The Story of a Fixer

Editorial

This article appeared in the August 17, 2009 edition of The Nation.

July 29, 2009

In these days of the disappearing newspaper, we hear a lot about the invisible costs of newsgathering. Sometimes the invisible cost is a life. Ian Olds's haunting documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, which airs on HBO August 17, reveals how the story of a war gets told: the brokering of deals so that an interview can take place; the bridging of vast distances in language, culture and geography between Western reporter and native source. In this process, a fixer is more than a facilitator. He is the conduit, a vital link in the chain that ultimately connects an audience--in this case, the largely American readers of this magazine--to fighters on the front lines of a war being waged in their name.

The Nation's Christian Parenti is the Western reporter in the film. Parenti hired Ajmal Naqshbandi in October 2004 when he first went to Kabul to write about the US occupation of Afghanistan. He stayed at Naqshbandi's guesthouse, along with "an anarchic mix of foreign reporters, contractors and other unidentified free agents," as he wrote in an award-winning piece about Naqshbandi published in Playboy. Naqshbandi helped him on all of the Afghanistan stories he wrote for The Nation in the wake of the US invasion: "Who Rules Afghanistan" (November 15, 2004); "Afghan Poppies Bloom" (January 24, 2005); "Afghanistan: The Other War" (March 27, 2006); and "Taliban Rising" (October 30, 2006).

It was Naqshbandi who enabled Parenti to interview Taliban fighters face to face on the desolate Zabul-Kandahar province border for "Afghanistan: The Other War." In a film rife with tension, that encounter makes for one of the most rattling scenes: several nervous Talibs cradle their guns, hanging back warily while Parenti shouts out his questions: "How does the Taliban sustain itself? Does it receive support from Pakistan?" The Taliban leader answers bluntly: "Yes, Pakistan stands with us. And on that side of the border we have our offices. Pakistan is supporting us. They supply us. Our leaders are there collecting help." The ominous approach of a reconnaissance plane ends the interview. As their car speeds away, Parenti pronounces Ajmal "the best fixer in Afghanistan" and himself "the most relieved American reporter in Afghanistan."