Libyans celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Libyan revolution

Libyans celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Libyan revolution, at Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli.

Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher.

Upon Napoleon’s return to power in March 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilize armies. Two large forces under Wellington and Blücher assembled close to the north-eastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition. Waterloo was the decisive engagement of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon’s last. According to Wellington, the battle was “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”.[10] The defeat at Waterloo ended Napoleon’s rule as Emperor of the French, and marked the end of his Hundred Days return from exile.

Two days before the battle, Blücher’s Prussian army had been defeated by the French at Ligny. Wellington decided to offer battle upon learning that the Prussian army had regrouped and was able to march to his support. Wellington’s army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon’s right flank. At that moment, Wellington’s Anglo-allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing coalition forces entered France and restored King Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, eventually surrendering to Captain Maitland of HMSBellerophon, part of the British blockade, and was exiled to Saint Helena where he died in 1821.

The battlefield is located in the municipalities of Braine-l’Alleud and Lasne, about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south of Brussels, and about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield today is dominated by a large monument, the Lion’s Mound. As this mound was constructed from earth taken from the battlefield itself, the contemporary topography of the battlefield near the mound has not been preserved.

The Royal Regiment of Scotland

Soldiers from B company 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland at sunset as they take part in Exercise Askari Storm on the outskirts of Nanyuki, Kenya.

Confiscated drugs are seen burning in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan

Confiscated alcohol and drugs are seen burning in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

Armistice Day – The anniversary of the end of The First World War

Brigadier Rob Thomson lays a wreath during a ceremony to mark Armistice Day attended by some of the British troops that still remain in Afghanistan at Kandahar airfield on in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Like Remembrance Sunday just gone, Armistice Day – which is the anniversary of the end of The First World War – has been marked by the remaining British troops for the last time in southern Afghanistan. Now that British combat operations have ended and the last UK base in Afghanistan has been handed over to the control of Afghan security forces, any remaining troops are leaving the country via Kandahar.

End of operations for the US and British combat troops in Afghanistan

U.S. Marines are seen on board a helicopter at Kandahar air base upon the end of operations for the Marines and British combat troops in Helmand.

David Chater

 

David Chater is an award-winning British broadcast journalist. Chater is a former correspondent with more than 35 years’ experience in international television news, having worked for Independent Television News, Sky News and Al Jazeera English. He joined ITN in 1976, Sky News in 1993 and Al Jazeera English in 2006. He is currently Head of News at Georgian television channel Kanal Pik, run under licence by K1.

Early life & education

Chater was born on 5 March 1953 in the large village of Meopham in Kent in South East England.^[1] He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School in the county town of Maidstone in Kent, from November 1965 to February 1972, and in later life, he became President of the Old Maidstonian Society.^[2]Immediately after leaving school, he took a Short-Service Limited Commission [SSLC] in the British Army and served briefly as an officer, attached to a regiment of Gurkha Rifles in Hong Kong, Brunei and Sarawak. He read Experimental Psychology at St John’s College from 1972 to 1975, graduating with an MA from the University of Oxford.

Career

Print-journalism

Like most journalists, Chater began his career working for the local newspaper. In his case, this was the Kent Messenger newspaper, but he stayed with the paper for only a very short time, before joining the broadcaster ITN.

ITN

Chater joined ITN in 1976, as a graduate trainee. Later, he became a scriptwriter and then a Chief Sub-Editor. As a reporter, he worked around the world, covering stories such as the Enniskillen bombing, Lockerbie, the Piper Alpha disaster, the Falklands Crisis and Falklands War in 1982 and the Gulf War in 1991. In 1991, Chater was seriously injured whilst reporting on the front-line in Vukovar during the Yugoslavian conflict, when he was shot in the back by a sniper’s bullet. Surgeons saved his life but had to remove one of his kidneys. After making a full recovery he returned to report on the Siege of Sarajevo and the continuing conflict in Bosnia. During his time with ITN, Chater filed stories from Tel Aviv, which was under Scud attack from Iraq during the first Gulf War, and went undercover to report on the opening of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Sky News

Chater joined Sky News in 1993, and opened its Moscow bureau, becoming its first Moscow Correspondent. He moved to Jerusalem in 1996, becoming Sky News’ Middle East correspondent. He was nominated for a Royal Television Society award for his coverage of the continuing conflict in that region. He reported from the conflict in Kosovo and the 1999 war against Slobodan Milosevic.

In 2001, Chater covered the war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, receiving a Gold Medal from the New York Television Festival for his reports on the siege of Kunduz, jointly with his Sky News colleague Colin Brazier. In April 2003, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Chater reported from the streets of Baghdad before and during the arrival of US forces to the city, stayed throughout Operation Shock and Awe and also covered the Battle for Faluja. Chater was awarded the Gold Medal for International Reporter of the Year at the New York Television Festival for his coverage of the Second Chechen War during the Siege of Grozny, in which he was caught in the middle of a Grad rocket attack while reporting to camera. The coverage was also nominated for an Emmy Award. He returned to the UK and was assigned to Sky News’ Investigative Journalism Unit, and later became Sky News’ Africa Correspondent.

Al Jazeera English

In 2006, Chater resigned from Sky News, joining Al Jazeera English. The then Head of Sky News, Nick Pollard, said Chater was leaving to pursue “other interests” and praised his “outstanding career” with the channel. Chater was Al Jazeera English’s correspondent in Jerusalem and later in Kabul, reporting on the rebuilding of Afghanistan, and Paris.

Kanal Pik

In 2008, Chater left Al Jazeera as a permanent correspondent to become Head of News at the Kanal Pik television channel in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Kanal Pik is run under licence by a new production company, K1, co-owned by British broadcasting journalist, Robert Parsons. Since 2008, Chater has continued to file occasional news reports for Al Jazeera, mostly on European issues.^[3][4][5][6]

Afghanistan War in Pictures

 Afghanistan War in Pictures

 

Green on blue attacks in Afghanistan

According to the news, Afghan security forces killed six service members from the American-led military coalition in a series of attacks in southern Afghanistan.

These attacks were the latest in the long series of so called green on blue incidents (attacks on NATO forces by members of the Afghan security forces), or insider attacks.

Two British soldiers also lost their lives in a similar incident in Helmand province.

Insiders have become a big threat to the security and future of Afghanistan.

Only this year, 60 coalition force members have lost their lives in such attacks.

Increasing numbers of these attacks have also destroyed the US plan to hand over the security of major cities to Afghan forces after the departure of NATO from Afghanistan.

The US has also suspended the training of Afghan security forces, wanting more scrutiny.

According to media reports, social and cultural differences are the main cause of the recent divides between Afghan and coalition forces.

Due to a poor scrutiny process and a lack of information, insurgents can easily penetrate Afghan forces. Even high security locations are not safe from insurgent attacks.

Recent events prove that the security situation has gone bad to worse. An attack last month on Bagram air base with insurgent rocket damaged the plane of a top US general and more recently six US fighter jets were destroyed in an attack on the base where Prince Harry is stationed.

Three coalition refueling stations were also destroyed and six aircraft hangars were damaged, costing millions of dollars.

Khawaja Umer Farooq
Jeddah