the United States in its history, and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. She will offer her insight into the mistakes made, the lessons learned and the Afghanistan that is left behind.

Christina Lamb is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times, she has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

In October the Frontline Club held a tenth anniversary exhibition at the Prix Bayeux Awards and on 13 November they welcomed Prix Bayeux to London for an event to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. The event brought together past winners who each presented their distinguished pieces of reporting and looked back on 20 years of reporting conflict.

The evening was opened by Jon Swain, award winning journalist and guest president of the Prix Bayeux jury, who explained how the awards are very much about the work produced rather than, as is often the case, who knows who. The discussion was chaired by Frontline Club founder and 2011 Bayeux-Calvados award winner, Vaughan Smith.

L-R Vaughan Smith, Adrien Jaulmes, Neil Connery, Christina Lamb and Jeremy Bowen

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor and winner of the award in 2009 for reporting on the aftermath of the 2009 Gaza War for BBC1’s Panorama. He accompanied a doctor from Gaza who lost several daughters and a niece in an Israeli shelling, the terrible irony being that he had spent a lot of his career working for peace with Israel:

“I went around the room and he told me where they were laying. I thought that if I’d put it in a more factual manner, it would have more impact. It worked out in that sense but as ever, one of the ambivalences [of war reporting] is that we report on the back of someone else’s tragedy.”

Great panel with @PrixBayeux winners @frontlineclub tonight, note the temporary exhibition with winning photos. pic.twitter.com/T9Wx25Efqc

— wotienke (@wotienke) November 13, 2013

Christina Lamb, author and journalist with The Sunday Times and winner of the award in 2009, read from Mission Impossible, an account of her time as an embedded journalist with the British military in Afghanistan. Mentioning the Green Book that requires reporters to have their copy pre-approved by military press officers, Lamb reflected:

“There’s a fine line between that and censorship. We [journalists] failed because we should have gotten up against it, all of us.”

Prix Bayeux exhibited photographs from previous winners of the award during the evening. [picture credit: Caroline Schmitt]

“The vast majority of people involved in news-gathering who are injured or killed are locals to that country. They’re not only journalists, but drivers, translators. . . . We as an industry have a huge moral responsibility for those people and I wonder whether we really deliver that as much as we need to.”

Adrien Jaulmes, reporter with Le Figaro and winner of the Bayeux-Calvados award in 2007, he said of reporting in Syria:

“Your moral duty is to share the dangers while you’re there. Journalists suddenly become the targets in big cities because they have money, and that changed the game for us within weeks.”

Watch and listen back here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/twenty-years-of-war-reporting

A unique exploration of the psychological and emotional toll of covering wars and the risks journalists take in order to cover them.

Shortlisted for the Academy Award nomination for best documentary, Under Fire: Journalists in Combat is co-produced by Dr. Anthony Feinstein, who works as a psychiatrist for CNN, CBS, BBC, Reuters and other international news outfits.

The documentary features the experiences and insights of award winning journalists such as Chris Hedges, Jeremy B Owen, Christina Lamb, Paul Watson, Ian Stuart, Finbarr O’ Reilly, Jon Steele and many more. Among those interviewed are prominent war journalists from the New York Times; BBC, Times of London and many others.

Directed by: Martyn Burke

Year: 2011

Duration: 89′

**The London Premiere of Under Fire: Journalists in Combat is part of a series of events, screenings and workshops examining the challenges to safety faced by journalists around the world.**

2009 promises to be a crucial year for the war in Afghanistan. While the latest independent report indicates that the Taliban have significantly increased their political and military control to around 75% of the country, and shows that 2008 has been the deadliest for US troops since the 2001 invasion, President-elect Obama has pledged to make the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda his top priority. He’ll be sending more troops to the region, has proposed an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year, and seems committed to preventing corruption.

But will these additional resources and commitment from the US government be enough to reverse this war and beat the Taliban? Is it realistic to think that the corruption so endemic to the country, can ever be significantly reduced or wiped out? How important are Pakistani policies and their alliances to British and US governments to this war? And given that more than two-thirds of Britons think that UK troops should leave Afghanistan within a year, will lack of popular support for this war impact on British government policy out there?

James Appathurai is a spokesperson for NATO

Col Stuart Tootal was a Commander of 3 Para Battle Group in Afghanistan before resigning from the army at the end of 2007 following his promotion to Colonel. He is now pursuing a career in corporate banking security and is also a media defence and security commentator. Col Tootal was selected to command the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (3 PARA) in 2005. This included commanding the first UK Battle Group of 1200 soldiers to be sent to Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan in 2006, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. On returning to the UK, he set up the 3 PARA Afghan Trust charity.

