Over the last 20 years, Olly has created a body of work that often combines journalistic rigour with powerful documentary storytelling, making films that reveal the complexities of international events through the eyes of ordinary people at the frontline of events.  He’s made films in Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza and Iraq, often featuring characters from two warring sides.

His latest film, a co-production for the BBC and PBS features interviews with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as senior commanders in the IDF, and draws on an archive of over 120 hours of footage that was filmed on a single day in Gaza last year.  How does he go about getting both sides of the story in such difficult and complex situations? And what what’s it like taking on such controversial and highly sensitive subject matter?

One Day in Gaza (58”) is a highly immersive film which reveals, moment by moment, what happened on May 14th 2018 – a day planned as a peaceful protest against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, but which resulted in one of Gaza’s deadliest days of violence for a generation.  Following the screening, Olly will talk to Gabriel Gatehouse about the making of the film and reveals the challenges, jeopardies and difficulties he encountered before, during and after production.

Critical praise for ‘One Day in Gaza’:

• “This astonishing documentary had a clarity that coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict has lacked for years”       The Guardian
• “Superlative”  The Telegraph
• “An extraordinary work”   The Times

Main image: Copyright: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

Anglo-American media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is dominated by news of conflict. There is no doubt that the region has seen many conflicts throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, from anti-colonial uprisings, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the rise of militant religious groups like Al-Qaeda and the self-declared Islamic State (or ISIS), and recent Arab “revolts”.

Nevertheless, coverage of the MENA region in mainstream Anglo-American media has been impacted by “Orientalist” perspectives that perpetrate negative stereotypes and connotations about Arabs and Muslims. These in turn reinforce Islamophopic sentiments in mainstream news discourse and various sectors of the Anglo-American society, and engender hate and fear against Arabs in general and Muslims specifically.

The evening will be formatted in a country-by-country approach to analyse the region, discussing coverage of Egypt, Syria, Gaza and Lebanon.

Chair

Rima Maktabi is a Lebanese TV presenter and award-winning journalist and is currently the London Bureau Chief for Al Arabiya. Before this Maktabi hosted CNN’s monthly program Inside the Middle East for two years. She has done extensive field coverage from Syria focusing on the political, military as well as the humanitarian aspect of the war torn
country; numerous news reports were produced by Maktabi from Aleppo, Idlib and Daraa provinces. She also produced thorough coverage from the frontline of Mosul in Iraq focusing on stories about the battle with ISIS.

Speakers

James Rodgers is Leader of International Studies in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London. James is the author of three books on journalism and war: Headlines from the Holy Land: Reporting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2015); No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013); Reporting Conflict (2012). James formerly worked as a journalist for Reuters TV, GMTV, and the BBC. While at the BBC, he worked as a producer, correspondent, editor, and occasional presenter. He completed foreign correspondent postings in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. James continues to contribute to broadcast, print, and online journalism. Most recently, he has had work published in The New European and on the Prospect website.

Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communications, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Omar is interested in the role of media and communication in political conflict, activism, and collective memory, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Before joining LSE, he was a lecturer (assistant professor) at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Journalism Studies.  Omar’s research has appeared in journals such as Communication Theory and Media, Culture & Society and has been recognized by the International Communication Association. A former Fulbright scholar, Dr Al-Ghazzi comes from a journalism professional background. He has previously worked as a reporter for Al-Hayat Arabic daily and as a media analyst at BBC Monitoring. He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Dr Zahera Harb  was a TV journalist in her native Lebanon for over 11 years, reporting for local and international organisations and anchoring news and current affairs programmes. She has completed assignments for BBC Arabic service, CNN world report and Dutch TV. She still commentates on Media and Politics in the Middle East. A Senior Lecturer in International Journalism at City, University of London, Zahera is widely published on journalism, media and politics in the Arab world. She is the author of Channels of Resistance: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media, co-editor (with Dina Matar) of Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine and  editor of Reporting the Middle East, the Practice of News in the 21stCentury, published by I.B.Tauris. Board roles include the Ethical Journalism Network. She is Associate editor of Journalism Practice and member of editorial boards of several academic journals including Journalism and Journal of Media practice.

