Matthieu Aikins

Matthieu Aikins
Occupation Journalist

Matthieu Aikins is a journalist and literary non-fiction writer best known for his reporting on the war in Afghanistan. He is a recipient of the George Polk Award, a finalist for the National Magazine Awards, and his writing appeared in the anthology The Best American Magazine Writing 2012.[1][2]

Career

After graduating from Queen's University in 2006, Aikins' spent several years traveling North America and Eastern Europe.[3][4] During that period, he contributed to Canadian newspapers and alt-weeklies, winning several journalism awards. One of his articles, "Adam's Fall," about suicides from the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in the coastal city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, won two major prizes and was followed by the construction of suicide-prevention barriers on the bridge in question.[5][6][7]

In 2008, Aikins traveled overland from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, where he began his career reporting from the region.[4] His half-Asian features and command of Persian allowed him to blend in as an Afghan, and Aikins began filing stories while traveling in local transportation and sleeping in roadside tea houses.[3] His breakthrough article came in late 2009, with the story "The Master of Spin Boldak," published in Harper's Magazine, which exposed drug-trafficking by the Afghan Border Police in the town of Spin Boldak.[3][4] The article was later used to train US military intelligence analysts on the region's history.[8][9]

Subsequently, Aikins has written mainly for American monthly magazines, including Harper's, the Atlantic, Wired, and GQ, and has expanded his coverage to include countries such as Syria and Pakistan.[10][11] In 2010, he won a National Magazine Award in Canada for his story "Last Stand in Kandahar," published in the Walrus. His 2011 article "Our Man in Kandahar," which exposed a massacre by the Afghan Border Police commander, Brigadier General Abdul Raziq, was a finalist in the reporting category for the American Society of Magazine Editors' National Magazine Awards. Aikins has been an outspoken critic of human rights abuses by US allies in Afghanistan.[12]

Aikins' piece in Rolling Stone entitled "The A-Team Killings," which investigated allegations of war crimes against a US Special Forces unit in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, received the 2013 George Polk Award for magazine reporting, and the 2014 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism. [13][14]

In 2012, Aikins graduated from New York University with a master's degree in Near Eastern Studies. He currently lives in Kabul, Afghanistan.[11]

Bibliography

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References

  1. ↑ "National Magazine Award Nominees Include 'New York,' 'The New Yorker,' 'Vice'" The Atlantic Wire. April 3, 2012. Retrieved July 17, 2013
  2. ↑ "Best American Magazine Writing 2012" American Society of Magazine Editors. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 "Longform Podcast #1: Matthieu Aikins" Longform.org. August 8, 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 "On Becoming Harper’s Man in Afghanistan, Matthieu Aikins: ‘I was just living the lifestyle of a vagabond’" LongForum. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  5. ↑ "CAJ Award winners announced" Newswire. May 24, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Winners, 2008 Atlantic Journalism Awards" Newswire. May 2, 2009.
  7. ↑ "Macdonald Bridge to get suicide barriers" The Coast. May 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ "Canadian journalist's Afghanistan story now used to train intelligence analysts" CBC Dispatches. March 6, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Military launches Afghanistan intelligence-gathering mission" Washington Post. February 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ "Kabubble: Kabul’s Looming Collapse" PRI: The World. January 25, 2013.
  11. 1 2 "About Page" www.maikins.com Retrieved July 17, 2013
  12. ↑ "Afghanistan: Experts Give Washington Failing Grade on Warlordism Lesson" Eurasianet. October 26, 2011.
  13. ↑ "Polk Winner on Afghanistan: Slain Journalists, Ghost Polls & Unresolved U.S. Ties to Deaths, Torture" Democracy Now!. April 14, 2014.
  14. ↑ " Matthieu Aikins receives the 2014 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for Rolling Stone investigation" Medill School of Journalism. June 5, 2014.
  15. ↑ Wired often changes the title of a print article when it is published online. This article is titled "Staring Down the Taliban in the Race to Eradicate Polio From Earth" online.


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