Kabul
In the Picture with Paula Bronstein: Afghanistan – Between Hope and Fear
Since her first assignment to Afghanistan in Autumn 2001 to document the US-led ‘Occupation Enduring Freedom’ in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, award-winning photojournalist Paula Bronstein has made the country her mission. Returning frequently to intimately document the daily lives of the Afghan people against the backdrop of a brutal and protracted war, Bronstein has captured ongoing challenges in Afghanistan – including human rights abuses against women and increased violence and instability – as well as the stirrings of new hope, including women participating in elections for the first time.
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.
Insight with Christina Lamb: Farewell Kabul
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, the people and the conflict. She 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.
Screening: The Network + Q&A
Unique, uplifting and heartbreaking, The Network tells the story of Afghanistan’s first independent television network – TOLO TV – and the people behind it. With over 800 Afghans employed producing news, current affairs, drama, comedy, music, and lifestyle programmes, the whole team face their biggest challenge with the impending withdrawal of foreign troops. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Eva Orner.
Voice of Afghanistan: Screening and Q&A with Jawed Taiman
By Jim Treadway “The life we had. The flowers, the trees,” an elder Afghan recalls about the village in which he has lived, and where director Jawed Taiman grew up before his family fled the Soviet invasion in 1979. “Just look at it now,” the man gestures. “It’s completely dry.” This conversation opens Taiman’s latest […]
Afghanistan: The mistake was not going in, but not knowing why we were there
If you want to take part in further discussion about the impact of the War on Terror on our world today and how it might shape our future, come along to our FIRST WEDNESDAY SPECIAL: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century on Wednesday, 7 September. The decision to go into Afghanistan was […]
Afghanistan: the mistakes began on 12 September 2001
Watch event here. If you want to take part in further discussion about the impact of the War on Terror on our world today and how it might shape our future, come along to our FIRST WEDNESDAY SPECIAL: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century on Wednesday, 7 September. The […]
Afghanistan: the brittle compact between military and media
Vaughan Smith argues that news management by the military is a risky business. Smith founded the Frontline Club in London in 2003 and during the 1990s he ran Frontline Television News. He filmed the only uncontrolled footage of the Gulf War in 1991 after bluffing his way into an active-duty unit while disguised as a […]
An Afghan fixer in Sweden
Naqeebulla Sherzad is an Afghan fixer. He worked with Ajmal Naskhbandi, the fixer beheaded by the Taliban in 2007, and who inspired the formation of the Frontline Fixer’s Fund – 100% of funds raised are given to the families of fixers killed or injured while working with international media – After being told his name […]
Behsud: Kuchi atrocities?
The story is so small and on such a local level that nobody is particularly interested. With an ever-growing insurgency, are international readers really interested in a conflict within the conflict, in which there are no international actors, nor anyone the ‘international community’ need particularly pay heed to… Even within Afghanistan, it doesn’t merit any […]
Taliban shadow governor killed?
In a little-reported story from the north-west of Afghanistan – no doubt overshadowed by the car-bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul – villagers in Qayser district used “a machine gun, sticks and stones” to chase away Taliban members, killing, in the process, the shadow-governor for Faryab province. The militants had tried to abduct […]
Road trips down south
Another timely reminder of the dangers on Afghanistan’s southern ringroad. 35 police officers were suspended a couple of days ago following protests by truck drivers about police corruption and kidnappings on the road from Herat to Kandahar. Incredibly, 12 drivers were kidnapped last week on the road (and I think that that’s probably a conservative […]
Green Grass
I write this from my beautiful green garden in Kabul, which has changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable. We now have aubergine, mint, coriander, roses, grapes and mulberries growing, along with a lot of other stuff that I’m sure is edible but don’t know the names of. As always, there’s lots happening in […]
Peter and the Gandamac Lodge
[video:youtube:2iltEbDjM_M] While waiting in Kabul, to come down to Helmand, I stayed at Peter Jouvenal’s Gandamac Lodge. It’s run by Peter and his Afghan wife, Hassina, and I have never stayed anywhere quite like it. I was in Kabul in 2001 when Peter decided to open a guesthouse there. He had just finished as John […]
The death of Ajmal Naqshbandi
Ever since his videotaped beheading by the Taliban on the afternoon of Sunday, April 8, Ajmal Naqshbandi has become a household name in Afghanistan. No death in recent years has so galvanized public opinion here. Like the murder of Margaret Hassan in Iraq a few years ago, Ajmal’s has come to epitomize the horror of […]
View from a Grain of Sand
The road to Kabul is littered with the carcasses of war – Soviet army tanks left rusting in the arid landscape, overturned buses without wheels that will never complete their journeys and the gaping wounds of bullet-ridden buildings. This is the scenery of modern Afghanistan. It is a country that has seen constant battle over […]