A devastating, well-reported story on the drone program of the U.S. Air Force and the lack of mental-health support for drone operators. Because they were not deployed, they seldom got the same recovery periods or mental-health screenings as other fighters. Instead they were treated as office workers, expected to show up for endless shifts in […]
war
Posted inEditor's Pick
Notes from Lviv
In a series of diary-like dispatches, Matt Gallagher shares a riveting on-the-ground account of training civilians for combat in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. All-day lane rotations between trainers on urban movement, dismounted recon ops, and advanced room defense. They’re getting better. Petro’s a leader. So is Symon, the law student. So is Ivan, a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sewing Lessons
In this personal essay at Salvation South, a new magazine edited by the founding editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner, Shelley Johansson retells her family’s story against the background of World War II. I know my great-grandmother felt that she was helping the war effort when she sewed bandages – her pride radiates off the page […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Airport
Journalist Shannon Gormley weaves an astonishing narrative and beautifully written (and at times, very personal) meditation on one family’s escape out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’d never written Asghar’s story as I’d said I would, and I’d buried the thought of contacting him, too, until foreign sections of newspapers began to […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Day My Wartime Cat Went Missing
“Time to leave it all behind — the people, the country, the war — and return to America, cats in tow.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Hathi
“Millions suffered through terror and upheaval in the turbulent years following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of them was a baby elephant from India.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘Look After My Babies’: In Ethiopia, a Tigray Family’s Quest
War broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region at the worst possible time for Abraha Kinfe Gebremariam and his family: his wife was giving birth to twins amid a massacre.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Reluctant Bomb Technicians of Sinjar
“The three of them had become part of a team that would clear the land they grew up on of the death ISIS had strewn there, beginning to reclaim it for Iraq’s displaced Yazidis to one day return home.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘Machines Set Loose to Slaughter’: the Dangerous Rise of Military AI
“… it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the idea of ethical robotic killing machines is unrealistic, and all too likely to support dangerous fantasies of pushbutton wars and guiltless slaughters.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
All that Was Innocent and Violent: Girlhood in Post-Revolution Iran
Naz Riahi recalls her vibrant childhood in a suburb of Tehran, and considers how the harsh realities imposed by the still new Islamic Republic seeped into her family’s life.