The Frontline Club

As Obama prepares to take office as the 44th US president, he is set to face huge challenges in the Middle East. Will the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that he is proposing with the region pave the way for improved relations with Iran and prevent them from developing their nuclear programme? Will he be able to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace process where every US president before him has failed and how will he balance his commitment to Israel with his desire to build peace with the Palestinians? Who are his new panel of advisors and special envoys to the Middle East and what will they mean for the region? And will the man famed for his rhetoric be able to make his vision a reality?

Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London since 1982. He has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the cold war, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. His most recent book, A Choice of Enemies: America confronts the Middle East, came out in May in the United States and was published in the UK in July.

Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi is the executive director of the Transatlantic Institute. A political scientist by training, he came to Brussels in 2006 after having previously taught Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is a frequent commentator on Israeli domestic politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Europe’s Middle East policy. His columns have appeared on Newsday, the National Review Online, The Middle East Quarterly, the Jewish Chronicle, The Guardian, The Daily Mirror; and blogs on Contentions.

Sadeq Saba is the BBC’s Iranian affairs analyst.

Zaki Chehab is the political editor for the London-based broadsheet Al Hayat and a Senior Editor for the Arabic TV channel LBC. He has covered the Middle East for a variety of newsmedia and has covered numerous Middle Eastern conflicts, including the Lebanese Civil War, the 1982 Lebanon War and the First Intifada. Chehab was born in Tyre, South Lebanon and grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp Burj El Shamali. He is the author of the 2005 book Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency and the 2007 book Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement.

Dr Rosemary Hollis is director of City University London’s Olive Tree Israeli-Palestinian scholarship programme. Dr Hollis was previously at Chatham House with three years as director of research and ten years before that as head of its Middle East Programme. Dr Hollis has carved out a career as a leading specialist on regional political and security issues in the Middle East, and was for several years an Assistant Professor in Political Science at George Washington University in the US.

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Nearly one year on since Raul Castro officially took power from his brother, Fidel, and with a new US president about to take office, the change that has inevitably been creeping up on Cuba looks set to continue into 2009. Amid celebrations of the Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary, we remember its achievements and  legacy, while assessing the implications of Obama’s Presidency for the island.

How have Cubans and the exiled community received the news of Obama’s election and what are the expectations on his promises to open dialogue with Cuba and lift the embargo? Has the inevitable “opening up” of the economy and wider access to the internet and communications changed the nature of Cuban society? And are the glory days of the Cuban Revolution now firmly in the past?

Richard Gott is a British journalist and historian with forty years experience of Latin America. He was for many years on the staff of The Guardian newspaper in London. He is currently an honorary research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. He has recently published Cuba: A New History (Yale University Press), and Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso).

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy is a poet, writer, journalist and broadcaster living in London. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990), and a new novel, Las Criadas de La Habana, The Maids of Havana. He has been a radio journalist since 1965, beginning with Cuban national radio as a current affairs journalist and with Cuban television on the first African and Caribbean music show. He was then with the BBC Latin American Service from 1981 to 1994. His latest book of poetry Malecón Sigloveinte (2005), has just been published in Cuba.

Stephen Wilkinson first visited Cuba in 1986 and has been travelling to and writing about the island ever since. Now assistant director at the International Institute for the Study of Cuba, Stephen has a PhD on the subject of Cuban literature. He has written numerous articles on such questions as the history of US-Cuba relations, Cuban attitudes and policy towards homosexuals and the nature of the Cuban state. Stephen’s book: Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture was published in 2006 by Peter Lang. He frequently comments on Cuba issues on The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free website.

Emilio San Pedro has been the BBC World Service’s Americas Editor for the last three years, and worked as a journalist for two decades, mostly in radio. He is currently based in Miami.

Nick Caistor is a former BBC Latin American analyst and is now a freelance writer on the region for various publications. He has been an expert on Haiti since 1990, when Aristide first came to power.

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Dubbed as India’s 9/11, the recent attacks in Mumbai left almost 200 dead and the world reeling. While criticism has been levelled at India’s government for their slow response to the attacks as well as their failure to act on intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba - a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan - are being blamed for carrying them out.

What will these attacks mean for the ongoing “war on terror” and will India now be seen as a soft target? Will deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India be brought closer by a new co-operation to work together in the aftermath of the attacks and a joint desire to bring the perpetrators to justice? Or will these attacks simply fuel the existing tensions between these two nuclear powers?

David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development correspondent, and formerly their Delhi correspondent.

