The Frontline Club

Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, has a booming population and a vibrant fashion and film industry, so how has the crash in the price of oil hit Nigeria so hard?

Funmi Iyanda has been trying to wrap her head around Nigeria’s problems for two years. In partnership with the Frontline Club and the Royal African Society, Funmi enlisted the expert insight of Professor Charles Soludo, Feyi Fawehinmi and Natznet Tesfay to help understand Nigeria’s myriad problems and begin to think of ways to fix the Nigerian economy.

This screening was followed by a Q&A with reporter Abi Austen, director Will West and producer Shoaib Sharifi.

Reporter Abigail Austen is a former Parachute Regiment officer, the first British army officer to change her gender. Together with director Will West, she returns to the battlefield at the invitation of her former Afghan colleagues. Austen served four years alongside the US Army in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Austen has secured unique and extraordinary access to a turning point in the battle against ISIS and the Taliban across Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and are the first television crew to re-visit Camp Bastion since the British army withdrew. Now the battle’s at a pivotal stage.

Following the end of Coalition combat operations at the close of 2014, Afghans have been leading the fight against ISIS and a resurgent Taliban. In 2015, just one year, the Afghan army has lost ten times more soldiers than the British lost in fifteen years. The Taliban now control over half the country.

Austen and West fly with the helicopters of the Afghan Air Force, crucial to bringing in reinforcements and carrying out the wounded and dead. The bases they fly to are completely surrounded by the Taliban and helicopters are the only way in or out.

Back in Kandahar, Austen visits wounded troops in the military hospital where no western television journalists have ever been allowed access. She finds wards full of severely injured men. In Afghanistan, there’s no pension or Help for Heroes. Many of the wounded are the sole breadwinners for their families.

Austen meets the Head of the Air Wing, General Sherzai, who admits that the military situation is critical. The Unreported World team flies with him to Helmand and visits the site of the former Camp Bastion, now empty and no use to the Afghans despite intense ongoing fighting. On her return to Kandahar, Austen is given bad news. Other towns including Musa Qala have fallen to the Taliban. The news means everything the British fought for in Northern Helmand is now in Taliban hands.

Austen and West join another helicopter mission to Khas Uruzgan, one of the last bases left. It’s completely surrounded by the Taliban, and the fighting is hand-to-hand. As the helicopter lands, the pilot Salim spots a Taliban position above. A battle rages overhead as a few desperate souls try to get on board and take the only way out.

An Afghan army that the West spent billions to create is beginning to fall apart. Kandahar City, the Taliban’s birthplace, is now within their sights. If the Taliban is successful, the Afghan Government is unlikely to survive.

Channel 4, 7.30pm, Friday 9th April

For more information visit: www.channel4.com/unreportedworld http://www.facebook.com/unreportedworld #UnreportedWorld

When war is over, how do we remember, commemorate and represent suffering, courage and loss? As events around the world mark the centenary of the First World War, we look at the work of two photographers who are exploring different forms of commemoration.

The discussion will consider the role of photography after the event, and its value in the process of remembering and re-forming understandings of the effects and aftermath of conflict.

Daniel Alexander’ s When War Is Over is the result of a six year project that investigates the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s ongoing commemoration of the 1.7 million Commonwealth War dead from WWI and WWII. Through archival material, new photographic work and aerial satellite images, the project investigates contemporary ideas of permanence, process, scale and commemoration.

Chloe Dewe Mathews’ Shot at Dawn depicts the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The images are accompanied by the names and dates of those executed at these sites, creating a form of memorial for these soldiers.

They were joined in conversation by Hilary Roberts, research curator of photography at the Imperial War Museum. Her recent publications include The Great War: A Photographic Narrative. She has curated and worked on a number of exhibitions related to photography and conflict, including Shaped By War: Photographs by Don McCullin, Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War, Donavan Wylie: Vision as Power and currently on at the IWM, Lee Miller: A Woman’s War.

This remarkable BAFTA nominated film from the new Scottish school of documentary filmmaking follows a convicted murderer over four years as he struggles to grapple with rebuilding his reputation in a remote Highland village while caring for his father. Though the film controversially gives the protagonist space to protest his innocence, an incredible four years of footage investigate his character – and the shattered hopes his pattern of recidivism leaves behind him.

16 Years Till Summer represents part of an exciting new wave of documentary filmmaking sweeping international festivals from Scotland; as such, it’s as bold in it’s subject matter as it is sceptical of finding ‘truth’ only in traditional forms of documentary film language. Prepare to have your preconceptions challenged.

Lou McLoughlan was one of BAFTA’s 2011 Brits to Watch, an initiative showcasing new British talent to the international industry. Her short, Caring For Calum, won two BAFTAs in the Scotland New Talent awards. 16 Years Till Summer is her newest feature. The film had its world premiere at Visions du Reel 2015, and was selected for Sheffield Doc/Fest‘s 2015 ‘Best of British’ documentary series.

