No greater agony than bearing an untold story

2012-01-14T01:41:00.000-08:00

Comrade Rehmati, a Maoist rebel, deep inside the jungles of Chhattisgarh in central India. Photo by Sami Siva

India's Failing Counterinsurgency Campaign

By Anuj Chopra

Tapping his fingernails on a tiny stainless steel lunch box, Comrade Vijay, a mustachioed rebel commander, made a startling assertion: There was enough bomb material inside to blow up a jeep. With 90 pounds of such explosives, he claimed, his comrades in the Indian Maoist rebel army had blown up land-mine-resistant armored vehicles the Indian government imported from South Africa. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are the "main strength" of the rebels, he told me, as he sat under a makeshift tarpaulin tent, rifle at his side.

In October 2009, on assignment for Abu Dhabi's National newspaper, I hiked more than 40 miles through the damp, malarial jungles of Bastar in central India, the deadliest theater of the country's decades-long Maoist insurgency, winding through mineral-rich hills and a spate of rebel-controlled villages to Comrade Vijay's hideout in a patch of forest clearing atop a hill. I had traveled all that way to ask the rebel commander whether there was any chance of a truce between his forces and the Indian government -- a possibility he and his men vehemently denied. As we spoke, Vijay's fellow comrades -- about 20 communist guerrillas, mostly teenaged boys and girls in olive green commando fatigues -- milled around the clearing, antiquated Enfield rifles slung on their shoulders, many of them snatched in raids on police stations.

2012-01-14T01:22:00.000-08:00

The coal thieves of Jharia. Photo by Subhash Sharma

India digs in to clean up mining

By Anuj Chopra

JHARIA, INDIA - Every day at sundown, about a dozen villagers from this village in the Jharia region in eastern India crawl like moles into a dark, airless hole punched 4 metres into the earth.

Working by torchlight, they spend hours each night ripping coal out of hard stone with hammers and pick axes, braving dangers such as cave ins and poisonous gas. For the impoverished residents of Jharia, stealing coal - about 12 to 15 sacks a night - from such hostile pits to sell in the region's flourishing black market is a dangerous way of life. But it is lucrative business. Each of the sacks holds up to 15kg of coal that sells for between 6 rupees and 10 rupees a kilo.

Beneath their feet lies one of India's largest coal deposits. In Jharia, where underground coal mining officially began in 1894, there is US$12 billion of coal deposits, the government says. In the past decade, residents of Jairampur, who requested anonymity fearing their village could be raided by authorities, have dug several such holes to reach the coal. Such illegal mining is rampant in this coal belt.

READ MORE: http://www.thenational.ae/business/india-digs-in-to-clean-up-mining

2012-01-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

Neha Dixit, who works for a large telecom company in Mumbai, shares her experiences of being a gay employee. Photo by Dinesh Krishnan

To be gay in Indian business

By Anuj Chopra

In her decade-long career, Neha Dixit has learned how to hide herself well. If an inquisitive colleague asks, marriage and kids are not for her--not after her recent divorce. It's not like she's not dating anyone, but she will only refer to her lover with a gender-neutral pronoun. If she can squelch all her natural tomboy instincts and "not look lesbian" at work, she will be just fine.

"If I have short hair, wear only shirts and trousers to work and have no boyfriend, there will be gossip about me," says Neha, 32, who requested that her real name not be revealed. "When I go to work, I leave a part of myself back at home."

Neha is a Mumbai-based executive with one of India's largest telecom companies exploiting new-fangled business opportunities in a rapidly accelerating market. But within the company, conservative mindsets prevail. Homosexuality, she has gleaned from conversations with several colleagues, is considered a mental derangement or a sex-crazed lifestyle imported from Western shores. Coming out in such an environment would be professional hara-kiri. Her sexuality could be a major stumbling block in her career advancement. "I will not be judged by my work alone." She also risks becoming an office joke; it could start off a trail of gossip and innuendo and her every friendly overture to female colleagues could be viewed with suspicion. Even worse, she fears her sexuality could be used as a weapon by some to blackmail or manipulate her.

The fear of being discovered is almost pathological. But Neha can't afford to be totally reticent about her private life either. "I could be labelled a snob or a stuck up, affecting the professional relationship with my team members."

She is forced to become a shape shifter, constantly editing and censoring herself amid pressures to fit within heterosexual norms. "I laugh the loudest when someone cracks a gay joke in the office," she says. "When colleagues talk about their weekends and heterosexual escapades, I cook up my own stories."

For Neha, and many others like her, the imaginary glass ceiling almost seems like an unbreachable barrier. A pervasive culture of silence has long bedevilled efforts to create workplace equality for employees who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT). For decades, they have waged a lonely battle for acceptance and visibility.

2012-01-13T21:42:00.000-08:00

How Pakistan fell in love with Bollywood

By Anuj Chopra

In February 2010, just before the release of the Bollywood film My Name is Khan, a message generated in Pakistan on the microblogging site Twitter was massively retweeted in Mumbai, India: "You might want to come to Karachi to catch MNIK's first day, first show!"

The release of My Name Is Khan, or MNIK, as it is popularly known, had to be scaled back in Mumbai, India's film capital, because of a political controversy. Just days before the premier, its lead actor, Shah Rukh Khan, had lamented the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers from the Indian Premier League cricket auction. This infuriated Shiv Sena, a Hindu ultranationalist group that advocates snapping all sporting and cultural ties with Pakistan. It launched a campaign against Khan, threatening to stall his film's release until he apologized and retracted his statement, which he refused to do. Placard-wielding protesters besieged his mansion in suburban Mumbai, burning his effigy and bellowing slogans like "Shah Rukh Khan, go away to Pakistan!" One of the protesters clutched in his hands a dummy airline ticket emblazoned with the words: "Mumbai to Pakistan." Mumbai stationed police officers at movie theaters and rounded up 2,000 people in advance of the opening as a cautionary measure.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border in Karachi, My Name Is Khan opened Feb. 13 to packed houses and was received with roaring claps and whistles. According to Pakistani cinema owners, it was the highest-earning film ever to screen in Pakistan.

This film certainly resonates with Pakistani audiences because of its theme -- it tells the story of an autistic Muslim man's struggles against prejudices in the United States in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The big applause line in Pakistan comes at the beginning, when Khan proclaims, "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!" But the widely published tweet inviting Indians to watch the film in Karachi offered a somewhat twisted insight into a cultural paradox: two countries sharing so many cultural references, and yet watching them through such different lenses.

