Latest investigation: A US-backed militia runs amok in Afghanistan.

Have a look at my latest investigation for Al Jazeera America, which shows that three suspected insurgents who were rounded up in a joint US-Afghan operation were handed over to a militia, who then executed them:

According to Belcher, ISAF had not heard allegations of the killings in Andar until they were raised by Al Jazeera, but it subsequently conducted an inquiry. “The inquiry found no information that substantiates the allegations. We have passed the allegations to our Afghan counterparts to conduct their own inquiry,” he said. “According to Afghan officials with whom we spoke after receiving your inquiry, these individuals were questioned and later released without harm.”

Spokespersons at the both the Afghan Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior declined to comment on the allegations. But when reached by telephone, Abdullah, the militia commander, acknowledged killing the men. “I killed these three people,” he said when asked about them by name. “Those three were Taliban.” He also claimed that he has received, and continues to receive, backing from the U.S. special forces for his unofficial militia. “Everything is provided by the foreigners, including the weapons, salaries and other equipment.”

You can read the full article here: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/23/exclusive-a-killinginandar.html

The Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism

Thanks again to my brave Afghan colleagues and the folks at Rolling Stone who made the story possible. I'm honored to win the Medill Medal, but the families of the missing men in Wardak are still waiting for justice from the military. Over a year after the killings and disappearances, the US Army's criminal investigation remains ongoing.

This is from the press release:

The 2014 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism has been awarded to Matthieu Aikins for his story in Rolling Stone exposing alleged war crimes by U.S. Army Special Forces in Wardak Province in Afghanistan.  A team of judges on behalf of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University selected Aikins’ work, “The A-Team Killings,” published in the Nov. 21, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

The Medill Medal is given to the individual or team of journalists, working for a U.S.-based media outlet, who best displayed moral, ethical or physical courage in the pursuit of a story or series of stories.

More award news for "The A-Team Killings"

I was in New York last month to receive the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for my article that appeared in Rolling Stone last November, entitled "The A-Team Killings." At the ceremony--which had an added touch of drama due to the last-minute arrival of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras--I spoke of the importance of maintaining the West's engagement with Afghanistan even after its military presence winds down. You can see a clip from the ceremony, as well as an interview, in the Democracy Now! segment above.

I was also a finalist for the Michael Kelly Award--congratulations to the well-deserving winner, Rukmini Callimachi--and the article received a citation from the Overseas Press Club. I've also been named a finalist for the second time for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, which will be announced in June.

"Enemy Inside the Wire" honored by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation

At its annual gala this evening, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation presented the Major Megan McClung Award for my article in last September's GQ Magazine, which told the story of a deadly Taliban attack on a Marine airbase in southern Afghanistan. The award honors  "exemplary work in advancing and preserving Marine Corps history," and I am grateful that I was able to tell the stories of the men and women who fought for their lives that night. My thanks in particular to Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Upton, the then-director of public affairs in Helmand, and to everyone in the 3rd Marine Air Wing who told me their stories.

The A-Team Killings wins the Polk Award

I'm incredibly honored to win the Polk Award for magazine reporting for my article in Rolling Stone, "The A-Team" killings. Here's the press release:

Matthieu Aikins, a freelance journalist who has reported from Afghanistan for five years, will receive the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for “The A-Team Killings” published in the November 21 issue of Rolling Stone. In the course of five months of dogged reporting from one of the country’s most dangerous areas, Aikins developed convincing evidence that a 12-man U.S. Army Special Forces unit and their Afghan translators rounded up and executed 10 civilians in the Nerkh district of Wardak province, where allegations of extrajudicial killings had emerged in early 2013. The army, which initially denied the charges, opened a criminal inquiry, and human rights organizations called for thorough and impartial investigations.

The article was the product of a team effort and wouldn't have been possible without the support of the editors and staff at Rolling Stone, my friend and driver Ruhollah Ahmadi who took us through an ambush, and, most of all, my dedicated colleague Fazal Rahman Muzhary. And congratulations to the Polk winners in other categories, which include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman for their reporting on Edward Snowden's revelations.

According to the US Army's Criminal Investigation Command, the investigation into the allegations of war crimes remains ongoing.

New in Wired: What will it take for the world to eradicate polio?

In 1988 there were 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. Last year there were 223. But getting all the way to zero will mean spending billions of dollars, penetrating the most remote regions of the globe, and facing down Taliban militants to get to the last unprotected children on Earth.

The world is racing to eliminate the polio virus, which can paralyze its victims. The outcome is by no means certain. A recent outbreak of polio in Syria--where hundreds of thousands of children have not been vaccinated due to the war--has raised fears of a resurgence of the virus in the Middle East. The World Health Organization has announced an emergency campaign to vaccinate 20 million children in the area.

This fall, I traveled to the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, one of the front lines in the battle against polio. My feature story is out in this month's issue of Wired magazine, a special edition guest-edited by Bill Gates. They've published it online here with a lovely and innovative web design, along with the deliriously evocative photography of Anastasia Taylor-Lind.

On the television

Two television appearances regarding my Rolling Stone investigation into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.

It could amount to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrated by American soldiers in Afghanistan: Allegations of torture, abuse and the murder of civilians by US Special Forces in the volatile Wardak Province. The scandal is the focus of a five-month investigation in Rolling Stone magazine by journalist Matthieu Aikins, who laid out his findings in an exclusive interview with RT's Lucy Kafanov.

New in Rolling Stone: Did US forces commit war crimes in Afghanistan?

My feature article, The A-Team Killings", is out this week in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The results of five months of investigation, the article presents detailed evidence to support the allegations that US Special Forces were complicit in a campaign of murder and torture in Wardak Province. 

On Thursday, I published a video showing Afghans torturing a prisoner as what appear to be American soldiers look on. We don't yet know who the individuals in the video are, but based on their appearance they are likely to be either special forces or military intelligence. Democracy Now also presented excerpts from the video on their show, during the second half of a two-part interview:

As a result of the Rolling Stone piece, Human Rights Watch has published a statement calling on the US government to ensure that a full investigation is carried out into the allegations.  There are sure to be more developments to follow; I've linked to some early coverage of my story below. 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/world/asia/afghanistan-criminal-probe/

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/11/08/magazine-probes-alleged-special-forces-atrocities.html?comp=700001075741&rank=1

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/07/disturbing-video-detainee-abuses-in-afghanistan/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/afghan-soldiers-whip-detainee-men-appearing-u-s-soldiers-article-1.1510714

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10433274/US-must-investigate-Afghan-killings-says-Human-Rights-Watch.html

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/07/new_information_about_possible_us_abuses_in_afghanistan

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/witnesses_u_s_special_forces_committed_war_crimes_in_afghanistan/

A teenage assassin and his young Marine victim

Lurking behind the resentment was a gnawing concern: that one of the cops might turn on the Marines without warning. So-called green-on-blue (or insider) attacks had been sweeping Afghanistan, leaving dozens of Americans dead. Innocent frictions between the two sides in Garmsir—such as arguments over living space—now took on a more menacing tone. The Marines felt like they were walking on eggshells. "I didn't ever feel safe," Oliver said. "It was, 'Be aware, never trust them, always have your weapon on you.'" But that evening he and some of the other Marines had left their pistols on the weight rack. They were almost home free.

Aynuddin stepped into the gym and leveled his rifle.

I want to share with you one of my favorite stories that I've written in a long time, one that I think captures the heartbreak and moral ambiguity of the war as best as I have yet been able. Published in the new issue of Mother Jones, it tells the story of Lance Corporal Greg Buckley Jr., and his assassin, a teenager named Aynuddin. Last fall, I traveled through Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, finding, among other things, Aynuddin's diary, so that he speaks to us in his own words:

As night fell, the boy went to the park to sleep. Around midnight, a pack of dogs came into the park and surrounded him. He drew his shawl tight and rolled himself inside of it. The dogs came and sniffed at him, but finally the night passed. In the morning, he was hungry, and wondered what to do.