Vikram Dodd writes for The Guardian and was in Mumbai shortly before the attacks took place, and returned there the following day to report on them.

Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. She is a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi as well as political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London. Her first book Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism was shortlisted for the UK’s Index on Censorship TR Fyvel prize and nominated for India’s Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Best Book Award. Most recently, Edna has written about the fallout from India’s 9/11 on her website.

Owen Bennett-Jones is presenter and correspondent for the BBC and former Islamabad correspondent. Owen’s coverage of the events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. In 2003 he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and he is currently working on a second edition.

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In recent weeks, increasing criticism has been leveled at the media over failure to provide adequate warning of the impending economic turmoil, as well as accusations of sensationalist coverage. Did the media fail in its scrutiny? Or are the workings of international finance now so complex and secretive that the media can no longer provide effective oversight?

We ask some of the journalists and commentators who have been credited with providing early warning of the collapse of the markets for their assessment of where the global economy will be in twelve months as well as asking them to reflect on the media’s role in the crisis.

Paul Lashmar is an investigative journalist and is currently undertaking a research project into the reporting in the UK of the sub-prime market prior to August 2007 for publication in Journalism Practice. He writes for various newspapers including the Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and The Evening Standard, and his specialist areas include terrorism, intelligence, organised crime, offshore crime, business fraud and the Cold War.

Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times and oversees the global coverage of the financial markets. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.

Ann Pettifor Ann Pettifor is a political economist and author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006) and editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave, 2003). She is a fellow of the new economics foundation (nef) in London and director of Advocacy International.

Michael Blastland is a freelance writer and broadcaster and co-author of The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and In Life. A journalist all his professional life, he started on weekly newspapers before moving to the BBC where he made current affairs programmes for Radio 4, such as Analysis and More or Less.

Paul Mason is Newsnight’s Economics Editor with a brief to cover an agenda that he sums up as: “profit, people and planet”. He is also the author of Meltdown - The End of the Age of Greed which will be published in Spring 2009 by Verso.

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MI5 says that some 4000 British Muslim extremists are a threat to national security and that another major terrorist attack is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

The investigative journalist Richard Watson, who has been at the forefront of reporting terrorism and extremism for BBC Newsnight, presents the results of his major investigation into the rise of extremism in Britain, which has just been published by Granta.

David Henshaw is the executive producer of Channel 4’s Dispatches Undercover Mosque films.

Sheikh Musa Admani was the first imam to be appointed to a British university in 2001. He has grass roots experience of countering radicalisation among the Muslim youth and has developed counter radicaliation programmes abroad. Sheikh Musa has participated in Madrid Seminar (2006 - building successful communities), Paris Three Faiths Forum (2005), Peace Research Institute (Oslo 2005) and the Forum Barcelona (2004) to name a few. His contribution at the international level has been towards promoting durable peace and encouraging Muslims to work in partnerships with international Institutions. All those concerned have come to learn the need for people of different faiths and no faith to come together and tackle international concerns that are paramount to the wellbeing of society at large.

Iftikhar Ahmed is head of the London School of Islamics. He is a retired teacher and is originally from Pakistan. He arrived in the UK on a work permit as a teacher in 1967 and worked for the ILEA as a teacher in the 60s and 70s. He founded the first Muslim school in 1981 in the London Borough of Newham and for the last 35 years has been campaigning for state funded Muslim schools. In the 1970s, he took the ILEA to the HIgh Court and the House of Lords for discrimination and racism for refusing to give him time off to attend the obligatory Friday prayer in the Masjid. He also took the British Government to the European Commission of Human Rights for the same reason.

Usman Raja is recognized internationally as one of the most accomplished trainers in the sports of Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts. Using this platform he has been working actively to aid social integration of Muslim youth through the understanding of Islamic principles. Experience as a Jihadist in his teenage years motivated him to become a passionate spokesman fully committed to furthering the cause of tolerance and understanding both outside and within the Muslim community.

Richard Watson is the BBC’s Newsnight correspondent.

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Recent events in the Caucasus have highlighted the growing self-confidence of a newly resurgent Russia, that appears to be seeking to revive much of the old Soviet influence at home and abroad.

In recent months, Russia - backed by increasing oil and gas revenues - has paid off debts to international banks and organisations; announced that it is seeking to modernise its military and resumed its long-range projection of military force; intervened militarily in support of separatist movements in the Caucasus; and made clear its objections to Nato expansion and the US missile defense plans.