Taking four years to complete (including the harrowing war in Gaza in 2014), Gaza Surf Club shows an incredibly engaging and enlightening story of a group of people whose similarities with our ‘human condition’ bring out the wrangling contrasts of our differences.

Director Philip Gnadt and Producer and Co-Director Mickey Yamine will be present post-screening for a Q&A with the audience.

Run Time: 87 mins

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/185917266

Whether covering the dashed hopes of the Egyptian revolution, the upheavals in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Ramallah or Gaza, the reality of refugee camps in Turkey, or the faultiness of Iraq’s bloody divisions, the man is on a mission to share the issues on the ground with his readers. But to cope with the new communications jungle, choose the subjects he wants and make the front page, he must set himself apart from traditional mass media.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/185352249

Jesse will be joined on the stage for the Q&A by Rossalyn Warren

Rossalyn is an award-winning foreign affairs journalist. Her reporting has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, BuzzFeed News, VICE, CNN, BBC, ELLE, Newsweek, and Teen Vogue, among other places. She’s reported from 15 countries across Latin America, Europe, and Africa, and her reporting has been nominated for an Orwell Prize and a British Journalism Award. Rossalyn was named news reporter of the year at the 2016 Words By Women Awards, and she was shortlisted for new journalist of the year at the 2015 British Journalism Awards. Forbes named Rossalyn ’30 Under 30′ in media in Europe.

Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.

On the release of her memoir Drawing Blood, which intersperses testimony of her own artistic and journalistic engagement with full-colour illustrations, we welcome Molly Crabapple to the Frontline Club to reflect on recent projects and to share her personal insight into the use of art as a tool for better understanding and documenting current events. With US presidential primaries now firmly underway, she will discuss her ongoing work on topical home turf issues including policing and the justice system, as well as her experiences covering the effects of conflict across the Middle East.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. She is the winner of a 2015 Front Page Award for her drawings of Aleppo for Vanity Fair, and was shortlisted for a Frontline Award in 2013. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

This event will be chaired by Natasha Lennard, a British-born, New York-based writer of news and political analysis, focusing on justice, power, biopolitics and dissent. She writes regularly for the Intercept, Fusion and Al Jazeera America, and has written for VICE News, The New York Times, Salon, The Nation and Politico, among others. She is editor-at-large at The New Inquiry journal.

Illustration: Molly Crabapple for VICE: ‘What Life is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo’

Based on new archive research and original interviews with leading correspondents and diplomats, the book explores why this fiercely contested region exerts such a pull over reporters: those who bring the story to the world. Despite decades of diplomacy, a just and lasting end to the conflict remains as difficult as ever to achieve.

Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent at BBC News, said: “At a time when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is under unprecedented scrutiny, James Rodgers provides an essential and insightful historical perspective on the long “war of words” behind a major conflict of our time. Rodgers’ book is essential reading for those seeking a greater understanding of the difficult dynamics behind reporting – and resolving conflicts.”

James Rodgers is an author and journalist. His previous books are Reporting Conflict (2012) and No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013). A former BBC correspondent in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza, James lectures in Journalism at City University.

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. Previous experience has shown that members often gain insight and inspiration from discussions with the author, which enable them to continue reading the book in a new light.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR THE FRONTLINE CLUB: Save 30% when ordering on palgrave.com. Please e-mail Sophie Kayes for the code. Valid until 31 October 2015. Terms and conditions apply.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks. 

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both happier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

The scenes from Gaza and the media portrayal of events again ignited a global debate about this enduring conflict. A year has passed, the media spotlight has moved on and the people have been left to rebuild their lives, with over 100,000 still displaced.

