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Matthieu Aikins is a Canadian journalist and literary non-fiction writer best known for his reporting on the war in Afghanistan. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards, and his writing appeared in the anthology The Best American Magazine Writing 2012.

Career
After graduating from Queen's University in 2006, Aikins' spent several years traveling North America and Eastern Europe. During that period, he contributed to Canadian newspapers and alt-weeklies, winning several journalism awards. One of his articles, "Adam's Fall," about suicides from the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in the coastal city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, won two major prizes and was followed by the construction of suicide-prevention barriers on the bridge in question.

In 2008, Aikins traveled overland from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, where he began his career reporting from the region. His half-Asian features and command of Persian allowed him to blend in as an Afghan, and Aikins began filing stories while traveling in local transportation and sleeping in roadside tea houses. His breakthrough article came in late 2009, with the story "The Master of Spin Boldak," published in Harper's Magazine, which exposed drug-trafficking by the Afghan Border Police in the town of Spin Boldak. The article was later used to train US military intelligence analysts on the region's history.

Subsequently, Aikins has written mainly for American monthly magazines, including Harper's, the Atlantic, Wired, and GQ, and has expanded his coverage to include countries such as Syria and Pakistan. In 2010, he won a National Magazine Award in Canada for his story "Last Stand in Kandahar," published in the Walrus. His 2011 article "Our Man in Kandahar," which exposed a massacre by the Afghan Border Police commander, Brigadier General Abdul Raziq, was a finalist in the reporting category for the American Society of Magazine Editors' National Magazine Awards. Aikins has been an outspoken critic of human rights abuses by US allies in Afghanistan.

In 2012, Aikins graduated from New York University with a master's degree in Near Eastern Studies. He currently lives in Kabul.

Articles

 * "Adam's Fall" The story of a young man's suicide from a landmark bridge, and the barriers that could have prevented it. The Coast, February 14, 2008.
 * "The Master of Spin Boldak" The author travels undercover with drug smugglers from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and discovers the involvement of the US's Afghan allies. Harper's Magazine, December 2009.
 * "Last Stand in Kandahar" Can the military's massive counterinsurgency gamble salvage the Afghan war? The Walrus, December 2010.
 * "Our Man in Kandahar" Was a key US ally involved in a massacre and torture in Afghanistan? The Atlantic, November 2011.