Azmat Khan

Azmat Khan is an award-winning investigative journalist, a New York Times Magazine Contributing Writer, and the Columbia University James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues. She was awarded a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for her work on the New York Times series “The Civilian Casualty Files,” which, according to the Pulitzer committee, “exposed the vast civilian toll of U.S.-led airstrikes, challenging official accounts of American military engagements in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan." Her investigation, developed over the course of six years, found that one in five of the coalition strikes identified resulted in a civilian death rate of more than 31 times higher than was acknowledged by the coalition. But what she is most proud of is that she made the related documents public — 1,300 files — and “they are filled with all kinds of legal rationale that it’s not my job to assess with the respects to the laws of war, but now legal scholars are. I know a number of studies that are taking place. Usually, it takes decades after a war has ended to really delve into what the protocols were. Now, there’s a chance to actually study this in real time. I’m really excited about the scholarship that will come out of that.” Khan is also a fellow of and mentor for the Center on the Future of War. She is writing a book for Random House titled “Precision Strike.” According to Khan, it is a ground-level investigation into the true human costs and implications of America's “precision” air wars around the world. “It is also an exploration of ways in which we might envision an alternative future.” Among her awards are a 2020 Carnegie Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club Ed Cunningham Award for Magazine Reporting, the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism, the Deadline Club Award for Independent Digital Reporting; the Deadline Club Award for Magazine Investigative Reporting and the South Asian Journalist Association's Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting on South Asia. Khan received an MSt. from Oxford University, which she attended as a Clarendon Scholar, and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. She has also studied at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Her reporting has taken her to Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and other conflict zones.