In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of In the East Wing. This is my conversation with Toby Harrington. Toby is an author and a journalist. He has spent many years of his life reporting from different places around the world, including Jerusalem and Baghdad in 2012 he was awarded the Orwell prize for books. He has written three non fiction books, including the most recent one titled first casualty, the untold story of the CIA secret mission to avenge 911 there is definitely a lot more to say about Toby, but it is certainly an honor to have him on the show. I'm really, really interested in talking about just a little bit of your journalism background, and perhaps war correspondence, if that's the right expression, is that would you say, yeah. And I think when I was reading about your background, I noticed a sort of pattern where, or let me actually, more accurately, I would probably say an interesting path, not a pattern. And that path consisted of a military career and then a transition to journalism. And that reminded me of a good friend of mine that I met in Lebanon who was a US military. He was with the Marines, but then decided to be a journalist. And I remember even before recording, I mentioned that he was in Ukraine for a while, and so it got me thinking about how, or it made me curious to understand how that transition happened. You know, from sort of Royal Navy. I think you were in Royal Navy, and then you decided to transition to journalism,

Toby Harnden 1:55
sure. Well, thanks so much. I'm very glad to be on the podcast, and I've enjoyed listening to some of the other episodes, and I know some of the people, oh yeah, like Jim Lawler, Nick Mulroy, for instance. I know it's interesting. The transition was not as stark as you might think. I didn't find it particularly different world at all. So in the Navy, and I joined, you know, I joined the Navy. My father had been in the Navy, fourth generation military. I grew up listening to my grandfather's tales of World War Two. And so I think I was, I was always going to join the military, and I'm very glad that I did. And one of the things I really enjoyed about it was dealing with all sorts of people from all sorts of different backgrounds and at different levels. So some so ordinary sailors from Glasgow or the East End of London, admirals and everything in between. And the other thing about it was and everyone was crammed together on board a shit with maybe 200 people, and you get to know every single person in the course of a year or two. And the other thing that I really liked was the variety and the travel and the fact that I changed jobs every year and a half, two years, it's exciting. So I go to a ship, I go to a ship, we'd sail around the world, and then I would go get a job in the Ministry of Defense or shore base. And so it was, there was a lot of change and a lot of variety, and very few days were saying I was going into an office every day. I was when I was in ministry defense, equivalent to Penn, and journalism was a little bit like that as well. You're dealing with all sorts of different people. Every day is different. You change jobs every couple of years. I went to I went to Northern Ireland, I went to Washington, DC, went to them, went to the Middle East, and also both professions were sort of human centered. So being with people was a, was a, was a big part of it. And I guess I'm barely outgoing and interested in people and what makes them tick and how things work, and so I did not find a big difference. I felt that, in a way, it felt like a natural progression. Wow, for me,

Abdullah Najjar 4:37
Well, it's interesting that you put it this way, because I when you were talking about how you were building sort of relations with approximately 200 people on a ship, and you're sort of building more than just a relationship, but perhaps even a brotherly or, you know, family bond. They sort of become your family, in a way you. I think it sort of maybe gives you an insight as well into how, especially when you're covering or in the Middle East or covering a war, and if you're embedded with military personnel, it gives you an insight into how these things work. Because you've been on the inside, right, you have some knowledge, and you understand how to how they perhaps navigate such such treacherous environments. And did that, do you think that gave you better chances, or, I guess, a better, yeah, better chance at being part of these sort of missions or operations abroad?