2012-01-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

The site for the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power plant in Jaitapur, India, guarded round the clock by a police outpost. Photo by Vikas Khot

Field of Fissures

By Anuj Chopra

JAITAPUR, INDIA - The fishing trawler's groaning engine is abruptly shut down a couple of nautical miles off the coast of Sakhri Nate, a seaside hamlet fringed with palm trees and mango groves. Sakshil Kotawadekar, 25, stands on the deck under the broiling sun, surrounded by a group of men untangling a spidery web of fishing nets and sorting their catch. "Look, that thing there," he says, pointing at a lighthouse perched atop a barren cliff along the jagged coastline. "It threatens to rob us of our lands, our livelihoods, our way of life. It will imperil our very existence."

Kotawadekar isn't describing a haunted lighthouse. Adjacent to it is the site for the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power plant to be built by the French state-owned company Areva. In all, six 1,650 MWe (megawatt electrical) European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) will be installed by Areva in phases within the next 15 to 18 years, with the first two reactors expected to come into operation by 2018-19. At full capacity, this plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district will trump Japan's 8,200 MW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant to become the world's largest nuclear power project.

Local fishermen like Kotawadekar, who owns two trawlers and whose family has been in the trade for generations, fear that the project could cause irreparable damage to the region's environment and marine ecology. The plant is expected to guzzle 52 billion litres of sea water every day--15 times Mumbai's daily water supply--and disgorge the same volume five degrees warmer back into the sea. Environmentalists say that would push away marine life along the coast into deeper waters, depleting the catch and forcing local fishermen to go further out into the sea. Ratnagiri boasts an annual catch of 1,25,000 tonnes of a variety of fish, including pomfret, surmai (kingfish), bangda (Indian mackerel) and rawas (Indian salmon), but with the project, those numbers could dwindle significantly. Environmentalists also fear that the radioactive waste generated in the nuclear plant could permeate the alluvial soil, stunting the local mango, cashew, rice and jackfruit plantations.

2012-01-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

Imtyaz Ahmad Ganaie, whose house was destroyed in an army encounter against militants in Sopore, Indian Kashmir. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Old Wounds, Fresh Attacks in Kashmir

By Anuj Chopra

SOPORE, INDIAN KASHMIR - Delicately lifting the hem of his pheran, a loose-fitting Kashmiri gown, Imtyaz Ahmad Ganaie stumbles barefoot across heaps of scattered rubble and detritus.

“Only bricks and stones remain,” he says, looking ashen, as he pointed at his house, destroyed during a three-day gun battle in February 2010 between Indian troops and militants. “Mortar shells destroyed everything.”

For nearly 70 hours, military helicopters beat overhead amid loud explosions and gunfire as a cat-and-mouse game ensued between soldiers and militants hiding in Ganaie’s crowded village of Chinkipora in Sopore.

His family, like other residents caught in the crossfire, managed to flee to safety, but nearly two dozen houses were flattened or severely damaged in the hunt which also left four Indian soldiers dead.

The disputed region of Kashmir is a victim of history’s caprice. Claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, it has been the focus of three wars between both nuclear-armed rivals since independence in 1947. Nearly 100,000 people have lost their lives since militancy first erupted in this Muslim-majority state two decades ago. But in this verdant landscape replete with flaming-red Chinar trees and apple orchards, militancy had ebbed to an all time low in recent years.

In the last decade, militancy related fatalities declined continuously since their peak of 4,507 killed in 2001. For the first time in two decades, killings in 2008 were well below the ‘high intensity’ mark of 1,000 per year for the third consecutive year.

However, this brash encounter with battle-inoculated militants is an ominous sign of a new, lethal wave of militancy returning to haunt Indian-administered Kashmir after a long lull.

READ MORE: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch-Archive/Detail/?lng=en&id=115038

2012-01-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

Venkatesh Iyer, co-founder of Goli Vada Pav, says his company is planning a massive expansion, with 500 franchise outlets across India in the next five years. Photo by Subhash Sharma

Mumbai street food on a roll with Goli Vada Pav

By Anuj Chopra

MUMBAI - Vada pav, a fried, spicy potato dumpling stuffed inside a sliced bread roll and slathered with hot sauce, is an inexpensive delicacy served all over Mumbai. It is usually prepared and eaten at roadside kiosks or at the pushcart eateries that are ubiquitous on the city's unruly streets.

It looks like something you must not ingest, and savouring its tantalising flavours requires that you wilfully abandon all basic rules of gastronomy and hygiene.

It is perhaps the least likely item upon which to build India's very own fast food chain, a brand with the potential to become as big and powerful as, say, McDonald's or Burger King. Yet two Mumbai entrepreneurs with a background in corporate finance embarked on this quest seven years ago. The competition was stiff, as building a brand for this home-grown version of the burger meant competing with countless successful roadside rivals.

Goli Vada Pav, a chain founded in 2004 by Venkatesh Iyer and Shivdas Menon, changed the way this popular snack is prepared - and consumed. It took the snack indoors into a more gentrified ambience and made it a sterilised, upmarket version of its original self, all the while without tinkering one bit with the alluring taste that sustains vada pav's mass appeal.

2012-01-13T21:04:00.000-08:00

Infosys employees undergo training at the company's campus in Mysore.

India's chronic manpower shortage

By Anuj Chopra

MUMBAI - Across western economies, the name of Bangalore - India's showcase technology city and the world's back office - is frequently used as a verb.

"To get Bangalored" is a phrase uttered, often pejoratively, to describe the shipping of high-paying white-collar jobs to low-cost Indian call centres or technology parks.

In recent years, outsourcing of thousands of jobs to India has prompted criticism from figures including Barack Obama, the US president, who has implored US companies to "say no to Bangalore, yes to Buffalo".

While India is perceived globally as a monster devouring western jobs, in reality it faces an intractable skills shortage that bedevils economic progress.

How is that possible, baffled observers wonder, in a country blessed with a demographic dividend and an abundance of labour? Two-thirds of India's 1.21 billion people are below the age of 35. India's colleges disgorge more than 750,000 science and engineering graduates every year. But the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), an industry lobby group in New Delhi, estimates that only 26 per cent of those graduates are fit for employment in India's US$60 billion technology sector.

