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Quil Lawrence

David Aquila ("Quil") Lawrence is an award-winning correspondent for NPR News, covering the millions of Americans who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as they transition to life back at home.

Previously, Lawrence served as NPR's Bureau Chief in Kabul. He joined NPR in 2009 as Baghdad Bureau Chief – capping off ten years of reporting in Iraq and all the bordering countries. That experience made the foundation for his first book Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East, published in 2008.

Before coming to NPR, Lawrence was based in Jerusalem, as Middle East correspondent for The World, a BBC/PRI co-production. For the BBC he covered the fall of the Taliban in December 2001 and returned to Afghanistan periodically to report on development, the drug trade and insurgency.

Lawrence began his career as a freelancer for NPR and various newspapers while based in Bogota, Colombia, covering Latin America. Other reporting trips took him to Sudan, Morocco, Cuba, Pakistan and Iran.

A native of Maine, Lawrence studied history at Brandeis University, with concentrations in the Middle East and Latin America. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Arabic.

America's Woman Warriors
3:05 am
Thu March 21, 2013

Sexual Violence Victims Say Military Justice System Is 'Broken'

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Credit Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images
Myla Haider (shown at a press conference in Washington, D.C., in 2011) says she initially decided not to report that she'd been raped because she'd "never met one victim who was able to report the crime and still retain their military career."
Credit AFP/Getty Images
Lawyer Susan Burke (shown here at a press conference in Abu Dhabi in 2010) has sued the Pentagon on behalf of multiple plaintiffs in rape cases, including Haider. Burke says the military justice system needs to change.
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Originally published on Fri March 29, 2013 1:51 pm

Myla Haider took a roundabout route to becoming an agent in the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, or CID. Wars kept interrupting her training.

"My commander wanted to take me to Iraq as the intelligence analyst for the battalion, so I gave up my seat in CID school," Haider says.

She speaks in a steady, "just the facts ma'am" tone. Once a cop always a cop, the 37-year-old says.

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National Security
3:23 am
Mon March 18, 2013

Women In Combat, And The Price They Pay

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Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Staff Sgt. Jessica Keown, with the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas, served with a female engagement team, or FET, in Afghanistan.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Sgt. Jaclyn O'Shea led a FET on two tours in Afghanistan.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
As part of a FET in Logar, Afghanistan, Keown, left, and O'Shea were involved in dozens of firefights.
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Originally published on Mon March 25, 2013 2:30 pm

America has been debating the role of women in combat since 1779.

That's when the Continental Congress first awarded a military disability pension to Mary Corbin after she manned a cannon in the Revolutionary War at the battle of Fort Washington in New York. Corbin got only half the pension male soldiers received, but she asked for — and received — the full ration of rum.

Today, as the Pentagon decides how to remove the combat exclusion, women still have trouble getting fully recognized for what they've achieved at war.

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National Security
3:13 pm
Tue February 19, 2013

A Wounded Soldier Stands Tall At Reunion With His Platoon

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Credit Florangela Davila for NPR
As part of homecoming ceremonies at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state in January, Army Spc. Tyler Jeffries — with crutches and prosthetic legs — joins his unit in formation as the national anthem is played. The homecoming marked the first time Jeffries had seen his platoon since he lost both his legs in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan last October.
Credit Ben Watson / NPR
Jeffries takes his first steps on prosthetic legs during what he described as an exhausting and painful physical therapy session at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., in November 2012, less than two months after the roadside bombing.
Credit Florangela Davila for NPR
As family and friends welcome the returning soldiers, Staff Sgt. Michael Blair gives Jeffries a bear hug.
Credit Florangela Davila for NPR
While his unit waits for buses to take them to a gym where family and friends will greet them, Jeffries sits in a wheelchair, one of his prosthetic legs visible.
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Originally published on Tue February 19, 2013 8:18 pm

U.S. Army Spc. Tyler Jeffries spent most of last year in Afghanistan, on dusty, hot patrols in the villages outside Kandahar. Last fall, on Oct. 6, his tour ended three months early.

"I was clearing an area and I had the metal detector. Then we had word that there was two guys coming toward our position," Jeffries recalled later that month.

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Around the Nation
3:34 pm
Wed February 6, 2013

Shooting Of 'American Sniper' Raises Questions About PTSD Treatment

Credit Paul Moseley / MCT/Landov
Chris Kyle, a retired Navy SEAL and best-selling author of American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, was killed at a gun range near Glen Rose, Texas, on Feb. 2.
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Originally published on Wed February 6, 2013 6:12 pm

Police in Texas have charged Eddie Ray Routh, a 25-year-old U.S. Marine reservist, with capital murder. Arrest records indicate that Routh had been twice taken to a mental hospital in recent months, and had told police he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

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The Impact of War
2:32 pm
Fri December 28, 2012

Suicide Hotline Fights To Keep Vets And Troops Alive

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Credit Chris Hondros / Getty Images
David Easterling, manager of the Suicide Prevention Program at Fort Riley in Kansas spray-paints Army boots white in 2009 as part of an on-base display to commemorate the six Fort Riley soldiers who committed suicide in 2008.
Credit John Berry / The Post-Standard/Landov
Each responder for the VA National Suicide Prevention Hotline Call Center has a bell on their desk that they ring when they need assistance in handling a call at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center in upstate New York.
Credit Emilio Morenatti / AP
Soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border in 2009. This year, more active-duty troops died by suicide than by fighting in Afghanistan.
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Originally published on Fri December 28, 2012 5:06 pm

At a suicide prevention center in upstate New York, America's troops and veterans are calling in for help.

And that help is needed more than ever. This past year witnessed a terrible death toll from suicide. For the first time in a decade of war, more active-duty troops have taken their own lives this year than have died fighting in Afghanistan.

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