Toby Harnden 5:39
Oh, certainly. And I think it's very important as a journalist to do something beforehand. Think it really makes you appreciate what a great job it is, what a privilege it is, and and I think real world experience, because journalism is not really the real world. Real world experience is important, and so whatever you do, it doesn't really matter, doesn't certainly doesn't have to be the military, but it's really good to do something else. And and I've always been quite interested in somebody was a lawyer or an economist or something, and then they became a journalist. And I think it really does give them an give them an edge in general, because of the life they've lived, but also sometimes in the particular field. And for me, certainly, my first big posting as journalists was to Northern Ireland. So you know, I became a journalist was 28 No, that's probably seems very old to you, but looking back, was quite young I and so I was, yeah, I was posted to Northern Ireland by the telegraph. I've been a general news reporter for a fairly short period, and I was covering terrorism and the British Army and also paramilitary organizations, the IRA loyalist paramilitaries, and it really helped me, I think, to be able to understand what soldiers were facing and what kind of mentality they would have and what kind of background they would come from, also just basics of understanding something about weapons, but rank, the rank structure. You know, what a division is, what a brigade is, what a platoon is, what what the role of a sergeant is, or role of a of a lieutenant left turn or Lieutenant is. So all, yeah, all that, I think, was really useful. And then later on, when, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq and young soldiers or Marines or whoever are pretty scared, I felt that I was able to relate them, because I see myself in them, and I understand, I think for many journalists, it's a leap of imagination. You can certainly do it. It's a leap of imagination to understand why a young person might sign up for the Marines and be actually quite excited to go over to Iraq. I really could, I really could understand that. So I think it was useful. It gave me a little bit of credibility. Because, I mean, a generation of journalists actually got a lot of military experience, or experience with the military through through embedding in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think that's led to a lot of better journalism in in a way. But at the start of that period, I think it was hard for a lot of journalists to be able to be able to relate to the military, because they never would have joined it themselves. That wasn't the culture in their family. They didn't really know anybody who had done it, and it was alien to them. And I didn't have any of those problems.

Abdullah Najjar 8:53
You know, there's something you mentioned to me before the recording about how you try when you're chasing a story, or when you're writing about you're more interested in the person or the humanity of the person. If that is that an accurate assessment, you think, yeah, yeah. And through your experience, say, in Northern Ireland or even in the Middle East, how difficult was that for you to perhaps humanize the enemy, or see or cover a story of a person that might be considered evil, but you're trying, you're more, perhaps, interested in the story and highlighting it without your own take, highlighting your take on the matter, and sort of give us just knowledge, just knowledge sharing, or knowledge generation, like I'm interested to know about that.