2012-01-13T20:54:00.000-08:00

Mumbai succumbs to a new underworld - the water mafia

By Anuj Chopra

MUMBAI - As night envelops Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, in the Indian city of Mumbai, two dozen dwellers sidle out of their shanties clutching steel ewers and plastic cans. They hurriedly clamber over a wrought iron railing fence, race across a tangle of railway tracks, braving speeding local trains, and crowd around a spigot in a desolate patch on the other side. Soon the place is burbling with a feverish scramble for water. Amid fist fights and verbal blows, they take turns to fill their containers from the gushing spigot. Then they run back to empty them with relatives waiting on the other side of the railing, and sprint back for a refill.

Sitting on a concrete platform a short distance away, chewing tobacco, is Ravi Anna, recognised as a local goon who controls the spigot. He offers slum dwellers without water connections a chance to collect drinking water between 7pm and 10pm every day - for a fee. To an outsider, the arrangement might sound entrepreneurial, except that this water is not his to sell. The spigot draws from a water tank belonging to the Indian Railways.

2010-11-07T05:38:00.000-08:00

A Sharia policewoman addresses women dressed in tight jeans during a street inspection in Banda Aceh. Photo by Anuj Chopra

On Patrol With Sharia Policewomen

By Anuj Chopra

BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA - The girls are outmanoeuvered.

Out of nowhere, a group of policewomen in olive-green uniforms, swoop in and flag down their motorcycle. "Where are you going?" one asks, inspecting their identity cards.

"To the university," the girls reply demurely. "Dressed like that?" she thunders. "That's not how a Muslim should dress. If you wear clothes like that, you will burn in hell!"

There is a deer-in-the-headlights moment. The girls, both teenagers, freeze in shamefaced silence. Both of them are wearing headscarves and dressed in nothing skimpy. But they still flout Aceh's dress code: both are wearing skin-tight, hip-hugging jeans, a big taboo in the eyes of Aceh's Sharia police. ...

READ MORE: http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/asia-pacific/on-patrol-with-sharia-policewomen?pageCount=1

2010-11-07T05:34:00.000-08:00

Indonesia Tries Rehabilitation To Wipe Out Extremism

By Anuj Chopra

JAKARTA, INDONESIA -- Imagine, for a moment, a possible headline in the future: "Osama bin Laden denounces terrorism and renounces jihad." What are the odds? Is it even possible to wean an extremist like bin Laden off his violent ideology? The likelihood is hard to envisage. But the Obama administration is keen to attempt something very close to that. This week, it agreed to give US$11 million (Dh40m) to Yemen to build a militant rehabilitation centre in the Arab state within the next three months for released Guantanamo Bay detainees. The centre would treat terrorists in much the same way as drug addicts: seeing Islamic radicalism as an anomalous behavioural pattern and treating it with a mix of psychotherapy, counselling and religious re-education, coupled with economic incentives to slowly steer them back into society.

This move, analysts say, underscores the realisation that punitive detention or torture in a dank prison does not necessarily reform extremists. Some militants continue to espouse a virulent hatred for the West even after serving time in prison. Killing them can be counterproductive - many of them seek martyrdom. The future of fighting extremism around the world may lie in terrorism rehabilitation. ...

2010-11-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

Mustafa Daood (left) performs with his band Debu at a shopping mall on the outskirts of Jakarta

Debu Prove You Can't Judge a Band By Its Album Cover

By Anuj Chopra

DEPOK, INDONESIA -- On a balmy evening, the mixed sounds of traditional and modern musical instruments drift out of a garage-turned-music studio. An oud, or Arabic lute, strums up a haunting Middle Eastern tune. A bass guitar unleashes a metallic twang. A tambourine evokes hippie-chic nostalgia from the 1960s. You expect a bunch of spiky-haired punk artists trying to jam together. But the doors open to a group of men in filigreed skullcaps and women in colourful jilbabs performing on a variety of stringed and percussion instruments.

Meet Debu, a 12-member Indonesian Islamic band, who are inviting much intrigue among music aficionados in Indonesia and much of the Islamic world. They are Muslim, but most are American. Together, they are blurring the lines between Islam and the West. "If you close your eyes and listen to our music, you might imagine us to be Turkish or Iranian musicians. When you open your eyes, you'll see blond Americans with long hair," said Mustafa Daood, the lead vocalist of Debu. "People have no idea where to place us." ...

2010-08-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD FROM KANDAHAR

By Anuj Chopra

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- This volatile city in southern Afghanistan, known as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, isn't unfamiliar with the staccato rattle of gunfire and the thunder of explosions. But last week's bomb attack — the deadliest in years — has deepened the anguish of war-weary Kandaharis living in the shadow of rising violence. A cluster of vehicle bombs ripped through a central area of Kandahar, killing 43 and injuring 65, nearly all of them civilians. The ear-piercing explosions sent shock waves through the city, smashing windows miles away from the bombing site and leaving broken shards of glass and mangled remains of cars strewn on the streets. Heaps of rubble and smoldering debris lay amid dozens of damaged buildings, now resembling more the ruins of an ancient civilization.

READ MORE:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919569,00.html

2010-08-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Gen Stanley McCrystal, the former top commander in Afghanistan, enjoying freshly-plucked apricots while on a tour of Jalrez valley in Wardak province in August 2009. Photo by Anuj Chopra

U.S. Hopes To Prompt Afghan Awakening

By Anuj Chopra

SANGLAKH, AFGHANISTAN -- Gen Stanley McCrystal, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, began deliberations last weekend on a critical question: can a new initiative in Afghanistan restore security in the country’s restive provinces? “I want to understand it,” he told local Afghan officials sitting on a grassy knoll and gorging freshly plucked apricots. “The more you teach me, the better I will perform at meetings with ministers in Kabul.” The initiative, begun in March, is the Afghan Police Protection Programme, or AP3, an anti-Taliban militia known colloquially as the Guardians. “Before the Guardians came, this district was 80 per cent insecure. The Taliban were everywhere,” said Sayad Jawad Bahunar, the sub-governor of the district. “But now people feel much safer.”...