He was tired, thirsty, and hungry. He had run away from home and was now ashamed in front of the entire world. He couldn't even ask for bread, he was too embarrassed. Filled with regret, he asked himself, why did I do this?

There is much inside the story to explain the sudden and bizarre explosion of insider attacks in Afghanistan, where Afghan police and soldiers have suddenly turned their guns on their Western allies, often at the price of their own lives, but what I think is most worthwhile about it is the simple manner in which the tragedy and absurdity of war are laid bare by the juxtaposed grief of loved ones from opposing sides.

It was on the way to Dover Air Force Base, to watch his son's body come off a plane in a box, that Buckley's anger returned. A onetime boxer, he'd always had a pugilistic streak. As Buckley and his family waited in the hangar, a tall, blond general approached and knelt in front of him. "Mr. Buckley, I just want to give you my condolences."

Buckley stabbed his fingers into the general's medals. "Do me a favor," he said, "and get the fuck up off your knee and get the fuck outta my face. 'Cause you motherfuckers had my son fucking murdered."

You can read the story here:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/green-on-blue-killings-afghanistan-army

New in GQ: The Battle of Bastion

One year ago, a group of fifteen Taliban fighters sneaked onto the massive air field of Camp Bastion and launched one of the most devastating attacks of the war, destroying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Marine jets in a single evening. The tale of the audacious attack--and of the small band of Marine aviators who fought back desperately to avoid being overrun--has never been fully told, and nor has the military held anyone accountable for lapses in security. In this month's issue of GQ Magazine, I bring you the Battle of Camp Bastion.

 The article is available for free online, but if you pick up a paper copy from the newsstands, you'll get a bonus caricature of me on the Contributors page.

In other news, I'm back in Afghanistan after a month's vacation over Ramadan, and I have some exciting projects planned for the fall that I'm looking forward to sharing with you, so stay tuned.

Syria's Homemade Arms Industry

Abu Yassin used to be a network engineer at an IT company in Beirut. Now he spends his days inventing new ways to kill people. He is one of Aleppo's premier bomb makers, and in the upcoming August issue of Wired Magazine, I tell his story, and that of the rebel's homemade arms industry.

In March, I traveled to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, and spent about three weeks with the city's weapons makers, chronicling their desperate struggle against Assad's professionally-equipped army. You can find the feature-length story online, along with photos from Magnum's Moises Saman, here:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/diy-arms-syria/

If you're a subscriber to the print edition--or you spot a copy on the display stand--you'll notice that Wired has done something pretty neat with the layout and the design. They've run the story in landscape, that is, sideways, which means that you have to turn the magazine ninety degrees to read it. Give it a try, and you'll probably find yourself flipping the top page over, so that it almost feels like you're holding a book. I think it's a smart idea that pushes you into a more contemplative reading space, and it's certainly innovative.

New e-book: Bird of Chaman, Flower of the Khyber

Last summer, Foreign Policy and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting teamed up to produce a series of e-books on the world's borderlands. I was commissioned to write about the volatile tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and decided that the best way to do so was to ride a Pakistani truck for 1,000 miles along the NATO supply routes that wind from the port city of Karachi to the Afghan capital of Kabul. Along the way, we faced Taliban attacks, Army checkpoints, bandits and breakdowns, and sundry adventures galore. Here's a excerpt from a scene in the tribal areas:

It was late now, and we prepared for bed. Jahangir returned to his wife and children. With no electricity for miles, the stars were alive and web-like above us. Despite the chill, I asked Afzal to pull the chairpais out into the courtyard so that Sardar and I could sleep in the open air. Our feet were pointing east; the moon rose above our toes as we settled under our blankets.