Toby Harnden 9:47
So I don't think I've ever found it that difficult to find a humanity in somebody, to be able to relate to their experience. You. Even if I might, you know, vehemently disagree with what they're doing, what their cause is, what their beliefs are. To me, you put that to one side, I mean, and if you're if you're condemning things, either internally or actually externally, and condemning people and say this person is, you know, irredeemable, or even even, which is a very American thing, which I which I thought I understand, I understand, but good guys and bad guys. I mean, really, most people are not completely good or completely bad, and things are black and white. They're generally chains of gay, chains of gray. And that's that doesn't mean there's there's not right and wrong, and I feel I do have a strong sense of of right and wrong, but to me, I didn't so in Northern Ireland, I didn't find it difficult to understand why a young person might want to join the IRA and Hill British soldiers had, you know, watch towers overlooking their you know, father's farmhouse they seen their mother being, you know, stopped and searched while she was going shopping. If they'd heard stories of discrimination in employment, I could, I could completely understand it. It didn't mean I agreed with what they were doing, but I could understand it and relate to it. And you know, wherever you go, people are still people, even if it's a completely different culture, say, Afghanistan. If you see a beggar on the street in in Kabul, a mother with two children, say, which I actually do remember looking out of, you know, a building Kabul in in 2020 and wondering about what her life was like. I think there, you know, you can understand that she's in, she's in a bad spot, and, and to have reached that position in life, some, some pretty tragic things must have happened and, and you can feel, you know, empathetic towards that. And you know, one of the great things about journalism, proper journalism is you go in with an open mind, and you try and find out what's going on. And I mean, some of the journalism I've enjoyed the most, or found the most rewarding is where you go into a situation and you have to work out what's going on, and you talk to this person, you talk to that person, you see with your own eyes what's happening, and you work it out. And I much prefer that than than going to set pieces that are created for the media, or where the journalist is is a sort of a player character in the play. I much prefer it to go into situations where I will be on the periphery in observing things, rather than inserting myself into events and therefore changing the dynamics of what was happening, yeah, but I just think it's a it's sort of a fundamental thing in in journalism, if you if you can't listen to people, and if you can't make connections with People and sort of enjoy people in all their variety, that I think you're in the wrong profession. Now, there are people who are there are people. There are some quite good journalists who are like that, who just sort of misanthropes. Don't really like people. But I mean, I always found actually, when I did big interviews with people, sometimes sometimes well known people, some prominent figures. But one problem, I think it was a problem, perhaps, that I would end up usually liking that person, partly because they'd given, you know me time they'd agreed to do the interview, but we spent an hour or so of intimacy. And sometimes it could be a little bit adversarial, because I'd be trying to get them to talk about something they didn't really want to talk about. They want to talk about the, you know, the tedious book they've written. I want to talk about the controversy in their life, the elephant in the room, so 10 years earlier. So there was sort of situations like that, but I've never really enjoyed these very adversarial television interviews, yeah? And I think I would find it difficult to do them, click others, yeah. And gotcha is the term? It's maybe a British term, like we. Trying to trick the person. That's the classic question. But question is, where you, you could, you can ask a question, and either way, the answer is, a story. Is a story. And I don't, I don't, don't really enjoy that and, and so for me, a central part of every everything I've done has been that being interested in people, and Jim or Jim Lawler was talking about this, indeed, on your podcast, there's always a connection you can make, and there's always something about even the most on the basic terrible person that is interesting and perhaps admirable, and you just try to find those, those parts of people. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 15:54
I think, I think a lot of times what drove me to be curious person and really want to, I guess, highlight the humanity of a person is because I think I grew up in an environments that environments that were very tough, and you you start to realize, or you start to appreciate life more for whatever it has to offer. And you know, you become more, I guess, in tune with your emotions, and you start to realize that it could end at any moment. And you it's sort of like an awakening that makes you appreciate life more, appreciate the people that make up this life, and want to learn things and want to talk to people that know perhaps more than you do. And I think it humbles you in a way, realizing that you know, just very, very little, and there's so much out there that can be there's so much knowledge out there that can be acquired, and people have stories, and people have lessons and certain things that they can share with you, that you can learn. And so I think my my experience, you know, being in conflict, torn areas for most of my life. It sort of humbled me in a way, made me more curious in people and in life. And I guess, as a as cliche as it might seem, the purpose of life in a way, yeah, yeah,

Toby Harnden 17:36
yeah. And I think that setbacks in life, when things go wrong. I've always believed, you know what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And all these accumulated experience, experiences, through your family, through your personal life, where you've lived everything, good things and the bad things, they all combine to make you the person you are this particular moment in time. And I also firmly believe that there may be things that I know more about than most people, but every single person I meet will know a lot more about a number of things than I do and so and I feel that the things I know, even subjects I'm pretty familiar with, or stuff I've thought about for many years, I will still only know a fraction of the totality of that subject, and so clearly we know we see it on cable TV and stuff. Blow hearts, people who think they know everything, or pretend they know everything, people who've got an easy answer to every question. I don't I don't trust that, because life is a lot more complicated.

