Anthony Loyd

Last updated

Anthony Loyd
Born
Anthony William Vivian Loyd

(1966-09-12) 12 September 1966 (age 58)
Churt, England
Education Eton College
Occupation War correspondent
Employer The Times
Spouse
Lady Sophia Hamilton
(m. 2002;div. 2005)

Anthony William Vivian Loyd (born 12 September 1966) is an English journalist and war correspondent, [1] best known for his 1999 book My War Gone By, I Miss It So. He gained prominence in February 2019 when he tracked down a British ISIL bride, Shamima Begum.

Contents

Biography

Loyd grew up in Churt on the HampshireSurrey border and attended St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Eton College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. [2] [3]

War correspondent

He went to school for journalism and then went to Bosnia with a vague plan to cover the ongoing war. He started taking pictures but almost by accident an American reporter offered to buy some that he saw. So Loyd became a war photographer supporting himself by selling photos for 50 Deutsche Marks per photograph. [1] Much later Loyd was traveling taking photos with British forces around Travnik, central Bosnia and Herzegovina about 90 km west of Sarajevo. While covering a fire fight a French correspondent who was writing for The Daily Telegraph was wounded by a claymore mine set off by the Croat HVO forces. The wounded correspondent asked Loyd to fill in until the paper could send a replacement, Loyd agreed and so started his first job as a journalist. [1] Afterwards he was put on retainer by The Times of London and regularly sent to war zones around the world.

Among the wars he reported were the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq. Loyd was noted for the risks he took in pursuing his stories. His most recent bylines (as of 15 September 2005) have been from Baghdad, where he has been out on patrol with both the American and Iraqi forces. [4]

Shamima Begum

Loyd found ISIL bride Shamima Begum in the Al-Hawl camp in Northern Syria. After finding Begum, Loyd taped an interview with her where she stated she had no regrets about moving to ISIL-Controlled territory. [5]

Author

My War Gone By, I Miss It So, is a book based on his experiences in Bosnia and Chechnya. In the book Loyd staggers chapters about war in Bosnia, Chechnya, and boredom tinged with heroin addiction in London.

He published a second volume of autobiography, Another Bloody Love Letter, in 2007. It covered his experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Personal life

Loyd married Lady Sophia Hamilton, daughter of James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn in 2002 at Baronscourt, the Duke's 5,500 acre (22 km²) ancestral estate, near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. [6] They were divorced in 2005, on an amicable basis, occasioned by Loyd's frequent absences reporting on wars. He remarried again in 2007 and as of 2008 was based in Devon with his wife, daughter and stepdaughter. [7] [8]

While reporting in Northern Syria (2014), he was shot twice in the leg by Syrian rebels to stop him running away. [9]

Family

His paternal grandfather was Captain Vivian Loyd MC (1894-1972), a British army Captain and inventor and manufacturer of tanks and military vehicles. His maternal great-grandfather was Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart (1880–1963). [10] [11] His great-grandfather was not only a highly decorated British soldier, he was also one of the most wounded (eleven times, which included the loss of an eye and a hand).

Bibliography

Books

Articles

Book reviews

YearReview articleWork(s) reviewed
2014"The enemy at my table". New Statesman. 143 (5237): 49. 21–27 November 2014. Powell, Jonathan (2014). Talking to terrorists : how to end armed conflicts. London: Bodley Head.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Fisk</span> English writer and journalist (1946–2020)

Robert William Fisk was an English writer and journalist. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islamic State</span> Salafi jihadist militant Islamist group

The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by their Arabic acronym Daesh, are a transnational Salafi jihadist group. Their origins were in the Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004. The organization affiliated itself with Al-Qaeda, so IS was originally a branch of Al-Qaeda and fought alongside them during the Iraqi insurgency. IS eventually split, and gained global prominence in 2014, when their militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Notorious for their perpetration of war crimes and extensive human rights violations, IS have engaged in the persecution of Christians, Mandaeans, Shia Muslims, and Sufi Sunnis, and published videos of beheadings and executions of journalists and aid workers. By the end of 2015, they ruled an area with an estimated population of 12 million people, where they enforced their extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.

Mulberry Academy Shoreditch Academy in London, England

Mulberry Academy Shoreditch is a comprehensive co-educational academy for students aged between 11–18 in the Bethnal Green neighbourhood of the Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London.

Mujahideen, or Mujahidin, is the plural form of mujahid, an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in jihad, interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the community (ummah).

Andrew Simmons is a broadcast journalist, currently working with Al Jazeera English. In recent years, he has specialised in covering the conflicts of the Arab Spring.

