Watch live coverage of the Miami Book Fair saturday and sunday on cspan2s book tv. How many years of your reporting career other percentage have you spent overseas . I guess close to half. First with the boston globe, i worked for a number of years in latin america. So that was close to a decade and then off and on with the washington post, it comes out to be close to a decade. When you decided on journalism, how did you gravitate toward foreign reporting . My earliest interest in journalism was really about domestic issues. Poverty, drug addiction, social ills, you might say. So i did a lot of work on that in the early years. I traveled a little bit overseas as a tourist to unusual places and i began to think that some of these same issues were definitely there and more and the struggles and problems were deeper. And i just wanted to try that. Host what special skills does it take to be a Foreign Affairs journalist, as opposed to someone working domestically . Pamela i mean, there is a number of things i would not necessarily call them skills, but there is a number of ways you have to be. You have to be ready to change things quickly, to make decisions very rapidly, to change course, to leave if omething is dangerous, to go places you were not expecting to go. You have to be prepared, depending on where you are, to go for a long time without sleep, sometimes without taking a shower or washing your hair. You have to be really prepared to be mobile and very flexible. As well as, you know, sort of intrepid. You have to be willing to go places that other people may not be willing to go because you are looking for something that is a problem usually. There is a revolution, there is a revolution, theres poverty, there is an actual disaster there, a fraud election, something happening that is disturbing. That is generally why you are there. Again, it is not for everyone. You also need to be either able to speak for leg wages or have somebody with you who is very good at speaking whatever language you are working in. Because you do not want to miss things, miss the subtlety, the uance. You can probably learn to read a headline quickly or say hello, but you really want to you are being immersed in a place, sometimes for the first time, where you dont know people sometimes. And you want somebody to be able to help you who can really give you the real sense of what is going on. Host that translator has to be a partner in reporting with you. Pamela absolutely. Host how do you find someone do you stay with them so that you can trust their skill level and interpretation, and also that they know the nuances of what they are translating . Amela in many cases, there is already somebody there. There are a number of cities ive worked in where they had a fulltime, one or even two, interpreters assigned, who live there, work there, know the languages. And you went out with them as a matter of course. If it is a crisis, a place you have never been, then you are really stuck. One of the things ive done over the years when i was in that situation, i would land at the airport and ask the taxi driver to bring me to the nearest newspaper. I would serve myself at the mercy of the editor and ask for someone to help me out. Sometimes they would want to go with me. That was one obvious thing to try. It didnt always work. Generally, i was able to find somebody at least for the first few days i could help me out and see what happened after that. Host were there particular challenges as a female journalist working in muslim countries over the past few years . Pamela at first. I made mistakes. I always tried to dress modestly but sometimes it was not modest enough. Sometimes i failed to cover my ankles, didnt realize i was disturbing people i was talking to. Although those tended to be more and i was interviewing religious cleric or Something Like that and i thought i was dressed properly and it turned out i was not dressed properly enough for them. I learned how to adjust that. One of my favorite incidents was when i was interviewing a leader of the taliban during when they were and power and i was with another woman, and we were interviewing this taliban official. We were both very tired, hadnt slept in a long time, and something he said or something sounded funny and we both started giggling. This is a huge mistake. The man was extremely offended and got up and left the room and never came back. You really have to be able to restrain yourself, i would say. And adapt to the circumstances and to the audience. You dont want to offend people, you dont want to disturb them. Sometimes people will say things that are very critical of the United States or of the est. That is more common than somebody saying something offensive about being a woman or causing problems. People tend, generally peaking, speaking very broadly now, more helpful to a woman than to a man. They can also try to take advantage of you in various ways. But generally, my experience has been that if they are not going to like something about you, or mistrust something about you, it is not going to be because you are a woman. It is going to be because you are an american. Host you wrote you were never injured but you lost many friends, a number of friends. How did you stay safe all those years . Pamela ive been injured many times in small ways. I would not bother recounting. Stuff happens. Ive been covered black and blue and fallen out of humvees and all sorts of stuff. Nothing seriously damaging. I feel very, very lucky about that. And yes, i have lost very Close Friends. In some ways, it is the luck of the draw. One of my oldest friends was killed in iraq, but in a car accident. Was connected to the war, it was during the war and they were probably going too fast and probably nervous. In the car was a terrible car accident. She was killed. Again, it was being there but not directly connected with the violence, so to speak. Other friends ive lost were people who had to get closer to the action, particularly people who worked in television. A very close colleague of mine, Television Journalist was killed in a suicide bombing. Just last year where he had gone, it was one of those terrible situations where somebody reported a suicide bombing in a certain neighborhood and then they sent out the Television Crew to follow it up