Abdullah Najjar 19:10
Yeah, yeah, when you when you first had a experience in the Middle East, Toby, what was, do you recall what you were thinking at the time, as you were about to travel abroad to perhaps an area you might not have been too familiar with. I don't remember whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq that you first went to in the in the region Iraq. Yeah, how you recall what, what that was like, you know, mentally for you or physically, as you were about to travel to a world that perhaps is not you're not very familiar with,

Toby Harnden 19:52
sure. Well, I think throughout my life, in a way, I put myself in. Unfamiliar, unfamiliar situations. So when I was a kid, I changed schools from the north, from the south of England to the north of England when I was nine, and so had to go into a playground, not knowing a single person having a different accent from everybody else, and knowing that it's gonna be a tough few days, and I was gonna have a few fights, and then I would make friends, and then doing very similar thing when I was 14, and actually working out who, who were the people who, potentially friends, who were the people to steer clear of. And then obviously the Navy. You go into a military environment. You don't know anybody, you're in a system with all these rules, and you and you have to make it work, and it's very much outside your comfort zone, going into a newsroom for the first time. Or Northern Ireland was a good transition period for me, because it's part of the United Kingdom, but there's a civil war going on and and low level compared to other parts of the world, terrorism going on, sort of armed internally going on, so I think I was reasonably well prepared, and also I'd always been thirsting to get closer to the action. I mean, one of the reasons why I left the Navy was because I was sailed all around the world and seen lots of nice places, but I was based in Scotland for the Gulf War. I joined just after the Falklands War. And so I always felt I tried to get a post in Bosnia, which maybe wouldn't send me to. So I always thought, thought I was missing out and I wasn't close enough to the action. Yeah, and so. And then 911 I was in Washington, DC, and I desperately wanted to go to Afghanistan, but, you know, The Daily Telegraph the newspaper, said to me, quite rightly, well, you're pretty well settled in DC. You've got good contacts. And it's a, you know, America's at war. It's very important, sorry, so we want to keep you there. But I really, really wanted to be in Afghanistan. And then I remember, you know, having my head in my hands when the statue of Saddam came down in Baghdad, and think, I can't believe I've missed another war. So, so there's an element of be careful what you wish for, I guess, in these things, but, but when I, when I got to So, I got posted to the Middle East, to Jerusalem, based in Jerusalem, in september 2003 and there was a sense at that point that Iraq was over and and that maybe It was going to revert back to and Afghanistan was over as well, and that it was going to go back to, you know, Israel, Palestinians being the main story in the Middle East, and that's what I got over there to cover. But it became clear pretty quickly that that the wheels were coming off in Iraq, and I was the Middle East correspondent, and so I wanted to go there. And I can actually remember the moment when I realized that I just had to get there, which was I walked into the American colony bar, which is on the green line in Jerusalem, and it's famous hotel for journalists and spies and diplomats. So I walked into that bar, and I was meeting a friend of mine who worked for LA Figaro. And he was, he was at the bar, and I walked in, and I said, you know, hi, Patrick. And he turned around and he said, you know, Toby,

