Jason Burke

Jason Burke (born 1970) is a British journalist and the author of several non-fiction books. he was a correspondent covering Africa for The Guardian, based in Johannesburg, having previously been based in New Delhi as the same paper's South Asia correspondent. He has written extensively on Islamic extremism and, among numerous other conflicts, covered the wars of 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Iraq, the latter of which he described as "entirely justifiable from a humanitarian perspective".

In 2003, Burke wrote Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, which was later updated and republished as Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. Noam Chomsky described it as the "best book there is" on Al-Qaeda. He was interviewed in the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares. In 2006, he wrote On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World.

Biography Burke attended Oxford University. For four years, he held a position as an investigative reporter at the Sunday Times. but his work has taken him to many locations. According to a book review in 2006 in The Daily Telegraph, Burke "is one of the journalistic band of brothers whose job is to get to the trouble spots ahead of the TV crews and show the electronic media what it is all about". His travels have included Gaza, Kurdistan, Thailand, Algeria, and Jordan, among others. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize.