When Western journalists go to conflict and war zones abroad there is no one there more vital to their security and the success of a story than fixers. They are reporters’ eyes and ears, they make the fascinating articles we read in the papers happen. Ian Olds’s Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, a documentary which airs on HBO August 17, is a story of one such relationship between a Western journalist, The Nation‘s Christian Parenti, and his fixer in Afghanistan Ajmal Naqshbandi, “the best fixer in Afghanistan.” Naqshbandi helped Parenti to work on all of his Afghanistan stories for The Nation in the wake of the US invasion: “Who Rules Afghanistan”; “Afghan Poppies Bloom”; “Afghanistan: The Other War”; and “Taliban Rising”.

In 2007 Naqshbandi was kidnapped together with a driver and an Italian reporter when the three went to a southern province of Afghanistan on assignment. “I lost the trust,” says Naqshbandi’s friend, also a fixer, fully realizing the dangers of what he was doing. “I’m a hundred percent sure that if I’m kidnapped, I’m gone.”

—Olga Razumovskaya

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