Robert Young Pelton is a Canadian-American author, journalist, and documentary film director. Pelton's work usually consists of conflict reporting and interviews with military and political figures in war zones.
Pelton has been present at several struggles, such as the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi in Afghanistan, the Battle of Grozny (1999–2000) in Chechnya, the rebel siege to control Monrovia in Liberia, and the siege on Villa Somalia in Mogadishu. He spent time with the Taliban, the Northern Alliance (pre-9/11), the CIA during the hunt for Osama bin Laden and with both insurgents and Blackwater security contractors during the war in Iraq. Robert has been with ground forces on ~40 occasions.
Pelton's survival and political guide The World's Most Dangerous Places, provides information for people who work and travel in high-risk zones, and is a New York Times bestseller. He was also the host of the Discovery Travel Channel series entitled Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places from 1998 to 2003. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Pelton writes books and produces documentaries on war-related subjects.
Early life Pelton was born July 25, 1955, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. At age 10, he began attending Grade 6 at Saint John's Cathedral Boys' School in Selkirk, Manitoba. The school is acclaimed for a wilderness curriculum featuring one thousand mile canoe trips, snowshoe marathons, raising animals, and advanced study of Latin, history, and religion. Later, an offshoot/affiliate school (St John's Ontario) became known for the deaths of a number of students in what became known as the Lake Timiskaming tragedy.
Career At age 17, Pelton began in the Toronto mailroom of the ad agency BBDO before being promoted to copywriter. He then worked for various multimedia companies that did product launches, which led to him working for Apple Inc., where he worked on the Lisa and later the Macintosh launch. His first break as a writer came in 1991, when he reported on the Camel Trophy, an annual competition by Land Rover across difficult terrain in Africa. Pelton competed for the U.S. team and published his account in Soldier of Fortune.
In 1993, Pelton purchased the name of the Fielding's Travel Guide from William Morrow and Company and published a couple of traditional guides that were focused toward younger, independent travelers.
Pelton licensed data-based travel content to companies such as Microsoft and IBM, selling his businesses to turn full-time to conflict coverage in the mid-1990s. He began with a two-book deal from Random House (The Adventurist and Come Back Alive), a television series from Discovery (The World's Most Dangerous Places), and a major web event with ABC News called Dangerous Places. Pelton created the concept of "solo" or "solo journalist". defined as a person who provides text, video, photos, and audio from remote regions without support. He founded the website Dangerous Magazine at which he published his own and other writers' articles about adventure travel.
In January 2003, Pelton was on assignment for National Geographic Adventure in the Darién Gap when he and two 22-year-old travelers were abducted by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. The trio was held in the jungle for 10 days before being released.
Pelton contributed to National Geographic Adventure as both a contributing editor and a columnist from January 2001 to 2007. In December 2007, he released an article on Blackwater Worldwide. He was involved in negotiations with the President of Equatorial Guinea regarding the early release of coup plotters Simon Mann and Nick du Toit, who had worked for Executive Outcomes in the mid-1990s. The story was documented in the May 2008 Men's Journal article "How to Stage a Coup".
In 2006, Pelton teamed up with Eason Jordan, former head of international news for CNN, and several others to launch Iraq Slogger, a clearinghouse of news and information coming out of Iraq during the Iraq War. The site was intended to aggregate articles by both foreign correspondents and Iraqi journalists, as well as nonprofessionals. According to Pelton, the site had insufficient income and ceased operations in 2009.
In December 2008, Pelton travelled the Horn of Africa with both pirates and an anti-piracy crew researching the industry. Pelton resumed immersion-style coverage in January 2009 by going inside the U.S. Army's controversial Human Terrain System. Around that time, he also spent a year as an advisor to NATO's Afghanistan commander.
In 2008, Pelton and Jordan founded AfPax Insider, a newsgathering and research service in Afghanistan and Pakistan modeled on Iraq Slogger. The venture provided free content on its website and was partially funded by the U.S. military. Controversy arose when a Defense Department official who was operating an unauthorized spy ring allegedly diverted funds that were intended to pay the open-source project. According to Jordan, the venture never had a "full-fledged launch" into offering a premium subscription service to private clients, and due to insufficient funding, remained a free website until it became inactive in August 2009.
In 2011, Pelton created Somalia Report. With assistance from around 140 locals and western editors, Pelton provided ground coverage of al-Shabaab, pirates, governments, contractors, intelligence groups, and regular people on a 24/7 information website.
