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“Is it still possible to live an adventure today? Is a journey like that of Joseph Kessel still feasible?” Such is the theme of Olivier Weber’s conference held at the Mediterranean University Center in Nice. The writer-adventurer and grand reporter, who has covered numerous conflicts from which he has drawn the material for his novels, has published books and produced documentaries of staggering richness. From Afghanistan to the Amazon, from the Kurdish maquis to the Himalayas, or to the rostrum of the United Nations, Olivier Weber gives us a precious testimony, that of an extraordinary journey that is also a journey of freedom.
Holder of a doctorate in international law on borders, Olivier Weber takes us on a discontinuous journey of two years through fifteen countries, culminating in the writing of “Frontières”, published in 2016: “It was a journey through the mountains between Iran and Iraq via Pakistan and the Maghreb. I wanted to understand what a border is. I met with humanitarians, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), but also smugglers and migrants, traffickers, and corrupt policemen. I finished the book at the French-Italian border in Ventimiglia, at the foot of the mountains, at the mouth of the Roya. This adventure was both human and geopolitical, as the idea was to let the inhabitants explain their lives at the borders, knowing that every border is political. There is no natural border; it is the result of a balance of power, a war, or a negotiated peace treaty. The border between country A and country B represents a third entity with different laws, easements, state-tolerated traffics, migrations, financial flows, and illicit products, particularly drugs.”
In the middle of the Siberian winter, the writer-adventurer crossed Lake Baikal with visually impaired people and high mountain guides, facing freezing cold temperatures to demonstrate that the visually impaired can survive in a hostile environment and to advocate for their cause. This adventure gave birth to a documentary film titled “Défi Baïkal, beyond light”, a message of hope and courage that won a Special Prize at the Adventure Meetings and a Favorite Award at FIFAV.
He explains, “Broadcast on France 2 and France 3 Côte d’Azur, this film shows that it is not the blind who accompany us, but rather we who accompany them, as they have made us discover another world, beyond the dark, beyond the light.”
Next, we see him in a photograph with Kurdish women in Iraq. A defender of the Kurdish cause, Olivier Weber went there to meet the brave peshmerga women. He comments, “We are 30 meters from the Daech front line. This line disappeared in 2017. It was the peshmerga, the death fighters, who defended it while the posts were guarded by men. It was a humanitarian mission for ‘Douleurs Sans Frontières’ with doctors to discuss the physical pain of amputees suffering from phantom limb pain (when a limb is amputated, the nerves continue to torture). For me, today’s humanitarianism and yesterday’s Doctors Without Borders, which attract many young people, are part of the adventure.” He would go on to publish “If I Forget You Kurdistan”, in which he pays tribute to Kurdish resistance fighters, particularly women.
A lecturer at Sciences Po, Olivier Weber inaugurated the course “Geopolitics of Guerrillas and Drugs” before being appointed Itinerant Ambassador of France to the UN for five years, charged with combating human trafficking and promoting human rights.
“In geopolitics,” he explains, “there are three types of actors on the international stage: states, the United Nations and non-state actors, humanitarians, and civil society. I carried out about thirty missions, and I went to the field to meet NGOs. There are thousands of them that influence the course of the world through testimony and action against corruption, drug trafficking, nepotism, etc. The majority of these NGOs are created and led by women. They contribute to improving the international scene by putting pressure on international law. Civil society is also part of a form of adventure.”
Returning to the tradition of grand reportage as conceived by Joseph Kessel, he went to Cambodia to shoot two film reports for France 2 and 5 on the former Khmer Rouge. He also wrote a book in 2013 called “The Unpunished, Cambodia: A Journey Into the Banality of Evil.” Weber projects photos while commenting, “The Khmer Rouge led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and massacred two million Cambodians out of the seven million. I found descendants of the Khmer Rouge in the north of the country, where I went with a young Cambodian whose family was massacred and who sought refuge in France. It is a real state of lawlessness controlled by the descendants of the Khmer Rouge, where everyone knows who the former executioners are and whose economy is based on casinos, prostitution, ruby trafficking, and money laundering, knowing that they had banned money when they were in power. Victims and those who hunted them mix together. I wanted to talk about the impunity of these mass murderers trained in Paris, Sciences Po, and the Sorbonne. It is very disturbing to come across intelligent mass murderers who have a PhD and talk about de Gaulle’s memoirs.”
Then, he takes us to Syria. Here, he is on a humanitarian mission on the front line with anti-Islamist fighters, two and a half years ago. He says, “We are on the banks of the Euphrates, almost in the marshes. On the other side, there is the Islamic State in Syria with, at its side, a NATO member state, Turkey, which is in contradiction with its role as a NATO member.”
Before an enchanted audience, Olivier Weber recounts his expedition to the Amazon, which gave rise to a cinematic film about deforestation titled “The Gold Fever”, that was presented at Cannes in 2008. “The Amazon is an entity,” he says, “it is the largest tropical forest in the world with an area of 5 million km2, spread over eight countries, including French Guiana. It is the realm of the lawless due to the gold miners and traffickers who are the actors in this rampant deforestation. There are 20,000 km2 of deforestation per year. We ventured for a month and a half in canoes, deep into the jungle. We met gold and mercury traffickers. We were threatened with death several times. It was a desire to testify about deforestation and the deculturation of the Indians. The four hundred Amerindian tribes of the Americas explain to us that a tree is an ancestor, the manna of spirits. This dispossession that we wanted to evoke during this adventure was very complicated to set up.” He also published a travelogue about gold seekers in the Amazon called “I’ll Have Gold” (Robert Laffont).
Our focus shifts to images that bear a poetic resemblance to landscapes: Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Mercantour in France. Weber imparts his perceptions: “I’ve found that in traveling to Afghanistan or Kurdistan, I rediscover landscapes from my childhood and adolescence. I believe that it’s part of a driving force. It’s a blend of literature, older sibling influences, novelists, poets, and the act of having walked in the mountains. When we talk about adventure, it involves a collection of reflections, methodologies, precepts, and themes, but also lived experiences and our personal journeys since childhood. This valley is not in Mercantour, but it belongs to someone who is dear to me and was killed two days before September 11, 2001. It’s the burial place of Commander Massoud, a sort of Switzerland with orchards and a stronghold against invaders. Unfortunately, it fell into the hands of the Taliban in 2021.”
The author revisits his trips to Afghanistan, particularly focusing on the personality of the Afghan Commander, Massoud, saying, “I left for Afghanistan at a very young age to produce documentaries and reports. There, I encountered Massoud, who has always intrigued me. He possessed natural charisma and simplicity. He spoke to his men about Persian poetry and French literature. Had he not been assassinated, the entire region would have had a different fate. It was the 42nd assassination attempt, and the probability of him being assassinated on September 9, 2001, was minuscule, given he was under CIA protection.” In 2013, he shot a film called “Massoud’s Confession”, which reveals an aspect of Afghan history and the desire to establish an enlightened Islam.
Olivier Weber was among the few Westerners able to approach the Taliban, about whom he published several works: “The Afghan Falcon: A Journey to the Land of the Taliban”, “Murdered Memory”, and “Afghan Eternities.” He displays a photo, closing the adventure cycle with a rhetorical inquiry spoken with a hint of humor: “What are the Taliban doing in these fields near Kandahar, the holy city, the religious capital of Afghanistan? They are harvesting opium. We had discussions about purity, and I would point out their hypocrisy. From 7 to 10 kilos of opium, they produce 1 kilo of heroin worth 7000 euros. It was a calculated risk…”
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