and when they got there, there was a second bomb. This happens a lot. And it is particularly cruel. But i lost other kinds of friends. N kabul, there was a wonderful restaurant where i used to go all the time with friends. It was a lovely oasis. Very casual and nice. The owner was a wonderful lebanese gentleman who i had gotten to know over the years. One time, it was in 2014, i was not there at the time but i had been there the week before. I was back in washington. The taliban broke into the restaurant, set off bombs, and shot and killed everyone inside including the owner. And it was awful. It was a real turning point for me and many of my foreign friends there. Host turning point in what way . Pamela where there a sanctuary for us . Where can we be safe . Where can we feel welcome . I mean there were other issues like some places served alcohol and that was a separate issue. It made a some places have problems. Of course, there were embassies and there were peoples homes, and i felt very welcome in a variety of peoples homes. I have several very Close Friends in kabul with beautiful, Beautiful Homes and ffices that i could go to. But it was more the sense of feeling like i mean, i was in iraq. I did know what urban warfare was like. I had experienced urban street to street warfare. I had not expected that in kabul. That incident and several others that happened after that made it feel much more like that. Host the last three years, you were stationed in kabul covering the region. What was your life like . Were you living in a compound, in the community with people and how did you keep yourself afe in that environment . Pamela i had lived in afghanistan for a number of different times, different periods of time. Sometimes in hotels, sometimes in guest houses, sometimes in community homes. Lmost always shared with other journalists, other foreign journalists. In the last several years, there were fewer foreign journalists there, and the safety became much more recarious. During these last several years when i was there, myself and most of the other western journalists, we lived inside the diplomatic zone. Which was highly guarded, barriers, lots of body checks. Car checks, searches on the way in and out. It was much more restricted. It was still a nice house and office, but once you are outside the actual place you were in, you are very much in a confined area. Host when you would go out to do your reporting from where you lived, how did you travel . Did you have to take special precautions or did you blend in with society as he made your way to report . Pamela you can never blend in. Somebody who looks like me would never blend in. In the early years after the taliban lost power, there were lots of westerners around in the streets going to restaurants, going out, doing things, shopping. Going to meetings, not casually, but more ormally. In these past several years, because the danger was much worse and there were so many suicide bombings and so many attacks, i would go out when i needed to or when i wanted to, ut not casually, not without letting somebody know in my office where i was going. I have not walked on the streets of kabul in a long time. Always in a car, always stopping, and then leaving, staying a short time and then leaving. Very, very different from the early years when you literally could walk around. If i did walk down a main street in kabul today, i would not see anyone who looked like e. Host you have brought photographs along that we are going to use to help understand your experience. This importantly, help americans understand this region of the world we have been so involved in over the past couple decades. Before we get into that in a macro sense, in 2004, you wrote a book titled fragments of grace, my search for meaning in the strife of south asia. Another decade has gone by and it has gotten more complicated. What is happening with your own search for that meaning as the situation you have been covering gets even more complex . Pamela it is a very good question. And one i cant answer yet. It is certainly something that i have thought about a lot. Comparing before and after. Ive thought about ways to write about it, one of the reasons that i felt it was time to come back from living in those countries was because i felt i was losing some of my creativity, some of my sense of something that is important and new and exciting, and how do you write about it . How do you keep writing about something that is not getting better, that is not changing, that is still how do you write about suicide bombings for the dozenth time in a way that is different . Obviously the people are different, you can find out about them, their circumstances will be different. A recent bombing at a wedding which was very unusual. There has been everything that is different. But it is the same problem that keeps recurring and recurring. I had stayed a few extra months because there was great hope that the peace talks would bear fruit. Instead they were canceled. And they are now still suspended. We dont know what is going to happen with that. I felt as if the search for meaning as i originally called it before, was harder to ind. And the title fragments of grace which i used, and if you read my book, it had a lot antidotes about people i had met who were special, or not necessarily people who had won something or gained something, but people who had touched me. Peoples whose experience had ouched me. In reporting about whom, i had found something uplifting. Hat was what i was looking for. That is what i meant by that title. And that has become harder and harder to find. You still find people that are doing something special, you are unusual, triumphing over adversity. My more recent book, the one about pakistan, my epilogue is about a man who was an extraordinary man, i think is actually probably the only saint i have ever met. Hes dead now, an elderly man who came from a welltodo family, could have had a normal career in business, but he devoted his life to helping the very, very, very poor. In a really unique way. He founded this ambulance service. It was basically a very nittygritty. One of the specialties of his work was going around and collecting dead bodies of people that did not have anybody to bury them. Very, very humble. And literally wanting to