Christina Lamb has been a foreign correspondent for almost 20 years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then the Sunday Times. Christina is a frequent commentator on Afghanistan and the war on terror on radio and television in Britain, Canada, Austaalia and the US and has given talks to schools, MPs, NATO and the military, and taught literary non-fiction at the Arvon Foundation. Her work inspired the book Zahir of multi-million selling author Paulo Coelho. 

Alastair Leithead reported from Afghanistan as the BBC’s Kabul correspondent from 2006 to 2008, and is one of very few journalists to have remained in the region throughout the recent hostilities. He is soon to take up his new post as BBC News’ South Asia correspondent, based in Bangkok. Alastair is now working on his first book, provisionally entitled Three Bloody Summers, a first-hand account of recent events in Helmand province.

David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development Correspondent with extensive experience in Afghanistan. His first book, Frontline was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2006. Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan is a history of foreign engagement in Afghanistan beginning with the first British mission 200 years ago.

Named Foreign Correspondent of the Year an extraordinary four times, Lamb has proved herself to be an intrepid adventurer. This collection of her journalism traces her steps from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe via the Amazon and numerous other conflicts, both large and small.  She has the successful war reporter’s flair for daring with a bit of courage thrown in, but she adds humanity and compassion. Her eye for detail comes out in such apparently inconsequential observations as that Benazir Bhutto’s nickname was “Pinkie.”  Moreover, Lamb’s writing communicates the strong sense of the absurd that foreign correspondents need to accomplish amazing things in ridiculous places to satisfy outrageous demands from editors back home.

This book is also about her journey from ingénue war correspondent to highly experienced and capable professional. Along the way, she has acquired a valued partner in the shape of her husband Paolo. Judging from the length and frequency of her absences, Paolo deserves many gold stars and should have every foreign editor in town who has ever contemplated employing Lamb kneeling at his feet. Together, they are raising a much-loved young son. Her description of surviving a terrifying attack by the Taliban on a “hearts and minds” mission with British troops is made more poignant by her realization that she could die in the battle. That is when her thoughts turn to her child, her guilt and her need to survive.

Having logged a few hours in war zones, always as one of a relatively small number of women and often the only mother, she writes candidly of the fundamental if usually unspoken conflict between motherhood and war zone professional. To one who has shared the experience, her account is most revealing. And the dilemma is unresolved.

This is the kind of book that drives television correspondents crazy. After careers of similar length, instead of books of clippings that can be thumbed, culled and edited, TV reporters are left with the haiku of news scripts and television spots stored in now unplayable formats. We are oh, so jealous. 

Reviewer: Sheila MacVicar is an International Correspondent for CBS News in London.

Four years later and over 1200 members signed up to the Frontline Club, we don’t hear that being said. Nor do we hear anyone saying that the Frontline Club is a place that exalts the journalism of the past and diminishes the journalism of the present.  

What was often debated at one of the 200 programmes and screenings held in 2007 at the Frontline Club – a staggering output – and a tribute to our dedicated hardworking programmers at Paddington–is the celebrity-driven news agenda and eroding commitment to hard-hitting documentaries about international issues. 

That reality was driven home in a study that was unveiled recently at the News Xchange Berlin international broadcast news conference. According to Influence Communications, a Montreal-based firm that has developed software that can track the coverage of 632 million new items around the world across all media platforms, Paris Hilton going to jail was the 13th most covered story in the world through November. And right behind it at number 12, again throughout the world, was the Madeleine McCann saga.  Iraq, the American presidential campaign, Iran, and Afghanistan did top the rankings but Darfur, Lebanon, and global warming didn’t make the top 15.  Paris Hilton even topped the Queen in the survey of leading international newsmakers. 

Yet this holiday season let us celebrate the exceptional journalism being done by so many brave and resourceful journalists, many of whom are active members of The Frontline Club. This is not one of those end of year rankings or listings of achievement but instead an acknowledgement of some of those by-lines and reports that caught my eye in recent weeks. If members reading this would like to add to the list, please send along your list.

•    Marie Colvin in the Sunday Times reporting on the streets of Basra on the escalating violence against Iraqi women for “un-Islamic behaviour.”

•    David Loyn of the BBC and Stephen Grey of the Sunday Times with British troops as they retook the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala.

•    Tim Hetherington’s dramatic pictures in Vanity Fair from an extended assignment covering the ferocious US military’s battle against the Taliban in the Korengal Valley. He had to endure a four -hour walk after breaking his ankle.

•    Chris McGreal in the Guardian tracking down the embattled Burmese monks regrouping in their villages, recounting tales of torture and brutal beatings by the Junta.

•    Christina Lamb’s riveting eye- witness report in the Sunday Times aboard Benazir Bhutto’s bus after an assassination attempt that killed more than 100 people in Karachi.