what the fuck are we doing here? The story is in Baghdad,

when we're stuck in fucking Jerusalem. And I realized that moment, I mean, I've been thinking along those lines myself. I realized at the moment he was exactly right. So there was a there was a Sunni insurgency in Anbar Province. There was a sheer insurgency in sad city. There'd be Marines killed in Ramadi and Fallujah. There were so American soldiers being killed in Baghdad. And the story was over there. And so the next morning, I called the office and said, I think I should go to Baghdad sign off from Jerusalem. So not just the trip. I had done a trip before sign off, go to go to Baghdad and put Jerusalem in the hands of a stringer, and that for the foreseeable future I would cover it up, which is what I did. But when I got out, when I got there, I mean, I was very I realized that there's a sort of psychological, almost a physiological thing. You go through that danger when you get there, so you like a lot of anticipation. And there was that corkscrew landing. I forget that. I think it was a Jordanian. And. Line where you'd be higher by Baghdad, and because of the surface to air missile threat, you'd be very high in the you do sort of corkscrew landing, where you descend, oh, kind of very, sort of vertically, rather than, like a slow, sense, into the airport. So you get to go through that. And that's what, of course, been written about. And so you could sort of expect it. And then there's the journey into Baghdad, and you sort of think violence is a war zone. And, well, it was war zone, and, you know, could get killed at any moment. There could be an explosion. So all your senses are sort of heightened. And I remember getting to Palestine hotel and meeting David Blair, who was the correspondent who was switching out and I was coming in. I've never seen a person happier to leave a place than David that day. He was we taught for 20 minutes and he left. So this was, this would have this was May 2004 and yeah, we had a good conversation, and we both agreed that the next thing that was going to happen start happening was kidnappings. The Westerners were going to start getting kidnapped. And sure enough, Nick Berg was the young American who was kidnapped and beheaded on video shortly after that. So we were right, but I really remember that day because I sort of felt that I survived something just by getting to the hotel. Yeah, I hadn't really, I mean, you know, a month or two later, that was a journey I would do all the time, and wouldn't think anything of it, but it made me realize that your sense of danger and threat is very much tied to how long you've been in a place, what you're anticipating, and actually the that early period was very dangerous in terms of calculating risk, the really important thing is how to calculate risk, how to how to deal with risk and danger, and how to make decisions about where to go, what to cover, what journeys to take, what what journeys not to take, who to work with, who not to work with, who to trust, who not to trust. And in that early period, there was a very early on, like in the first few days, I almost realized it at the time that I'm taking too many risks here, because I was so desperate to get to the story, like to Najaf was being held by the Maori army at that point, and there was this big push from the news desk and colleagues that the place to be was Najaf. The journey was date. The journey was dangerous. You had to go through these sunny areas, you know, I didn't know the Fit sir and the and the driver very well. So I didn't know where they were coming from. You know, they were both Sunny. But we're going into a sheer area that all these nuances I didn't really understand. And so we went down, you know, two or three days in, we went down to Najaf. And as we got close, I think it was putho was the name of the place, just north of Najaf. We were held up by the Maori army dragged out of the vehicle. They were holding up our body armor and helmets and saying, you know, Americans, CIA, all this kind of stuff. And I remember getting into the we were taken away to be questioned. I remember getting into this truck and sitting on the sitting on the back and beneath our feet was just hundreds of RPG rounds. Oh my god. And I was very calm, partly because I just, I just think I've always known that the worst thing you can do is to panic and just to look at things, to just try and slow down, control your breathing, watch what's going on. That's a much better thing to do than start running around with your hair on fire. But I remember looking at the translator, fixer called salah. Who was, who was, I didn't really appreciate all this time. He's a sunny This is a Shia militia. And I looked at him, and I said, I felt okay. So I thought. This is just, this is this is Iraq. This is stuff that happens. You're here, you've chosen to be here. Just, just deal with it. But really, I had lost my perspective a little bit, because it was, it was, it was much worse than I thought, and realizing when things are dangerous in your really bad spot is important. I remember looking at Stalin, and he looked, just look really sad. I remember looking him and saying, is everything okay, salon, this is okay. And I guess I was expecting him to say, no problem, we'll be fine. It's just one of those things. And he looked at me and he said, he said, No, Toby, no, it's not fucking okay. And so it was a bit of a level set. If I realized, okay, this wasn't just another day in Iraq. It was, it was dangerous, and looking back, we probably shouldn't have done that trip. We should have done it in a different way, or I should have got at least one sheer, a sheer driver, or somebody who had a bit of bit of local knowledge. And I think some two or three months into it, I was much better at assessing danger and risk and making informed choices. But in that early period, I was sort of suppressing fear or danger, and also I was just really, really, really eager. Felt to me like of years of missing out on things. I was really eager to get to the story. But of course, you know, hopefully our lives are going to be long. There are plenty of opportunities to do things, and you have to, you have to stay alive to be able to to do them. So it would have been pretty stupid to have got killed on that, you know, second or third day, or whatever it was.

