The New York Times Magazine   February 12, 2023

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The New York Times Magazine   September 4, 2022

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The New York Times Magazine   May 19, 2022

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The New York Times Magazine   January 16, 2022

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The New York Times Magazine   December 16, 2020

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Death in the Desert

The New York Times Magazine   August 18, 2020

How U.S. policy turned the Sonoran Desert into a graveyard for migrants.

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The First Smartphone War

Wired   October 5, 2019

Mechanized combat and photography grew up together. In the Iraqi city of Mosul, they merged.

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The Living and the Dead

The New York Times Magazine   July 19, 2017

In October, Iraqi forces set out to retake Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities and ISIS’s biggest stronghold in the country. It would take them nine months and cost thousands of lives.

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Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times

They Will Have to Die Now

The New York Times Magazine   November 14, 2016

With the Kurdish peshmerga on the road to Mosul.

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Surviving the Fall of ISIS

National Geographic   October 2016

As Iraqi and coalition forces invade Mosul, the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq, the grim details of the extremist group’s rule come to light.

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The Prosecutor and the President

The New York Times Magazine   June 26, 2016

The International Criminal Court embodied the hope of bringing warlords and demagogues to justice. Then Luis Moreno-Ocampo took on the heir to Kenya’s most powerful political dynasty.

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On the Run in Burundi

The New Yorker   April 27, 2016

“Where there are people, there is conflict,” a Burundian saying goes. It has been relevant in this tiny Francophone country for as long as most of its inhabitants can remember.

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The Doctor

The Atavist   October 2015

Tom Catena is the only surgeon for thousands of square miles in southern Sudan. His hospital, and his life, are constantly under threat. There is no end to the carnage he must treat, and no sign of it letting up. Why does he refuse to leave?

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Escape or Die

The New Yorker   April 13, 2015

When pirates captured a cargo ship, its crew faced one desperate choice after another.

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Dr. Machar, I Presume

National Geographic   October 2014

How the world’s youngest nation descended into civil war.

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Close Your Heart

Slate   June 2, 2014

The Central African Republic’s sectarian civil war has divided a once peaceful nation, and pitted brother against brother.

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Reconciliation Is Hard Won

National Geographic   April 2, 2014

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the genocide, Rwandan villagers try to forgive the unforgivable.

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Should the United Nations Shoot First?

National Geographic   March 2014

The UN allowed its troops to attack armed groups in Congo, which led to the defeat of the vicious M23 militia. But the battle for Africa’s heartland is far from over.

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Love and Ruin

The Atavist   February 2014

There were the lovers: Louis, a paratrooper-turned-archaeologist, and Nancy, a travel writer, wife of a CIA division chief. Then there was the place: Kabul, Afghanistan, in the 1960s.

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The War for Nigeria

National Geographic   November 2013

A bloody insurgency tears at the heart of Africa’s most populous nation.

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After Westgate

National Geographic   October 4, 2013

Nairobi’s Indians showed extraordinary courage during the Westgate mall attack.

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Surviving Westgate

The New Yorker   September 27, 2013

“Then I heard the sound,” she said. “PAH! There were three shots.”

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Youssou N’Dour Has Left the Building

Departures   October 2013

By 30, he was the sound of Dakar, the most listened-to musician in Africa. Now he’s mulling a run for the presidency of Senegal.

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Terror At The Westgate Mall

The New Yorker   September 22, 2013

When I arrived Saturday afternoon in the mall’s parking lot, policemen, AK-47s and pistols drawn, were running around, speaking into walkie-talkies. The crowd of journalists and onlookers was growing.

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The Kenyatta Affair

Foreign Policy   March 20, 2013

What Africa can learn from Austria’s Nazi legacy.

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The Fall and Rise of Raila Odinga

Foreign Policy   March 2, 2013

In Kenya’s contested election, the tortured past of family dynasty is alive but not quite well.

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Vote M For Murder

Foreign Policy   February 26, 2013

In Kenya, politics is the continuation of war by other means.

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Debate Night in Kenya

The New Yorker   February 20, 2013

Kenyan candidates are referred to in the British manner, as aspirants, but they study American campaigns, so the country’s first-ever televised presidential debate was a slick production.

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The Battle for Nuba

Foreign Policy   January 22, 2013

Will total war in Sudan ever cease?

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