Anand Gopal
Anand Gopal is a journalist and author of "No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes", which describes the travails of three Afghans caught in the war on terror. It was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Career. Gopal is notable for his reporting in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He is believed to be one of the few Western journalists to have embedded with the Taliban, an experience that forms part of the basis of "No Good Men Among the Living". In 2012 Gopal reported  for "Harper's Magazine" on the town of Taftanaz in Syria, which suffered a massacre at the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2014 he reported for Harper's on a murderous U.S.-backed police chief in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He has reported for "The New York Times", "The Atlantic" and "Harpers" and other outlets. Gopal's views on the Taliban have been quoted in several books. From 2012–2014, Gopal was a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. In January 2010 Gopal published a story about secret prisons in Afghanistan, run by JSOC Joint Special Operations  Command. In the September 13, 2021 New Yorker magazine Gopal writes an article entitled "The Other Afghan Women" a feature in the New Yorkers "A Reporter at Large" beat. The article most likely has some overlap with his previous works as his previous experience certainly informed his present writing although this time he is writing just as the Taliban are retaking much of Afghanistan and US Forces are writ large leaving. The article is a study in the nuance and complexity involved with The Anerican War and the near impossibility for a outcome that benefits all parties. The article primarily  traces the life of an Afhan Women and her lifetime experiences with a war that rages all around her from birth forward. One in which as the metropolitan areas of Afghanistan see major gains in women's rights this comes at the cost of the life of those in the countryside. Gopal was one of the experts on Afghanistan chosen to appear in the documentary "Rethink Afghanistan". Gopal conducted a rare interview with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the reclusive leader of one of the Taliban's most important allies. Gopal was a resident of Manhattan when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center  on September 11, 2001. Awards. His book was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2014 National Book Award and the 2015 Helen Bernstein Award. It was awarded the 2015 Ridenhour Prize for demonstrating "why the United States' emphasis on counterterrorism at the expense of nation-building and reconciliation inadvertently led to the Taliban's resurgence after 2001."