Committed writer, Olivier Weber has written on a lot of lost causes and indigenous people. He has defended in particular the resistance of South Sudan and has denounced the slavery of Sudanese children. He participated at the operations of saving the
boat people, in the China Sea, with volunteers of the international NGO Doctors of the World (
Médecins du Monde). He has also defended the Afghan
mujahideen during the war against the Soviet army and then against the pro-communist regime of Najibullah and had traveled several times with the rebels and Commander
Massoud. After criticizing the regime of the
Taliban, he was expelled from
Afghanistan by the militias of Mollah Umar. His denunciation of human trafficking by the
Tamil Tigers of
Sri Lanka and disposal of their prisoners, after several trips to the bush, brought him new threats. The plane he was to take from
Jaffna to
Colombo was deliberately shot down by fighters of the armed movement. Following an expedition with one of the Burmese guerrillas, he met secretly in
Rangoon the opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi. After winning the award
Joseph-Kessel Prize, he was nominated president of the prize in 2001. In August 2001, he traveled to Central Asia to launch a humanitarian mission in the
Panjshir Valley and bring to
Ahmad Shah Massoud proofs of his book
The Afghan Hawk. A few days later, 9 September 2001, two days before the
attacks on the World Trade Center, the Lion of Panjshir was assassinated by two terrorists of
Al-Qaeda. Olivier Weber was to attend his funeral, when the Taliban launched a major offensive. His testimony and his denunciation of the Taliban regime and the rise of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia have earned him death threats. He has published several books on Central Asia and the
Silk Road:
The Great Feast of the East,
The Afghan Hawk: a journey to the land of the Taliban,
Memory Murdered,
Road of Drugs,
The White Death. He has denounced the impunity of the
Khmer Rouge in the mountains of western
Cambodia, after meeting the underground movement leaders
Ieng Sary and
Khieu Samphan, both former deputies of
Pol Pot. In May 2009, he presented the
Joseph-Kessel Prize to the writer and member of the
Académie française Érik Orsenna for his fight for water and his latest book. The film of his book
Cursed for Gold (La Fièvre de l'or), a travelogue on human trafficking in the Amazon and other traffickings related to deforestation and the massacre of Native Americans, was the subject of remarkable press and has been described as a witness in the vein of ''
Darwin's Nightmare and Blood Diamond''. His essay on
Joseph Kessel, "Kessel, The Eternal Nomad", highlights the commitment of the reporter and member of the French Academy. He has also written the biographies of Joseph Conrad, Jack London and Ella Maillart. He is a member of the Albert Londres Award's jury. Author and writer of documentaries, he is also editor of the series "Writers travelers". ==The ambassador==