Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
Lahore, Pakistan · Born 1948, Rawalpindi · Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia correspondent and author
Ahmed Rashid is Pakistan's most internationally prominent foreign affairs journalist and the author of the best-selling book on the Taliban — a figure who, as Christopher Hitchens described him, is "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" and who has been covering the wars in Afghanistan and conflicts in Central Asia and Pakistan since 1979. His career spans more than four decades of reporting from one of the world's most dangerous and strategically consequential regions, producing journalism and books that shaped how governments, militaries, and the informed public understood the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the collapse of the Afghan state long before those subjects became crisis-era mainstream concerns.
After graduating from Cambridge, Rashid spent approximately ten years in the hills of Balochistan attempting to organize an uprising against the Pakistani military dictatorships of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan — an experience that ended in frustration and defeat, and turned him toward writing about the region he had tried to change through other means. He has been the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review for 22 years (1982–2004) and for the Daily Telegraph for more than a decade and a half (1992–2008). He currently writes for the Financial Times, the New York Review of Books, and several Pakistani publications, and appears regularly on BBC, CNN, and NPR.
His advisory and board roles reflect the degree to which governments, international organizations, and civil society institutions have sought his counsel: he has served on the Board of Advisers of the International Committee of the Red Cross; on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists; on the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch's Asia division; and on the Advisory Board of Eurasia Net of the Soros Foundation. He is a scholar of the Davos World Economic Forum. In the 1990s he was part of a UN-led team that attempted to find ways to end the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. At the invitation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he became the first journalist to address the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2002, and the first journalist to address NATO ambassadors in Brussels in September 2003.
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
Yale University Press, 2000 (updated 2010) · New York Times bestseller (5 weeks) · 1.5 million copies sold · translated into 40+ languages · "an astonishing number for an academic press" · Used extensively by American analysts after 9/11
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
Yale University Press, 2002 · On the emergence of militant Islam in the post-Soviet Central Asian states
Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
Viking, 2008 · Winner, Italy's Tiziano Terzani Literary Prize · Silver Medal, Arthur Ross Book Award (Council on Foreign Relations) · Finalist, Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award
Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
Viking, 2012 · The third volume of his Afghanistan-Pakistan-US trilogy
The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism?
St. Martin's Press, 1994 · His debut; on Central Asia after the Soviet collapse
The publication of Taliban in 2000 — before the September 11 attacks — established Rashid as the pre-eminent outside authority on the movement. The book, published by Yale University Press (an academic press), became a New York Times bestseller for five weeks after 9/11 and has sold 1.5 million copies in English alone, with translations into more than 40 languages. American intelligence agencies, the State Department, and military officers relied on it as a primary briefing document on a movement most of Washington had barely registered before the attacks. That the world's most consequential journalistic subject of the early 21st century had been documented in depth and in print by a Pakistani journalist living in Lahore — and largely ignored by Western governments that had access to the book — is one of the more instructive failures of the era's intelligence and policy apparatus. Rashid has said that former President George W. Bush plagiarized his work in writing his memoirs.
After the 2001 war in Afghanistan, Rashid donated one third of his book earnings to establish the Open Media Fund for Afghanistan, an NGO that supported local Afghan journalists and media development. He enlisted the Open Society Institute, AOL Time Warner Foundation, and Internews Network to provide additional financial support — one of the more unusual examples of a foreign correspondent using the proceeds of his work to support the media infrastructure of the country he covered.
Nisar Osmani Courage in Journalism Award — Human Rights Society of Pakistan (2001)
Foreign Policy 100 Global Thinkers (2009 and 2010)
Casa Asia Prize — Spain (2008)
Best Columnist in the Spanish Press — presented by King Juan Carlos (2009)
Tiziano Terzani Literary Prize — Italy (2009, for Descent into Chaos)
Arthur Ross Book Award, Silver Medal — Council on Foreign Relations (2009)
First journalist to address the UN General Assembly (2002)
First journalist to address NATO ambassadors (2003)
Ahmed Rashid · Born 1948, Rawalpindi, Pakistan · Based in Lahore
Education: Malvern College · Government College Lahore · Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (BA Political Science, MA)
Current outlets: Financial Times · New York Review of Books · BBC Online · Pakistani publications
Former: Far Eastern Economic Review (1982–2004) · Daily Telegraph (1992–2008) · The Independent (1986–1992)
Boards: Committee to Protect Journalists · Human Rights Watch Asia · ICRC Board of Advisers (2004) · Eurasia Net / Soros Foundation
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