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090824/FOREIGN/708239841/1011

2009-09-18T01:49:00.000-07:00

Jayakrishna Goit, the underground leader of the Akhil Terai Mukti Morcha, talks about his demand for an independent sovereign state in the Terai region of Nepal. Photo by Subhash Sharma

The Explosive Plains of Nepal

By Anuj Chopra

TERAI PLAINS, NEPAL -- At first glance, Jaikrishna Goit defies every image of an armed militant. A lean, bespectacled sexagenarian, clad in a handspun cotton kurta, he proffers quotes from history books to articulate his argument – that his native Terai, a low-lying stretch of alluvial plains in southern Nepal, has the right to secede and form an independent state.
“Our land was annexed by colonial powers and then ceded to Nepal’s Pahadi rulers in the 19th century through different treaties. But with the 1950 Indo-Nepal accord, all previous treaties stood abrogated. Nepal’s rule over Terai is illegal,” Mr Goit said in an interview at an ashram in a dusty Indian village near the border with Nepal. “We want – and deserve – liberation.”
For many Nepalis, Mr Goit is a terrorist, responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians and and willing to engage in criminality to achieve his separatist goals. When asked about his group’s methods, he paused to consider his response.
“Gandhi, too, advocated the use of arms for independence,” he said, before digging into his bag to pull out a magazine carrying an Indian government advertisement that had a quote from Gandhi. “Gandhi once said,” he began, quoting from the ad, “I would rather have people resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner remain a hopeless witness to their own dishonour”.
“We, Madhesis, aren’t cowards,” he added.
Once a top Maoist leader, Mr Goit is now high on the Nepali government’s most-wanted list. He leads the Akhil Terai Mukti Morcha (ATMM), an underground militant group fighting for a separate homeland for ethnic Madhesis, who make up one-third of Nepal’s population. He sidled out of hiding in Nepal through the porous Indo-Nepal border for this interview. ...
Read more:
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/the-explosive-plains-of-nepal

2009-09-18T01:45:00.000-07:00

Anand Kumar flanked by his bodyguards. Photo by Subhash Sharma

India's School For The Poor But Gifted

By Anuj Chopra

PATNA, INDIA -- On a recent evening, a gaggle of students huddled together on wobbly wooden benches in a spartan classroom under a tin-shed, celebrating their new-found achievement with milk cakes. “If I hadn’t made it,” remarked 17-year-old Vishwaraj Anand, one the students, “I would have to toil all my life in my father’s paddy farm. Now I’m a step closer to going to Nasa to study about the worlds beyond.” Their teacher, a short, slightly stout, man called Anand Kumar, stood before the dusty blackboard, wearing a beaming smile. These students recently passed an undergraduate entrance test. But not just any ordinary test.

For a whole year, they slogged with a singular obsession of gaining admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), a string of 15 top-notch engineering colleges – the Indian equivalent of Ivy League schools – which, since India’s independence, have created some of the world’s brightest tech wizards and engineering geniuses.

IITs are notoriously selective in their admission procedure. About 384,977 students took their Joint Entrance Test (IIT-JEE) this year, hankering after 8,295 seats, indicating an admission rate of around two per cent, the most competitive in the world. (That at Princeton, Yale, and Harvard hovers around nine per cent). Only 10,035 cracked the test this year. Thirty of them sat in this ramshackle classroom.

2009-09-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

Ronsomo Langthasa, one of the victims of ethnic violence, in front of her burnt house in Assam's Jorai village. Photo by Sanjit Das

Victims of Burning Ethnic Tensions

By Anuj Chopra

NORTH CACHAR HILLS, INDIA -- The gunmen, nearly a dozen of them, some in black commando fatigues and bandannas, others in ordinary clothes, came in the early hours of the morning. While the villagers were still sleeping, they opened fire. Those who were able to, ran, taking only their children. But the gunmen chased them down and then torched their homes. Pabitra Lankhasa, 50, remembers shouting over the din of confusion to his wife and children, telling them to run for their lives as their village was set ablaze behind them. Days later, the family returned, to find a blackened divot where their house once stood. Everything they owned was destroyed. After the early May attack, a clutch of policemen armed with indigenously-made assault rifles nervously guard Jorai village, in India’s state of Assam, hunkering behind a sandbag outpost and a makeshift watchtower in a jackfruit tree. “Why did they target us?” said Mr Lankhasa, wearing only a lungyi. “I have no clue. All I can say with certainty is that they were Zeme Naga assailants thirsty for Dimasa blood.” ...

Read more:
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/victims-of-burning-ethnic-tensions

2009-09-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

Cadres of the ceasefire militant group, Dima Halam Daogan (DHD), at a weapons training drill in their designated camp in Assam's North Cachar Hills. Photo by Sanjit Das

Taking The Battle To Enemy Within

By Anuj Chopra

NORTH CACHAR HILLS, INDIA -- After hours of being out of mobile phone range, the bell finally rang. “Commander Daniel here,” said a scratchy voice on the other end, probably somewhere in the remote jungles of Assam’s North Cachar Hills. “What do you want?”

The signal was weak. His coarse voice was breaking. It sounded as though Commander Daniel was on the move. He declined a face-to-face interview – “Too risky, we are being hounded” – but he had a terse message for the Indian government.

“Tell them,” he said, “if they think they can crush us just because they’ve got our chairman, they are wrong. Our movement will not stop.”

One of the most wanted fugitives in the region, Commander Daniel – Daniel Dimasa – escaped with two other rebels in a jailbreak in December after eight months behind bars. He is one of the top commanders of the Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel), also called Black Widow, the most lethal insurgent group in the region, active since 2003. It is fighting for a separate state within India for the Dimasas, the largest tribal group in this hill district. ...

2009-08-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

"Commander" Sampat Pal of the Gulabi Gang teaches women how to wield a bamboo baton. Photo by Sanjit Das

India's Pink Gang Are Vigilantes

By Anuj Chopra

BANDA DISTRICT, INDIA --On a hot afternoon, a throng of two dozen women clad in candy-pink saris gathered beneath the cool shade of a gnarled banyan tree. They listened with rapt attention as a sinewy but robust woman they called "commander" delivered a military-type briefing. "To face down men in this part of the world, you have to use force," she said. "We function in a man's world where men make all the rules. Our fight is against injustice."
The "commander" is Sampat Pal, the 47-year-old leader of thousands of female vigilantes known as the Gulabi (Pink) Gang. Since its inception three years ago in a lawless area of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, women from some 600 villages have joined the group, wielding heavy clubs and and traditional bamboo batons, called lathis, used by police for crowd control to "convince" wife beaters, rapists and corrupt bureaucrats to change their ways. ...

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/14/MNRR15FURD.DTL

2009-08-14T02:35:00.000-07:00

Bangladesh's Bedes, known as river gypsies, live in tarpaulin tents after the monsoons. Photo by Sanjit Das

BANGLADESH'S RIVER GYPSIES MOVING TO MAINSTREAM

By Anuj Chopra

LAUHAJANG, BANGLADESH --Each monsoon season, swelling rivers send the nomadic Bedes, or "river gypsies," drifting once again across Bangladesh waterways. When the monsoons end, the Bedes return to land to live in tarpaulin tents or bamboo huts in places like Lauhajang, a village of 150 families 44 miles from the capital, Dhaka. The village is part of a government program to end the 800,000-member community's nomadic ways, educate their children and convince them to become part of mainstream society. In December, the Bedes were given the right to vote for the first time in national elections. "For all these years, we were living as refugees in our own country," said Saud Khan, 51, a Lauhajang resident. "For the first time, we feel like we have become citizens of Bangladesh." ...

