It's hard to believe that a year has passed--it feels like two--which means that it's time for the paperback edition, a surprisingly slender volume available on February 14. Buy it for a sweetheart. Thanks to all of you who helped make The Naked Don’t Fear the Water a success: it was on TIME and the Economist's Best of 2022 lists, has been longlisted for a PEN award, and is being translated into nine languages, most recently Italian.
If you're in New York City next week, please join us for a celebration at NYU's journalism school. At 7 pm on Thursday, February 16, I'll be speaking with Rozina Ali--if you haven't read her incredible story about an Afghan child taken from her family, please do--and Suketu Mehta, whose classic book about Mumbai, Maximum City, was an early inspiration for me.
It's free and there'll be wine and other refreshments, but be sure to RSVP since they'll have a list at the door:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-with-author-matthieu-aikins-tickets-528661329267
Our drone strike investigation wins two Emmys
Last Wednesday, the video that I produced with my colleagues from the New York Times’ Visual Investigation team won two Emmy awards, for Best News Coverage (Short Form), and Outstanding Investigative News Coverage. Here’s the press release:
Using never-before-seen security camera footage, The Visual Investigations team was the first to dispute the military version of a U.S. drone strike against what it claimed was an ISIS suicide bomber. The team proved that the United States instead killed an innocent Afghan civilian and nine of his family members. This group of dogged journalists verified the footage with eyewitness accounts and satellite images to create a highly detailed and damning account of the day’s events. The video unit’s coverage forced the Pentagon to apologize — and cleared the family’s name.
“The team worked relentlessly and quickly to zero-in on and assemble the visual evidence that dismantled the U.S. military’s version of events, even in the face of continuous pushback from the Pentagon,” said Mark Scheffler, editor of Visual Investigations. “In the wake of our story, officials admitted they had made a ‘catastrophic mistake.’ Setting the record straight is a true hallmark of this team, and this award is a great testament to their pursuit of accountability.”
The Taliban's First Year in Power
For the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, I returned to Afghanistan to report on the Taliban’s first year in power. I look at why they’ve refused to allow girls’ high schools to reopen, how they’ve accepted billions in Western humanitarian aid, and report new details of secret meetings with US officials. Photos by the talented Kiana Hayeri.
The Pulitzer and other prizes
I’m honored to win the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, as part of a New York Times team that investigated civilian casualties from US airstrikes. The project also won the Polk and Overseas Press Club awards.
Our reporting from Afghanistan was also a Pulitzer finalist, in the same category. And my longform magazine story on the fall of Kabul won a National Magazine Award in the Reporting category, along with the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize.
Thank you to all the friends and colleagues who made this work possible.
Reviews of my book, THE NAKED DON'T FEAR THE WATER
My first book, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water, has been out since February and I’m thrilled by how’s it been received by critics and readers, starting with this generous, perceptive review by Jessica Goudeau in the New York Times Book Review, where it was also an Editor’s Choice:
It has become a cliché to state that a book is “urgent” or “necessary” when it touches on a critical humanitarian issue; almost any book about Afghan migrants would be important right now. But this book is exceptionally well done. That’s primarily due to Aikins’s painstaking, unflinching portrayals. In refusing to make saints or sinners of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, Aikins crafts an expansive, immersive work that reads like the most gripping novel but is all the more compelling because the events are both true and ongoing.
It’s also been reviewed by the Guardian, the Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the New Yorker, the Financial Times, the Scotsman, the Spectator, Dawn, and was named one of TIME’s “Best Books of 2022 So Far.”
That’s in addition to the response to the French, Spanish and Dutch versions. I was lucky to be invited to Paris and Amsterdam for book events and it’s been interesting to see how much closer to home the story is for a European audience. The German, Polish, and Czech translations are due out later this year, and I’ll be back in Europe in the fall for more book events—stay tuned on social media.
Photo by Jim Huylebroek, September 1, 2021
Covering the collapse in Afghanistan
In June, I returned to Afghanistan after a book-related absence of a couple years. I was planning to cover the American withdrawal, but like nearly everyone else, I didn’t expect the government to collapse so swiftly, even before the last foreign troops were out. Things began to happen fast, and after two hectic months, the Taliban were at the capital’s gates. Along with some freelancer friends, including the photographer Jim Huylebroek, I stayed behind to report on the evacuation and its aftermath. For a while, I was the New York Times’ only reporter on the ground. I finally left for the US in November.
Here are some of the stories from the busiest and most chaotic five months of my life. The first is a very long (20k words) cover story for the Times Magazine, a narrative account of the summer. The rest are articles I wrote for the newspaper, along with some related episodes for the Daily podcast. The highlight is our investigation into the US military’s botched drone strike, which killed ten innocent people, including seven children. Jim and I were at the scene of the strike early the next morning, and the Times’ coverage helped force the military to acknowledge its mistake.
