Author eyes al-Qaida’s next move

Journalist and author Kim Barker, scheduled to read tonight from her critically acclaimed book “Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan,” cautions that the death of Osama bin Laden means little in the day-to-day difficulties of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The stunning American raid on bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad will make the restive country more dangerous for foreigners and moderate and liberal lawmakers, academics and leaders throughout the country of 187 million people, she said.

Barker, who reported for The Spokesman-Review from 1995-1998 before eventually covering the Afghan war for the Chicago Tribune, described al-Qaida as an evolving network that she suspects will replace the symbolic leadership of bin Laden.

“It has many heads,” she said, “cut off one and several more grow to replace it.”

Still, bin Laden’s death is “huge for troop morale. This was the whole reason we went there,” she said.

Barker’s book weaves her own experiences as a war correspondent with the odd and sometimes humorous observations of a shattered country.

She will discuss her views of the conflict, its global implications and what the death of bin Laden may mean.

Yet she has other worries on her mind.

Her brother’s fiancée, Dorothy Parvaz, has gone missing in Syria.

Parvaz, a former reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now working for Al-Jazeera news service, disappeared Friday after her flight from Doha, Qatar, landed in Damascus.

“We’re very worried,” said Barker, who noted that the uprisings against authoritarian regimes across the region have jeopardized the safety of journalists.

Syria has restricted media organizations from reporting on the government’s violent crackdown against protesters.

Parvaz has American, Canadian and Iranian citizenship.