![]() ![]() “The war didn’t end the way anyone expected.” “In recent months the signs were all there this force was ready to crumble,” Whitlock said. Still, it’s one thing to know an end is coming, it’s another to have it happen so quickly. The book lays clear the contrast between official reports promising progress by NATO and Afghan forces and the morass that was apparent to all who spent time in the country.įor those following Afghanistan, the government run by President Ashraf Ghani was a terminally ill patient. To read The Afghanistan Papers is to understand how the inevitability of a Taliban victory, something many felt keenly when they were on the ground, came to be. Whitlock’s work is about the big picture. Much of my reporting has been about the people on the ground. ![]() ![]() Watching scenes from Kabul this week, a place I longed to return to this year, breaks my heart. The people are warm and resilient and full of life. I find the people and place intoxicating. I’ve covered Afghanistan since 2004 and the country holds a special place in my heart. I read an advance copy of The Afghanistan Papers and found the book both riveting and maddening. His coverage of the Fat Leonard probe, a corruption scandal that ensnared more than 60 admirals, is bonkers. I met Whitlock when I interviewed at The Washington Post he was one of the reasons I wanted to work there. The book is one-part indictment of mission creep and American hubris, and one-part warning to future leaders. Over the last year, Whitlock has turned the original reporting into a full length book: The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.īased on interviews with soldiers, diplomats and policymakers by a government watchdog, it chronicles years of recklessness and bad decision-making that the nation is still grappling with today. In December 2019, The Washington Post published a groundbreaking investigative series by Whitlock, “ The Afghanistan Papers,” that quickly became a foundational text for understanding the war in Afghanistan. “No question that affected my whole career.” “The journalistic ambitions were high and the standards were high,” he said about the N&O. He’s now an investigative reporter at the Post. His time in North Carolina set him up to jump to The Washington Post, first as a statehouse reporter, and later as the Berlin Bureau chief. “I really learned a lot about records, documents, and not taking no for an answer,” said Whitlock of his journey from the N&O’s Chapel Hill bureau, to its Durham team, before eventually arriving at the state desk, where he got to wander from mountains to the sea looking for stories and projects, like a sprawling and detail-filled profile in 1997 exploring banker Hugh McColl’s rise to power. His groundbreaking investigative series on the Afghanistan War-“The Afghanistan Papers”-is back at the center of the national debate thanks to its cutting and insightful critiques of American policy and execution over the course of the 20-year war.īut whether or not North Carolina remembers him, a Duke graduate and seven-year veteran of the News & Observer, Whitlock certainly remembers the state. “I don’t think too many people in NC still remember me,” he said, before quickly agreeing to chat. When I asked Craig Whitlock, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Washington Post reporter, whether he’d have time for an interview last week, he responded with a dose of self-deprecation. ![]()
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