help those who had no help. I was very inspired by him and i was glad that i did meet him before he died. Host before we look at your photographs, how did photography become part of your work . Pamela ive always loved to take pictures. Everywhere ive gone, i have always taken lots of pictures. Sometimes they have been used in newspapers, other times not, sometimes they put where in my books. I always feel it adds so much of the texture and richness of what you are reporting on. To show people. Host how many do you think you have now . Pamela oh my god, thousands and thousands. Host what are you going to do with them all . Pamela a lot of them are would be hard to use now. They are in an old camera, or even before that, film. Lot of it was film in the early days. Most of my work from latin merica and taking pictures was all in film. Somewhere i have the slips of negative somewhere. More recently, the chips. And now it is all digital. I also had my cell phone destroyed. I lost a lot of those. I have saved precious ones but ive lost some precious ones. Host we are going to start with afghanistan. As i mentioned before we started taping, i will give our audience a very brief fact about the major countries we will talk about so they have some context. These are from usaid. And the c. I. A. Fact book. 40 Million People live in the country. 25 urban. 75 rural. He median age is 19. Life expectancy, 52 years. 99 muslim, 85 are sunni. Per capita income, 550 a year. Here is the u. S. Connection, the usaid budget including the department of defense, all aid to the country in 2016, 5. 7 illion, u. S. Spending on the war since 2001, 975 billion. U. S. Military casualties, 20,000 people wounded. 2,326 deaths. Civilian casualties estimated at 38,000. That is from brown university. That is the state of the country. Who are the combatants there today . Pamela today, the war there has been a real roller coaster with different phases and different players, you might say. It is obviously the american and nato component that is much smaller. There is really only a few thousand International Forces here left. And they are basically confined to training and advising, except for the special forces who do participate in combat with the afghans. That is a separate program. Net the major part of the war. So you still have the taliban. The taliban which came roaring back in 2006, 2 2006, 2 thousand seven, and 2008, still remains as a fullfledged, very committed, very well armed insurgency. And it is still wreaking havoc all over the country, including the capital. You have much smaller fraction of isis, or the islamic state, which is not affiliated with the taliban. Sometimes it works with them and sometimes against them. They are internationally based, they are not to mess tickly based the way the taliban is. They are much smaller in numbers. They are extremely ruthless in afghanistan as they have been elsewhere. They do a lot of damage, which is punching far above their numbers, especially in suicide bombings. They have done dozens of suicide bombings in kabul and other cities which have been extremely devastating. Those are the two bad guy factions. And the other side, you have Afghan Forces, you have military, police, you have an air force and you have afghan advisors, international advisors. The Afghan Forces have been through a lot of difficulties, lot of ups and downs. They have come under criticism for corruption, poor leadership, for really intrinsic problems. There is new leadership now in the Afghan Forces which the americans and nato leaders have a lot of hope for. They seem to be doing a better job. The war is still at a stalemate. Talks are not happening anymore. There is not a pause in the fighting but there is certainly a pause in figuring out how to stop it. Host to understand what life is like for the citizens of this country, we are going to look at your pictures. Our first time first one is from 2015. This is during the elections. Searching of a woman voter. You have chosen these. What does it say to us about the situation at the time and the hopefulness around elections in the past . Pamela that is a woman in the neighborhood of kabul, which is a large poor minority district, which has received the brunt of attacks by both taliban, particularly by isis, in the capital. She was in a long line of women voters, being searched before going to the polls. Men vote separately there. I think she was sort of startled by me rather than by what she was doing. The house rmn in kabul is better educated and very politically committed than a lot of other groups. They really are. A lot of them have come back from long exile in iran. Omen tend to be better educated, they have more rights, i should say more encouragement from their families and their community to do things like vote. To be out in public. To be participating in public life. Many parts of afghanistan, especially rural ones, you ont see that as much. Even though she is looking sort of disturbed, she represents a very important trend of women participating in public life in afghanistan. This by the dangers. Despite the dangers. Her community has been attacked many times, including during elections. Host for women in the cities, are there more rights . Is there a rural or urban divide in how women are treated . Pamela yes. There is a ruralurban split in every social and political sense. Women in the capital and in provincial capitals in large cities, women tend to go there to have jobs or get education, or because their families want them to be more involved in things. There are a lot of things that they can do. Women can work and ministries, women can teach school, women have more accepted roles in urban society in afghanistan. No matter what their ethnic background. In village life, in many part of the country, they are very circumscribed by culture and society in what they can do. In many parts of the country, they do not leave home without being fully covered, including their face, and without having a male relative at their ide. Which means their lives are very, very circumscribed in many parts of the country. The culture still does not accept that women should go to school after they reach the age of puberty. Most of Afghan Society accepts they should go to school as young girls. Once they reach the age of puber