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/01/MNQD1557M5.DTL#ixzz0O9J0GbRE

2009-05-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

STUMBLING THROUGH BURMA'S REMOTE JUNGLE CAPITAL

By Anuj Chopra

NAYPYIDAW, BURMA -- When widespread protests erupted in 2007 on the streets of Rangoon, Burma's longtime capital, the ruling military generals hunkered down from the enraged crowds in their newest sanctuary, a remote administrative capital 400 kilometres to the north. Naypyidaw is an impregnable – or at least unreachable – command post, boasting Stalinist-style buildings, luxury homes, wide paved boulevards, and 24-hour-a-day electricity that is a world away from the blackouts and daily hardships faced by Burma's poor. The name translates into English as, Seat of Kings, and is teeming with an army of 80,000 bedraggled-looking construction workers, which human rights groups claim include forced labour programs. Hacked out of a malarial jungle starting in 2005, this 10-square-kilometre inland fortress – off limits to foreigners – is being built as the military's nerve centre, far from prying eyes ...

http://www.thestar.com/article/265615

ENTERING BURMA'S NEW CAPITAL
By Anuj chopra
When the deeply-rutted village tracks morphed into wide, paved, six-lane roads, I knew I was nearing Burma's new jungle capital. A long and bumpy overnight bus ride, traversing 250 miles from Rangoon, has brought me to Naypyidaw – the country's administrative capital since 2005, and a secluded, secretive sanctuary for Burma's military generals. In Rangoon, two private bus services refused to sell me a ticket, fearing retribution from the military junta for ferrying a foreigner to the generals' nerve center. One owner of a rickety bus agreed to take me after I offered to pay double – with the caveat that he'd offload me the minute he sensed trouble with military authorities. Fortunately, it was a smooth ride (but for the rutted roads) and I was dropped at the hotel zone. I asked for a room at the Myat Taw Win hotel, one of many plush hotels, nervous I might be turned away. The receptionist gave me a cold stare, noted down my passport details in a mammoth register, and for $60 a night, offered me the key to a luxurious, self-contained villa with foreign cable TV and air conditioning. After some arguing, the hotel agreed to rent me a $3-an-hour motorbike with a driver, for a quick tour of Naypyidaw. "No pictures," I was warned. Two men caught taking pictures a few months ago are now serving time in the notorious Insein prison in Rangoon, I was reminded. ...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p07s02-wosc.html

2009-05-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

Where Jailbirds Run On Their Records -- And Win

By Anuj Chopra

GHAZIPUR, INDIA -- For the past three years, a federal prison in the badlands of northern India has been the next best thing to freedom for Mukhtar Ansari. A tall, mustached member of the Uttar Pradesh state legislature, he's awaiting trial for more than two dozen alleged crimes, including murder. But Ansari has remained steadily in touch with his loyal supporters—especially in recent weeks, while he ran for a seat in the nation's parliament from his cell. Dedicated campaign workers like Lakshmi Devi, an elderly local widow who thinks of the jailed candidate as a modern-day Robin Hood, have been routinely allowed to call on Ansari at any time of day. They need only to flash an entry permit—not a government-issued photo ID, but a note on Ansari's personal letterhead. "Gatekeeper Sahib," the old woman's tattered letter says, handwritten in Hindi. "Do not stop aunty from coming to see me."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/194587

2009-05-20T23:54:00.000-07:00

The Talk of Nepal: The Future of Its Gurkhas

By Anuj Chopra

KATHMANDU, NEPAL --The kukri strapped to Mekhman Tamang's hip belt is more than an ordinary family heirloom. When his father bequeathed the traditional knife to him 10 years ago, Tamang, a third-generation Gurkha soldier, also inherited the stout-hearted reputation tethered to thousands of Nepalese men who fought for foreign countries before him. Recruited by the British army in 1999, the 30-year-old soldier has braved hails of Taliban bullets during two recent stints in Afghanistan. But he is uncertain whether he will be able to pass down his kukri — or the Gurkha legacy — to his son.

For nearly two centuries, hundreds of thousands of Gurkhas have been plucked from the foothills of the Himalayas to serve primarily in the British and Indian armies. They have often been given dangerous frontline duties in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Borneo, the Falklands, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The British army has awarded more than a dozen Victoria Crosses to Nepalese soldiers over the years, but despite the job's prestige at home, Gurkhas have long complained of being treated differently from native soldiers. For decades, Gurkhas have struggled with the British government for parity of pay, pensions, and perks, and more recently, with British immigration officials over their right to settle in the U.K.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1889035,00.html

2009-05-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

A white layer of salt envelopes Mohammed Jehangir's farm in Khajura, Bangladesh. Photo by Anuj Chopra

How Global Warming Threatens Millions In Bangladesh

By Anuj Chopra

KHAJURA, BANGLADESH --In this obscure village perched on the rugged coastline along the Bay of Bengal, climate change exudes a taste. It is the flavor of salt. As recently as five years ago, water from the village well tasted sweet to Mohammed Jehangir. But now, a glassful, flecked with tiny white crystals, is briny. Like other paddy farmers in this southern village, Jehangir is baffled by the change. But international scientists aren't surprised to see such effects, as global warming causes sea levels to rise. It is a sign that the brackish water from the Bay of Bengal is encroaching, surging up Bangladesh's fresh-water rivers, percolating deep into the soil, fouling ponds and the underground water supply that millions depend on to drink and cultivate their farms. Salt is slowly, yet inexorably, making its way to the rice paddies of farmers like Jehangir, destroying their only source of income.