Abdullah Najjar 31:44
That's right, that's right. You spoke of being, you know, being accustomed to a place, or getting comfortable with the place after spending some time in the set place. And I think I remember growing up, obviously, I witnessed the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya when I was 10, and that was obviously pivotal moments in our lives, because we had to experience for The longest time this sort of war as it unfolds, obviously there was a NATO interference, and so all you hear oftentimes is, you know, the bombs dropping and the windows rattling, and you sort of grow accustomed to the situation. And I think that period sort of made it very it was, was a so firmly ingrained in our memory, because it sort of was perhaps our first ever experience being in a zone that is, I guess, bombarded in a way, and then throughout the years, ever since then you Get, I think, what, what scholars would call a protracted Civil War. Every now and again, you have factions fighting. You hear guns being shot, you know rocket launchers or bombs being dropped. And so you grow accustomed to being in such environments, and it sort of becomes your new normal. But there's, but no one actually prepares you for that. There's no way that you can simulate, I guess, that real experience, you know, this really real in a way that that you can can't, you know, simulate that to make it more to make yourself more comfortable as you experience it for the first time. And so it's, it's sort of interesting how one can be torn between two worlds, where you can live in a place that is perhaps more peaceful and comfortable, you know, there's comfort, but then at the same time, you can easily, you can bounce, you know, you can go from one place that is more where there's literally no action, and then you go to another place, and it's just, immediately, it's like a flip switch, you know, you you find yourself in that different zone, and you can operate properly. And it's just, you know, but there's no way that one would be able to know how that feels like, until the experience it, you know?

Toby Harnden 34:21
Yeah, I think one of my theories about life is hopefully we get to when we're very old and we're at the end of a natural life, so we sort of live the full distance. And I imagine, and I've talked to a lot of old people at the moment. You know, I'm doing searching CIA history, and so I speak to a lot of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s, yeah, and I feel that people get to the end of their lives, if they're lucky. Up and get to the end of their natural life, and they think, Ah, I've just worked it out. Just worked out how this thing works. And then that's it. That's sort of the beauty of life, that we're all, we're always, we're always learning. And every you know, every you know, cocky teenager thinks they they understand everything, and they know more than you do, but you mentioned something earlier, which I think is very important, which is particularly when you're young. But it's not just when you're younger, it's all the time. Is to appreciate and talk to and listen to people who have experience in things, whether it's because they're older and they've done lots of things, or whether they've lived in a different country or been through an experience you can you can always learn. And that there are so many people who go into a situation thinking they know it all and they don't listen to Yeah. So you go into a newsroom, and there's some grizzled old veteran who's been, you know, doing it for 25 years, and maybe is drinking too much and has got lots of boring stories, you know, what they, they you could probably, you can be almost sure that you can learn some things from that person, right? And so I think that's very important thing in life to to learn from other people. And as an older person, I'm 59, years old, there's a lot also that I can learn from younger people, some obvious things, like technology and stuff, but sometimes attitudes of you know, I may have all these prejudices or assumptions about a certain subject or a certain person, and sometimes a young person can just cut through it. And so my kids, my kids, sometimes I'll list, you know, my son will sometimes say things he's 16 or 17. Sometimes I'll talk to my son about something he'd be like, You know what? That's just not right. And I would have been thinking, Well, maybe it's right. I think it's probably not right, but maybe it is, but it's just because I don't know enough about it, and he'll just cut through it. So yeah, so sometimes that's a good level setter to talk to somebody who's who's younger and outside, but you always have to be learning from other people. I think, would

Abdullah Najjar 37:24
you say Toby that that attitude was present even early on, when you found yourself in perhaps the toughest situations in life abroad, where you had to learn lessons or what life is like from people of a different world, of a different culture. Did you have that same attitude back back then?

