“Iraq: Under Worse Management,” in Bloomberg Businessweek
I spent four weeks in December 2011 and January 2012 in Iraq on behalf of Bloomberg Businessweek, working on a feature about the state of the country after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The result is a cover story for the week of January 23 with an accompanying photo essay. Here’s the intro to the [...]
“Herat Burning” multimedia posted on Assignment Afghanistan
Following my photo-essay “Afghanistan’s Burned Brides” from the January-February issue of Mother Jones, about the growing phenomenon of self-immolation, I decided to produce my own multimedia treatment of the story based on from the audio recordings, photos, and video I shot in the western city of Herat in September and October 2010. I posted “Herat [...]
“Trial by Fire” published in Mother Jones
This from the header of my new “Afghanistan’s Burned Brides” slideshow at MotherJones.com:
“The head nurse at Herat Regional Hospital’s Burn Unit guesses that she’s seen at least a thousand self-immolation cases since she started working here 13 years ago. Almost all of them are young women who’ve been beaten, starved, or forced into abusive marriages [...]
Another Day in the ‘Dab
“Another Day in the ‘Dab” is about an artillery unit from the 101st Airborne Division that finds itself exchanging orders to Iraq for another mission as part of the 2010 Afghan “surge” in one of southern Afghanistan’s most dangerous regions—Arghandab, a key point on the smuggling trail from Helmand to Pakistan, where insurgents had [...]
VQR Fall 2010: “Digging Out”
The Fall 2010 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review—a special issue on global mining—includes my essay about the potential of natural resource development and mining in Afghanistan, titled “Digging Out.” In June 2010, the New York Times published an article celebrating the discovery of vast mineral riches under Afghanistan’s soil—as much as $1 trillion worth [...]
VQR Web Exclusive: Easter in Gaza
I had been itching to do one last story from Gaza before I left earlier this month, and Easter in Gaza gave me the perfect opportunity. The ceremony was pure magic, and it was truly bizarre to find such a colorful and festive undertaking happening in the middle of the night in the Old City [...]
VQR Spring 2010: “The Path to Yaghestan”
The Spring 2010 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review came out on April 1. The story and photos that resulted from my October 2009 trip to Wardak Province, Afghanistan, are finally in print!