We will be joined by a panel of journalists who were there to cover the conflict, as well as those who have been involved in the efforts to rebuild, to reflect on what happened a year ago and what life has been like since.

Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent. She has reported on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and on politics and foreign policy in Iran, Syria and the Middle East.

The panel:

Euan Crawshaw is the regional emergency manager for the Middle East at Christian Aid. After 6 years spent working on a variety of Emergency projects in East and Central Africa and the Middle East, he has been managing Christian Aids response in Gaza since December last year.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Daily Beast, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Salon, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is the author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered the Party and most recently The 51 Day War: Resistance and Ruin in Gaza.

Christopher Gunness is the director of advocacy and communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which runs emergency and human development programmes across the Middle East. He worked at the BBC World Service covering the upheavals that ended the Cold War, including the Burmese uprising in 1988. He served as BBC UN correspondent, a BBC News reporter and a presenter on BBC World. In 2006 he was appointed head of communications in the UN’s political office in Jerusalem and a year later transferred to his current post.

Dr Toby Greene is a political analyst and writer. He is the director of research for BICOM, the deputy editor of BICOM’s Fathom journal, and a visiting scholar at Tel Aviv University where he also teaches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is author of Blair, Labour and Palestine: Conflicting Views on Middle East Peace After 9/11.

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

Although the latest wave of violence has ended, the suffering in Gaza has not. This was the story that director Hernan Zin wanted to tell with his new film Born in Gaza, which held its UK premiere at the Frontline Club on 20 February.

Born in Gaza weaves together the testimonies of Gaza’s youth, in order to paint a picture of the devastating impact of the ongoing conflict. Zin interviews children who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and their family members, as well as those who have themselves been injured by Israeli shelling during repeated attacks in the summer of 2014.

Hernan Zin

Zin said he wanted to show a different side of war: “Sometimes I feel like we’re always running with the camera behind, you know… That’s why I say OK, I’ll do just the opposite. A different perspective; no bombs, no dead bodies. And secondly, very slowly. Even though it was in the middle of a war, we tried to get inside the people, because I think that the consequences of war are inside the people… We miss that in normal journalism.”

“I was a little bit like a madman… [Other journalists] were running in one direction to the bombs with the flack jacket and the helmet and I was going in the other direction with my swimming trunks,” said Zin, referring to the scenes shots in the sea off the beaches of Gaza.

The film was constructed around a set of candid interviews with a group of children who had been deeply affected by the conflict.

“I wasn’t very sure if that was going to work, if they had enough speech to keep a 70 minute-long movie, just with their own voices and thoughts. But it worked,” said Zin, who was surprised at how well his subjects understood their own situation.

Hernan Zin

“They know so well that… across the Mediterranean, children in Spain, Italy, in Greece, were playing in the beach,” said Zin.

“We had everything translated three times because I was so surprised, how come they’re speaking like this?… They want to take things into their own hands, because when they look up at their parents and grandparents, [they think that] somehow they’ve not protected them.”

“They are not happy about their leaders,” said Zin, referring to Hamas and Fatah, “…sometimes the Palestinians blame first their leaders and then the Israelis.”

A number of audience members asked how he was able to create the film without inflicting more psychological damage on the children interviewed. In one scene in particular, Zin takes the two boys who survived the infamous airstrike that that killed four children from the same family back to the same beach for the first time since the event.

“I didn’t want to make them suffer and bring back the trauma. But somehow one of the fathers said, ‘OK, they have to go back sooner or later so let’s go’,” said Zin.

“Sometimes for respect, and of course not wanting to bring the trauma back to people, we push them aside. And if they have the need to talk, or if they trust you and they want to talk, let’s treat them normally.”

Another audience member was interested to hear how Zin found the experience of working in Gaza, both during the war and when he visited three month later. Permits to enter Gaza are given and taken away very arbitrarily by the Israeli authorities, Zin said, but during the conflict he was free to move as he wished. This had its dangers though.