Inside the Fall of Kabul, December 10
Times Investigation: In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb, September 10
Video: How a U.S Drone Strike Killed the Wrong Person, September 10
The Daily: A Righteous Strike, September 21
Afghan Family Says Errant U.S. Missile Killed 10, Including 7 Children, August 30
After Quick Victory, Taliban Find Governing Is Harder, September 1
The Daily: How Will the Taliban Rule This Time? September 7
After Airport Bombing, an Afghan Family Buries a Father, and Hope, August 27
New in the New York Times Magazine: How One Looted Artifact Tells the Story of Modern Afghanistan
“Seeing a beautiful object in a glass case, you might not think of empty tombs in a faraway country.”
Forty years of war have not spared Afghanistan’s ancient heritage. Its archeological treasures have been looted and sold around the world. In this Sunday’s issue of the New York Times Magazine, I investigate the case of a stolen marble that ended up in Hamburg—and what the German museum that bought it did next:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/magazine/ghazni-panels-afghanistan-art.html
Ancient art is a new subject for me and I’m grateful to all the people who helped me navigate the Ghazni marbles’ complicated history, especially my friends in Afghanistan. I hope I’ve done justice to the many shades of gray.
I'm at the American Academy in Berlin this fall - and other past fellowships
I’ve been working on a book for almost five years now, which is why I’ve been so quiet. I’ll be ready to say more about it in a few months, but in the meantime if you’re curious you can watch this video, where I explain my project for the fall as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. And if you want to learn about my fellow fellows, or more about the program, check out their website.
I have been lucky to have had fellowships at several places since I started the book, beginning with Type Media Center (formerly the Nation Institute), New America, and, last year, the Council on Foreign Relations. Their generosity has allowed me to devote myself to writing, for which I’m eternally grateful.
Like I said, more to come about the book.
Why did a US gunship destroy a hospital?
On October 3, 2015, an American gunship destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, killing 42 people. The US government's report ruled that it was an accident. But did Afghan forces, out of a longstanding mistrust for the NGO and its policy of treating all sides, mislead the US military into a devastating tragedy? In this weekend's issue of the New York Times Magazine, I investigate:
New in the New Yorker: A Corruption Scandal in Afghanistan
Hikmatullah Shadman was just 16 years old when he joined the US Special Forces as a translator in his native town of Kandahar, Afghanistan. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had made more than $160 million while working as a logistics contractor for the US military. Now, he and a group of soldiers who worked for the Special Forces stand accused of bribery and fraud.
In "The Bidding War," my story in this week's issue of the New Yorker, I tell how Hikmat came to be at the center of a massive corruption scandal involving America's elite forces in Afghanistan.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-man-who-made-millions-off-the-afghan-war
This article, which took me nearly two years to write and report, offers a window into a war that has been waged as much by for-profit companies as by the military. Since 2007, there have regularly been more contractors than US troops in Afghanistan, and today they outnumber them three to one. Around $800 billion has been appropriated for the war, and yet many have come to see these vast expenditures as self-defeating, as the result has been forms of corruption so extreme that the US has in some cases funded the Taliban. As Scott Lindsay, a Congressional investigator, puts it: "If you have to pay your enemy for the right to be there, something's gone wrong."
Finalist for the National Magazine Award
My story on the Saudi-led war in Yemen in Rolling Stone, which I reported with Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. It's an honor to be a finalist alongside so many other talented journalists. Sadly, a few days later, we learned that the Yemeni journalist Almigdad Mojalli was killed by a Saudi-coalition airstrike, while investigating another such bombing that had caused civilian casualties. Almigdad was a tireless chronicler of his country's unjust suffering and had offered helpful advice to me in the course of a very difficult story. We get laurels, they get bombs--likely American-made, in this case. As foreign correspondents, we owe local journalists and fixers a debt of blood.
I also want to thank my friends Mohammed Ali Kalfood, Saif Saleh Al-Oliby, and Essam Sanabani, the local journalists who worked with us in Yemen, along with Maan Vantae Tijani Yai, who helped us embark on our voyage in Djibouti. We're also indebted to Hussain Al Bukhaiti for getting us to Saada and back safely. And of course, we couldn't have done it without the ace team at Rolling Stone, Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Sean Woods, and the now-departed Will Dana.
The Livingston Award
On Monday, I received the Livingston Award for International Reporting, which recognizes works by journalists under the age of 35, for my story on Aleppo's first responders. I was fortunate enough to have the honor of being presented the award by Christiane Amanpour.
Winner of the Overseas Press Club Award for best magazine reporting
Sebastiano Tomada and I accepted the Overseas Press Club award for best magazine reporting in New York last night, for our story on Syria's first responders, "Whoever Saves a Life," published by Matter. It's a long way from the bombed-out streets of Aleppo to the glittering hallways of the Mandarin Oriental, but I hope that we never lose sight of the people who matter. Syria's civil war is entering its fifth year, and the intractability of that conflict points to the need for a radical struggle for justice both abroad and at home, if we're to change a system based on inequality and violence. Thank you to Salam Rizek for getting us in and out of Syria safely, and to Mike Benoist and the team at Matter for taking the chance on this story. And most of all, thank you to the brave rescuers of the Syrian Civil Defense for allowing us to share their story. They continue to risk their lives daily so that others might live.
