A native of England, Gall has more than a decade of experience in Afghanistan. She is a fluent Russian speaker with knowledge of the Dari spoken in Afghanistan, and got her start in journalism in the 1990's for The Moscow Times. There, she gained notice for her detailed coverage of the first chechen war, which she chronicled in a book co-authored with Thomas de Waal, "Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus," first published in Britain in 1996, and widely praised as the definitive account of that conflict. Gall went on to report for The Financial Times and The Economist from Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus before joining The New York Times in January 1999.

(Fonte columbia.edu)