Al J. Venter – författare

From a small town in Natal to dodging bullets in war torn countries. Al J. Venter has borne witness to humanity’s biggest atrocities of the past 55 years. He is the oldest active war correspondent, and he has reported on over 25 wars. In his memoir he masterfully tells the tales of the wars he covered and the stories behind the headlines and the trip across Africa that changed it all. From rebel groups who came for him, to seeing children die. . . to cheating death 'at least 20 times'. Al J. Venter has written over 60 books and is a legend in the world of conflict zones.

These are frightening times for us all: Sarin nerve gas being sprayed on innocent civilians in Syria, threats that biological warfare agents might be spread about on the New York Subway and the most terrifying of all, three dirty bomb attacks thwarted in Russia. The reality of all these developments is that the environment in which we live today is being seriously threatened by the calculated use of weapons of mass destruction, and from a variety of dissident sources.Several rogue nations have attempted to build the bomb, an enormously complex task. So far only Pakistan and North Korea have succeeded, with Iran right now on the cusp of making that breakthrough. South Africa built six atom bombs in the 1970/1980s but these were dismantled under British and American supervision together with help from the International Atomic Energy Agency before Nelson Mandela's African National Congress came into power.In Nuclear Terror, Venter assesses the developments over recent decades of different countries in their attempts to build nuclear programmes. Not inflammatory or scaremongering, Venter takes an objective stance in chronicling these disturbing developments overseas and in the process adds another valuable contribution to this conversation.

When the world held its breath It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944 long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was, and is, the Horn of Africa Few countries in Africa have had such powerful links with both the Soviet Union and United States each for several years at a stretch as Somalia. From a quiet Indian Ocean backwater that had once been an Italian colony, it remained aloof from the kind of power struggles that beset countries like Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, Algeria and others in the 1970s. Overnight, that all changed in 1969 when the army, led by Major General Siad Barre, grabbed power. His first move was to abrogate all security links he might have had with the West and to invite Moscow into his country as an ally.The Soviets moved quickly, establishing several air bases in the interior and stationing their ships in Somali ports.Baledogle, a small airport north of Mogadishu, became a major air base from where Soviet military aircraft operated through much of the Indian Ocean. An impetuous man, Siad Barre believed his links with Moscow were secure enough to annex several neighbouring regions. But when he invaded Ethiopia s Ogaden Province Addis Ababa was then Washington s staunchest friend in Africa s Horn the Soviets had had enough. To the consternation of the West they abandoned Somalia and embraced Ethiopia, which resulted in the Russians giving full support in the Ogaden War to Addis Ababa and establishing the largest airlift of arms to an African country since the Six-Day War. For more than a decade thereafter conditions within Somalia deteriorated. Various tribal leaders established themselves as war lords , some with Soviet support, others getting succour from Western sources. It got so bad that in 1992 the United Nations eventually stepped in with Operation Restore Hope, a multi-national force created for conducting humanitarian operations in Somalia.The move was always controversial with many tribal leaders retaining either clandestine Soviet links or receiving aid from radical Arab forces that included al-Qaeda.Though the United Nations and the African Union (AU) both maintain a strong presence in the country, hostilities and killings go on.

Insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere-the majority linked to al Qaeda-are in the news on an almost daily basis. But very little surfaces about a festering insurgency that has been on the go for six years in West Africa under the acronym of AQIM, or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. This low-level series of guerrilla conflicts is widespread and sporadic, covering an area as vast as Europe. Nigeria has been drawn into the equation because its Boko Haram insurgent faction maintains close ties with AQIM and Islamic State.For now though, the focus is on Mali where several jihadist groups-despite formal peace agreements-remain active. Involved is the French army and air force as well as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM) as well as the European Union Capacity Building Mission (EUCAP).The insurrection that fostered all this broke out early 2012 when President Fran�ois Hollande announced the beginning of Operation Serval. Five hours later the first squadrons of French Gazelle helicopter gunships began attacking Islamist columns. A day later French fighter jets based in Chad, almost 2,000 kilometres away, were making sorties against rebel ground targets in northern Mali.

One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people-mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children-died in one of Africa's first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced-barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict-involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets.Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africa's most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability-from which Nigeria never really recovered-also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.

Portugal was the first European country to colonise Africa. It was also the last to leave, almost five centuries later. During the course of what Lisbon called its civilizing mission in Africa the Portuguese weathered numerous insurrections, but none as severe as the guerrilla war first launched in Angola in 1961 and two years later in Portuguese Guinea. While Angola had a solid economic infrastructure, that did not hold for the tiny West African enclave that was to become Guine-Bissau. Both Soviets and Cubans believed that because that tiny colony- roughly the size of Belgium - had no resources and a small population, that Lisbon would soon capitulate. They were wrong, because hostilities lasted more than a decade and the 11-year struggle turned into the most intense of Lisbon's three African colonies.It was a classic African guerrilla campaign that kicked off in January 1963, but nobody noticed because what was taking place in Vietnam grabbed all the headlines. The Soviet-led guerrilla campaign in Portuguese Guinea was to go on and set the scene for the wars that followed in Rhodesia and present-day Namibia.

Portugal fought a bush war in Mozambique - one of the most beautiful countries in the world - for over a decade. The small European nation was ranged against formidable odds and in the end was unable to muster the resources required to effectively take on the might of the Soviet Union and its collaborators - every single communist country on the planet and almost all of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, Al Venter argues, Portugal did not actually lose the war, and indeed fought in difficult terrain with a good degree of success over an extended period. It was radical domestic politics that heralded the end. Mozambique is once again embroiled in a guerrilla war, this time against a large force of Islamic militants, many from Somalia and some Arab countries, and unequivocally backed by Islamic State and the lessons of Mozambique’s bush war are still relevant today.

Africa currently faces more wars, insurgencies, army mutinies, coups d’état and rebellions than at any time since World War II. Conflict in all forms has become endemic, now accentuated by a relative newcomer: Jihadism, increasingly linked to either Islamic State or al-Qaeda.  The year 2020 saw a record high in state-based conflicts on the African continent: around 22,000 incidents of armed conflict recorded. There were two dozen country-based military struggles recorded, three or four more than in 2018. Of these, 13 battled over territory, the highest number ever. Incidents of conflict have risen each year since, and the broader canvas since Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine suggests things will continue to worsen. Islamic Jihadist forces are responsible for much of this, involved in a succession of conflicts in Africa. These range all the way across the Sub-Sahara swathe, Mauretania, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, the Sudans as well as Somalia. A more recent entrant to the fray is Tanzania, whose Dar es Salaam government in late 2021 appealed to the European Union for military help to counter an escalating Jihadist insurgency in its southern province. The upward trend is sobering. And there are long-term security implications both within and beyond Africa – if conditions do deteriorate, Europe will ultimately be threatened. Veteran war correspondent Al Venter brings his decades of experience to illuminate what Islamic Jihadist forces are effecting in Africa, and why, and what the future may hold.

The world’s oldest still-active war correspondent, Al J. Venter has reported from the front lines for well over half a century, witnessing the horrors humanity visits upon itself in twenty-five conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.In this memoir, Venter masterfully recounts his experiences, sharing the real stories behind the headlines and the sharp lessons he learned that enabled him to survive his countless exploits, ranging from exposing a major KGB operative in Rhodesia entirely by accident, and accompanying an Israeli force led by Ariel Sharon into Beirut, to gun-running into the United States.