Should the West accept that Russia will continue to dominate in its sphere of influence or does it pose a renewed threat to Nato and its allies? And does the West have double-standards when it comes to dealing with Russia?

Join us as we debate all these issues and more with Edward Lucas - author of The New Cold War and Alexei Pankin, a respected Russian journalist.

Edward Lucas is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist and has been covering the region for more than 20 years. He’s witnessed the final years of the Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet empire as well as Boris Yeltsin’s downfall and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. From 1992 to 1994, he was the managing editor of The Baltic Independent, a weekly English-language newspaper published in Tallinn. He is the author of The New Cold War. Alexei Pankin is a Russian political and media analyst. Currently he is Editor-in-Chief of the IFRA-GIPP Magazine, an ePaper monthly for publishing business professionals, and columnist for a number of news outlets including Novosti - a Russian News and Information agency, and The Moscow Times. Between 1992 and 1996 he organised national elections media coverage, monitoring missions in post-Communist countries ranging from Estonia to former Yugoslavia, and from Russia to South Caucasus. He was founding editor of the Op-Ed page at the leading Russian national daily Izvestia. Bridget Kendall has been the BBC’s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent since 1998. She has made several documentaries for BBC television including profiles of Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as a documentary on the rise of Russian nationalism. During 2006, she travelled to Russia to chair and present three hour-long debates on Russia’s future, as well as conduct a two-and-a-quarter hour interactive interview with President Putin, live from inside the Kremlin, which was broadcast worldwide - her second interview with the Russian leader.

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Richard Bourne’s Lula of Brazil is an objective study of one man set against the contemporary history of a major emerging power. From climate change to inequality, Lula and his country are grappling with the greatest challenges facing the modern world.

President Lula of Brazil has a life that reads like a film script. The child of a dysfunctional family, his early life was one of poverty and chaos. In the 1970s, at a time when his country and continent were ruled by right-wing dictators, he switched from football-mad metalworker to militant trade union leader.

Dissatisfied with the power of existing parties to bring about change, he founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the Workers Party. He was elected as president in 2002 and again in 2006. As a progressive leader in a globalizing world, he has walked a difficult tightrope in international relations with the US, Africa and the Middle East; and in trying to improve the lot of poor and black Brazilians at home.

Richard Bourne is the author of numerous other books on Latin America and first visited Brazil in 1965 as a journalist. He later founded the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit at London University’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Rogerio Simoes is head of the BBC Brazilian Service

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In this revealing memoir, newspaper editor Abdul Bari Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his journey from Palestinian refugee camps to the front page. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain’s involvement in the region.

Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break.

Abdul Bari Atwan was born in Gaza in 1950, left aged seventeen and has since become one of the world’s foremost commentators on the Middle East, for the last twenty years editing the independent Arabic daily, London-based al-Quds al-Arabi.

Ian Black is the Middle Eastern editor for The Guardian.

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Pulitzer winning photographer Liu Heung Shing is a renowned Chinese photographer and a former foreign correspondent. In a career spanning over 20 years he covered China, India, Korea, the US and former USSR for all the major publications.

China: Portrait of a Country is the new photography volume edited by Liu and brings together a vast selection of images by Chinese photographers since 1949, giving readers a visual journey across the great People’s Republic.

Via work by 88 Chinese photographers, this collection of images including some never seen before, shows how the Chinese people have blossomed in spite of enduring previous decades of extraordinary hardship.

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After the recent conflict in the Caucasus and Russia’s recognition of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, Russia continues to defy the West and the pledges made in the ceasefire agreement, by planning to keep about 8000 troops in the region.

Is the West being hypocritical in refusing to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, after its recent support and recognition of Kosovo’s independence? Should Georgia be encouraged to join NATO? And how concerned should we be over the frosty relationship that’s developing between Russia and the West?

Pavel Andreev is a Deputy UK Bureau Chief and a commentator for the Russian News Agency RIA Novosti, which he joined in 2006. His writes about Russo-British relations, International Relations and British Politics. Before returning to Journalism, which he practiced extensively earlier in life, he was in the Diplomatic Service, serving in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow and its Embassy in London.

Oksana Antonenko is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Ms. Antonenko co-edited the book Russia and the European Union: Prospects for a New Relationship and in 2005 she facilitated two meetings between Georgian and South Ossetian senior officials and experts with the aim of promoting conflict resolution in the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict.

Damien McElroy has been Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph since 2006. Prior to that he was on the Sunday Telegraph and has been posted in Istanbul and Beijing in his ten years working with the Telegraph. He covered the recent conflict in Georgia.

