Q&A with Tam Hussein
"In the early stages of my career... the willingness to take calculated risks was very important."
Throughout the Orwell Festival we’re sharing new writing and insights from this year’s finalists. The Orwell Prizes for Journalism 2022 shortlist, released last month, highlights the finest politically engaged journalism published in 2021. To see the list, and all our awards, visit our website here.
Tam Hussein is an award winning investigative journalist focusing on conflict, terrorism, refugees and human trafficking, currently contributing editor to New Lines Magazine and specialist producer for ITV News. His books include To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan; The Travels of Ibn Fudayl; and The Darkness Inside (forthcoming). We spoke to Tam about his shortlisted essays and his journey as a writer and reporter.
Your entry features two profiles - Abu Qatadah, a long-time inmate in English prisons, now in custody in Jordan, and Talha Ahsan, an ex-jihadist who has reinvented himself as a poet and host of a history podcast. What draws you to a subject - and these subjects particularly?
I have always been interested in fighting, conflict, martial traditions and the fighting men who participate in them. But those men interest me partly because they are tied up to my own history: I grew up in the 90s and where these ideas were coursing through the British Muslim diaspora youth. I believe that some of these ideas formed a tradition which served as the basis of why we had the phenomena of Muslim young men going off to fight in Syria in such large numbers, but more specifically many of them turning to the caliphate of ISIS. So for me its about building up a genealogy, an honest history, to show those links - however uncomfortable.
Moreover, these subjects are historical figures. Whether you like it or not, Abu Qatadah is considered in his field a scholar whose importance in the jihadi discourse cannot be ignored; his finger prints are everywhere, if you will. Meeting men such these helps me to understand what has passed. I want to collect their testimonies and accounts in order to inform our understanding.
The likes of Talha Ahsan resonates with me, even more so, because like me he grew up in the 90s, and is both a witness and a participant in these events. He brings his academic training to the fore, as well as considered religious understanding, so when he tells his story, he’s not discussing it like an ideologue but as someone who is trying to put the record straight for future generations. Listening to both these accounts was a privilege and required a lot of trust.
In terms of access, that comes through one’s work: the ability to have a completely different point of view but being able to give them a fair hearing without being their mouthpiece is important. They respect it. It also involves leveraging personal connections, sending feelers out, and having random coffees at ungodly times with people who can vouch for you. I think it’s also about integrity and personal connections you have with your sources. I remain in contact with both men.
What has the broader reception to the Orwell Prize shortlisted pieces been? Have you observed prizes like this one helping grow the audience?
Making the shortlist has helped to grow my audience. For instance, my Substack page, The Blood-Rep, has seen an increase in subscribers. My social media handles have also seen more followers and the messages I have received from industry insiders also show that they are aware of my work, so pitching ideas become easier. The shortlist has certainly led people to buy To the Mountains, my life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan. But the nicest thing is the fact that people have written to me saying that they are looking into my fiction. Orwell of course wrote fiction too, and I hope that it will lead to an interest in my forthcoming novel, The Darkness Inside.
You're both a contributing editor to New Lines magazine and a specialist producer for ITV news. Does working across writing and broadcast inform how you approach each form? Do you have a preference for one or the other, or feel any pressure to specialize?
I like both. I love the thrill of breaking news, investigating something on your own, just tinkering away at a problem - and then informing the audience. I think whether broadcast or print the same principles apply in terms of rigour, but sometimes broadcasting can be problematic especially with social media, something that Neil Postman has talked about in Amusing Ourselves to Death. But print allows me to be reflective and explore something in depth. So they compliment each other.
Your essay on Afghanistan paints a stark picture of a country that, following decades of war, has become a 'mythical country' in the Muslim world, and inspired many diaspora jihadists. What happens to that idea - the 'fantasyland' - now the Taliban have won?
I think it has reinforced the myth and that is not the fault of the Taliban - they were local actors in a regional conflict. Irrespective of the historical record and events, to many of the diaspora jihadists, the Taliban victory is a vindication of their ideas. So I believe Afghanistan will remain this mythical country unless they deal with the historical realities going back decades.
What is the best piece of reporting - or book - you've watched/read/heard recently?
Recently: The Key Man by Simon Clark and Will Louch and Kleptopia by Tom Burgis are both good in their ability to tell a story and breakdown financial wrongdoing effortlessly. As an investigator who relies on Open Source Intelligence, I also love the work of the New York Times visual investigations team simply because in the age of ‘fake news’ they really show their working with brutal honesty and clarity.
Which journalists working today do you most admire?
Chris Sands and Fazelminallah Qazizai both do some great work. They are tenacious as well as really decent human beings. I work with Chris closely, so have seen him bringing his professionalism and ethics to the fore. I envy the work that went into their recent book, interviewing over three hundred sources in order to write probably the only biography on a Mujahid leader, Hekmatyar. I also admire Donald McRae, the Guardian boxing journalist whose portraits and profiles are wonderful, as is his approach to his craft.
Who (or what) helped you most when you were first starting your career?
In the early stages of my career, I think the willingness to take calculated risks was very important - the willingness to go where most will not go helped a lot. I came into journalism relatively late, and I think life experience, people skills, languages and a post-grad in the arts and willingness to think outside the box all helped. I had spent a considerable period of time abroad learning, living and writing so when the opportunity did arrive I was ready to seize the opportunity.
What does George Orwell mean to you?
I wrote ‘The Reluctant Roadman: the true story of children enslaved in Britain’s county lines’, which was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils in 2021, and it was inspired by Orwell - I had just finished Down and Out in Paris and London. I think some of Orwell’s finest pieces are not the usual – Nineteen Eighty-Four or Animal Farm, though they are good - it’s Down and Out , Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia and his essays. Those works shows how he is able to transcend his background and look at himself and his society with great honesty. His willingness to deeply understand and immerse himself, to reach out to people one would usually not associate with is something that really inspires me. And I use him as a benchmark.