“While he has been a spectacular failure since, at the time the same aura of hope hung around [Hamid Karzai] as now hangs around Obama,” [Mark Corcoran] says.

“He has an impossible task. The jacket always reminds me of a charismatic individual who has been set an impossible task: trying to bring peace to Afghanistan.”

“The level of access we were granted was unprecedented,” Corcoran recalls. “We had free run of the presidential palace. It was fascinating. He had already survived several assassination attempts. We were sitting in on national security meetings and went with him when he was meeting various warlords and governors.

REPORTING from Afghanistan has many negatives — and a few positives.

The ABC‘s veteran reporter and Foreign Correspondent host Mark Corcoran has watched people being executed and tribesmen fighting on the front line with complete disregard for their lives — and the lives of journalists reporting the conflict.

An ornate Afghan jacket, a personal gift to Corcoran from President Hamid Karzai, represents one of the better moments in his career as a foreign correspondent.

“While he has been a spectacular failure since, at the time the same aura of hope hung around Karzai as now hangs around Obama,” Corcoran says.

“He lives under constant threat of assassination; that is the default position. Everyone is a threat.

“He has an impossible task. The jacket always reminds me of a charismatic individual who has been set an impossible task: trying to bring peace to Afghanistan.”

The jacket will be on display in the foyer of the ABC‘s Sydney headquarters as part of a multi-media exhibition titled Reporting Wars: Challenges and Responsibilities. The exhibition opens this Friday and precedes a conference on Monday.

The events are being organised by the ABC, the Red Cross and the Australian News Safety Group.

Corcoran says the jacket was presented to him in 2003 after he and a small film crew had spent two weeks doing a profile on Mr Karzai.

The fortnight included covering a trip Mr Karzai made to Pakistan to confront President Pervez Musharraf over Taliban border incursions.

Fears that Mr Karzai could be assassinated were so strong that even the short journey from the Afghanistan presidential compound to the airport involved heavy security, including Apache helicopters flying overhead and snipers on rooftops.

“The level of access we were granted was unprecedented,” Corcoran recalls. “We had free run of the presidential palace. It was fascinating. He had already survived several assassination attempts. We were sitting in on national security meetings and went with him when he was meeting various warlords and governors.

“He was trying to wrestle control of the country from the people who had come in and taken over after the Taliban.

“It was one of the highlights of my career. The only thing we were not permitted to see was his wife.”

Corcoran will launch the exhibition this Friday.

Credit: John Stapleton