Extended special - correspondent Christina Lamb
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They're called Monday.com, and it was love at first onboarding. They're beautiful dashboards. They're customizable workflows that is floating on a digital cloud nine. So no hard feelings, but we're moving on. Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use. Welcome to the world in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Stuart Willey.

Thank you.

So we jumped at the chance to catch up with her on a recent visit to the newsroom here in London. Christina, welcome to The World in 10. Thank you. They say the only constant in life is change.

And at the moment, it feels like everything's changing. What are you making of it all? Everything, everywhere, all at once. Yeah, I've never known a time like it, I have to say, in 37 years of being a foreign correspondent. Everything that we kind of, I suppose, took for granted, for example, that the US was on the same side as Europe, now all seems to be very much up in the air.

And you can say, well, Europe took advantage of the United States for years and just kind of assumed that they always had our backs and so should have been better prepared. But, you know, it's easy to be wise after the event. But certainly it's everybody now is scrambling to try and see what on earth they can do to

rescue the situation. I think, to me, apart from the meltdown in the Oval Office, the way that Trump treated Zelensky, the other really, really disturbing thing was the vote at the United Nations when the United States voted alongside North Korea and Belarus and Russia was just something unimaginable. And frankly, you know, there's so much

that a lot of things are now not even being noticed. Partly I think that is Trump's strategy, sort of flood the zone with lots of things. So, you know, I feel like we should be very outraged about the...

Closure of USAID. Every day I'm getting messages from different organizations saying that they're having to close people that ran maternity units in Ukraine, that had FGM projects in Kenya, secret schools in Afghanistan, civil society projects in Syria, projects to help media in different conflict zones, local media. Really important things that now have just stopped.

As you say, tearing up some of those expectations we had about relationships at the UN, a new world order even. Do we see the end of those kind of multilateral organizations, the UN, NATO, the ICC? I mean, clearly there's a problem, right? There's a lack of trust. There's a lack of trust in journalism as well. And the fact is that Trump was elected and

far-right groups are doing well in different places. You see far-right influencers like Andrew Tate having so many followers. So there's clearly a problem. We can't just sort of say, well, these people are terrible. We need to try and understand what it is that is attracting people to support those kind of figures and ideas

why democracy is being pushed back in so many places. I do think women have a role because we need to raise our voices more than ever because we are being sidelined. You know, these are toxic masculinity or patriarchal groups that are pushing these things.

and these policies. And so we need to make sure our voices are heard. If we can understand them, if we can particularly have women's voices heard, other voices heard, is it an inevitable path that things break down or could we see a rollback to something like it was before? I mean, I think two things. One, I think we must never stop being outraged by women

what Trump is doing, for example, when he's doing all these things. And I worry that after a while, people just think, go, well, you know, it's just another thing and don't actually raise their voices about it or

But I also think we mustn't give up hope. You know, the fact is that in two years he'll face congressional elections. The election I was based in Washington for some years. And that's one of the things you realize quite quickly is how how frequent elections and how domestic politics are.

play such an important role in everything. So a lot of decisions. So for many years, I'd been a foreign reporter covering things that were affected by decisions made in Washington that I didn't understand. But actually living there gave me much more understanding of how decisions

domestic politics play a part in all of these things. So, you know, it may well be that he loses the congressional majority and then he becomes a kind of lame duck president and not able to do all these things. But at the moment, of course, he does have

Beyond the Washington, D.C. electoral cycle and the noise and chaos that, depending on the time zone you live in, you wake up to each morning from the White House, there are major conflicts in the world that are being forgotten. I'm thinking of the Dihar Congo, of Sudan, of the

Is that a real worry? Yes, absolutely. I mean, that was the case even before what's happened in the last couple of weeks because, you know, I think it's very difficult for people to focus on more than one or two bad things. I mean, politicians certainly don't have the bandwidth to deal with and...

You know, also it's expensive doing foreign reporting. We don't have the staff to cover all of these different things. We don't have the space. But also, you know, you...

How do readers or listeners, you know, how much can they take? You can't keep bombarding them with terrible things from all these different places. So I know people have complained to me, like, why don't we cover Sudan? Or why don't we... Now, I feel strongly about the DRC because I happen to have a good friend running a hospital in one of the places that's being overrun. So I'm hearing, you know, firsthand, you know,

And it's hard to be able to get these things out there because there's so much else going on. And people have complained to me, why is there so much focus on Ukraine and not these other places? But, you know, I don't think we should apologize for that. Ukraine is in Europe. It affects us directly. Of course, you know, I never imagined as a young journalist that I would end up covering a major land war in Europe. I thought those days were over.

And we all know that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he's not going to stop there. So this really matters to all of us in this area. So I think it is natural that we would report that perhaps more than other things. Gaza, for

It's been very difficult because we can't get in there. So there's a limit to what you can do. And one of the ways that the job has changed since I started was WhatsApp. And now I stay in touch with everybody. I interview pretty much and I'm getting messages all the time from places. So I'm in contact with people I know in northern Gaza. And, you know, they've been...

endlessly every day sending me horrific pictures and stories of what's happening. But sometimes they say to me, what's the point of doing this because no one's doing anything? And that's very difficult. I went into this job because I thought that if you exposed injustice, you could make a difference. But if

you report these things and nobody does anything about it, then that's very depressing.

