The television journalist, the Taliban and a bloody war with few winners

FOOTAGE of coffins arriving back home carrying the bodies of dead British soldiers has become an all too familiar, and tragic, sight on our TV screens.

The conflict in Afghanistan has been raging for more than a decade and with each passing week the number of British casualties rises as more families’ lives are ripped apart.

One of the main reasons for keeping troops in Afghanistan, it’s been argued, is the need to train Afghan security forces to handle the situation once British forces withdraw in 2014. But this view has come under growing pressure with a fifth of UK soldiers killed in the country this year the victims not of insurgents, but of Afghan soldiers or police.

Such incidents, known as “green-on-blue” attacks, have increased concern over safety and a growing number of people now believe we are paying too high a price for a conflict that shows no sign of ending. Others argue that to leave prematurely could result in the country falling back into the hands of extremists with dire consequences for the wider world.

Sandy Gall, the veteran television journalist and former ITN news presenter, has been reporting from Afghanistan for 
the past 30 years. In his latest 
book – War Against the Taliban: Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan – he looks at the initial failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, the political miscalculations that have befallen the West’s involvement since 9/11, and why the reconstruction of this war-torn country has withered on the vine.

Gall, who opens this year’s Ilkley Literature Festival on Friday, draws on interviews with Nato military leaders, Western diplomats, politicians and ordinary Afghans, as well as his own experiences to produce an insightful analysis of the many challenges facing those fighting on the most dangerous frontier in the world.

He believes there are several reasons why the situation in Afghanistan has become so parlous. “The Americans unwisely decided to invade Iraq just as we were getting on top of things in Afghanistan, that was the first big mistake. I think they thought that Afghanistan was fixed and the problems had been solved, but they were nothing like solved,” he says.

Among the Afghans he spoke to was the country’s former Finance Minister Dr Ashraf Ghani. “When he heard the news that America had invaded Iraq he said it was bad news for his country because as he put it, ‘all the oxygen was taken out’ of the effort in Afghanistan. They took their eye off the ball,” he says.

Gall says that corruption among Afghan officials is another crippling problem. “This has beset Hamid Karzai’s government. He seems to be a very honourable man so why does he allow so much corruption to go on?” He admits there is no obvious answer but says the failure to tackle the issue has played into the hands of insurgents. “The significance is it has allowed the Taliban to say the government is corrupt and that if you don’t bribe people at court you won’t get justice. They can claim that corruption has destroyed the credibility of the government.”

He believes that as much as a third of the country’s population now supports, or is at least sympathetic to, the Taliban. He questions what he views as the misplaced faith that Britain and the US have in Pakistan, where there is a considerable support for the Taliban in certain areas, and he points out the failure to crack down on Afghanistan’s burgeoning drug trade.

“That’s a continuing problem and the Taliban have used drug trafficking to finance their activities, but that will need a political solution.”

Despite his criticism of past mistakes and his concern at the growing volatility, he believes it would be wrong for British forces to leave before their job is finished. “I know people are worried about the spate of green-on-blue incidents but I think it would be disastrous to pull out now,” he says.

“Nobody wants to see these casualties and for the families who have lost loved ones it must be dreadful, but I believe in the interests of Britain we need to stay the course. We need to continue the policy of mentoring, training and supporting the Afghan army, so that when we do leave we do so with the confidence that the country won’t be going back to square one, with the Taliban in control and terrorist training camps being set up. It’s important that we hold our nerve and don’t panic.”

Gall first travelled to Afghanistan back in 1971, on route to Pakistan to cover the outbreak of the Third Indo-Pakistani War. But it wasn’t until a decade later when he returned to the country to make the first in a series of TV documentaries about the Mujahideen’s war against the Soviet Union, that he began to develop a deep interest in Afghanistan and its people.

“I suppose I went there with a romantic idea of this small country fighting a vast empire, a kind of David versus Goliath,” 
he says.

“What I found was a kind and admirable people who fought very bravely.” He was impressed, too, by a landscape that has beguiled visitors since the days of Alexander the Great.

“It’s an idyllic country in many ways, places like the Panjshir Valley have a wild beauty that can take your breath away.”

Although he has written extensively about Afghanistan in recent years, his journalistic career stretches back to the 1950s and he has enjoyed a ringside seat at some of the 20th century’s most tumultuous events.

“I always wanted to be in the Foreign Office, or a foreign correspondent, because I was keen on travel and liked the 
idea of reporting from abroad,” he says.

After completing his national service in 1948, he graduated from Aberdeen University in 1952 and the following year joined Reuters, spending the next 10 years as one of their foreign corespondents. During this period he covered the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution, before joining ITN as a foreign correspondent.

Again, he found himself in 
the thick of the action. “I covered the Kennedy assassination 
and the Six Day War in 1967 and then the Yom Kippur War. I also went to Vietnam several times and I was there when Saigon fell in 1975.”

Not surprisingly there have 
been a few close shaves along 
the way. “I was in Uganda when there was an invasion from Tanzania and Idi Amin thought it was a British plot and locked up all the British journalists. We 
were rounded up and put in a military barracks in Kampala. We were put in an execution cell by mistake before eventually being moved, which was rather unpleasant.”

He had another fortunate 
escape while covering the crisis in the Congo in the early 60s. “There was a group of us who were arrested as spies and they threatened to shoot us before the UN came and got us out – Thank God for the UN.”

In more recent times, he has become increasingly preoccupied with Afghanistan. In 1986, he set up the Sandy Gall Afghanistan Appeal charity, to help train Afghan professionals to provide artificial limbs and other mobility aids, and since then it has helped fit more than 20,000 people with artificial legs or calipers and provided physiotherapy treatment for more than 60,000 patients.

He was awarded the Order of St Michael and St George for services to the people of Afghanistan in 2010, and at the age of 84 he still travels to the country at least once year. But given the daunting challenges that lie ahead, what hope is there for future peace in Afghanistan, a country that has been marred by violence for so long?

“It will take time before there is any political settlement and any solution will need to include the Taliban,” he says. “There will still be a big western influence but in the long run the Afghans will have to sort it out themselves. I hope they can do it, but it’s all fingers crossed stuff.”

Sandy Gall is in conversation at King’s Hall, Ilkley, this Friday, from 7.30pm to 8.30pm. Tickets are priced £12. For more information call 01943 816 714, or visit www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk

War Against the Taliban – Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury, is out now priced £20.

Reports from the front line

Sandy Gall joined Reuters in 1953 as a foreign correspondent, covering the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution.

In 1963 he joined ITN during which time he covered the Vietnam War and the Six Day War. He also reported from China, Afghanistan and Africa.

He was one of the original staff on ITN’s News at Ten, becoming one of its senior presenters.

He has written several books about Afghanistan and made three ITN documentaries during the Soviet War, two of which were nominated for Bafta awards.

In 1986 he and his wife, Eleanor, set up the Sandy Gall Afghanistan Appeal Charity, to help people who have lost limbs in combat.