Filkins Shares War Coverage Experience

“I write for a newspaper, and, you know, I think that in the time that I was in Iraq I probably went to 100 bombs of one sort or another, car bombings, suicide bombs, you know donkey bombings, and they’re terrible, they’re horrendous,” said Dexter Filkins, in front of a Boston College lecture hall brimming with spectators.  “But you know, I’d come back and write the story.  And you’ve heard stories on the radio and t.v., you’ve read them in the paper or on the net, they all sound the same.  You know, ‘29 people killed, 14 wounded today in a car bombing in Bagdad’ and you switch off, you don’t even listen.  I can tell you that if you’ve ever been to a car bombing or a suicide bombing, you would never forget it.  It is absolutely the end of the world.”

Still jet lagged from coming from Kabul a couple days before, Filkins was hosted by Boston College’s Lowell Humanities Series on Tuesday, September 21, before returning to Kabul the next morning.  His speech was attended primarily by students from Boston College and Boston University there to absorb his journalism expertise, with a smattering of college professors and other interested Bostonians.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins spoke at Boston College this week, addressing his experience covering Afghanistan and Iraq. Photo Courtesy of Eddric Lee.

As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Filkins began his reporting in Afghanistan in 1998, long before the World Trade Center toppled to the ground on 9/11.  Since then he has been traveling back and forth between Afghanistan and Iraq, reporting on what he calls, “our two wars that, you know, we’ve all come to know and love”.  He has compiled his experiences in his book, The Forever War, which was published in 2008.

Throughout his speech, Filkins’ displayed a slideshow of photographs taken in Afghanistan and Iraq by photojournalists he traveled with throughout the years.

“Afghanistan was a place that nobody really knew about and nobody really cared very much about,” Filkins said, describing his initial travels in the late 1990s with a photograph of Afghanistan’s stark terrain displayed behind him.  “Afghanistan is just an incredibly, just an extraordinary place…it’s just kind of the land that time forgot,” he said, showing a photograph of a donkey parking lot.

With a steady gaze on the audience before him, Filkins candidly wove his way through topics ranging from the conditions US soldiers are facing to rental car troubles to his meetings with Afghanis and Iraqis whose lives are surrounded by war.

“The image that we all have is kind of, you know, the Taliban, Al Queda are these kind of knuckle-dragging you know zealots, you know drooling maniacs,” said Filkins, addressing a photograph of a wounded, 21-year-old member of the Taliban.  “He was just a kid you know,…I mean, you can just see the fear in his eyes…He kind of got recruited one day by some people who said, you know, ‘Go fight the Jews in Palestine’, and he didn’t even know where he was, and suddenly he was in the middle of this war.”

Comparatively, Filkins showed a photo of American soldiers in Bagdad saying, “These are the guys, just to remind you, that kind of fight our wars.  They generally, unless they’re officers, they don’t go to Boston College or Boston University… They’re just kids from the countryside.  They’re 19 and they’re from, you know, Starkville, Mississippi and Terrell, Texas.”

Following his speech, Filkins paused for audience questions, most of which were wasted on by journalism students who cared more about how he writes his news ledes than his personal encounters with the Taliban.

Regarding his experience as a reporter, Filkins said, “We [Filkins and his fellow New York Times reporters] got up and risked our lives every day, and we weren’t doing that so like one political party could win, we were just doing it to find the truth as best we can.”

Filkins’ past and current coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan can be found on the New York Times’ website and in his book, which can be bought in most bookstores.

About Rachel Stine

Rachel Stine (COM'12) is the Campus Editor for the Quad. She loves sailing the uncharted waters of BU's campus goings-on to uncover some of its deepest secrets and hidden treasures.

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