Spotlight on Andrew Quilty

Winner of the 2021 June Andrews Award for Freelance Journalist of the Year and the 2021 Humanitarian Storytelling Award.

Just being here in Afghanistan on the ground allowed me to gain greater access to the victims, rather than the perpetrators themselves, in order to shed more light on this developing story.

Kabul-based journalist and photojournalist Andrew Quilty won two awards at the 2021 Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism — Freelance Journalist of the Year and the Humanitarian Storytelling Award — for his coverage of the war on civilians in Afghanistan.

“In a strong field of excellent entries, Andrew Quilty’s work was a stand-out,” the judges said. “A War on Civilians in Afghanistan combines fine on-the-ground reporting, compelling photography, and podcasting to capture the experiences of civilians in the conflict zone. Quilty displayed considerable tenacity and talent to tell these important stories.”

We spoke with Andrew about the need to support boots-on-the-ground international journalism and the power of journalism to force institutional change.

Congratulations on winning the Freelancer of the Year and Humanitarian Storytelling Awards. What’s the significance, for you, of receiving these recognitions for this body of work?
The significance for me in receiving recognition for this body of work is that it’s the first time I’ve been recognised for my writing as opposed to my photography, which has made up the vast majority of my career. About 18 months ago, I decided to refocus my journalism towards the written word and in particular, long form storytelling. Pushing the photography somewhat to the side and using that more as a complement to the written word, as opposed to the sole focus as it had been in the majority of my working life.

How did these stories come together for you? What were the starting points?
The real starting point for the stories probably began as far back as 2015, when I covered the American bombing of a hospital run by Medicines Sans Frontiers in the Northern Afghan city of Kunduz, where more than 40 non-combatants who were in the hospital at the time were killed.

Ever since then, I’ve really focused on the civilian, non-combatant victims of the war in Afghanistan. And so, the handful of stories that were recognised with these awards is really a continuation of that. One of the stories, about a CIA-led Afghan militia that was responsible for a number of extra judicial executions, massacres and abuses over the period of about 12 to 18 months in 2019 in one particular Afghan province called Wardak, came as a result of pulling on one single thread.

At the beginning of 2019, I heard of one of these raids and I conducted a few interviews with survivors. And it became clear to me that this wasn’t a one-off event. So I started trying to find other victims, other survivors of similar raids. And it ended up turning into what appeared to be a very well-thought-out, deliberate campaign, the victims of which were largely civilians and non-combatants who happened to live in areas controlled by the Taliban.

The second main story which I was recognised for was published by The Monthly. And it looked at, again, the theme of civilian casualties, this time in Uruzgan with the victims, in this case, being those of Australian special forces many years ago, from around 2007 through to 2014. The impetus for this report came primarily from the publication of the Brereton report, with which most people are probably familiar, and which was not only conducted but later published, largely thanks to the dogged reporting of a number of Australian journalists.

What I thought I could bring to the story, or add to the story, was the fact that I was based in Afghanistan and could access more of the victims than those reporting from Australia might’ve been able to do, without great difficulty.

Just being here in Afghanistan on the ground allowed me to gain greater access to the victims, rather than the perpetrators themselves, in order to shed more light on this developing story.

What have been some of the most significant impacts you’ve seen these stories have?
To be completely honest, I don’t think I’ve seen any impacts from these stories yet, in terms of justice for victims or justice being served against the perpetrators. Which I suppose is the ideal outcome — and the somewhat idealistic outcome — that most of us journalists hope to achieve when we get into the business.

I think, however, that my stories have become part of a growing number of stories and accounts.

And which, at least we hope, in time will become too great for those responsible, or the government’s responsible, to ignore.

Although my story on the Uruzgan victims obviously came after the Brereton report, I see the Brereton report, to an extent, as being the result of the work of a number of Australian journalists working at home that put so much pressure on the government that they were forced to conduct their own investigation. That has now followed into the establishment of the Office of the Special Investigator, which has now been charged by the Australian government with investigating and, potentially, prosecuting these crimes down the track.

I see my work as bolstering the case for justice.

How did you get into the field of photojournalism and journalism?
I had a couple of uncles who were professional photographers when I was growing up. One of whom gave me one of their cameras, a classic Nikon F3. Before I had even become particularly interested in photography, this certainly piqued my interest.

I then traveled around Australia for six months soon after leaving school, taking that camera with me and taking very casual, basic photographs of the trip, as anyone would nowadays and has in the past. But I saw it as a creative tool with which I could take my creative pursuits further.

So when I returned from that trip, I enrolled in photography at TAFE in Ultimo, Sydney. While I was studying there, at the same time I was working in a liquor store, where I met a photo editor at Fairfax at the time, who was very encouraging and who offered me some work experience at Fairfax. From there, I met some of the photographers who would have a huge impact on not only my photography, but also my view of the world and my life more generally. And it really rolled on from there.

Do you have a message for the Australian public about why it’s important that we continue to support quality international journalism?
I think, obviously, the media industry is and has been going through serious change in the last couple of decades. Firstly, in terms of photography, you have the uptake of digital photography. And in the same sense and at the same time, you saw analogue print journalism traversing over to the internet. That obviously had a huge impact on advertising revenue and the ability simply for newspapers and media outlets to make revenue from the business.

That saw international foreign desks within these outlets shrink overnight. And I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but I think there’s no doubt that in Australia, the amount of international journalism that is being funded now in comparison to, say, 20 years ago, is very minimal. That means a relatively small country like Australia must be happy to make do with the syndicated journalism that’s coming out of wire agencies, for example in a place like Afghanistan, and more generic reporting.

The kind of reporting that I did in the case of The Monthly is particularly pertinent to a specifically Australian audience, and without the support of publications like The Monthly, stories like that are not going to get commissioned and not going to get published.

Obviously, it’s an expensive undertaking to conduct reporting in places like Afghanistan. There are issues of security, translation and fixing. So it is a costly pursuit.

I think the support of publications like, in this case, The Monthly, not only is it critical to me as a journalist, but it’s critical for the Australian public if they are to get an understanding of the nuances of what is happening in a place like Afghanistan, where Australia has a legacy that needs to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Is there anyone you would like to thank for their involvement in these stories?
As with almost any story that’s reported in Afghanistan by foreign media organisations, the stories themselves would not be reported or published at all if it weren’t for local journalists and what we often call fixers and translators, the people who facilitate these stories being told, and whom we rely on for our safety and security.

For obvious reasons, I can’t name the people who have helped me in many cases and may have asked me not to name them. However, I can’t understate the extent to which their involvement made these stories possible.

For the story published by The Intercept, it involved ferrying in taxis — two at a time, to Kabul from the neighbouring province of Wardak — about 50 witnesses and victims of these night raids. And that involved a friend, a fixer, that would go into this province — into Taliban-controlled areas, across frontlines, at great risk to himself — and bring these people back to Kabul so that I could interview them.

In the case of the story published by The Monthly, a friend and colleague of mine who was happy to be named, Aziz Tassal, accompanied me on my week-long trip to Uruzgan. And once again, he was instrumental in bringing the stories together and collecting the accounts, by simply spending the time with me there and making for an environment conducive to good journalism and hard work. All of which culminates in the telling of hard stories.

Andrew Quilty has been based in Kabul, Afghanistan, since 2013, working first as a photojournalist and more recently as a writer. He has won eight Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley in 2016, as well as the George Polk Award, World Press Photo Awards and, most recently, an Overseas Press Club of America award.

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