DOWN AND OUT ON THE SMUGGLER’S ROAD – By Nick Turse (The Intercept) / February 13, 2022
A veteran war reporter goes undercover to document a world where movement is surveilled, curtailed, and criminalized.
I ALWAYS KNEW Matthieu Aikins must be brave. He went undercover with Afghanistan’s drug-trafficking border police, exposed a possible massacre by a top Afghan commander, and dug into allegations of killings by a U.S. Special Forces A-Team.
Some reporters can’t help telling you their latest tale of derring-do: “I was there. And it was hell!” I’d infrequently run into Aikins somewhere, but the Canadian journalist would never say much about what he had just done or where he was headed. Then my next issue of Harper’s would arrive, and I’d see “On the Front Lines in the World’s Deadliest Megacity” above his name.
But I didn’t really know how brave Aikins was until, a third of the way through his debut book, he admits: “I was in danger of losing the plot.” I felt the same. It seemed as if “The Naked Don’t Fear the Water” (a title borrowed from a Dari proverb) might be going off the rails.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/02/13/matthieu-aikins-book-refugee-war/
