On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, investigative journalist and photographer Lynzy Billing discusses her ProPublica investigation, which details the fatal activities and nightly raids by secretive, CIA-backed Afghan Zero Units special forces in Afghanistan.
Billing cataloged hundreds of night raids by one of the four Zero Unit squads, identifying at least 452 civilians killed over four years. She crisscrossed hundreds of miles of Nangarhar interviewing survivors, eyewitnesses, doctors, and elders in villages seldom, if ever, visited by reporters. The circumstances of the civilian deaths were rarely clear, but the grieving families she spoke to in these remote communities were united in their rage at the Americans and the US-backed Kabul government.
What does accountability look like for people who lost loved ones?
Guest:
Lynzy Billing, investigative journalist and photographer based between Afghanistan and Iraq
Web Resources:
ProPublica: The Night Raids
ProPublica: Why Congress Can’t Stop the CIA From Working With Forces That Commit Abuses
Brown University's Cost of War: Afghanistan before and after 20 years of war
Brown University's Cost of War: US Costs for the war in Afghanistan
