Thank you to everyone who has contributed—no matter the amount, it is greatly appreciated, and I have been humbled by the response of all you. As Sean-Paul gleefully notes, I have gotten to where I’m going to start buying my plane tickets! I’m still a little over $600 short of what I need for security, travel permits, and in-country transportation, so keep ‘em comin’! 60 people contributing $10 is all it takes—I know you have it within you!
But everyone—I have been shocked and humbled in the best possible way by this. I hope I can live up to the trust you’re placing in me.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Facebook is a really good way to contact friends for small donations–here’s a note I posted about the trip:
Dear friends,
I’d like to draw your attention to a blogger-friend of mine who is trying to fund a trip to Afghanistan in late August/early September. I ask you to consider donating $10 to help bring his funding total up to the goal.
Joshua Foust is an extremely knowledgeable scholar of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he doesn’t have institutional support to make a reporting trip to the northern provinces. He is a blogger whose coverage of Afghanistan is top-notch, and it challenges the typical cheerleader attitude of many print journalists at a time when critical thinking is especially needed.
In fact, he is so highly esteemed by fellow scholars of the region that he has received two $1000 donations, one of which is a challenge grant to raise the rest of the funds.
In return for your donation, you’ll be able to follow Josh’s blogging of his trip and know that you’ve made a direct contribution to an honest effort to understand one of the most important foreign policy problems of the present moment. Think about it: $10 would buy like two copies of the New Yorker, which you’re not buying anymore because of that stupid Obama cover.
You can find his funding appeal here:
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2008/07/06/putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is/#comments
Please be careful. I only contributed this late in the game because I could not stomach the idea of helping to send anybody on such a potentially lethal trip (yes I know you are big boy – but anyway).
Hopefully my cash will help you make it a safer trip.