From sneaking into Iraq with George Galloway to dodging Russians in Afghanistan, Paul Moorcraft’s life has never been dull. William Gadsby Peet hears a war tale or two
This photo was taken in Iraq just after Paul had mistaken Preparation H for toothpaste, hence the grimace
Professor Paul Moorcraft has enjoyed one hell of a career. And he isn’t exactly shy of saying so.
“Pen and Sword, my publishers, were on the phone yesterday to say that the field marshals on their books only get one memoir, so they weren’t sure why they were letting me write a fourth. I said: ‘I’ve lived an interesting life!’”
Nor is that an empty boast, as I quickly find out over a cup of tea in the kitchen of Paul’s charming Surrey Hills cottage at Gomshall. He nods at a horrific piece of kitsch on the wall: a dinner plate adorned with a portrait of Saddam Hussein (think royal wedding memorabilia but with a walrus moustache).
“I bought that in Iraq,” he says. “George Galloway and I snuck in a few days before the invasion. We spent the entire time arguing about whether or not we’d find WMDs. I was convinced we would and George was sure we wouldn’t. I remember saying that if we didn’t find anything I’d eat my hat. I rang him up six months afterwards and asked if he’d allow me custard or cream to accompany my dinner. He laughed and thanked me for apologising, as no one else he knew had done so.”
Above and below: Paul and his film crew in the Kabul Hills, 1984
This, I reflect ruefully, is going to be a hard piece to write up. For the next hour and a half, Moorcraft – author, journalist, lecturer, British defence establishment insider and, since 2004, Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis, an independent think tank dedicated to conflict resolution – has me waving goodbye to sentences that would have been the crowning jewel of most interviews. Here, with no context whatsoever to justify their inclusion, are three I simply couldn’t resist.
“She invited me to a BBQ and fired a shot across my bows by insisting I eat my sausage sideways to avoid phallic misinterpretation.” “How I ended up as an officer in the Zimbabwean army, I’ve no idea.” And finally: “He introduced Osama bin Laden to his third wife, so I used to say: ‘Look Hassan, I’m single...’”
A proud Welshman hailing from Cardiff, Paul was enticed away from a marketing job at the Welsh tourism board by his interest in international affairs, lecturing at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before branching out into the related worlds of war correspondence and conflict resolution.
“I was fascinated by the use of power and how civil and military interests interrelate,” he explains. “That’s why I’ve always been drawn to the most dangerous places on earth. I’ve had a Rambo lifestyle – though I look like Danny DeVito now – and I was interested in the nature of courage too. Is it a muscle that you develop and strengthen, or a well that you use up?
“Anyway, I had a habit of being able to get to places and talk to people, and somehow I consistently seemed to be in the most dangerous places at the right (or wrong) time.”
Paul with US Marine liaison officer, Bosnia, 1997
Paul on the Angolan/Namibian border in 1986 with his trusty Pentax K-1000 – "Almost idiot-proof but it did beat me a few times!"
Paul with Islamic fighters (Mujahedin) in tribal territory between Pakistan and Afghan, July 84
Dozens of books and no fewer than 30 war zones later, it’s funny to think that one of our most prolific writers on armed conflict almost spent his life promoting a welcome in the hillsides. Instead, years on the front line have left Paul with a battery of anecdotes more West Bank than West Glamorgan in flavour.
“I’m a dirty old man and I really fancied Marie Colvin,” begins one such tale with a laugh, prompted by a photo on the mantelpiece. “So I have lots of pictures of her. Lindsey [Hilsum] is a colleague and friend of mine, and that photo of her with Marie [the acclaimed Sunday Times journalist killed in Syria in 2012] was taken in 2003 on the West Bank, outside Jenin.
“The PLO smuggled us in and it was a big story, as the Israelis had surrounded the town and were knocking the hell out of it, though they said they were using limited means. We’d been arrested and were stuck in an armoured vehicle that was very, very hot.
“Lindsey asked me to entertain the troops, so I was pretending to be a DJ and put records on. I started singing The Day I Met Marie – you know, ‘Marie with the laughing eyes, she’d toss her hair and tantalize’. Just as I began, I realised that Marie Colvin only had one eye. So I went ‘Shhhcrk’ and said that the record was broken and that we’d have to play The Young Ones instead.”
Paul’s frenetic sense of humour often distracts attention from the severity of these perilous situations. The jovial mask slips, however, when I enquire as to the hairiest moment of his career.
“I led a group of ex-special forces guys in Afghanistan back in 1984,” he recalls. “We were filming a documentary about the fifth anniversary of the Soviet invasion.
“I got everybody in and out, but we saw heavy action each day. There were a lot of Spetsnaz – Russian special forces – around and we were bombed by Mi-24s. The Russians blew every house we stayed in to pieces within a few hours of our leaving. The whole thing was quite heavy going.”
Photo of the Sudan Liberation Army taken by Paul in Darfur, 2008. The rebels in this photo are wearing amulets which they believed (wrongly) turned enemy bullets into water
Paul with Swedish UN officer, Lebanon, 1991
Film crew near Russian armoured personnel carrier – knocked out by Mujahedin. The film crew had all previously been professional soldiers (except Paul) before becoming film-makers. Photo taken in June, 1984, near Kabul
Truth is stranger than fiction, however, as Mark Twain and others have asserted, and another of Paul’s assignments yielded gloriously unforeseen fruit.
“At my think tank, we were asked to observe the South Sudan election process. Well, one of our locals, the future Lord of the Manor of Shere, fell in love with the lady running my office in Khartoum.
“His mother, the current Lord, doesn’t like me – or she didn’t, on account of a graphic sex scene in Anchoress of Shere [Paul’s novel of 2002]. But as soon as I inadvertently arranged for her son to marry a beautiful Sudanese girl, all was forgiven.”
By now the intended focus of the interview – Moorcraft’s latest books, The Jihadist Threat and Superpowers, Rogue States and Terrorism – has been buried beneath the personality avalanche of the man himself. They’re fine reads though, offering a wide-ranging and often provocative examination of world politics, terrorism and the Middle East.
Paul’s assessment is rather more blunt.
“I never know if I’m a polymath or just full of s**t!”
’The Jihadist Threat’ and ‘Superpowers, Rogue States and Terrorism’ are published by Pen and Sword: pen-and-sword.co.uk
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