John Burns on Those Who Aid War Journalists

"Behind these deaths lie complex and highly emotive issues for those of us who have traveled to war zones for the Times and other news organizations, involving our responsibilities for the lives of the locally employed people who make it possible for us to operate in faraway lands -- interpreters and reporters like Sultan Munadi (pictured left), but also drivers, security guards and domestic staff members; altogether, in the case of The Times, at least 200 people in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years of those two wars."

You can read John Burns full blog entry here.

The New York Times's Lonely War

Vanity Fair has an amazing piece that explores the "day-to-day toll - the infighting, isolation, and near-death experiences - of covering the most important story no one wants to read about."  The author of the article, Seth Mnookin, focuses in on the New York Times's Baghdad bureau (there is a small mention of CNN's Michael Holmes) and talks with John F. Burns, Dexter Filkins, and others.

The above photograph of Dexter Filkins was taken by Ashley Gilbertson in 2004.

John Burns: Prospects in Afghanistan, Not Looking Good

John Burns, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, was recently interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations on his recent visit to Afghanistan.  Burns has spent many years in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s and had the following to say with respect to the front line on the war on terrorism:

"The asymmetric war which was effectively deployed by the insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq is moving to Afghanistan.  Indeed, some of the practitioners are moving.  We have been briefed by American military in Iraq that former fighters who in the past were flooding to Iraq, mostly Arabs and Central Asians, are now making Afghanistan their war of choice; which means, in effect, that Senator Barack Obama and the insurgency in Iraq agree on one thing and that is that the front line of the war on terrorism is now Afghanistan and not Iraq."

You can also find Burn's most recent New York Times article on Afghanistan here.