“It’s a town hall style meeting – we quickly come to you,” BBC 4‘s Paddy O’Connell told a sold-out First Wednesday audience at the Frontline Club yesterday evening.  The topic was intervention in Syria, and with four experts by his side, O’Connell led a lively back-and-forth with the night’s attendees.

“Here we are talking about your country and bombing it, which we do regularly in the Middle East, don’t we?” he jibed to Lina Sinjab, who was born in Syria and worked as the BBC’s correspondent there until a few months ago.

L-R: Paddy O’Connell, Scott Lucas, Lina Sinjab, Shiraz Maher, Jonathan Steele. Photo: Jim Treadway

Sinjab, however, emphasised the necessity of stepping in.  With conservative estimates that 80,000 people have been killed and two million have fled the country, she opined:

“The reality on the ground is pushing Syrians – they have no other options. They know the Americans are coming for their own interest, but there is no other way to stop the bleeding of Syrians on a daily basis.”

Only one of the four experts argued against intervention:  Jonathan Steele, a columnist at The Guardian and longtime foreign correspondent.

“It would be a disaster,” Steele said.  “We don’t know what the repercussions would be… In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told it’d be short and quick and surgical and all the rest of it, and they turn out not to be.”

But Syrians today are in a different position than Iraqis or Afghans a decade ago, Steele’s co-panelists felt.  Shiraz Maher is an expert on terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and to him, a critical factor is how much Syrians want an intervention:

“The Syrian people themselves have been calling for some form of intervention, for some form of outside help to come into Syria and tip the balance, and just to level that playing field…

” I’m not saying it would be clean [or] perfect. . . . Yes, if the West intervenes, we will inevitably kill, indirectly, and unintentionally, some civilians. But if we stand back, [Assad’s] regime continues to do the same thing – every single day.”

What should an intervention look like, then?

Sinjab, Maher, and Scott Lucas all withered at the idea of limited bombing.  Lucas, a professor at Birmingham University and expert on U.S. and U.K. involvement in the Middle East, explained:

“The question [shouldn’t] be on bombing. It should be on a longer term question of support for the insurgency. . . . It is a myth that Al Qaeda groups are dominating the insurgency. It’s a question of arms supplies: do you provide anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry to the insurgents which negates the weapons that Assad continues to have to basically maintain dominance? Do you support a no-fly zone or a protected zone that took place in Libya in 2011, which allowed people to be protected, and the opposition therefore could move against Qaddafi?”

The greatest danger to Syrians, Sinjab, Maher, and Lucas feared, was an intervention too weak or misguided.

“For Assad, for the Syrian Ba’athists,” Maher said, “this struggle is an existential one…  They [will] kill whatever number it takes [to survive].”

To protect Syrians, they saw a need for much more than just “a shot across the bow,” as U.S. President Obama has imagined.  In Sinjab’s words, Syrians

“are very fearful of:  if the Americans only did a ‘shot across the bow,’ and it was [only] a limited target, then the Assad forceswould retaliate big time on the people.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-syria-crossing

The past, present and future of British military engagement with the media was the centre of a lively debate at the Frontline Club on 20 February 2013. Chaired by Stewart Purvis, professor of television journalism at City University London and former Editor-in-Chief and CEO of ITN.

Lorna Ward, who has worked on what could be seen as both sides of the argument, as deputy foreign news editor at Sky News and as part of media operations for the TA, started off the discussion with the four points she believes cause the most tension: lack of understanding on both parts, impatience, egos or personalities and lack of communication between the opposing cultures.

Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, added that the main contention point is in the treatment of casualties:

“If you go on an embed with the British Army, unless you perhaps are with the BBC or large broadcasting union and you negotiate specific access, you are not allowed to film casualties.”

Vaughan Smith: "I don't think that journalists can be expected to participate in the sanitisation of war" #frontlineclub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) February 20, 2013

It wasn’t long into the debate until the MoD’s Green Book was brought up, and that it seems to ignore casualties all together – only referring to them with respect to patient confidentiality, Smith continued:

“In that Green Book it doesn’t really tell you that you can’t film casualties . . . only two [of the 85 paragraphs] deal with casualties. Patient confidentiality is brought up but not explained . . . I believe that the MoD are effectively using this patient confidentiality . . . to prevent us from covering casualties.”