When Barack Obama was elected, the world cheered. Not only was he the first African-American President, he inspired hope and trust – everywhere. His promises – to end the war in Iraq, close Guantanamo, fight climate change, reform American healthcare – seemed to mark a new era of civility and hope. What happened instead was the worst economic collapse in living memory, a Republican opposition that refused any sort of cooperation, and the rise of a populist anti-government Tea Party.

In this landmark series by Norma Percy, Brian Lapping and Paul Mitchell, four one-hour programmes look at how he brought America out of the Great Recession; how his triumphant reform of America’s healthcare system was followed by defeat at the polls at the hands of the Tea Party; the failure to close Guantanamo, the Arab Spring and the inside story of the secret nuclear negotiations with Iran; the struggle for gun control and his response to the racial unrest of Ferguson.

With unprecedented access and contribution from a number of key players within the administration, Inside Obama’s White House captures key moments when policy was made.

Jonathan Freedland is a weekly columnist and writer for the Guardian. A former Washington correspondent who has covered every US presidential election since 1992, he is also a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View. In 2014 he was awarded the Orwell special prize for journalism. He has also published eight books including six bestselling thrillers, the latest being The 3rd Woman. He tweets @freedland.

On 22 March, a series of deadly terror attacks shook the de facto capital of the European Union – with supporters of Daesh claiming responsibility.

As the date of the referendum rapidly approaches, when the British people will vote on whether to remain in the EU, the prospect of Brexit is one of many problems Europe currently faces. The continent is deeply divided on how to deal with the refugee crisis. While the Schengen agreement, one of the fundamental principles of the EU, hangs in the balance.

In light of the recent attacks in Brussels, and ahead of the 23 June EU referendum, we will be joined by journalists who cover the continent to discuss the crisis it faces on all sides – and what Brexit would mean for the future of Europe.

Chaired by Gavin Hewitt, the BBC’s chief correspondent and former Europe editor.

Annalisa Piras is a director, producer and journalist. She edited, produced and co-wrote the documentary Girlfriend in a Coma and wrote, directed and produced The Great European Disaster Movie. She is the Director of the Wake Up Foundation.

Joris Luyendijk is a journalist and author of Swimming with Sharks: My Journey Into the World of the Bankers. He used to write the Guardian‘s Banking Blog, which looked at the world of finance from an anthropological perspective

Natalie Nougayrède is a columnist, leader writer and foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian. She was previously executive editor and managing editor of Le Monde.

Toby Young is a journalist, columnist and associate editor of The Spectator. He is author of What Every Parent Needs to Know: How to Help Your Child Get the Most Out of Primary School and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

The Frontline Club's Adam Barr spoke to Julian Borger about his start in journalism, mistaken identical twins and the secret services.

While the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, seems to have captured the attention of Hollywood – meeting with actor Sean Penn before his recent recapture – there is a brutal reality to the war on drugs that we don’t see in the Hollywood interpretation.

Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001 and has gained access to every level of the cartel chain of command in what he calls the ‘new battlefields of the Americas’. In his new book Gangster Warlords, he writes about a new kind of criminal kingpin that has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star.

Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policymakers, Grillo will be joining us, in conversation with journalist and media consultant Susana Seijas, to share what he has discovered – a disturbing new understanding of a war that has spiralled out of control and urgently needs to be confronted.

Ioan Grillo is a journalist and writer based in Mexico City. He has covered Latin America since 2001 for TIME magazine, CNN, Reuters, The Houston Chronicle, The Associated Press, GlobalPost, France 24, CBC, The Sunday Telegraph, Letras Libres and many others. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, the BBC and the Guardian. He is author of Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America and El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.

The Balkan Wars of the nineties resulted in the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazi era. When the fighting ended, a fourteen-year manhunt began in order to bring those responsible to justice.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) eventually accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, including Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and Slobodan Milošević, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

In his new book The Butcher’s Trail, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Julian Borger, documents this monumental manhunt. He will be joining us to reveal what he discovered from the special forces sol­diers, intelligence officials, and investigators that were involved, and how this process could set a precedent for bringing future war criminals to justice.

Julian Borger will be joined in conversation by: Philippe Sands QC, an expert in international law; Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, he has since dedicated his work to education, reconciliation and peace-building; and Milan Dinić, who worked as a journalist for a decade for media outlets in Serbia and the Balkans. The discussion will be chaired by author and journalist, Adam LeBor.

Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor for the Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War for the BBC and the Guardian, and returned to the Balkans to report on the Kosovo conflict in 1999. He also served as the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent and its Washington bureau chief.

To celebrate the launch of Granta’s 134th edition, named No Mans Land, author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who lived and worked in Russia from 1999 to 2006 chaired a discussion at the Frontline Club.

Before Oliver chaired the event he spoke to Adam Barr about Russia’s involvement in Syria and corruption in former communist countries.