In the New Gangland of El Salvador
How LA-style gang life migrated to the slums of San Salvador.
How LA-style gang life migrated to the slums of San Salvador.
Alma Guillermoprieto New York Review of Books Oct 2011 15min Permalink
A prescient take on what the US invasion of Iraq would mean for both countries.
James Fallows The Atlantic Nov 2002 40min Permalink
Inside the Afghan Local Police, who are accused of killing and raping villagers, and are believed to be the United States’s last shot in Afghanistan.
Ten years after anthrax attacks, biodefense is busted.
Wil S. Hylton New York Times Magazine Oct 2011 30min Permalink
On the FBI’s program to infiltrate Muslim communities in America.
Trevor Aaronson Mother Jones Sep 2011 Permalink
Abdul Raziq, a 33-year-old warlord, is an increasingly powerful player in Afghanistan and the recipient of substantial U.S. support. He may also be the perpetrator of a civilian massacre.
Matthieu Aikins The Atlantic Nov 2011 10min Permalink
The Haqqani family, an organized crime militia dubbed the “Sopranos of the Afghanistan war,” will almost surely outlast the U.S. occupation and thus seize tremendous power after the U.S. exits.
Alissa J. Rubin, Mark Mazzetti, Scott Shane New York Times Sep 2011 10min Permalink
On being gay in the military, three years before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
A vast majority of those interviewed had been interrogated at least once, and what they described was nearly the same. They said those under suspicion of homosexuality suffer bright lights in their eyes and sometimes handcuffs on their wrists, warnings that their parents will be informed or their hometown newspapers called, threats that their stripes will be torn off and they will pushed through the gates of the base before a jeering crowd.
Jane Gross New York Times Apr 1990 10min Permalink
Profiles of Vietnam veterans several years after returning home.
Tracy Kidder The Atlantic Mar 1978 50min Permalink
The death of the journalist who exposed dark secrets about Islamic extremism in Pakistan’s military.
Dexter Filkins New Yorker Sep 2011 35min Permalink
The author interviews England in prison:
By now, people all over the world have heard of Lynndie England. She's the "Small-Town Girl Who Became an All-American Monster," as one Australian newspaper headline described her, or "the girl with a leash," as Mick Jagger calls her in the song "Dangerous Beauty." Yet England remains a mystery. Is she a torturer? A pawn? Another victim of the Iraq war? While the world weighed in, England said very little.
Tara McKelvey Marie Claire May 2009 Permalink
An essay on the evolving narrative of martyrdom in the Islamist and secular worlds.
Christopher Watt Maisonneuve Sep 2011 10min Permalink
At a dinner party, the author meets one of Afghanistan’s last remaining maskhara — an entertainer, thief and murderer.
Jon Lee Anderson Guernica Sep 2011 10min Permalink
As “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” comes to an end, a conversation with gay servicemen past and present.
Chris Heath GQ Sep 2011 35min Permalink
The life history of an unassuming Sudanese man, Noor Uthman Muhammed, who has spent the last nine years in Guantánamo Bay prison.
Tyler Cabot Esquire Sep 2011 1h5min Permalink
The story of Robert Quinones:
Fifteen months of carnage in Iraq had left the 29-year-old debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder. But despite his doctor’s urgent recommendation, the Army failed to send him to a Warrior Transition Unit for help. The best the Department of Veterans Affairs could offer was 10-minute therapy sessions — via videoconference. So, early on Labor Day morning last year, after topping off a night of drinking with a handful of sleeping pills, Quinones barged into Fort Stewart’s hospital, forced his way to the third-floor psychiatric ward and held three soldiers hostage, demanding better mental health treatment.
Megan McCloskey Stars and Stripes Aug 2011 20min Permalink
A clinical test is underway to evaluate MDMA—ecstasy—as a treatment for PTSD.
Brian Anderson Motherboard Aug 2011 15min Permalink
The CIA’s declassified account of the two decades two young officers spent as captives after being shot down over China during the Korean War.
The truth and consequences of reporting from a war zone.
Scott Johnson Guernica Aug 2011 20min Permalink
The story of the Abbottabad raid, in detail.
Nicholas Schmidle New Yorker Jan 2012 35min Permalink
Alan Beaty’s Tennessee farm serves an unofficial halfway house for Marines struggling with their return to civilian life.
Mike Sager Esquire Aug 2011 30min Permalink
In Afghanistan and other zones of international crisis with John Kerry:
Why, then, does Kerry bother? Why is he racing back and forth to put out the fires being set by a serial arsonist? I asked him about this on the short flight from Kabul to Islamabad. Kerry tried to put the best possible face on what he had learned. Despite the warlords in Kabul, he said, Karzai had appointed some talented officials at the provincial and district levels. “It’s a mixed bag,” he concluded gamely. Kerry knew Karzai’s failings as well as anyone, but he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan’s president, because he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan. But why not?
James Traub New York Times Magazine Jul 2011 25min Permalink
John Walker Lindh’s father on why his son is an innocent victim of the War on Terror.
Frank Lindh The Guardian Jul 2011 25min Permalink
The story of a Marine who saved innumerable lives, then got fired.
James Verini Washington Monthly Jul 2011 2h15min Permalink
The first five years of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s tenure have been marked by a dangerous consolidation of power.
According to political allies and Western diplomats who have worked with Maliki, he isn't so much power-hungry as deeply cynical and mistrusting. The Dawa Party, which Maliki joined as a young man, was hunted by Saddam's Baathist regime. Even those living in exile -- like Maliki, who lived in Syria and Iran for more than 20 years -- organized themselves into isolated cells to protect against the regime's spies and limit the information that any one member might divulge if he were captured or compromised. Maliki's early career was saturated in perpetual suspicion.
Ben Van Heuvelen Foreign Policy Jun 2011 20min Permalink