The Philippine Online Chronicles

A TIME reporter may have failed to disclose a conflict of interest when she wrote a story on the war in Afghanistan that went with the controversial cover of the July 29 issue of the magazine.

The cover featured the mutilated face of Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off as punishment for fleeing the home of her husband, and the article made a strong case for the continued military involvement of the United States in the country.

According to a New York Observer piece by John Gorenfield, Aryn Baker, the author of the story and the TIME bureau chief for Afghanistan/Pakistan, did not foreground the fact that her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is one of six board members of a USD100 million Afghan government project that encourages foreign investment in the war-torn nation.

In addition, Samee has headed two companies, namely Digistan and Ora-Tech, which, with the aid of the international military, have been awarded development contracts in Afghanistan. These include private infrastructure projects that the U.S.-backed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, favors.

Gorenfield dwelt at length on the network of relationships within which Samee, Baker, and various business interests in Afghanistan have moved, and asserted that, as a result of Samee's business dealings, his wife, Baker, "appears to have benefited materially from the NATO invasion" of Afghanistan.

Baker had no comment for the Observer, but TIME defended its cover story as a "straightforward reported piece" that neither supported nor opposed the war effort. It added that Samee was not connected to the U.S. military, has never sought to enter into business with them, and has absolutely no financial stake in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

Statements made by Samee himself, however, show differently. Gorenfield cited three separate instances in 2006 in which Samee told Radio Free Europe, Entrepreneur magazine, and Associated Press that there were many good business opportunities in Afghanistan, a situation that could be attributed, at least in part, to the involvement of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the coalition forces.

After Gorenfield's story was reported by Jason Linkins in The Huffington Post, TIME told the Post that the allegations of Gorenfield were false, and that the Observer "got the story wrong". Linkins remarked that TIME did not specifically refute any of Gorenfield's assertions, and contended that Baker's article was hardly an example of straightforward reportage.

Aside from the alleged conflict of interest, the cover image of the disfigured Aisha, which bore the caption, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan", has  drawn criticism and sparked debate.

Gorenfield said that the Taliban condemned the punishment of Aisha as "unislamic" in a press release. Tom Scocca of Slate pointed out that Aisha had been maimed in 2009, eight years after the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, while pundit Matthew Yglesias said that it was "disingenuous" to claim that the continued military engagement of the U.S. was the key to stopping other girls or women from being treated like Aisha was.

TIME managing editor Richard Stengel said that the decision to publish the disturbing photo of Aisha was not informed by any particular stance on the war, but by the urge to help people know the realities of the war "they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan".