Profile: Kim Barker

The first time she wore a burqa was in 2006.

Her translator had never asked her to don the Taliban’s outfit for women; she’d never worn more than a headscarf across her face, despite having reported on and off from Afghanistan for nearly five years.

And to Kim Barker’s surprise, she almost liked the “blue prison.”

“For the first time in Afghanistan, I am invisible,” she wrote in a piece for The Chicago Tribune. “Wearing a burqa is strangely liberating. As much as I hate everything about it, I kind of like the security and the anonymity it offers.”

Barker has held the position of South Asia correspondent for the Tribune since 2004, covering the chaotic countries of Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. Her datelines often come from familiar cities of Kandahar or Kabul. They also come from less familiar places, like Musa Qala Base, or Yakhdand, Afghanistan.

Writing about even the remotest regions has agreed with her; editors applaud her for an insatiable curiosity and skillful writing.

“Kim is a rare remarkable combination of pursuer and poet, a great reporter and a great writer,” said David Boardman, who worked with Barker while she reported for the Seattle Times. “Smart. Hardworking. Passionate.”

Those qualities are required especially when working in Afghanistan, where resistance to United States occupation and persistent insurgency have made headlines since September 11.

The fact that Barker is a woman elevates her to a special status within the ranks of foreign correspondents. More and more, women correspondents are being credited with changing the face of war, as well as the style of war reporting.

In a series of articles written by Heidi Dietrich for Quill magazine, former correspondent Ann Cooper is quoted as saying that, “There are quite a few female correspondents who cover war now, certainly significantly more than twenty to thirty years ago.”

Cooper, who wrote from Moscow and South Africa, is now the executive director of The Committee to Protect Journalists. A study done by the Brookings Institute found that nearly one-third of all foreign correspondents are now women.

Dietrich’s series, titled “Women Who Cover War,” relies on first-hand experiences from female correspondents to tell the story of the advantages, disadvantages and challenges each has faced in her quest to report from war zones.

The five articles cover gender advantages and disadvantages and why the women wanted to report from war zones.

Freelancer Stacy Sullivan recalled reporting on a shell dropping onto a front porch in Bosnia, where girls were skipping rope. Sullivan said that when the female correspondents interviewed the father, everyone cried together.

“That story wouldn’t have happened with a male correspondent,” Sullivan is quoted as saying.

Barker echoed Sullivan’s words when talking about working in Afghanistan.

“I think that women, especially me, tend to be more attracted to stories about people, about how they live and die,” she said. “Even the stories I’ve done with the troops I think reflect this.”

Barker’s articles weave multi-colored tapestries of how it feels to deeply miss family, and what’s it’s like to be away from home.  The stories she files about the amount of bloodshed and military tactics don’t always carry her byline; it’s the stories about civilian children and the loss of fellow soldiers that she graces with her name.

In Barker’s article titled ‘Taliban haven is GIs Camp Hell,’ she wrote about soldiers who said they’d been largely ‘forgotten,’ and the hate that spewed from their lips.

“Some soldiers hate this place and these people and they are not shy about saying so,” Barker wrote. “They willingly volunteer these feelings, that they hate Afghans, hate Afghanistan and that they do not understand why anyone would fight over such a desolate country for so many years.”

“Other soldiers try to put themselves in the minds of Afghans, or of the children at least, and wonder what it’s like to grow up in a desert on the edge of the Earth,” the story continues, “in a place where the Taliban burns down schools, where brand-new USAID-funded clinics are not used, where the job options are limited to herding goats and growing poppies.”

It’s this kind of story that has kept Barker in journalism since she started working for her high school newspaper in Casper, Wyoming.