Afghan Civil War Footage | Smuggling Guns with the Mujahideen (1989)

In December 1989, ITN’s Sandy Gall, sound recordist Russell Padwick, and camera operator Sebastian Rich joined a mujahideen convoy as it travelled from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Ten months after the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, the mujahideen’s struggle against the Soviet–sponsored regime of Mohammad Najibullah continued. Over seven days, Gall and his team crossed the Hindu Kush by horse and on foot, documenting the journey as Afghan rebels delivered arms to mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Presented here is the uncut footage from Gall’s journey to meet Massoud, together with his special reports broadcast on 6 and 7 December 1989.

For decades, Sandy Gall’s name was synonymous with ITN and its flagship programme, News at Ten. His international reporting earned him a reputation as one of the UK’s most insightful and intrepid foreign affairs journalists. He was 62 years old when he set out on his journey to Taloqan; it was his fifth trip to Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Through his reporting on the Soviet-Afghan war, Gall developed a deep personal connection to Afghanistan and its people. In 1986, Gall and his wife, Eleanor Gall (née Smyth), founded Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal, a charity dedicated to assisting in the provision of artificial limbs to victims of the Afghan civil war, particularly children. He remained friends with Ahmad Shah Massoud up until the latter’s assassination by Al Qaeda on 9 September 2001, two days before 9/11.

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