Jackie Northam
Jackie Northam is NPR's International Affairs Correspondent. She is a veteran journalist who has spent three decades reporting on conflict, politics, and life across the globe - from the mountains of Afghanistan and the desert sands of Saudi Arabia, to the gritty prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and the pristine beauty of the Arctic.
Northam spent more than a dozen years as an international correspondent living in London, Budapest, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Nairobi. She charted the collapse of communism, covered the first Gulf War from Saudi Arabia, counter-terrorism efforts in Pakistan, and reported from Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Her work has taken her to conflict zones around the world. Northam covered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, arriving in the country just four days after Hutu extremists began slaughtering ethnic Tutsis. In Afghanistan, she accompanied Green Berets on a precarious mission to take a Taliban base. In Cambodia, she reported from Khmer Rouge strongholds.
Throughout her career, Northam has put a human face on her reporting, whether it be the courage of villagers walking miles to cast their vote in an Afghan election despite death threats from militants, or the face of a rescue worker as he desperately listens for any sound of life beneath the rubble of a collapsed elementary school in Haiti.
Northam joined NPR in 2000 as National Security Correspondent, covering US defense and intelligence policies. She led the network's coverage of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal and the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Her present beat focuses on the complex relationship between international business and geopolitics, including how the lifting of nuclear sanctions has opened Iran for business, the impact of China's efforts to buy up businesses and real estate around the world, and whether President Trump's overseas business interests are affecting US policy.
Northam has received multiple journalism awards during her career, including Associated Press awards and regional Edward R. Murrow awards, and was part of an NPR team of journalists who won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for "The DNA Files," a series about the science of genetics.
A native of Canada, Northam spends her time off crewing in the summer, on the ski hills in the winter, and on long walks year-round with her beloved beagle, Tara.
-
This week, as the U.S. prepared to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban named a new interim government in Afghanistan.
-
Pakistan has long been seen as backing the Taliban in defiance of the rest of the world. But now that they have seized control of Afghanistan, that relationship could change.
-
About 200 people, including some Americans, departed the Afghan capital on Thursday. Officials said this was not an evacuation flight, but rather that people were leaving of their own free will. -
When Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the president of Afghanistan fled. It was so fast, the group didn't seem to have a plan to run the country. Tuesday, they announced an interim government.
-
The Taliban released a list of interim ministers of a new acting government at a press conference in Kabul. The list included many who are under U.N. and/or U.S. sanctions.
-
In 2011, the CIA involved a local doctor to help verify Osama bin Laden was hiding in a compound in Pakistan. That decision has had a long lasting impact on aid groups trying to work in the country.
-
With the U.S. military gone, the big question now is: What happens next in the new chapter between the two countries, and what happens to Americans and others left behind.
-
Pakistan helped create the Taliban in the 1990s — and was one of only three countries to recognize their government. Now the country is watching the situation in Afghanistan.
-
Pakistan's neighbor has long been associated with the Taliban. The group controls most Afghan territory after decades of war with the U.S. Afghan refugees are trying to cross into Pakistan.
-
There were two explosions Thursday outside Kabul's airport, where thousands of people have been gathering for days trying to get out of the country and to safety following the Taliban's takeover.