“Israeli drones are 24 hours a day, flying over you. You can listen to them and during sunset, with the way the light comes, you can see them… We were trying to move ourselves very slowly, showing we are not doing anything [bad]. But we were very scared,” said Zin.

Zin said he feels an obligation to show the film to as many audiences as possible, from Canada to India, and would also like to see the film screened in Israel. “There is a huge swathe of Israelis who would love to see this,” commented one audience member in agreement.

For Zin, there is also a real sense of urgency.  “I would like people to see this before the next time they feel tempted to throw rockets at Gaza again,” he said.

Hernan Zin

Visit the Born in Gaza Facebook page for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

On Friday 19 September, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of The Process, followed by a lively Q&A with the director, Joshua Baker, moderated by Jonathan Miller, foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News.

The film follows three main characters in Israel and Palestine: a young Israeli woman who has moved from her settlement to Tel Aviv, a privileged young Palestinian man who lives with his wealthy family in Ramallah and a mother living in the West Bank who is determined to join the struggle against occupation.

Miller introduced the film by saying, for him, it was revelatory and enlightening, presenting the very depressing story of war without end, but also capturing something different in the stories it revealed.

Baker started by explaining that he filmed everything himself with one camera, which resulted in six car crashes, and often made it very difficult to capture scenes with many people. While the film is only one-hour long, Baker shot over 77 hours of footage.

In explaining his decision and motivation behind the film, he said:

“I’d been spending a lot of time in the region, I’d been going to the region for a couple of years before this . . . and I became fascinated with this conflict that had been going for so long, but seemed to be so mundane, almost, so normalised. I started travelling to the West Bank and kind of got a bit tired of the lack of attention to the story , and also how different I think it can be from how its reported to the reality on the ground. . . . So I wanted to take a new stab at covering it, and hopefully that’s what this does.”

The first question was from a Palestinian journalist in the audience who was disappointed with the lack of acknowledgement of Israeli government oppression. Several other members of the audience agreed with this criticism, while another member of the audience wondered why the film did not touch on the role of the US government in the peace process and as a provider of weapons to Israel.

Baker replied that he felt he had presented the level of suffering Palestinians face under occupation, but he acknowledged that he had made certain “editorial decisions to make it palatable to a mainstream audience”.

As the film was only finished in June, just before the summer of violence in Gaza, the three main characters had not yet seen the final film. One of the main characters is a wealthy Palestinian who makes favourable statements about Israel in the film and Baker was worried about his safety, in light of the current situation. In discussing why he chose to include this character, he said that he represents a “certain elite of Palestinian society and politics”, who have almost benefited from the Israeli occupation.

One audience member felt he could relate to much of the film as it presented how the Israeli and Palestinian communities live almost completely separately. As a North American, he compared it to the almost invisibility of the indigenous populations of Canada and the US. Would there be another film on the same issue, but perhaps more raw? Baker said that this had been an option for this film, due to the amount of footage he had collected. But:

“I was not interested in violence. . . . It detracted from the message.”

Much of the film discusses the status quo, which is the result of the lack of progress made by the peace process after 20 years of negotiations. Baker discussed with the audience the fact that “most Palestinians don’t believe in the process” and politicians from both sides benefit more by keeping the status quo, especially the Israeli government who would lose much more by making any meaningful changes.

The Q&A ended with Miller explaining that, as a news journalist, he is bound by the need to be impartial. He asked Baker whether he felt this was also the case for him as a documentary filmmaker, to which Baker replied:

“While I hope that I approached this with some journalistic integrity and gave voices to both sides . . . it is clear that the Palestinians suffer the most in this situation, and it is very clear how horrible that is, and how they are suffering with no end in sight from the international community. Ultimately, I think it also harms Israel a hell of a lot; the continued alienation and isolation that they will face in the coming years will affect their current standing in the international community.”

