In the most high-profile assassination by the Taliban since 2001, head of the High Peace Council and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated today by a man posing as a Taliban negotiator and concealing a bomb in his turban.
For the Guardian newspaper, I profile the controversial powerbroker whose death may very be one day seen as the opening salvo in a renewed Afghan civil war.
At 11 am this morning, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the controversial half brother of the president and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan, was shot dead in his home by an acquaintance. His killing will have seismic consequences for Kandahar's political landscape. For Foreign Policy magazine, I offer an analysis of what comes next for Afghanistan. A shorter version also ran in the Guardian today.
I'm back in Afghanistan for the summer, and I'll be writing weekly dispatched for the website of Harper's Magazine. This week, I explore how Kabul is a city perpetually on the brink of crisis, and the reasons behind it. Read it here.
On Friday, I won a National Magazine Award in Canada for 'Best New Creative Talent'.
I won the award for my article 'Last Stand in Kandahar', which appeared on the cover of the November 2010 issue of the Walrus Magazine. The article was also nominated for and received honorable mentions in the 'Investigative Reporting' and 'Politics & Public Interest' categories.
On the cover of January's issue of Harper's Magazine, you'll find my latest investigative effort, "Disappearing Ink: Afghanistan's Sham Democracy."
Held on September 18, 2010, Afghanistan's parliamentary elections continue to drag on with no end in sight, as President Karzai threatens to annul the results of the election. While the specifics of who won and lost are a tangled morass of local outcomes, the general picture is that individuals with links to warlords and corrupt contractors strengthened their positions, while reformists and intellectuals were largely wiped out. Moreover, millions of Afghans were disenfranchised of their vote due to the ongoing violence which prevented voting stations from opening in many areas of the country.
My article goes in-depth both into the shadowy dealings behind the current election and the failed history of democracy building in post-2001 Afghanistan. The version on the Harper's website is only available to subscribers, but you can click here to download a PDF copy.
It wouldn't be the end of the year without a flood of listicles, and as a working hack I'm obliged to do my part. Foreign Policy Magazine's AfPak Channel has put together a list of 'The Stories You Missed in 2010', in which my work is included.
There are a number of insightful pieces worth reading, including Martine van Biljert's take on Karzai's 'madness', and Kate Clark's rundown of presidential pardons (both work at the excellent Afghanistan Analysts Network.) My own piece is about the true story behind Karzai's decree banning private security companies, and why the media and the West in general have been chasing a red herring on it.
Click here to read the 'The Stories You Missed in 2010'.
'The Long Forum', a new web magazine founded by Dan Slater, has posted a fun interview with me on my life as a freelance vagabond. You'll find useful tips on how to break into the magazine business, such as risking your life in a war zone. Read it here.
This is the latest in a series of interviews I've done as a result of my recent magazine work. Most of them have been in the evanescent medium of radio, but you can find one segment archived here.
Unless you live under a rock, you'll know that the idea of 'objectivity' has been in crisis in journalism over the last decade (and gee, in academia in general for the entire twentieth century.) Nevertheless, I subscribe to a certain 'detachment' as a journalist both for pragmatic and more rarefied reasons. Overly identifying ourselves with one particular group, particularly in situations of intense conflict, means that we risk losing access to other parties. And, epistemologically speaking, I think that there is a certain cognitive advantage that comes from denying oneself the comfort of strongly held 'beliefs' about what ought to be (others might call this a sort of moral cowardice.)
These notions often come into conflict with one's position as an agent out there in the world. Specifically, my deepening engagement with Afghanistan as both an intellectual subject and a community of human beings means that I've felt it necessary to take somewhat of a stand. My friend Alex Strick van Linschoten, along with Gilles Dorronsoro (an eminent scholar with whom I have an amiable acquaintance), has drawn up an open letter to President Obama that encapsulates a number of sentiments prevalent within, though not restricted to, the community of Afghanistan experts, scholars, and journalists (of whom I hesitate to call myself even a junior member.) The most important of these is that there needs to be a genuine effort on the part of the United States towards opening up a process of peace negotiations that will bring warring parties to the table. This took nearly ten years to produce a formal accord in the case of the Communist coup and Soviet occupation (and ended in failure), so the idea is that we'd better get started soon. Among the most significant of Wikileaks revelations is that the US has been extremely misleading about its role vis a vis peace negotiations, privately undermining what it has publicly supported.