Toby Harnden 37:49
I think so. I mean, I think as you go through life, you accumulates experiences, and each thing informs you. And you know, having children is is pretty humbling. For instance, it's one of those things that that changes you. But, yeah, I mean, I grew up with, you know, parents who were interested in the world, who were sort of adventurous in their own ways, although they didn't travel particularly widely. But I think there was, I remember a phrase my dad, you know, something would happen. It's all part of life's rich tapestry. Sort of meaningless phrase, in a way, but I guess what he was saying was, you know, life has lots of different experiences and and different things. And so, for instance, when I, when I got so in 2005 I was arrested in Zimbabwe and in prison, yeah, which ended up being for two weeks. I didn't know it was gonna be two weeks. And on day, you know, the morning of day 14, joke was beginning to wear a bit thin in and I if, if I'd been convicted, I could have spent four years, good lord. And I was with a colleague and friend photographer, and we sort of had these, these conversations. But, you know, we were in African jail, and since the country was breaking down, the system in the jail, in some ways, would was was breaking down, we were, I think there was one other white guy in the in the prison, who was a South African who had aid and was in a terrible, terrible shape, and we were taken to meet him. Obviously, you never need to meet the other white guy. But, and we were in a and we were in a cell of a little over 100 people, and it was murderers, rapists, armed. Robbers, quote, political prisoners, and that's why we were in there, but it was all sorts of people. And you get in there, and it's pretty it's pretty frightening. You worry about things like rape and and violence, and so when you first get in there, you're like, Okay, so what's this? How's this gonna work? What this is gonna be like, but pretty soon, I mean, in this case, you know, we realized that it was structured. There was, it was a bit, actually, like the the IRA wing of the Mays prison in Northern Ireland, where it was run along military lines, whether it was commanding officer, number of deputies and sort of lieutenants. And it was very, was very structured, and we realized that we we sort of had value in that we could so the currency was soap and cigarettes, and we were meeting with lawyers most days, and we would be brought soap and cigarettes, so we literally had currency. Wow, we they people felt that we could help them, that we could put them in touch with lawyers, we could get this story out to an extent, I suppose we could. And so we were, we were looked after, and we had people assigned to us who were sort of like bodyguards, and nobody messed with us. And it was actually in some ways quite well, or everything was quite well ordered. There wasn't random violence or bad stuff going on. And, you know, we had, we had each other, which was good, but we, we, we sort of made friends and had great conversations with these guys who had had, you know, incredible lives and and a lot of them, a lot of them were in a bad, bad spot. I mean, we were fortunate. We went, we our case was tried almost immediately, of people, because this was a remand prison. Some people have been held in remand for two or three years, and they were in terrible date. And there was a lot of actually, the worst thing, which I underestimated at the time, was the disease in the prison. That was the worst thing. That was the biggest danger. Actually, Julian got a couple of pretty bad diseases, and I was okay. So I don't know why that was, but, but, yeah, I think that that my experience, no in the Navy, in Northern Ireland, in Iraq, all, all that sort of helped. And also it was a perspective thing, because Julian and I both spent a lot of time in Iraq just before then, being terrified of being kidnapped and having a heads chopped off, you know, the worst fear. And I went and I went through the fear sometimes when I thought it might be happening or be about to happen, that you just be, you know, in a vehicle or in your hotel room or or interviewing somebody, and you just grabbed and the next thing is, you're in an orange jumpsuit and you're being videoed. And you know, who knows what? You know what's going to happen or when it's going to happen. So we've been we've been through that, and so we both said to each other, well, it's not all right. We're not going to get beheaded. The worst that can happen is because we were, we were charged with practicing journalism without accreditation under this very repressive Mugabe era law in Zimbabwe. And the penalty, the maximum penalty for that, was four years. And we knew this, and so we were like, well, the worst thing that can happen is we'll be in here for four years, and obviously that's a long time. It was a worst case scenario. I generally think the worst case scenarios, generally speaking, don't happen, yeah, but even so, it's, it's a lot of the psyche, or our psyche was a lot different than if we'd been taken by some Sunni group or some, just some, you know, robbers, you know, sort of bandits who might have sold us on to al Qaeda. That would have been, we would have felt very sort of different. So there's a perspective thing, and so, you know, we, you know, a little bit like going on, since that's, you know, school ground, school yard, when you, you know, when you're nine, you sort of have to survive, and you have to make alliances, and you have to work out, you know, who's who, how the system works, and who to avoid and who not to antagonize, and who to befriend. And so we just, we just did all that, and it was out fine. Gosh,