Not long after drifting off, we awoke to the sharp boom of an explosion and the concussion of a blast wave. Opening my eyes, I saw the sky above me turn orange with light. I instinctively pulled the covers over my head and curled into a ball on the charpai. The blast felt so close that I thought shrapnel and debris would rain down on us. After a moment, I let down the blankets and lifted my head. I could see the whites of Sardar’s eyes shining next to me in the moonlight.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered.

“A bomb blast,” he said.

---

If you're interested, you can buy the e-book either directly from Foreign Policy as a PDF, or get it in Kindle format from Amazon. Either way, start here:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ebooks/bird_chaman_flower_khyber

This e-book format is a bit of an experiment for me, and so I'm counting on your interest and support to make it work. And if you do buy and like it, please share your sentiments on Facebook and Twitter, and consider leaving a review on Amazon. Who knows, this could indeed become a model for funding a lot of good long-form journalism that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day.

In other news, I was in Aleppo in northern Syria for most of March, working on an assignment for Wired Magazine. I'm now back in Karachi, where I'm researching the city's gangs. I'll have a couple articles out in the coming months in more traditional venues so do stay tuned.

The Great Kabubble

I have an article entitled "Kabubble: Counting down to economic collapse in the Afghan capital" out in the February issue of Harper's Magazine.

Like most of Harper's features, it's available to subscribers only, but this blog post that I wrote for their website today will give you a taste:

"As high and barbed as their blast walls may go, diplomats and foreign aid workers have not (yet) found a way to keep the capital’s smoggy air from their orderly compounds."

The feature article is complemented by some very expressive photography from one of my favorite photographers working in Afghanistan, Zalmai. And the story's final kicker is perhaps the best that I've written yet:

"His Excellency President Karzai promised us."

If you're intrigued, do consider subscribing to Harper's--as fusty as its attitude to the Web might be sometimes, I think it has retained a contemplative sensibility that's eroding in this time of tweetable headlines. I certainly don't think that I could have written this kind of article in many other venues.

In other news, If you’re in Washington, DC, this Friday afternoon or feel like tuning in to the webcast, I’ll be speaking on a panel about the political economy of transition at the United States Institute for Peace. I’ll be joined by the author and journalist Anand Gopal, who has written extensively on patronage networks in Afghanistan, and the economist Bill Byrd, who helped author last year’s seminal World Bank Report on Afghanistan’s economy in transition.

New article in this month's GQ Magazine

I have a new article out in the January issue of GQ Magazine. It tells the story of Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden. This summer, I spent a couple of months in Pakistan, investigating how Afridi set up a fake vaccination campaign with the intent of collecting DNA from one of Bin Laden's children. It's a spy thriller that raises troubling questions about the CIA's use of medical workers as a front for their operations. You can find it on newsstands, or read it online here.

Last month, I spoke to Democracy Now! about the article, the new film Zero Dark Thirty, and the recent killings of polio vaccination workers in Pakistan:

DemocracyNow.org - Today we look at the capture of Osama bin Laden -- the focus of the controversial new movie, "Zero Dark Thirty" -- which was released this week. Billed as "the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man," the film has come under harsh criticism from Republican Sen.

A new website and some long overdue updates

If you've ever visited my website before, you'll notice some dramatic design changes, not least from black to white. While I was proud of the site I had hand-coded back in 2006 by patching together primitive bits of HTML, CSS, and Java (a moment that represents the peak of my programming skills), I was missing out on minor developments like social media and blogging that had become ubiquitous in the meantime.

So, taking advantage of an enforced Eid-related stopover in Delhi, I've put together this new site. It was a relatively painless process thanks to the hosting service, Squarespace, which I can heartily recommend. Please come on in and kick the tires. (A quick note on posts that had been up on my old site: I've reposted them with their old timestamps, exactly as they were published, with the exception of new titles.)