Information on further screenings of The Process can be found on the film’s Facebook page.

A compelling Frontline Club event on Wednesday 25 June showcased film and photographic work from across the globe that revealed both the depth of suffering and the strength of human spirit in some of the world’s most devastating internal conflicts.

Featured at the event was a series of photographs from Tim Freccia in South Sudan, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala in Venezuela, Eman Mohammed in Gaza and Daniel Berehulak in Afghanistan, curated by multimedia photojournalist and filmmaker John D McHugh.

The event culminated in a screening of Ground Zero Syria, a dramatic film by Robert King featuring unprecedented footage of the brutal conflict in Syria, and an impassioned interview with King by The Times journalist Anthony Loyd that offered some chilling conclusions about the future of the conflict.

Robert King and Anthony Loyd at the Frontline Club.

All of the showcased work shared a common theme: that of the determination of each journalist to bring to light the plight of people facing oppression or armed struggle in their home countries, and to reveal the characters of those individuals caught up in some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

Among Freccia’s work was a set of portraits of soldiers from the White Army, a ruthless militia group fighting alongside former Vice President Riek Machar in his campaign against the government of South Sudan.

In Freccia’s unique portraits, presented against a white background, he aimed to show through the expressions and postures of his subjects the “humanity present in these characters, for good or bad, which is often neglected”.

Zavala’s photographs were captured in Caracas and San Cristobal in February and March this year as the protests against Venezuela’s government escalated.

A picture of a woman slumped over the coffin of a lost loved one revealed the sacrifices made by the protestors, while another featured a combatant in plastic protective glasses making Molotov cocktails to take into the fray.

Mohammed took up photojournalism at the age of 19. In a narration of her photographs, she explained how she had to overcome cultural barriers to a woman pursuing such a career.

“I thought I had what it took to be a career photographer,” she said. “I was wrong. To gain acceptance in a male dominated field was next to impossible.”

Covering the war in Gaza in 2008-09 and under fire from aerial bomb attacks, the ground “shaking like a swing beneath us”, Mohammed was abandoned by the two male journalists with whom she was travelling. “Terrified, humiliated and feeling sorry for myself”, she learned a valuable lesson.

Mohammed‘s career has been characterised by a constant tension between capturing her own agony and that of others:

“You can freeze, but your camera cannot. If you don’t document history, it never happened.”

Her work included touching portraits of Mohamed Hodr, who along with 22 members of his family lived for several years beneath the rubble of what was once his home.

The only surviving remnant of what was to be a retirement retreat was a jacuzzi, which he hauled up to the roof of his shattered home so that each morning he could give his children a bubble bath.

Berehulak’s work focused on the terrible impact that the rapidly rising use of heroin in Afghanistan is having on the local population. One in 10 urban households in the country has at least one drug user, and in rural areas heroin use is as high as 30 per cent.

A set of photographs of one hospital ward that was admitting 200 children a month for severe malnutrition featured pictures of young children so wrinkled with starvation that they looked more like the elderly than the newly born. At a year-and-a-half, Mohammed weighed just 10 pounds.

“Nearly every potential lifeline is strained or broken here,” said Berehulak in his narration. “Women are kept away from everyone except those in their immediate family.

“Farmers can’t grow crops because of mines, and doctors can’t get to children until the situation is already severe. Women can’t nourish their own children [because of the heroin use].”

At the country’s premier children’s hospital in Kabul, a five-year-old boy weighing just 20 pounds was being treated on a bench because the infusion line wouldn’t reach to a bed. The drug problem, said the director of demand reduction at the ministry of health, is a tsunami for his country.

Ground Zero Syria

Screened in the second half of the event, King’s film gave a unique insight into the fighters of the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) in their efforts to survive the brutal attacks of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“For six to seven months we didn’t even think about picking up weapons,” said one.