Abdullah Najjar 44:50
it's just, these are the experiences I think that shape us and make us more. Hmm, in a way, less. We stress less when it comes to the small things. I guess because you like when you experience such deep or very rare scenarios in life, it just these things become more. They impact the level of, I guess, again, the appreciation of life. And at the same time, you start to, I guess, worry less about the little things, you maybe start to see the bigger picture. I don't know if that resonates. That's

Toby Harnden 45:40
certainly true, yeah. But it can also work the other way. So there's a there's a difficulty sometimes, with acclimating to ordinary life after intense experiences. And this is a part in I've done, actually work, quite a lot of work in different at different times on PTSD. So did a panorama documentary in Britain about PTSD and suicide in in the military. And I remember, I remember coming back from Afghanistan in 2009 I've been in Helmand Province, and it was, you know, it was carnage, really. At the time with with the British unit, lots of soldiers were being killed, being out on patrols where, you know, you think that the next, next step that I take, the ground may erupt, I'm gonna lose both my legs or be killed. And so I've been through that, and I remember coming back to Washington, DC, going into the office building where I worked, and the security guard there, who I knew, who I sort of said hello to, you know, most mornings for two or three years, asked me For ID because there'd been some security threat or something, and they people had to show their driver's licenses, okay? And, and I kind of exploded, and I just basically said, like, What the fuck do you mean? You know, you know who I am. It's ridiculous. Like, just No, I'm not showing you my idea. What are you going to do about like, that sort of reaction? And then I caught myself on and and that's because I've been through all these intense experiences recently where it felt like things were life and death, and then I had to deal with everyday bullshit. And so, I mean, that's a common thing amongst people who served in war zones. You know that that kind of movie scene where you, you go into the supermarket Island, there's 25 different types of cereal, and it's just, and it's so it's so jarring, because you've been in a place where all those everyday Monday things don't matter. You're just focusing on staying alive and doing your job and, you know, surviving until then the next day so that. So there is that issue, but big, big picture, certainly you appreciate life, because you don't take it for granted, and you've known people who've been killed, and, in some cases, friends, and there is a feeling that I have sometimes, that you live a good life And a meaningful life, in part because other people didn't get that privilege through just the randomness of, you know, the human condition. Yeah. And so think those two, those two things, are maybe, maybe intention with each other, but, but, yeah, I do think big picture. The these experiences help you appreciate life and keep things in perspective. And I do try, you know, mostly with success, to not sweat the small stuff and not get really agitated about this politician does this or says that, or does this video or this crazy thing that was said on cable TV, I mostly don't care, because does it really affect me? No, it's stupid, and I'm not going to get sucked in. Yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 49:34
Well, you know, Toby, I would love to perhaps do part two with you, and we delve deeper into your books, which I will highlight in my introduction after we wrap up our recording, and I'll also attach to the episode when it's published. But we have, we have sort of reached, I think, an hour mark, and I, and it pains me to have to really, I. To sort of conclude our conversation, but I do want to say I truly appreciated your insights into conversation and the perspective that you have is just, I'm always very grateful and blessed that I get to have people like you on my show and, you know, talk about life lessons and the things that perhaps make us who we are, our rich experiences that make us unique. And I'd still be interested in doing perhaps part two, because I think there's a lot more to talk about. Sure, well,

Toby Harnden 50:34
thank you very much. Very happy to be guests. I enjoy the podcast. Good luck with it, and you've got you've had an interesting life and got some interesting stories to tell yourself. Well,

Abdullah Najjar 50:45
thank you. Yeah, I think I'm sure there's a lot more that we can learn from from each other. So thanks again for joining me. Toby.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai