RCFP attorneys are representing Azmat Khan, who is seeking records about civilian casualties resulting from military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan.
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@azmatzahra
RCFP attorneys are representing Azmat Khan, who is seeking records about civilian casualties resulting from military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan.
Out in print in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine:
Earlier this summer, Kiana Hayeri set out to photograph Afghans who grew up after the U.S invasion, in a society that ostensibly promised them educational and economic progress, and careers as journalists, actresses and artists. Some led lives their parents could never even dream of; others never saw those opportunities and made desperate, deadly attempts to escape.
After the Taliban took Kabul, I interviewed half a dozen of Kiana’s subjects. All of them have no idea what their future holds. They include those who who stand to lose hard-won progress, but also those who never even got to partake in what was promised in the first place.
You can see Kiana’s moving photos and our reporting in this weekend’s magazine. I think it illustrates a rural-urban divide that is all too often missing from coverage of the country.
In which I help explain America’s long war in Afghanistan...
Is Aerial Bombing Effective?
From an interview about Precision Strike:
“One of the things I hope to do in the book is go beyond the traditional parameters of how we understand what is effective. In policy circles, this question all too often comes down to whether the U.S. is achieving its goals, and whether the costs or means are worth it. But we can't answer the question of whether aerial bombing is effective without considering what the ultimate purpose of the war is, and whether those purposes are just. A collective, democratic debate needs to happen on this question, but the reliance on air power is one way in which our population is completely inured from the reality of war and cannot participate in that debate in any meaningful way.”
Until now, the fear of legal liability has driven condolence-payment policy. Department of Defense officials have been averse to fueling any misperception that the U.S. military has an obligation to provide compensation for civilian casualties that do not violate international humanitarian law. But sentiment shifted in the wake of a groundbreaking The New York Times investigation by Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal last November on the failure to implement amends in Iraq and Syria. Section 936 marks the first time that Congress has mandated uniform DoD processes and standards in this area.
Just Security: Condolence Payments for Civilian Casualties: Lessons for Applying the New NDAA
Couldn’t have imagined a better weekend at SNHU. Their students have gone above and beyond to graduate—many of them while raising families and working hard jobs—and it was an unbelievable honor to spend time with them at commencement this year!
American military officials have completed more than 1,500 assessments of civilian casualty allegations from U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq & Syria, but to date, they’ve publicly released only a handful.
These records are one of the only ways the American public can know what our government truly knows about civilian casualties and how it investigates them. And for Iraqi and Syrian survivors, these documents are the only answer they will ever get as to why they were hit, or why their losses haven’t been recognized by the U.S. government.
Over the last 15 months, I’ve been working to get 1,390 such documents through the Freedom of Information Act—to no avail. So earlier this month, represented by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, I filed suit against the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command.
Fingers crossed...
One of the biases of retrospection is to believe that the moral crises of the past were clearer than our own—that, had we been alive at the time, we would have recognized them, known what to do about them, and known when the time had come to do so. That is a fantasy. Iniquity is always coercive and insidious and intimidating, and lived reality is always a muddle, and the kind of clarity that leads to action comes not from without but from within. The great virtue of a figurative railroad is that, when someone needs it—and someone always needs it—we don’t have to build it. We are it, if we choose.
Kathryn Schulz on The Underground Railroad
Meticulously reported and movingly told, this investigation of the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State found that far more civilians had been killed by airstrikes than the Pentagon would acknowledge. The judges deemed this a stunning and important work of journalism.
Judges of the 2018 National Magazine Award for Reporting
Read: The Uncounted
Listen To The Podcast: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Do you remember this iconic photo from the Iraq war?
This was 5-year-old Samar Hassan in 2005, just moments after American soldiers killed her parents at a checkpoint in Iraq. Photographer Chris Hondros had been embedded with the unit in Tel Afar, and happened to capture a reality rarely seen by the American public. Though her face became a defining image of the war, Samar didn't learn that until 2011, after Chris was killed in Libya.
Last night, I watched Hondros: A Documentary Film, a powerful work seemingly about Chris’s life, but even more so about a theme central to his work: accountability in war.
Over and over, the film returned to the people whose faces were made famous by Chris' photos—a young soldier in Liberia, a family in Iraq. But one scene in particular was among the most arresting of any film I've watched in years. It featured Samar, the girl in the photo, who's now 18. Filmmaker Greg Campbell spent time with one of the soldiers who'd shot at Samar's parents. He was broken, and wanted so badly to tell Samar's family how sorry he was. So Greg went back to Iraq to track down Samar, and found her. He told her about the soldier and his remorse, and here's how Samar responded:
"No one ever told me he was sorry. Is sorry going to bring them back? No, it won't. I'll never forgive them...
If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood—and still I would not feel satisfied"
It's just one of many powerful scenes that will leave you mulling war & accountability for a while to come.
On Syria: What to Read & Watch
Over the last few days, some friends have asked for quality sources to get informed about the war in Syria. I wanted to recommend a few works I've found especially powerful. These aren't newsy pieces; they're films, books, and magazine pieces rich in substance, context, and history.
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in investigative reporting
Against a barrage of fake news, one hope lies in the power of investigative journalism. While much of journalism can be investigative in some way, outright investigations are altogether different; they're rigorous, systematic, and sweeping, while also forensic in their detail, peeling back layer after layer. While they can (and often do) result in extraordinary impact, full-fledged investigations take immense skill, resources, and time to pull off. Many newsrooms struggle to afford them.
This is partly why I was so thrilled Longreads asked me to write about some of my favorite investigations from 2016. Here are just a few of the works I chose, not only because they represent the best of investigative journalism, but also some of the best paths forward for this industry.
Know This History
It took the rise of Donald Trump for many Americans to first learn about NSEERS, the post-9/11 special registration program for non-immigrant males from mostly Muslim-majority countries. But for years, many of us have been writing about this—and other programs like it—that disproportionately impact Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims.
Trump's rhetoric may surprise you, but it is not new. It began even before 9/11 and continues today, often transcending political party. Here are just eight examples:
アメリカは教育を、アフガニスタンでの戦争の輝かしい成果としている。しかしBuzzFeed Newsの取材で、多くの実体のない学校があることがわかった。
Now in Japanese, courtesy of the wonderful BuzzFeed Japan.
The United States trumpets education – particularly of girls – as one of its key victories during the war in Afghanistan. But Azmat Khan’s exhaustive reporting reveals otherwise. Many of the schools Khan visited during her investigation for BuzzFeed News have never seen a single student or teacher. In a category dominated by big-team reporting, the judges were especially impressed by Khan’s initiative as a solo practitioner. In fact, she was the first member of the Western media to follow the trail of a billion-plus dollars spent by the U.S. on education-related funding in Afghanistan, piecing together a well-written narrative from contractors, aid workers and warlords. Khan also conducted more than 150 interviews for her piece, many of them on-the-ground in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The payoff? Khan’s work had a clear impact, prompting detailed monitoring of USAID as well as a commission to investigate corruption in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education.
Deadline Club Awards Judges’ Comments