Khajura is on the front lines of climate change, and some of the poorest of the world's poor are feeling the consequences of the fossil fuel emissions by industrialized nations half a world away. There is little chance of, literally, turning back the tide. The implications are dire for many millions living here and for others in low-lying areas around the world. ...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/energy/2009/03/26/how-global-warming-threatens-millions-in-bangladesh.html

2009-05-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Reeperbahn in Hamburg: One of the Europe's oldest and most famous red-light districts. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Red Lights Go Out In Reeperbahn

By Anuj Chopra

HAMBURG, GERMANY --At first, it feels like you are in a high-security enclave. High barricades bookend the infamous Herbertstrasse, sometimes called the "street of shame". Then, you notice women perched comfortably on swivel chairs, dressed in nothing but stockings and suspenders, looking out from narrow shop windows. Some stick their necks out, to lure passers-by to come in or to hurl invective at tourists trying to cheekily snap a picture. Known for its tacky sex shops, strip joints, bordellos and casinos, the Reeperbahn in Hamburg's St Pauli area is one of the oldest and most famous red-light districts of the world. Once a favorite hangout for fatigued sailors from ships that anchored at Hamburg's famous port, it slowly began drawing hordes of tourists from all over the world. But now prostitution is slowly dying in the Reeperbahn. The sex industry here is in terminal decline as prostitution flourishes through more modern ways, mainly through the internet, a medium that is considered both discreet and safe...

http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2228318.0.0.php

2009-05-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

An illegal migrant wades through thorny bushes to reach his squalid hut in a jungle on the fringes of Calais, France. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Émigrés' Europe Dreams In Chains

By Anuj Chopra

CALAIS, FRANCE -- As darkness begins descending on the French port of Calais, Naseer Ahmad, 17, sidles out of his hovel hidden amid thorny bushes in a jungle and heads towards the mouth of Le tunnel sous la Manche, the rail tunnel beneath the English Channel that connects France and England. Ahmad makes his way along roads and across fields, crosses high fences and razor wire and sneaks past floodlights and police patrols. When he gets to the tracks, he tries to jump aboard freight or passenger trains headed down the tunnel. The lanky young Afghan has been trying to smuggle himself into England in this manner for over a year. “Life in England is a dream,” he says. “After coming so far, I won’t give up.” Ahmad arrived in Calais a year ago after a perilous 5,630-kilometre journey from southern Afghanistan’s war-torn Helmand province. He covered the distance partly on foot and partly hidden in cargo containers or in rickety boats. He was guided all along by fly-by-night agents who helped migrants such as himself to evade arrest and smuggled them to foreign shores in return for a hefty fee. ...

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/10/09/10250793.html

2009-05-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Mud houses cling to a hill overlooking Kabul. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Afghanistan Faced With Severe Housing Shortage

By Anuj Chopra

KABUL, Afghanistan -- It's a daily ritual for 8-year-old Bismillah. Every morning, five grimy plastic cans slung over his tiny shoulder, he descends a rugged hillside, negotiating the steep pitches of scree and gravel with goat-like agility. At the bottom of the hill, he waits under the broiling sun in a long queue leading up to a spigot. But wait he must or his family will be left without drinking water for the day. Bismillah lives with his handicapped father, mother and four sisters in a mud-and-wood house in a cramped settlement clinging to a shale-brown hill overlooking Kabul. With no direct water supply, dwellers of these rudimentary housing settlements -- all illegally built -- must lug their water from the bottom of the hill. "Life is hard," says, Suraiya begum, Bismillah's mother, her face hidden behind the lavender fabric of her burqa. "We wouldn't live here if we had a better choice." Six years after the invasion, ask ordinary Afghans the biggest challenge they face, and their answer isn't likely to be the Taliban. It is, in fact, to find a roof over their heads. ...

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/layout/set/print/content/view/full/73?id=52215&lng=en&ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&page544=3&size544=10

2009-01-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

SRI LANKA: Peace Isn't That Different From War

By Anuj Chopra

JAFFNA, SRI LANKA — It's only an hour's airtime from Sri Lanka's capital city, Colombo, to the Jaffna peninsula at the northern tip of the island, but getting there is a miserable ordeal that can kill nearly half a day. Suitcases in hand, heaving and sweating for hours under the blazing sun, passengers endure a gauntlet of checkpoints, where they are repeatedly stopped, questioned, frisked and hassled. Most of the travelers are ethnic Tamils, a minority on the island, although they're the overwhelming majority in the battle-scarred north. Some, without the necessary paperwork, are turned back. No one dares to protest. The slightest disruption can halt air service at any time. After five sweltering hours of queuing up, a Tamil passenger elbows me in the ribs and mutters: "This is how you're treated when you're taken to a prison camp."...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/164219

2008-08-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

The magnificent Hazrat-e-Masumeh shrine in Qom, Iran. This is where Fatemah, the sister of Imam Reza, the 8th century Shi'ite imam, is buried. Photo by Anuj Chopra

In Iran’s Holy City, Dissent Over Mixing Islam and Politics

By Anuj Chopra

QOM, IRAN—On a snowy day early this year, a cheery crowd gathered in a busy square here, undeterred by the sting of icy wind gusts. A mobile crane moved into place to serve as a makeshift gallows, followed by black-masked hangmen. Three convicted drug traffickers were brought out, each made to stand on a stool as a noose was placed around his neck. Moments later, the hangmen swiftly pulled away the stools. For hours, the three bodies were left dangling.

Standing nearby was a lean, gray-bearded cleric from Mofid University, which is regarded as a relatively liberal seminary in this Shiite holy city south of Tehran. As he watched the grim spectacle, not the first he has witnessed, he was troubled by the number of public hangings in Iran and the message this sends not only to the outside world but at home as well. In 2007, Iran executed at least 317 people, most by hanging, up from 177 in 2006, according to Amnesty International. There have been at least 108 executions so far this year. "Through public executions, they create an atmosphere of intimidation and silence," he remarked a few days later, asking not to be named for his safety. "They want to frighten people, to make them afraid of voicing criticism. This is not the Islam I know.''

Such dissent fomenting in Qom, a center of Shiite scholarship, shows that the current Iranian government leadership faces rumblings of opposition not just from secular-minded intellectuals in affluent areas of northern Tehran but from elements in Iran's clerical class, too. This cleric—once a staunch supporter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution—is disillusioned with the "frightening direction" the revolution has veered toward, making way for what some have labeled a "turbaned dictatorship"...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/06/27/in-irans-holy-city-dissent-over-mixing-islam-and-politics.html

2008-08-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

Scenes from Qom, the hub of Shia Islam and Iran's most holy city (Photos by Anuj Chopra)

2008-08-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Felakat, an Iranian rapper, lounging in his under ground studio in Tehran. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Iranian Rap Music Bedevils the Authorities

By Anuj Chopra

TEHRAN, IRAN—In a cozy soundproof recording studio housed in a decrepit building here, the rap musician known as Felakat lounges on a chair, surrounded by sound mixers and other sleek recording gizmos. Sporting a tousled black shirt, a slick fur jacket, and a rumpled and spiky hairstyle, the Iranian rapper might well pass for a punk icon. "I devoted my life to rap when I was just 15," says the 27-year-old Felakat, which means "miserable" in Farsi. "Rap is my god."

