🌐 in the right place at a historic time

CNN's Nic Robertson stands in front of a helicopter

CNN's Nic Robertson in Ma’rib,Yemen, reporting on that country's civil war in January 2018. (Photo credit: Sarah el Sirgany/CNN)

Nic Robertson, CNN’s award-winning international diplomatic editor, has traveled the globe covering armed conflicts, terrorism and other major news since he joined the network in 1990.

On the day of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, he was one of the only Western journalists in Afghanistan – and the only one with livestreaming capability. He was able to report from the country that was about to become the focus of the world’s attention on that fateful day as well as beam out a Taliban news conference to the rest of the world in the aftermath of the attacks.

But as everyone watched images of the World Trade Center in flames after an airplane had crashed into it, Robertson – thousands of miles away in the heart of Kabul – didn’t know it was happening. In fact he learned about it from his wife.

“There was no easy phone call to the outside world, so I had no idea what was happening at the time. I'd called the international desk, to talk about a package we were working on, and no one answered, which was really unusual. So I called my wife, who was a CNN correspondent in London at the time, and got through to her. And she told me what she had just seen on the TV… While we were talking, the second plane flew into the tower. So then I knew, to me, it was terrorism and the most likely people responsible were al Qaeda, and it was going to be coming from where I was.”

In fact, Robertson watched those unforgettable images of the towers coming down only about a week later, when he crossed the border safely into Pakistan. What had happened in the days between was a dizzying blur of nonstop reporting as the link to Afghanistan became clear.

The Taliban had been hosting Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, in Afghanistan since his home country of Saudi Arabia had expelled him in 1996. When they refused to turn him over to the US in the wake of 9/11, the US invaded a few weeks later.

Nic Robertson reporting live from Kabul on 9/11.

The day after 9/11, “the Taliban foreign minister told me that they could no longer guarantee our safety, which was basically them saying, we're not going to attack you, it's just, we don't know what's happening. We're not controlling the situation.”

All other international journalists, and CNN’s local “fixer,” who helps smooth the way in a foreign land with a vast array of services, left the country along with the UN, but not Robertson. He and his cameraman, Alfredo De Lara, hired another fixer and drove 16 hours overnight to Kandahar, where he had set up CNN’s office.

“We were hidden in the back of the vehicle under blankets, because we didn't want anyone to see a couple of foreigners driving around. And we got to our house in Kandahar and we started broadcasting from there. In Kandahar, we felt a bit safer because that's where the headquarters for the Taliban were. Kabul was much closer to a potential front line.”

That bought them a few days of reporting and very little sleep, until the Taliban came around and ordered them to leave the country immediately or be forcefully escorted out. They left – briefly. But within about a month Robertson would be back inside Afghanistan on a Taliban convoy, and he has reported from there extensively ever since.

“I feel sad and sorry for the people of Afghanistan,” he says, reflecting on the many innocent people he knew who had lost their lives or lost everything they owned in America’s longest overseas war, “their houses and livelihoods reduced to rubble.’’

“The US drawdown was chaotic; it was possible to see it coming,” he says. “It has cost the US dearly in terms of global standing among allies and adversaries alike.”

“The country is as broken as it ever was, and it needn’t have been this way,” he adds, explaining that the Afghan people’s idea of peace was not the same as America’s. “The Afghan people just wanted the warlords to be disarmed and weapons taken off the streets so they could live their lives. That's not what we ended up with.”

Alongside the terrors of war, Robertson describes the country as one of the loveliest he’s ever been to. “It is so devastatingly, beautiful. The mountains are so raw. The country has a very, very raw beauty,” he says, describing towering mountains and different-colored sand strata.

2001 was a milestone year for Robertson, and not only for 9/11 but for a much lighter-hearted reason as well. It was the year People magazine voted him "sexiest news correspondent”! How did that make him feel?

“It made my wife very happy,” he says. Margaret Lowrie Robertson, a former CNN correspondent, framed the magazine cover, which is proudly on display at their home in England.