In June 2015, Pelton started publishing the Migrant Report to track the movement of refugees and migrants. The venture was sponsored by a non-profit organization in Malta. and provided in-depth coverage from Libya, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Books
The World's Most Dangerous Places
Pelton's first major writing project was his self-published guide to conflict, The World's Most Dangerous Places. The New York Times described it as "One of the oddest and most fascinating travel books to appear in a long time". CNN called the book a "compendium of the world's frightful places."
The first edition was written in 1993; it currently is in its fifth edition from Harper Resource.
The Adventurist The Adventurist is Pelton's autobiography that covers his childhood and an assortment of later travel experiences around the world up until 1999.
Come Back Alive
A real-world survival guide, written in a humorous style.
Hunter, Hammer and Heaven, Three Worlds Gone Mad A 2002 book on Pelton's journey into three wars in three tiny countries Chechnya, Sierra Leone, and Bougainville, which were examples of a jihad against the Russians, a mercenary war for resources, and an eco war to preserve a native lifestyle.
Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror Pelton has written about contemporary private military contractors, as well as his experiences with US Special Forces in the opening weeks in the war on terror. Of Licensed to Kill, one reviewer summarized: "He is a journalistic story-quilt of characters engaged as private security contractors and mercenaries in a variety of settings from Afghanistan to Equatorial Guinea... The pages turn... because Pelton's stories are intrinsically interesting."Peter J. Woolley, "Soldiers of Fortune," in The Common Review (Spring 2007), pp. 46–8; or http://www.thecommonreview.org/fileadmin/template/tcr/pdf/TCR54.pdf Retrieved December 27, 2011. The book was reviewed by author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger ("An incredible look into the murky and virtually impenetrable world of private military contractors . . . Pelton may well have seen the future.") and terrorism expert Peter Bergen ("A rollicking read that takes the reader inside the murky world of military contractors—from the craggy passes of the Afghan-Pakistan border to the extreme danger of Baghdad's airport road, to the diamond fields of Africa. Licensed to Kill is not only a great travelogue, [but] it also has some important things to say about the brave new world of privatized violence").
Raven Raven, Pelton's only novel, is a fictionalized account of his early life interwoven with experiences in the Pacific Northwest. Civilian Warriors In July 2013, Pelton stated in an interview with Spy Talk's Jeff Stein that Erik Prince had come to him to fix a ghostwritten autobiography that Prince had been unsuccessfully trying to publish since February 2008 with Regnery and again in 2010 with Simon & Schuster. According to the interview, Pelton rewrote Prince's book, hired a fact-checker to remove numerous plagiarized passages from the previous writers, and dissuaded Prince from self-publishing, getting Prince a US$1 million advance from Adrian Zackheim at Penguin Publishing.
Magazines In late 2001, Pelton began writing feature stories for National Geographic Adventure and then continued writing a column until 2009 entitled, "Pelton's World" for National Geographic Adventure. His feature stories for National Geographic covered his journeys into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia.
Pelton has written for and been profiled in numerous magazines including The World's Most Dangerous Friend by Tim Cahill in Men's Journal and Outside magazine covering topics such as Blackwater, the U.S. military Human Terrain System, South African mercenaries, and American military volunteers in rebel-held Burma. He also has written about his time with Somali pirates and maritime anti-piracy security teams for Bloomberg Businessweek and security contractors in Iraq for Popular Mechanics.
In May 2014, Vice magazine released a multimedia event which featured Pelton traveling with photographer Tim Freccia and with a former Lost Boy, Machot Lap Thiep, to South Sudan at the height of the fighting. It was the first time in Vice's 21-year history that a single author and single photographer created an entire issue on one topic. The 130-page, 50,000-word article was also released online In conjunction, a three-parter 40-minute documentary film entitled Saving South Sudan accompanied the article.
Graphic novels Artist Billy Tucci illustrated and wrote a 64-page illustrated novel entitled Roll Hard based on one of Pelton's chapters in Licensed to Kill. The book documents the true story of a team of Blackwater misfits who must travel up and down the most dangerous road in Iraq. Pelton rode every mission with the team for a month, which routinely came under attack. After Pelton left the team, they were hit by an IED with one fatality and a number wounded. Wired magazine described it as "At a time when comics are still dominated by busty babes, zombies, and superheroes wearing tights, Pelton and Tucci's gritty, journalistic portrayal of America's fighters-for-hire is a profound departure."
Publishers Weekly described the book: "While that's a prime setup for endless scenes of action-movie carnage, the narrative instead focuses on the men as professionals and what makes them put their lives on the line for a daily payout around $600. It's that spotlight on the humanity of the contractors that make this an engaging read, and artist Tucci (Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion) turns in understated, realistic artwork that is among the finest of his career. While the role of contractors in the Iraq conflict is controversial, this gives it a human face."
Rebel, Jihadi, and insurgent groups