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Revision as of 10:52, 8 May 2009
John Gunston (born July 1962) is the third Baronet of Wickwar in the County of Gloucestershire in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. He is perhaps better known for his exploits as a photographer in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Born John Wellesley Gunston in July, 1962, in Nyasaland (later Malawi), he was the son of the local British commissioner in the town of Blantyre. Having lived in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London, Gunston enrolled at Harrow when he was 15. Dropping out after a year, Gunston returned to Africa to join the Police Anti-Terrorism Unit of the British South African Police. He served for 18 months before returning to England to enroll at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurt, Surrey. From there he joined the Irish Guards. After leaving the Guards, and having recovered from a serious car accident, in 1981, at the age of 21, Gunston decided to become a war photojournalist.
Gunston made several trips into war-torn Afghanistan through the 1980's, covering the war between the occupying Soviet forces aligned to the Communist Afghan government, and mujahidin resistance groups. Gunston was one of the relatively few western journalists who went inside Afghanistan during this period. He traveled at different times with the mujahidin groups controlled by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Haq, with whom Gunston formed a close friendship.
Little has been written about Gunston's life before the Afghan war, and nothing since. Some relatively brief accounts of his exploits during the war can be found in Robert D. Kaplan's 1990 book, 'Soldier's of God - With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan.' Kaplan was a friend of Gunston, and also a journalist in Afghanistan during the 1980's.
Sources:
Kaplan, D. Robert (1990). Soldiers of God - With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-52132-7.