Anand Gopal

Type Media Center Fellow

Anand Gopal is a fellow at Type Media Center, a journalist covering the Middle East, and a scholar who studies political violence. He is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of “No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes,” which won the Ridenhour Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Award. He has won the George Polk Award, the National Magazine Award, and multiple Overseas Press Club awards for his reporting from Iraq and Syria. He received his PhD from Columbia University, where he studied network analysis, and is a professor at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University.

Books

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes

In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces the lives of three Afghans caught in America’s war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent; a U.S.-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain wealth and power; and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, No Good Men Among the Living stunningly lays bare the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony.

Highlights

The Other Afghan Women

In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them.

Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom

Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?

The Hell After ISIS

Even as the militant group loses ground in Iraq, many Sunnis say they have no hope for peace. One family’s story shows why.