You can read the text of the letter here. The original list of signatories continues to grow, and includes names like Ahmed Rashid, Robert Crews, Antonio Giustozzi, Nir Rosen, David Edwards, Christine Fair, Nick Miszhak and many more individuals whose work and opinions I highly respect. Alex has compiled a list of reactions on his blog here.
My cover story in this month's issue of the Walrus magazine, Canada's leading literary nonfiction monthly, is entitled "Last Stand in Kandahar: Can the military's massive counterinsurgency gamble salvage the Afghan war?"
I traveled on my own and with the military this summer during the height of the offensive in southern Afghanistan in order to understand just how the influx of troops and money is destabilizing the province and reinforcing the root political causes of the conflict -- effects that will probably outlast the temporary security gains of the surge. The piece is already garnering intense interest in Canada and I'll be doing radio interviews on the subject all this week.
An update is in order, as I've been remiss over the summer. I spent a very busy four months in Afghanistan, including a scorching month in Kandahar during the summer offensive, both embedded and independently. My observations on ISAF's military progress in Kandahar will be published as the cover story in the December issue of the Walrus Magazine, Canada's leading literary nonfiction magazine.
I did have time for some lighter pursuits, including this article for Popular Science Magazine, in which I explored illegal emerald mines in the mountains north of Kabul:
The Treasure of the Safit Chir
I've also written a long piece of political analysis in the Indian literary journal the Caravan, which investigates India's involvement in Afghanistan. I spent several months speaking to spooks, diplomats, and locals in an attempt to fathom the clandestine battle taking place between the region's intelligence agencies, and its impact on Afghan politics.
India in Afghanistan: Nation building or proxy war?
I've also recently written two articles for the excellent AfPak Channel, a joint collaboration between Foreign Policy Magazine and the New America Foundation:
The big business of kidnapping in Afghanistan. (A longer version of a story originally written for the French magazine Courrier International.)
Losing legitimacy in Kandahar: Preliminary winners in the parliamentary elections. (With Grant Hewad, originally written for the Afghan Analysts' Network.)
More will be forthcoming.
My article 'Unembedded in Afghanistan' for the Coast Magazine has won this year's Canadian Association of Journalist's prize for feature writing. The article is a long-form version of my first trip through Afghanistan, where I spent a month traveling alone through the country disguised as an Afghan. The Coast has a write-up on the award. The story also won a silver prize for Enterprise Reporting in this year's Atlantic Journalism Awards. This is my second year in a row winning CAJ and AJA awards.
From the Washington Post, February 20, 2010:
"On their first day of class in Afghanistan, the new U.S. intelligence analysts were given a homework assignment.
First read a six-page classified military intelligence report about the situation in Spin Boldak, a key border town and smuggling route in southern Afghanistan. Then read a 7,500-word article in Harper's magazine, also about Spin Boldak and the exploits of its powerful Afghan border police commander.
The conclusion they were expected to draw: The important information would be found in the magazine story. The scores of spies and analysts producing reams of secret documents were not cutting it."
My investigation of Border Police drug-trafficking ring in Kandahar Province, published last December in Harper's Magazine seems have reached high places. The article, incidentally, has kindly been made available online, for free, by Harper's.
I have an article in the March/April issue of Legion Magazine on life in southern Afghanistan, along with photos from Spin Boldak. Access it here.
My lengthy investigation of drug trafficking in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, is published in this month's issue of Harper's Magazine. Subscribers can access an online version here, but the article won't be freely available until the issue comes down off of newsstands.