Felakat is well aware of the perils of his musical choice. Rap is forbidden in Iran. Even so, Felakat and numerous other rap musicians are the demigods of Iran's underground music scene—which encompasses any group that fails to obtain a recording license from Iran's stern Culture Ministry and distributes its albums illegally through the flourishing black market.

Felakat has a considerable following in a nation where 70 percent of the population is under 30. He coyly admits his female fans have "become fanatical" in the year since the release of "Nazgol," his hit track themed on love and fidelity. "I've had to change my mobile phone number twice," he says with a grin, a cigarette dangling between his lips.

With the introduction of satellite television in Iran in the early 1990s—also illegal—and the popularity of American artists like 2Pac and Eminem, hip-hop music found an explosive following among the Iranian youth. Eventually the young Iranians turned to creating this genre of music in Farsi...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/03/12/iranian-rap-music-bedevils-the-authorities.html

2008-08-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

Krishnan Chinnapayan, a rat catcher from India's impoverished Irula community. Photo by Anuj Chopra

A better rat trap improves the lot of low Hindu caste

By Anuj Chopra

SIRIGUMI, INDIA -- The sun was blazing down on Krishnan Chinnapayan as he wiped the sweat from his chalky brow and stood on an arid patch of farmland, preparing for what seemed to be a military mission. "They can sense us," he said, pointing at a nearby burrow. "They are very clever creatures."

Through a hand-operated air pump attached to a cylindrical device, a torrent of smoke then entered the burrow. Seconds later, Chinnapayan pulled out a huge brown rat from a gray blanket of smoke, holding it by its tail before killing it.

In this impoverished tribal belt in southern Tamil Nadu state, catching rats has been a primary job for members of Chinnapayan's Irula tribe - an impoverished community of 3 million people at the bottom rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy who have often found themselves teetering on the brink of starvation.

But the introduction of innovative rat traps has remarkably reversed the Irulas' plight. By curbing the amount of rodents that have long menaced Indian farmers, the tribe has seen its income triple in the past three years, while bringing them new respect. The Irulas, who were once jeered by many locals as "rodent assassins," are now being touted as saviors by many farmers...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/06/MN32TVLQQ.DTL

2008-08-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Guna Ponraj, an autorickshaw driver, who sold one of his kidneys in exchange for a mound of cash . Photo by Anuj Chopra

India's Black Market Racket in Human Kidneys

By Anuj Chopra

CHENNAI, INDIA— Tears well up in Guna Ponraj's rheumy eyes as he stares at the hideous scar running down his side. A year ago, he consented to a practice he assumed would be the swiftest way to escape his mounting debts: swapping a kidney for cash.
An organ procurer promised Ponraj, 38, an auto rickshaw driver with a fourth-grade education, $2,500 for one of his kidneys. "Humans don't need two kidneys, I was made to believe," he says, now lamenting his decision. "I can sell my extra kidney and become rich, I thought." But he was swindled and received only half that much. And since the operation, Ponraj often misses work because of excruciating pain around his hip, pushing him more deeply into debt.Many Indian cities, such as Chennai in southern India, are becoming hubs for the illicit kidney business, despite a 1994 ban on such trade in human organs. Organized rings of hustlers, working in cooperation with some doctors, prowl slum neighborhoods for vulnerable donors like Ponraj to supply a growing number of mainly foreign patients seeking kidney transplants...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/02/01/indias-black-market-racket-in-human-kidneys.html

2007-10-05T09:44:00.001-07:00

BURMA: VOICES OF DISSENT

By Anuj Chopra

I came to Burma in late August to investigate the growing protests sparked by government fuel price hikes -- just weeks before smaller protests swelled to massive demonstrations led by tens of thousands of monks. In a religiously devout country where nearly 80 percent of the population is Buddhist, the monks hold tremendous sway over the Burmese people.

A few days after I arrived, walking down Rangoon's busy Shwe Gon Daing street, I encountered a small but angry group of about 35 protesters chanting slogans against the government's decision to raise fuel prices. Security officials in plain clothes emerged on the scene quickly. Shops in the area rolled down their shutters. Journalists were ordered to stay on the other side of the road and refrain from taking pictures, and a waiting crowd watched in nervous anticipation. The protesters were roughed up -- some of them punched in the face -- and then tossed into a waiting police truck. The small demonstration was crushed in a matter of minutes. It's not the army in uniforms beating up people, I noticed, but thugs probably hired by the junta. I wondered if the military regime feels it has less direct culpability that way. I was watching from a distance like a curious bystander and didn't risk taking out my camera. But the junta's photographers were busy clicking pictures of the crowd. I was told they keep track of who is attending these protest rallies. If the same people are seen in more than two protest rallies, they fall under the government's radar of suspicion. In these early weeks of the protest public participation is still conspicuously low. For days the government paper, The New Light of Myanmar, has been carrying ominous articles warning protesters that if they didn't cease and desist, they could be in jail for up to 20 years. Even the air coughs fear...

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/10/burma_voices_of.html

2007-10-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

SCENES FROM THE STREETS OF RANGOON...
Nearly 90% of Burmese live close to or at the poverty line; the per capita income is a meager $175, even below neighboring Bangladesh and Chad; Burma's military dictatorship spends 40% of the budget on the upkeep of its 450,000-strong army - the largest in South East Asia; only a sliver of the budget goes to health care and education.

2007-10-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

BURMA: BLOOD ON BURGUNDY

By Anuj Chopra

We've been inundated with Myanmar for the last few days. As the people of this tiny nation turn out in force to protest their lack of democratic rights, Myanmar’s Orwellian dictatorship, which has ruled the country for 45 years, has clamped down with an iron fist.

The world is outraged at the use of force on peaceful demonstrators. However, just next door, Indians watch with serene detachment. The MEA has its own prosaic reasons for its insipid response to the “internal matters” of a restive neighbour: India needs to “safeguard its strategic interests”, we’re told. India has a lot to lose if it supports a weak democratic movement that is bound to be crushed — Myanmar can, after all, slake India’s unquenchable thirst for gas. It can also help vanquish ULFA, India’s nemesis in the Northeast. And India needs to mollycoddle Myanmar to create a buffer for China, our rival Asian behemoth.

So India’s okay doing business with an odious regime that wages war on its own people, dragoons them into forced labour, pauperises a once-thriving nation and muzzles all dissent. There is no national outrage as India sells weapons to a brutal regime, rendering toothless a decade-old EU arms embargo meant to pressure the junta to restore democracy.

