Jeff B. Harmon

Jeff B. Harmon (born December 31, 1953) is an American film director, writer, and producer. He is also an actor, photographer, and song writer. As a journalist and war correspondent, he penetrated the Nazi underground in Paraguay while searching for Dr. Josef Mengele, right-wing death squads in El Salvador, covered Emperor Bokassa's coronation, the fall of Idi Amin, the war in Afghanistan (from both the Mujahideen and Soviet sides), and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Working as an independent filmmaker together with British cameraman, Alexander Lindsay, in 1989 Harmon completed his Afghan Trilogy, which included the documentaries Jihad: A Story of the Others, which Chicago Tribune called "one of the most graphic reflections of the bloody holy way, or jihad", Afgan and Warlord of Kayan. Jihad took over one year to make and was filmed clandestinely in different provinces of Afghanistan, including in Kunar and Kandahar. It showed combat and daily life under Soviet occupation, as seen through the eyes of Haji Adbul Latif, the 'Lion of Kandahar' and his Mujahideen fighters. Jihad won various awards including the prestigious Royal Television Journalism Award, the ACE Award (the highest award in US cable television), the Blue Ribbon at the American Film & Video Festival, and CINE's Golden Eagle. Critics called the documentary an 'instructive, pithy, not boring and an important piece of journalism that the American public and decision-makers should view'.Harmon and Lindsay were among the very few who later managed to create another documentary, Afgan, about the same war, but this time shot from the side of the Soviet army, receiving unprecedented access to the troops and even flying on missions with the Spetsnaz. Afgan won the Blue Ribbon at the American Film & Video Festival. Warlord of Kayan told the story of Sayed Jafar Naderi, the son of an Afghan Ismaili leader and a former member of a hippie motorcycle gang in Allentown who used to work in McDonald's and play the drums in a h