Dexter Filkins, NYT war correspondent, moving to New Yorker

The Observer reports that Dexter Filkins, author of the "The Forever War," a gripping account of combat in Iraq, and one of the New York Times's top correspondents in Afghanistan/Pakistan, will leave the paper to work for the New Yorker. He won't be covering the war for the magazine.

Shifting priorities, shifting beats

As the U.S. military shifts its emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, the New York Times and other papers are moving reporters from Baghdad to Kabul.

Alissa Rubin will be leaving her post as Baghdad bureau chief for the Times to cover the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Stephen Lee Meyers will take Rubin's place in Baghdad.

From the New York Observer:

Back in April, foreign editor Susan Chira told us the Times would be bulking up its Pakistan coverage.

“This is obviously the war that the president is focusing on,” said Ms. Chira then. “And troops are being shifted to there so we intend to gear up ... But we won’t leave Baghdad."

She also told us that many veterans of The Times’ Iraq coverage, including CJ Chivers, Sabrina Tavernise, Richard Oppel and Dexter Filkins, would be turning their attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well.

Reporters escape Taliban kidnappers

David Rohde, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and local reporter Tahir Ludin escaped their Taliban kidnappers Friday after seven months in captivity in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The New York Times and other media outlets had kept the story of the kidnappings under wraps "out of concern for the men's safety."

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Rohde, 41, had traveled to Afghanistan in early November to work on a book about the history of American involvement there when he was invited to interview a Taliban commander in Logar Province outside Kabul. Mr. Rohde, who years before had been taken prisoner while reporting in Bosnia, had instructed The Times’s bureau in Kabul about whom to notify if he did not return. He also indicated that he believed that the interview was important and that he would be all right.

His father, Harvey Rohde, said that while he regretted that his son had made the trip, he understood his motivation, “to get both sides of the story, to have his book honestly portray not just the one side but the other side as well.”

In 1996, while working for the Christian Science Monitor, Rohde was imprisoned and interrogated by Bosnian Serbs after he snuck into Serb territory to find evidence of mass graves in the Bosnian conflict.

Climbing a mountain

Against fast and freezing winds and waist deep snow, Nicholas Rice continues his trek up Manaslu in Nepal. Rice today spoke by satellite phone to Guy McCarthy at Watershed News from base camp.

George W. Huckabee*

Remember when George W. Bush couldn't name the the leaders of several key foreign nations, including a certain general who had recently taken control of Pakistan? It seemed like the kind of gaffe that would throw Bush out of contention for the Republican nomination. It didn't.

Comes now Mike Huckabee, who seems to know just as little about the world around him as Bush did, and is just as confident about asserting major policy proposals based in ignorance.

Indeed, Huckabee's reaction to yesterday's assassination of Benazir Bhutto was to propose building a fence along the Mexican border. Why? Because of all the angry Pakistanis coming into our country via Mexico. How many you ask? According to Huckabee, 660 were caught "last year." Where'd he get that number? First he said from the CIA. Then he said from a story in the Denver Post.

According to the Post, 660 illegal Pakistanis were caught between 2002 and 2005.

I'm sure if he can find a vice-presidential nominee with strong foreign policy credentials that everything will go swimmingly.

*From Politico.com: On Friday morning, Huckabee listed former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as someone with whom he either has “spoken or will continue to speak.”

See, nothing to worry about.