These are the postings on my previous website, from May 2007 to October 1, as they originally appeared. Many of these links may no longer be working.
The Coast has published a long-form version of my first trip through Afghanistan, where I spent a month traveling alone through the country disguised as an Afghan. Fun stuff.
There will be a hiatus in my international reporting, as I arrive in New York City to take on a graduate fellowship at New York University. Still, I'm itching to get back, and hope to organize another extended reporting trip to Afghanistan this coming summer.
My article "Adam's Fall" continues to win awards. Last night it took home the 2008 Canadian Association of Journalists Award in the Community Newspaper category, and was a runner-up for Print Feature. Earlier this month, it won the Atlantic Journalism Award for Enterprise Reporting.
Last February, my 6,000 word investigative report, "Adam's Fall", published in The Coast, examined Halifax's landmark Macdonald Bridge as a chronic suicide hot-spot. The article lead to a great deal of publicity on the issue, including two days of coverage on CBC Television. While at the time the Bridge Commission denied that barriers to prevent suicide were feasible from an engineering perspective, they've recently revised that opinion, and have now issued tenders for barriers--which may help save lives.
Read more about it here.
I have a feature in this Saturday's Globe & Mail on the economic crisis in Iran and its implications for the Iranian presidential election this June.
You can find the article here.
The National Post has published a three-part series by me on my month-long journey alone through Afghanistan. I travelled through the mountainous heart of the country, often disguised as an Afghan, in order to photograph and chronicle the lives of ordinary people there.
You can find links to the three articles here.
The British indie journal Bad Idea Magazine has a long article and photos by me in its fall edition, profiling the rise and success of Croatian turbo-folk kingpin Alen Borbas.
In what I hope is an entertaining read, I chronicle this colourful figure's flamboyant lifestyle, sharp and shady business dealings, and connections to indicted war criminals, while casting light generally on the rise of a post-war nouveau riche in Croatia.
An online version is not available but you can pick up a copy of Bad Idea in most well-stocked book stores, if you're not already familiar with this very hip source of innovative photo essays and literary journalism.
You can find an article and photos recounting my year-long sailing trip around the Atlantic in this month's issue of SAIL Magazine.
An online version should eventually be available atwww.sailmagazine.com.
The September issue of Progress Magazine features an article by me on the rise of Web 2.0 companies in Atlantic Canada.
You can read it here.
I've been named a winner of 2008 Dalton Camp Award.
More about it here.
This Sunday's edition of the Nova Scotian, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald's weekly magazine, carries an article by me on Nova Scotia's suicide prevention strategy.
It will be available on the Herald's website for only a brief time; however, you can view a PDF version in the Writing section of this website.
I have a major investigative article published in today's issue of The Coast, dealing with the issue of Halifax's Macdonald Bridge being a known suicide hotspot.
The article looks at the issue through the lens of one family's tragic experience of their young son's suicide.
You can view it here.
I will be appearing on CBC's 'News at Six' in Nova Scotia tomorrow evening, as part of the network's coverage of my upcoming article on bridge suicides.
Here's a link to their site, which contains (for the time being) a clip of the segment: 'News at Six'.
Two recent music articles in the Coast:
Andru Branch - January 24, 2008.
Anew Airship - January 3, 2008.
Last weekend I had the privilege of shooting the lovely Mary Grace Koile, an up-and-coming Halifax folk artist. You can find her promotional pictures in the band portraits portfolio now.
Check out her MySpace for some sweet tuneage!
Earlier this month, I was up in beautiful Antigonish, Nova Scotia, shooting the annual Evolve Music Festival that takes place there in the summers. I've put together a photo essay documenting the crowd and communal life, which you can check out on the photo essays page.
A photoshoot with the very hep cats at Anew Airship has been added to the band portraits portfolio.
The boys have an EP in the works and you can find some of those tracks on their MySpace.
A photo essay depicting our epic, 11-month voyage circumnavigating the North Atlantic in a 50-foot sailboat has been added to the photo essays page.