KATHY GANNON
ABOUT KATHY
Kathy Gannon is currently the 2022 fall semester Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. For 35 years she covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for The Associated Press as chief correspondent and later news director. She has also covered the 2006 war in south Lebanon, the Iraq war, the Central Asian States, and Azerbaijan. Gannon was the only Western journalist allowed in Kabul by the Taliban in the weeks preceding the 2001 U.S.-British offensive in Afghanistan.
In addition to her coverage of South Central Asia, she has covered the Middle East, including the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and war in northern Iraq.
In April 2014 Gannon was seriously wounded—hit by seven bullets—while covering preparations for Afghan national elections when an Afghan police officer opened fire on the car in which she was riding. Her colleague and close friend, AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, was killed in the attack.