Major General Jonathan Shaw who served in the Falklands, Kosovo and Iraq before being chief of staff of UK Land Forces between 2007 and 2008, added:

“If you respect their perspective you can have a very helpful relationship – sometimes.”

“When you detect as a solider that this guy [a journalist] has come out to a theatre not to report the truth but to find the evidence to substantiate a story that has already been demanded by the editor back in London, that’s when you lose trust.”

Defence correspondent for the Evening Standard, Robert Fox added:

“Working with the military, embedding, being an accredited correspondent is a necessary evil. . . . I use it as an ends to my particular means.”

Fox strongly felt that the debate on whether the military should ‘manage’ the media was quickly becoming out of date:

“I don’t think this is anything like as big a deal as it has been in my life because the nature of news is changing. The nature of the military is changing. The nature of the military role in British public life and common endeavour is diminishing.”

Robert Fox: "The nature of news is changing…it will find a way out. This debate is becoming increasingly irrelevant." #frontlineclub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) February 20, 2013

At this point it had become clear that in the audience were other journalists who could add to the discussion. Jonathan Steele, who had just returned from Syria said of the Green Book:

“It is prior censorship, you have to sign it in order to get this embed which gives the MoD the right to read all your copy, look at all your pictures, all your video before you send it out. . . . We go along with this. Why is there no revolt? Why don’t we just refuse?”

Smith added that perhaps it is time to revisit the restrictions of the Green Book.

But what of the future? Is embedding with the military going to be the best way to get a story? Ward answered:

“With competition such that it is across journalists and news outlets there is more and more pressure to get that exclusive. . . . In Afghanistan at the moment, as areas get less volatile, more journalists are starting out on an embed and disembedding half way through and the issue for the MoD is where does our responsibility start and where does our responsibility end?”

Watch the event in full here:

Arriving in the Deep South of the United States in 1964, Jonathan Steele witnessed the appalling treatment of black Americans. Almost five decades on, The Guardian‘s foreign correspondent says that ‘bearing witness’ to happenings in places as disparate as El Salvador, Russia and Afghanistan still drives his journalism.

With Tom Finn, the Guardian’s correspondent in Yemen, Steele discussed his take on being a foreign correspondent through the prism of his latest book Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths.

Scathing of the US approach in Afghanistan, Steele argues that the Americans continue to make the same mistakes as the USSR just over a decade before. 

Speaking softly but with urgency, Steele only raises his voice to make a point he feels is important:

“The people who bear the greatest responsibility for the misery of Afghanistan in the 1980s, other than Afghans themselves, are the Russians. The people who bear the greatest responsibility for the misery of Afghanistan in the 1990s other than the Afghans themselves are the Americans.”

Thirty years of visits to Afghanistan have left the Guardian journalist with plenty of scope to consider the actions of Russia and the US. 

The ‘ghosts’ of Afghanistan in the title of his book are testament to “wasted lives”; all types of victims of a decades-old conflict.

“The word the Soviet soldiers used for the Mujahideen was ‘Dukhie’ which means ghosts because they were elusive, invisible and hard to get your hands on.”

“The ghosts are the soldiers who died, they are the… over a million Afghani civilians who have died, as well as my memories.” 

Steele argued that greater engagement with the Taliban by both journalists and governments is necessary.

“Responsible journalism gets away from demonisation” he says, but “What do [the Taliban] want? Well we don’t know, there is no contact with the top niche of the Taliban.”

The occupational hazards of working abroad in dangerous areas aren’t limited to stray bullets, he said. They include commonplace things: alcohol, nicotine, depression, and – worst of the bunch – cynicism. 

“Cynicism makes you glib, makes you flip, makes you turn off.”

Its opposite may be curiosity – the most important characteristic of any foreign correspondent said Steele, who added that working as a correspondent may be more difficult now in war zones. 