Roy Allison is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before he joined the LSE he was Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs), 1993-2005. His most recent co-authored book is Putin’s Russia and the Enlarged Europe. He has visited Georgia frequently since 1987.

Kim Sengupta is the defence and diplomatic correspondent at The Independent

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Philippe Sands investigates in his new book Torture Team - how the Rumsfeld Memo - a Memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation which defied international definitions of torture - set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention.

The Rumsfeld Memo authorised the controversial interrogation practices that went on to be used in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From his behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates and is able to hold the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration to account, for their failure to safeguard international law.

Philippe Sands is an international lawyer and a professor of law at University College London. He is the author of Lawless World and is frequently a commentator on news and current affairs programmes including CNN, MSNBC, and BBC World Service. He has been involved in many leading international cases, including those involving the treatment of British detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Olenka Frenkiel is a reporter, writer and documentary film-maker specialising in international investigations for BBC Television and Radio. Her recent films in North Korea, Israel and Pakistan have won the Peabody, RTS and CINE Golden Eagle awards among others.

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Since 1991, Somalia has been a dangerous, violent and lawless place, home to numerous conflicts and civil war, as well as increasingly a third theatre of operations for the US in its global war on terror. From localised inter-tribal and clan warfare, to regional tensions and international disputes, Somalia remains a highly complex battleground. Will the recent Djibouti peace agreements between the Transitional Federal Government and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia result in anything concrete? And is Somalia really the next front in the War on Terror?

Ahmed Abdisalam is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information, Youth & Sports for the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

Abdirahman Warsame is the deputy head of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) and was chief negotiator in the recent UN-brokered peace talks in Djibouti.

Mary Harper is an African specialist for the BBC.
Sally Healy OBE is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programe at Chatham House. She was formerly an East Africa specialist at the Foreign Office. She led a collaborative study of conflict in the Horn of Africa, the findings of which were published by Chatham House in June 2008: Lost Opportunities in the Horn of Africa: how Conflicts Connect and Peace agreements unravel.

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In May 1991 Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia and over the past 17 years the government there has restored law and order to make it one of the must democratic and functioning societies in the Horn of Africa. In stark contrast to its neighbour Somalia, Somaliland has become an oasis of peace, stability and progress and a haven for thousands of Somalis fleeing from their war-torn country.

Yet Somaliland’s independence and sovereignty is still not recognised by most of the international community including Britain. What are the obstacles in the way of international recognition and is this really the best way forward?

How have the people of Somaliland built such a stable democracy, society and institutions in such a war-torn region and what are the lessons other de facto states can learn from it?

Richard Dowden is director of the Royal African Society. He worked for the Times until 1986 when he became Africa Editor of the Independent and in 1995 he took the post of Africa Editor at The Economist. He has also made three television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 on Africa.

Adam Mussa Jibril has been the Somaliland representative in the UK since January 2008.

Michael Walls is a lecturer in Development Planning at UCL and has a research interest in state formation in Somaliland. He is Chair of Somaliland Focus (UK) and the Anglo-Somali Society and a coordinator of the UK international election observation team for upcoming Somaliland elections.

Edward Mason is Head of the London Office of Independent Diplomat. He joined the organisation in November 2005 and has worked on all of ID’s current projects with the governments of Kosovo, Somaliland and Western Sahara. He is ID’s expert on Somaliland.

Mike Wooldridge is a world affairs correspondent for BBC News. He joined the BBC in April 1970 and in 1982 became East Africa correspondent. In 1989 he moved to Johannesburg to become Southern Africa correspondent and started his present job in 2001. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Mike covered conflict and hunger and other humanitarian crises in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Angola and Mozambique as well as the release of Nelson Mandela. He has reported from Africa regularly since then.

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Jehad Nga is one of the most talented emerging photographers on the international scene and for the last three years has worked intensely in and around Mogadishu. For one night only he will present a selection of images from his portfolio and talk about operating as a photographer in one of the world’s most dangerous environments. Nga’s photography style is unique - artistically sensitive, vibrant and thought provoking yet with the ability to shock and appall.

In addition to his work in Somalia, Nga has worked widely in Iraq on assignment for the New York Times. His image of blindfolded Iraqi prisoners arrested by US forces was used as the main publicity shot for the Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side.

Nga’s work in Somalia is an ongoing project. The work has been shown at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York, and funds from his art sales are going to build a school in Somalia. “It’s all one big piece of work,” he says.

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