From The Times, this is The World in Ten. Today, joined by longtime war reporter Christina Lam, the chief foreign correspondent at The Sunday Times. Christina, some of the reporting of yours that's really stuck with me has been on the plight of women, especially in conflict zones, but also in Iran, a country where we've seen a kind of lurch recently on the rights of women. What's happening in Iran right now?

So people may remember in 2022, 2023, the Women Life Freedom Movement, incredibly brave women coming out into the streets, schoolgirls, young women, older women, and also men. And

knowing that the clerical regime would crack down ultimately as they did people were many people lost their eyes through these pellet guns some people were arrested thousands of people some people were executed so in the end the protests stopped more I mean there is still sort of small protests that happen around the university in Tehran and other places but

But the movement hasn't gone away. And it's a very different kind of act of defiance. Many women in Tehran are not covering their head, despite the fact that that is illegal. And so incredibly brave. And I just recently interviewed this actress, Sohaila Golestani, who was the lead actress in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is an astonishing Iranian film about

made it in secret and set during the time of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. So obviously something that the regime would not approve of. In that film, you see her and other women with their heads not covered and you see them sharing footage of what was happening on the streets. And those filmmakers all and actors had to flee the country. And Suheila, the lead actress, actually got arrested

in the country because she was having surgery on a ruptured tendon. And so she is still there and she's now on trial for, I think they call it spreading prostitution or corruption on earth and denigrating the Islamic Republic for which she could go to jail or face 74 lashes. And in fact, an Iranian singer said,

who'd sung "Protest Song" was convicted and given 74 lashes. So, you know, these people are incredibly brave and that's one of the reasons that I think I've always focused a lot on women in war and conflict is to me they're the real heroes. They're the people who are sort of trying to keep life together when all these terrible things are happening.

And we don't see any statues to them, but they are really heroic. And there is also this dark side of what happens to women in war, which is the use of sexual violence. And fortunately, we see that over and over again. There isn't a conflict in the world, I think, today where it's not happening. And yet, you know, there's little discussion of it and very few people brought to justice.

Of course, next door to Iran is Afghanistan, where there hasn't been a women life protest. But those women are still being cracked down upon by the Taliban authorities. Is there hope for them somewhere?

So I think it's absolutely heartbreaking and shocking that in the year 2025, there is a country in the world where girls cannot go to high school, women can't go to university, cannot work, cannot go to the park, to beauty salons, even appear at windows. And I think we should be...

This is not acceptable. We should be talking about this all the time and trying to get something changed. And I fear it's now three and a half years since Taliban took over and the outrage has kind of gone. And meanwhile,

Women and girls more or less live imprisoned behind four walls, which is just so shocking. But I do feel strongly that we must never stop having hope. And there are some brave people there running secret schools and projects and trying to make a difference for girls and boys.

And it is very incumbent on us outside, particularly women, to keep talking about this and trying to see what we can do. So for 37 years, you've covered the world's conflicts from Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine to Zimbabwe.

Is there a moment you can look back at in your reporting that gave you hope for the world, that makes you feel something better is possible? I mean, I have to say now it's quite a long time since I've done a story where it's felt there was a happy ending. And I used to be very careful at trying to do sort of fun stories as well as all the bad stuff because otherwise it would drive you mad. But it's quite hard to find fun stories in this world.

climate and things that we thought were happy endings then turn out not to be happy endings. So for example, Afghanistan in 2001, when the previous Taliban regime was toppled. And I remember being on a roof of the place I was staying in December 2001. And under the Taliban, you know, everyone had to grow beards, women had to cover their heads and wear burqas, there was no music allowed. And I remember being on that roof and

and hearing music coming from the street. And it just started snowing as well, which is sort of seen as good luck in Kabul, because it's good that there's good for the crops. And that really felt like a happy ending. But of course, you know, that went horribly wrong. So now I'm a little bit

when Assad was finally but suddenly removed and then surprised everybody in December in Syria. And again, you had the same kind of, you know, people coming out in the streets and celebrating. And,

And now I'm a bit worried, like, is that really going to last? There's so many problems. And that's why it's so important to help these new administrations early on, because, you know, most people in Syria are living in poverty. There's terrible power cuts. And if people feel, well, actually, this new government isn't doing anything for us, then...

they may have big problems again. But, you know, all of those things after 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, all of which looked like successes initially because their dictators or the repressive regimes were removed pretty quickly with the help of Western firepower.

all then went horribly wrong. And I guess one of the frustrations as a journalist has been we all reported what happened and kind of why it happened, and yet the lessons never seem to be learned. The same mistakes were made over and over again.

Christina Lam, Chief Foreign Correspondent of the Sunday Times. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for having me. Click follow or subscribe to make sure you don't miss the next World in 10, where we'll bring you an extended interview with Kurt Volker, the former US ambassador to NATO. He'll discuss the pressures on Russia's economy, how

how the relationship between Trump and Putin is changing, and future US support for NATO. But that's it from us for today. Thank you for taking time to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

They say opposites attract. That's why the Sleep Number Smart Bed is the best bed for couples. You can each choose what's right for you, whenever you like. You like a bed that feels firm, but they want soft? Sleep Number does that. You want to sleep cooler, while they like to feel warm? Sleep Number does that too. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. Sleep Number Smart Beds start at $999.

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