In 2017, writing for The New York Times Magazine, he helped expose the vast number of civilians killed by US aerial campaigns in Iraq and Syria.

[4] He has reported extensively from those countries, including a feature on the crimes of anti-ISIS militias for The Atlantic, which won a George Polk Award.

In 2012 Gopal reported for Harper's Magazine on the town of Taftanaz in Syria, which suffered a massacre at the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

[8] That same year, Gopal also conducted a rare interview via email with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the reclusive leader of one of the Taliban's most important allies.

[1][10] It was awarded the 2015 Ridenhour Prize for demonstrating "why the United States' emphasis on counterterrorism at the expense of nation-building and reconciliation inadvertently led to the Taliban's resurgence after 2001.