• MICHAEL WARE THE COURIER-MAIL DECEMBER 18, 2014 12:00AM

AIIA Queensland intern James Turner interviews
former war correspondent, Michael Ware, about Islamic State

[click photo to play]

Just who is behind the Islamic State?
Wed 3 Sep 2014, 6:29pm
Julia Baird talks with former Time and CNN war correspondent, Michael Ware.
Source The Drum | Duration 13min 46sec
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-03/just-who-is-behind-the-islamic-state/5717582

Michael Ware tells a compelling story of his experience at the hands of Islamists wanting to create an Islamic State. He was almost executed by the group that began the current push. Michael speaks about the brutality he witnessed at the hands of these people. Michael Ware is presently making a documentary on the subject.

Triple J Hack interview

21 August, 2014 11:35AM AEST
Michael Ware
Journalist Michael Ware returns to discuss the guiding ideals of jihadist group, Islamic State.

r1319167_18239382

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/08/21/4071673.htm?site=conversations

UPDATE: Podcast now available at https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/conversations-richard-fidler/id94688506?mt=2&i=317972085

• MICHAEL WARE
• THE COURIER-MAIL
• AUGUST 20, 2014 12:00AM

Australian TV cameraman Harry Burton was killed in Afghanistan in 2001.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …
– William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III, Scene I.

DID Harry Burton know he was about to be executed? Against giant bare rock, standing in the dirt. When his car was stopped and he was dragged out of it?

Did he know, I’ve long wondered? Asking myself that over and over ever since his murder in 2001.

Even as I found that lonely patch of road and stood there, months later, in silent testament. Grieving. Heaving. On that dusty little highway, by a winding mountain river, on the road to the Afghan capital Kabul. I wondered.

...so you can guess the pose!

Planes in war zones too common: Ware

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 03:22 EST, 18 July 2014 | UPDATED: 03:22 EST, 18 July 2014

Veteran Australian war correspondent Michael Ware says the MH17 disaster has elevated the crisis between Russia and Ukraine to a potentially explosive level.

With East-West tensions already heightened due to Moscow's annexation of Crimea, Ware believes the next few days are critical, and although the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines jet was likely a tragic accident, he says it has undoubtedly raised the stakes.

"The situation in the Ukraine is (now) a potentially explosive tinderbox - politically, economically and of course militarily," Ware told AAP on Friday.

"The downing of this aircraft heightens the tensions that already exist. There can be no room for error in somewhere like the Ukraine, and here we have seen error unfold.
Ware said the attack on the jet squarely increases pressure on Moscow to rein in pro-Russian paramilitaries.

"I think a lot of people will be pointing to the Russian military," he said.

"It's incidents like this that are always laden with the potential to further unravel these hypercharged environments."

Ware, a former CNN and Time reporter who has experienced the worst of war coverage including being captured by al-Qaeda, says he is generally surprised there isn't more collateral damage.

"This is a sad reality of where the commercial imperative collides with war. It's still economically attractive to airlines to continue flying over war zones. It's simply a matter of cost and reducing fuel," Ware said.

"Alas that is what happened here.

Ware said Jordanian Airlines and Iraqi Air both operated ceaselessly over Iraq at the height of its conflict.

However, the difference in Ukraine on Friday morning was the weapons system in play - the Buk Missile Launcher.

"At an altitude that an airliner usually flies they are safe from many surface-to-air systems," Ware said.

"It's not a common situation where we have weapons systems like this available in an active war zone, particularly to non-state actors like the pro-Russian paramilitary, operating in parts of the Ukraine.

"In places like Afghanistan and Iraq for example, there is the use of surface-to-air missiles but they're a much smaller weapons system, that is most often man-carried and launched from the shoulder.

"It's most unusual we have a situation in a former Soviet State where you have the availability of a weapons system like this, that can reach into the clouds and touch an aircraft at this kind of altitude. So it is unique in that sense."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2697029/Planes-war-zones-common-Ware.html