“We started out with olive branches, but [in the end] the only option was to take up arms and put him [Assad] out of office.”

At a field hospital in Al-Qusayr, southwest of Homs near the border with Lebanon, a young boy looked forlornly up at the camera with a single streak of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Across the ward, another child’s guts were bursting through his sundered stomach.

“If I die when I help people it is good for me,” said a doctor at the hospital. “I’m a doctor, I must help people.”

At the Dar al-Shifa field hospital in Aleppo, Dr Osman, a physician at the hospital, explained how he had nightmares about amputating children’s limbs, but each day resisted the urge to return to normal life because there was no one else to help these people.

According to Osman, about 80 per cent of the patients at Dar al-Shifa are civilians. At the time of the interview, the hospital had already been bombed five times, with another 15 bombings nearby.

“The Syrian regime considers medical staff as a perfect target, as a military target,” he said.  “When you kill one doctor it is better than killing a thousand fighters.”

In November 2012, King was there when the hospital was hit yet again, but still hope was not vanquished.

“Dar al-Shifa is not a building, it’s not a machine; it’s people, it’s doctors, nurses,” said Osman, speaking amidst the rubble.

“We will continue. We will build this hospital again and we will work again.”

In one striking scene, Dr Abaman, a former veterinarian working as an assistant physician at the hospital, appealed directly to the camera, emotion cracking his voice:

“We have enough shown TV. Do something. Do something. We are suffering here alone.”

The film also featured the tragic burning of Aleppo’s market, a world heritage site and one of the world’s best-preserved souks.

King asked Ahmed Alhaji, who had witnessed the fire, to explain what he had seen.

“I saw a lot of things that make me cry,” he said. “I saw Assad destroy our history. My heart is broken, I was crying blood.”

Towards the end of the film, King asked an FSA fighter what he thought of the West’s Syria policy. The West’s inaction before – and even after – evidence came to light of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, he said, was a sign to Assad that:

“Whatever you want to do, go ahead and do it. You want to kill 100,000 people that’s okay; you want to drop 100,000 tonnes of bombs that’s fine. Chemical weapons? Just keep 20–30 per cent of them.”

Most of the characters featured in the film, said King, are now dead.

Beyond the obvious perils of filming during an almost constant artillery bombardment, King faced his own challenges in shooting the film, not least the very lack of engagement from the West and its media that was alluded to by the film’s characters.

“I had to reassess why I was risking my life to cover slaughter,” said King in the Q&A with Loyd.

“I’d been there for four months and had photographed 5,000 dead bodies and nobody cared. No one would buy my photographs, so I started shooting video.”

The politics within Syria were also a source of frustration for King. He saw a shipment of powdered milk he had helped facilitate first held up in customs and then less than welcomed by those who had been benefiting from the black market in the product.

Those people who had helped him gain access to the country started to try to influence his material and, when he refused, banned him from going back.

“In the first year I figured that their politics were holding up the medical needs of the community,” said King. “Then they wanted to control the message.”

Asked by members of the audience whether his work could be used to try the perpetrators of the violence, King expressed his frustration with the absence of a more effective international legal system:

“If there was an international court of law that could hold people accountable for their war crimes . . . but why give my stuff to some organisation that fantasises that it can prosecute people?”

Loyd and King agreed that the future for the country is bleak and the potential fallout dire.

“The war launched against Al Qaeda was one thing,” said Loyd, wearing a cast around his leg after sustaining gunshot injuries in the latest of many reporting trips to Syria.

“Now something far worse [Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS)] has taken up a huge block of the Middle East running almost to the Mediterranean, and the West is aghast as to how to deal with the situation.

“Syria has raised a huge question mark and nobody knows what to do.”

King is convinced that chemical weapons have been smuggled out of Syria and have already reached Western European capitals. Asked whether he was planning to go back to Syria, he said:

“I don’t have to go to Syria. It’s done. It’s here. It’s over. I’m going to sit and wait.”