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.
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In what is considered a good-faith gesture, Pakistan last week released at least nine Afghan Taliban prisoners. The move is seen as part of a new strategy by Pakistan as it eyes the looming drawdown of U.S. and Western troops in Afghanistan 鈥� and a small but potentially important breakthrough in the peace process.
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A single accuser's word is often enough to lead to an arrest and spark mob violence. Human rights advocates say the charges are frequently made against religious minorities, and are often used to settle personal scores. -
Polio is deadly, but so is what's required to stamp it out once and for all in Pakistan: facing down Islamist extremists. The virus thrives in Pakistan's lawless 鈥� and largely inaccessible 鈥� tribal regions. To stop polio's spread, health workers must be courageous, clever and relentless. -
Adding to recent political unrest in Pakistan, poverty is rife and unemployment is growing as the population skyrockets. Analysts worry about the growing frustration, and that the jobless are an increasingly easy target for the Taliban. -
The railways minister is offering $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of the anti-Islam video Innocence Of Muslims. The offer has brought international condemnation, but Islamic militants have praised the minister and he says he's not backing down.
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A.Q. Khan is a hero at home for helping build the bomb, and a villain in the West for selling nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea. Now he's forming a political movement with an eye on looming parliamentary elections. -
With dense forests and rugged beauty, Grindstone Island is a favorite summer getaway for visitors 鈥� and some of them never want to leave. The island near the Canadian border has one official cemetery, but locals say that hundreds of people are buried there, in unofficial gravesites.