Jim Muir is a British journalist, currently serving as a Middle East correspondent for BBC News, based in Beirut, Lebanon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War against the Islamic State</span> Military actions against the Islamic State

Many states began to intervene against the Islamic State, in both the Syrian Civil War and the War in Iraq (2013–2017), in response to its rapid territorial gains from its 2014 Northern Iraq offensives, universally condemned executions, human rights abuses and the fear of further spillovers of the Syrian Civil War. These efforts are called the war against the Islamic State, or the war against ISIS. In later years, there were also minor interventions by some states against IS-affiliated groups in Nigeria and Libya. All these efforts significantly degraded the Islamic State's capabilities by around 2019–2020. While moderate fighting continues in Syria, as of 2024, ISIS has been contained to a manageably small area and force capability.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom. British citizens have fought as members of the group, and there has been political debate on how to punish them. On 26 September 2014, Parliament voted to begin Royal Air Force airstrikes against ISIL in northern Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, which began four days later, using Tornado GR4 jets. On 2 December 2015, the UK Parliament authorised an extension to the Royal Air Force airstrike campaign, joining the US-led international coalition against ISIL in Syria. Hours after the vote, Royal Air Force Tornado jets began bombing ISIL-controlled oilfields.

The Bethnal Green trio are Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three British girls who attended the Bethnal Green Academy in London before leaving home in February 2015 to join the Islamic State. According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, they were among an estimated 550 women and girls from Western countries who had travelled to join IS—part of what some have called "a jihadi, girl-power subculture", the so-called Brides of ISIL. As of 2024, one girl has been reported killed (Sultana), one girl has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied re-entry into the country (Begum) while the third's fate is unknown (Abase).

2013 was the year in which the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant adopted that name. The group expanded its territorial control in Syria and began to do so in Iraq also, and committed acts of terrorism in both countries and in Turkey.

Shamima Begum is a British-born woman who entered Syria to join the Islamic State at the age of 15. As of 2024, she is living in al-Roj detention camp in Syria.

Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State (IS), becoming brides of Islamic State fighters. While some traveled willingly, including three British schoolgirls known as the Bethnal Green trio, others were brought to Iraq and Syria as minors by their parents or family or forcefully. Some attempted to travel but were prevented.

Sharmeena Begum is a jihadi bride who left the United Kingdom to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in December 2014. Two months later, in February 2015, her school friends Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana joined her in occupied Syria. Begum is one of the youngest British teenagers to join ISIL.

Lisa Smith is a former Irish soldier who converted to Islam and later travelled to Syria during the Syrian Civil War to join the militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) during the Syrian Civil War. Born in Dundalk, she was a member of the Irish Army before transferring to the Irish Air Corps in 2011, but quit following her conversion to Islam. In 2015, following the breakdown of her marriage, she travelled to Syria to join ISIS. In 2019, she was captured and detained by the US forces in northern Syria. She was sentenced at the Irish Special Criminal Court on 22 July 2022 to 15 months in prison following her conviction on 30 May of membership of Daesh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Hawl refugee camp</span> Refugee camp in Syria

The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.

The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreign fighters in the Syrian civil war</span>

Foreign fighters in the Syrian civil war have come to Syria and joined all four sides in the war. In addition to Sunni foreign fighters arriving to defend the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or join the Syrian rebels, Shia fighters from several countries have joined pro-government militias in Syria, and leftists have become foreign fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces.

<i>Begum v Home Secretary</i> 2021 Supreme Court of the United Kingdom case

Begum v Home Secretary [2021] UKSC 7 is the short name of three closely connected proceedings considered together in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, R v Special Immigration Appeals Commission; R v Secretary of State for the Home Department; and Begum v Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning Shamima Begum, a woman born in the United Kingdom who at the age of 15 travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Her intention to return to England in 2019 resulted in a public debate about the handling of returning jihadists.

Mohammed Tasnime Akunjee is a British Bangladeshi criminal law and human rights lawyer, and a political commentator. He specializes in terrorism and related fields, and his notable works includes the 2019 defamation case against Tommy Robinson, the Almondbury Community School bullying incident, and the citizenship deprivation case between the British government and Shamima Begum. In January 2024, he declared intention to run as an Independent candidate for a Member of Parliament for the newly drawn Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency in East London, though he did not do so in the general election that July.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Anthony Loyd (1 February 2001). My War Gone By, I Miss It So . Penguin (Non-Classics). ISBN   0-14-029854-1.
  2. "My War Gone by, I Miss it so". www.ralphmag.org. Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  3. "Writers | Eton College". www.etoncollege.com. Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  4. Anthony Loyd (11 February 2005). "I'm more scared of going out with these guys than fighting insurgents". The Times . London. Archived from the original on 23 May 2011. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  5. Qamishli, northern Syria, Anthony Loyd (14 February 2019). "How I found Shamima Begum". The Times. ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  6. Eden 2013
  7. "Anthony Loyd's blood, sweat and tears". Metro. 2008. Retrieved 18 December 2008.
  8. The stepdaughter is mentioned in another article
  9. Williams, Martin (14 May 2014). "Times journalists escape after kidnapping in northern Syria". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  10. Ines Sabalic (2000). "War in the Balkans". bosnia.org.uk New Series no.13/14 December 1999 - February 2000. Archived from the original on 31 March 2010. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  11. Modjeska, Drusilla (2007). The Best Australian Essays 2007. Black Inc. ISBN   9781863954198.

Sources