I found the indifference even more disconcerting after I travelled to Myanmar in August. The recent protests have been glossed over with a patina of democratic yearnings, but they, just like Myanmar’s 1988 uprising for democracy, were triggered by the worsening economic hardships of ordinary Myanmarese...
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ne131007BLOOD.asp

RAVAGED BY WAR

2007-09-15T13:44:00.001-07:00

Scenes of destruction in 2006 from Trincomalee district, Sri Lanka. Relentless fighting between the Tamil Tigers (L.T.T.E) and the Sri Lankan Army had forced residents of Thoppur village to flee their homes. After many agonizing weeks in relief camps, when fighting finally ceased, they returned to their village, only to find devastation where their houses once stood. (Photos by Anuj Chopra)

While passing through Thoppur village, I met S. Thangaratnam, a Tamil man, lugging a semi-exploded shell on his shoulder, and another one in his hand. Heavy shelling had destroyed most houses in Thoppur. These shells had fallen on Thangaratnam's house. An unemployed man, he planned to sell them for their iron value.

2007-09-15T05:10:00.001-07:00

Maoist rebels in Jhyaltung Danda, Nepal. Photo by Anuj Chopra

Nepal: Maoists Begin to Disarm

By ANUJ CHOPRA

JHYALTUNG DANDA, Nepal -- We've spent five hours on the road from Kathmandu. The car is belching out thick smoke as it wobbles along the deeply rutted roads. The mercury has dropped dramatically and fog is adding to the precarious journey.

We're on our way to a remote hamlet in western Nepal, Jhyaltung Danda in the Nawalparasi district, to spend time at a Maoist camp run by the country's rebels, if they let us. Emerging from the shadow of a long clandestine existence, Nepal's Maoist rebels are now in the process of laying down arms under UN supervision, officially calling an end to their decade long revolution.

As our destination nears, the countryside is increasingly beautiful: old wooden houses rise above vast tracts of maize in mid bloom; little children waive at us as we pass by.

In the distance, I see a red flag flying from the top of a watchtower. As we pull up, a gun barrel darts out from a foxhole padded by sand bags.

We have arrived at the headquarters of the 4th division of the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA), a rag-tag army of Nepal's Maoists. Yesterday, I tried to visit another camp in the district of Nawalparisi to meet with the rebels. The camp's lanky deputy commander politely broke the news that he couldn't get permission from his "higher ups." So my translator and I had to turn back.

Today, we are in luck...

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/03/nepal_can_peace.html

2007-09-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

Herat's ancient grand blue mosque. Photo by Anuj Chopra

IRAN IN AFGHANISTAN, FRIENDLY FOE

by Anuj Chopra

HERAT, Afghanistan -- Unlike much of Afghanistan, there are no signs of war in Herat. Far from the dangerous haunts of the Taliban, life in this ancient town on the western border with Iran is peaceful. And there is an economic boom — all thanks to its western neighbour. Machines of local factories never stop whirring during the day; there is 24-hour electricity supply here — largely provided by Iran. Its macadamised roads lined with pine trees are illuminated by streetlights, in stark contrast with the capital Kabul where long outages are frequent. And its markets are flooded with cheap Iranian goods: tea, rice and mounds of kimia dates. Peace finally prevails in this 5,000-year-old town, which has been besieged and annexed several times in its troubled history. There has been little insurgent activity since the Taliban — who are despised by the locals for practising a murderous brand of Sharia — were routed out of power by the Americans, six years ago. But beneath the seeming calm, Western officials warn, trouble is brewing. Accusations are mounting of Iran using Afghanistan — just like Iraq — as a buffer to expand its long-smouldering proxy war against America...
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/08/16/10147009.html

2007-09-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: Feeding his addiction: Khalil in his 'drug den' -- an old bullet-pocked, shrapnel-scarred, Soviet era building in Kabul -- a regular haunt for several drug addicts. (Photo by Anuj Chopra)

KILLING FIELDS
-- by Anuj Chopra

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Mohammad’s motivation to check into a drug rehab clinic was a very personal tragedy. Just last month, this 60-year-old saw one of his eight children, addicted for years to heroin, painfully wither away in front of his eyes. “He smoked nig ht and day,” he says, grimacing. “I want to live. I want my other children to live.”Along with Agha, 17, his eldest son, also an addict, Mohammad made a perilous four-day road trip to Kabul from his obscure village in Helmand province. They are both fortunate to be admitted in the Nejat clinic, the only drug rehab clinic in Kabul. It offers a residential treatment programme to addicts who spend weeks here going through the painful process of withdrawal. But despite being funded by international donors, the number of patients who seek admission here far outstrips the treatment facilities here. With only 10 beds and few in-house specialists, they routinely turn away patients. There are over a 1,000 addicts on the waiting list. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, making it the world’s largest poppy growing nation. The booming poppy cultivation is leaving the Afghan society ravaged by the malaise of drug addiction.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=17868

2007-09-15T00:48:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: Tahira Begum, a 'half-widow' in Kashmir.
Photo by Anuj Chopra

Kashmir: The Disappeared
-- By Anuj Chopra

SRINAGAR, Indian Kashmir – A wood-fired bukhari warms the tiny room, providing much needed respite from the biting cold. Donning the hijab, Tahira Begum, fair, frail, and 32, is sitting in a quiet corner, her knees drawn to her chest. Between sobs, she narrates how searching for her missing husband has been her life's obsession in the last six years.

"I've looked up every prison, every morgue in Kashmir ," she sighs, her voice weak and faltering.
"I've searched and searched and searched."

Tariq Ahmad, her childhood friend who she fell in love with and married when she was only 15, disappeared mysteriously six years ago. Unemployed at that time, he left to look for work one morning, never to return again.

Some eye witnesses said they had seen Indian army soldiers whisking him away, putting him in a van and driving away. Since then, there's been no information about his whereabouts. The army denies detaining him.

Tahira begum, amid uncertainty over whether her husband is still alive, is denounced a "half-widow" -- a woman who is neither a widow nor a wife. She cannot remarry under Islamic law until it's proved Tariq is dead.

The search for answers on her husband's whereabouts has taken over her nights, her days. She's been popping anti-depressants, she tells me, just so she can hold on to her sanity for the sake of her three children. Hope of Tariq's return has waned over the years. All that Tahira Begum asks for is a dignified closure.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/flash_point/kashmir/dispatch.html..