Photo by Haidar Hamdani/AFP/Getty
Inside Baghdad's Brutal Battle Against ISIS
There has been a lot of talk about ISIS lately, but less about the people who are fighting a dirty war against them since the Iraqi army and police collapsed this summer: sectarian Shia militias backed by Iran. I have a story out in the current issue of Rolling Stone—the one with Kendrick Lamar on the cover—that details Iraq’s frightening descent into a fragmented militia state, and what this means for the US’s campaign against ISIS.
Late last year, I traveled to Baghdad, and found that, while the militias have been brutally effective at pushing back ISIS, in many areas they’ve committed war crimes against Sunni civilian populations that will only further entrench the sectarian roots of the conflict. In some cases, they've done so with US-supplied weaponry. Read the full story here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-baghdads-brutal-battle-against-isis-20150313
On being a (Western) war correspondent
This is a version of the notes that I wrote for a speech that I gave in December at the Medill School of Journalism in Chicago, on the occasion of receiving a medal for “courage” which had been renamed after James Foley, as result of a story I wrote about war crimes in Afghanistan. As you can see from the speech, I’m a little conflicted about the award, and the role of the (Western) war correspondent in general. I’m posting it here because it represents an attempt to think through these issues publicly, and I’d appreciate your thoughts as well. I also think it has some relevance to our considerations of the Charlie Hebdo murders.
Read the speech on Medium: https://medium.com/@mattaikins/on-being-a-western-war-correspondent-64a39f0757cd
Photograph by Victor J. Blue
Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State
This spring, I traveled to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, and witnessed what would be the largest opium harvest in Afghan history. Over the past decade, in the midst of a massive international military and development mission, the drug economy in Afghanistan has flourished. Today, the country produces twice as much opium as it did in 2000. How the heck did that happen? In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, I take you inside the making of the Afghan narco state:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/afghanistan-the-making-of-a-narco-state-20141204?
The Kurt Schork Award
It was an honor to receive the Kurt Schork Memorial Award last week, alongside two courageous and hard-working journalists, Neha Dixit and Priyanka Dubey. Thanks to the Thomson Reuters Foundation for establishing the award in honor of Kurt's memory, who was killed on assignment in Sierra Leone in 2000. At at time when journalists are under unprecedented threat and pressure both at home and abroad, the event was a reminder of the sacrifices that may be demanded of them in their pursuit of the truth.
Whoever Saves a Life
Is there such thing as a good-news story from Syria?
This June, I spent seven days embedded with a brave team of volunteer rescuers in rebel-held Aleppo, who are caught between the Syrian government on one side, and ISIS on the other. Along with photographer Sebastiano Tomada-Piccolomini, I documented how they risk death every day in order to save lives under the relentless barrage of the regime’s bombs. In a war that sometimes seems without good guys, here are some real Syrian heroes. This, for Matter, is their harrowing story, “Whoever Saves a Life” (alongside some gorgeous photos from Seba):
https://medium.com/matter/whoever-saves-a-life-1aaea20b782
If you do have a read, you’ll be interested as well in my postscript, which includes a video of me explaining a very close call with a barrel bomb, as well as an explanation of how the team was ultimately betrayed:
https://medium.com/media/d6fa6f969d53b6aac0fae408615903b4/href
Schell Fellow at the Nation Institute
I'm excited to announce that I've been named the Schell Fellow at the Nation Institute. It's an honor to be included among such a distinguished and principled group of fellows. The Nation Institute is a nonprofit media center dedicated to strengthening the independent press and advancing social justice and civil rights. The fellowship--which is named after the late Jonathan Schell, an advocate of nuclear disarmament--is intended to help support my reporting on national security and foreign policy issues.
New in Rolling Stone: Last Tango in Kabul
I have a piece in the current issue of Rolling Stone that depicts the end of a wild era in Kabul as Afghanistan faces a violent, uncertain future. It's partly an elegy for a cynical boom town and partly a meditation on what comes next, in the face of a wave of attacks that have the city's expat community fearing for their future:
The killings continued this summer: Two Finnish aid workers were slaughtered in July, and then on August 5th, U.S. Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene was gunned down in Kabul – the highest-ranking officer killed in the war. The violence brought to the surface what has been growing more and more obvious: The West is desperate to get out. NGOs and embassies, already in the process of drawing down their activities, have closed up like clams under drastically heightened security restrictions. The boomtown Kabul of the Surge has come and gone like a dream. But even a president's promise to end a war can't lop history off into neat little chunks. We are leaving behind a country whose fate is more uncertain than ever, where during a contentious election, two rival candidates have declared themselves the rightful president, where murders in broad daylight go unsolved. The American Era is ending in Afghanistan, but what will we be leaving behind?
You can read the full piece here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/last-tango-in-kabul-20140818?page=4