“In Kosovo you almost did have this feeling that you could cross the lines and you were completely in a different category – like Gods in the Illiad, on the Achilles side one day and on the Trojan side the other"

“Now journalists seem to have a value – there’s a value in taking a journalist hostage… so I think we have been dragged into the battlefield in a way we weren’t ten or fifteen years ago”

The big age difference between Jonathan Steele and Tom Finn crystallises when the role of technology in reporting comes up. 

“If” Finn later replied, “I was witnessing some breaking news and I couldn’t tweet it I would feel incredibly frustrated.”

“Your i-Phone is bearing witness [to events] now,” says Steele, returning to his main theme. “But you need someone to explain them much more".

“Things move on and you have to accept that, there’s good and bad in every era. But I think there will always be scope for the kind of journalism that the BBC or The Guardian tries to put out, and that is providing context.”

By Olivia Heath

Award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele discussed his views on the war in Afghanistan and the changing role of the foreign correspondent on Tuesday night  at the Frontline Club.

“It was a life changing experience for almost everybody including myself. It was radicalising, invigorating and shocking because we saw that this was a different face of America that we had been bought up with.”

Steele talked to the audience about his first break in journalism after being accepted on a traineeship scheme at The Guardian: “Persistence, ambition and a little bit of luck –  in my case it was an enormous dose of luck, about 95 per cent.”

View in iTunes

Jonathan Steele has been covering global events for the Guardian for over forty years. From the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Alabama to his extensive coverage of the past 30 years of Afghan history, his work has won him recognition as one of the greatest foreign correspondents of his generation.

He will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with freelance journalist Tom Finn who is currently based in Sana’a, Yemen to reflect on his 40-year career, which has taken him to Eastern Europe, Washington correspondent and Kabul, Afghanistan throughout the Soviet period until 1992.

Twice winner of the International Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards, Jonathan Steele has, among others, also picked up the James Cameron award, the London Press Club’s Scoop of the Year award and Martha Gellhorn special award.

Join us to hear Jonathan Steele draw on his years of experience to talk about the craft of the foreign correspondent and discuss how the role has changed.

Steele will also be discussing his new book Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths.

The first of our Film Africa screenings, celebrating the best African fiction and documentary films across the continent, is El Problema, while on Friday Sorious Samura and Anas Aremeyaw Anas will be at Frontline Club for the launch of Africa Investigates. 

Next week we will be joined by The Guardian‘s Jonathan Steele to discuss the craft of the foreign correspondent and a 40-year career that has seen him cover events across the world.

Don’t forget to join us for our November Club Quiz on Thursday evening.

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.
ALL EVENTS ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

We will be discussing Kashmir’s future, the changing role of the foreign correspondent with The Guardian‘s Jonathan Steele, torture and the Arab Spring, and the coming presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A series of Film Africa documentaries look at the people of the Western Sahara and a community of women living in exile after being accused of witchcraft.

There’s a film about the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who, by setting himself on fire, sparked an uprising in Tunisia, and another tells the story of the brother of Private McKinley Nolan and his quest to find out the truth about what happened to the missing G.I.s in Vietnam.

Following on from this month’s #fcbbca discussion on Israel, we will be discussing women and the Arab Spring at Westminster College’s Paddington Green Campus.

The focus of our November First Wednesday discussion will be announced on Wednesday 26 October.
  

We will be discussing Kashmir’s future, the changing role of the foreign correspondent with The Guardian‘s Jonathan Steele, torture and the Arab Spring, and the coming presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A series of Film Africa documentaries look at the people of the Western Sahara and a community of women living in exile after being accused of witchcraft. There’s a film about the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who, by setting himself on fire, sparked an uprising in Tunisia, and another tells the story of the brother of Private McKinley Nolan and his quest to find out the truth about what happened to the missing G.I.s in Vietnam.

Following on from this month’s #fcbbca discussion on Israel, we will be discussing women and the Arab Spring at Westminster College’s Paddington Green Campus. The focus of our November First Wednesday discussion will be announced on Wednesday 26 October.
 

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blogor download our podcasts on iTunes.