Born in 1967 in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, Mohammad Hossein Jafarian is a journalist, war documentarian, and poet. Among his noted books in Persian are Windows Facing the Sea, The Wounded Shoulders of Pamir, and In the Capital of Forgetfulness. He has covered war and combat in various countries including Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Among his many documentaries are The Lost Generation (on the war in Kosovo), The Ruby of Badakhshan (on Afghanistan), Why We Fight, and The Unfinished epic (renowned six-part documentary on the life and times of the legendary leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud). Jafarian also twice served as Iranian attaché in Afghanistan and himself was wounded there. He was also a volunteer Basij combat fighter during Iran’s long war against Saddam in the 1980s. He is widely considered in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia as authority par excellence on Afghan history and current affairs and was awarded Massoud’s famous Afghan Pakol hat for his long service to the country.
Perhaps no outsider understands Afghanistan better than Iranian journalist Mohammad Hossein Jafarian. In a series of ongoing exchanges, published here in real time, Jafarian interrogates the nuance and complexity too often elided by outsiders.