You may also notice that I haven't posted any updates since April 3, precisely the sort of laggardly behavior I'm hoping to avoid with Squarespace's slick new interface. A lot has happened since then. Firstly, I lost the National Magazine Awards to Lawrence Wright (which I feel is an accomplishment in itself.) Secondly, I published two articles, both on the intersection of digital security, government surveillance, and journalism​, an area that has increasingly fascinated me.

The first, in the June issue of Wired magazine, ​is entitled 'Jamming Tripoli' and it tells the story of dictator Moammar Gadhafi's secret Internet surveillance empire, and of the activists his regime targeted. The article reveals that, with the assistance of Western technology companies, Gadhafi's spies were able to assemble a system capable of monitoring nearly all email and Internet traffic within the country. It's part of a disturbing new technological frontier of increasing government surveillance.

​The second, in Columbia Journalism Review, is about two incidents--one in Libya and one in Syria--where journalists put their sources in serious jeopardy after being compromised by regime spies as a result of lax digital security. It's a wake-up call to journalists who find all these debates about technology rather abstract (i.e. almost all the journalists I've encountered.)

The last update is that I've moved to Kabul full-time, where I expect to spend the next few years covering the drawdown of the international military and development project in Afghanistan. I'm also going to be exploring the region as much as I can. Just these last couple months I've been traveling around Pakistan and India, working on some stories that--I hope--you'll get to see on this very website.​

Thanks, and if you have any comments on the design of the website, I'd love to hear them.​

​MA​

Nominated for a National Magazine Award

​My article in last November's issue of the Atlantic, 'Our Man in Kandahar', has been nominated for a National Magazine Award by the American Society of Magazine Editors. It's the most well known award in American magazine journalism, and winners will be announced on May 3. The original article, which you can read here, was also a finalist for the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism.

Last year, I won a National Magazine Award in Canada for another article from Kandahar, this one in the December 2010 issue of the Walrus.

Discussing the massacre in Kandahar

I've been on a few news programs recently to discuss the shocking massacre in Kandahar and the resulting political fallout for Afghanistan.

MSNBC's Now with Alex:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CBC's Connect with Mark Kelley:

MSNBC's Weekends with Alex Witt:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New story in GQ magazine

I have an article on the cover of this month's issue of GQ Magazine, an exclusive look at the 20-hour siege of the US Embassy in Kabul last September. Read it here.

Press coverage of my Atlantic piece

Last week, I published an investigation in the Atlantic magazinethat revealed a series of egregious human rights abuses--including the torture of detainees and a mass murder--carried out by a key US ally in Kandahar named General Abdul Raziq. The article has been circulated widely and I'm hoping that it will lead to increased attention to the issue of human rights in Afghanistan. In the meantime, here's a roundup of some of the interviews I've been doing about the story, including one on the program 'Democracy Now':

Radio Interviews

NPR 'Morning Edition'

BBC 'Newshour' (starts at 32:00 mark)

CBC 'As It Happens' (Part 3, starts at 18:54 mark)

New story in the Atlantic

In 2009, I wrote an investigate piece, 'The Master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's Drug-Trafficking Border Police', tha tappeared on the cover of Harper's Magazine. The story detailed my time spent with the forces of Colonel Abdul Raziq, a powerful warlord in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan. During the time I spent reporting that story, I heard even darker rumors about Raziq's involvement in extrajudicial killings and torture, but was not able to publish them for lack of evidence.

Today, I've published a 5,000-word article in the Atlantic, which will run in print in the November issue. It reflects the last two years that I spent on multiple trips to Kandahar Province, gathering a conclusive dossier of evidence that Raziq and his men have systematically murdered and tortured Afghans in the areas they control. What's more, I reveal that the US has been aware of these allegations for five years but has continued to support Raziq, raising questions as to whether officials have violated the 1997 Leahy amendment law forbidding support to foreign military units suspected of involvement in gross violations of human rights.

You can find the report, along with additional photo evidence, here.

I'll be tracking reactions to the article and further developments on my Twitter account, which you can click here to follow.