ThinkProgress
September 2018

Iran president: Trump’s UN speech shows his ‘Nazi disposition’

UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK — As opening speeches at U.N.’s General Debate on Tuesday highlighted the need for multilateral responses to global issues such as migration and climate change, President Donald Trump was not even in the room.

Although the words might have been intended for him — the United States has refused to sign the U.N. compact on migration and pulled out the Paris Climate Agreement — Trump was late to arrive to the United Nations. Read more →

ThinkProgress
August 2018

Not so fast, eh: The real deal on that U.S.-Mexico trade agreement

After a protracted struggle over renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at President Donald Trump’s behest, the United States and Mexico came to a new agreement on a new deal.

Sort of.

On Monday, President Trump invited the press into the Oval Office to hear his call with Mexico’s outgoing President Peña Nieto: Trump insists that this isn’t another NAFTA agreement, which he says the U.S. is leaving behind. But the deal is neither done nor is it necessarily how Trump presented it: As a bilateral deal between Mexico and the United States. Read more →

ThinkProgress
July 2018

The Trump administration’s calculus for the new nukes it wants to build could very well backfire

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States is about to start adding to its nuclear capabilities with new “low-yield” nuclear warheads.

Congress is approving roughly $90 million in the upcoming fiscal year’s budget (FY19) for these new capabilities. That might not seem like a lot when it comes to the overall $716 billion budget in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but consider that Michigan is spending about the same amount to replace the lead pipes that created a water crisis in Flint.

The Senate passed its version of the budget in June, with the House having earlier passed its own NDAA, leaving the two to square away their differences in a joint conference committee in the coming weeks. Read more →

ThinkProgress
March 2018

Refugees fled to Greece for safety. They arrived at a living hell.

LESBOS, GREECE – Roohina sits in a room the size of a minivan with her daughter, Hosna, who is one and a half years old. Only the room isn’t so much a room as an indoor tent: The back wall is the only actual wall in their new home in the Moria refugee camp on the island. Blankets create a division between their space and the space where other families live in in the container housing. Another blanket functions as a door.

Roohina, who had a job at a U.N. agency in Kabul, has been living in Moria with Hosna and her husband, who she did not name and was not there at the time, for six days. The family decided to leave after his place of employment, Roshan, a telecommunication company, was among the businesses hit with a massive suicide attack in the capital’s diplomatic district in May. The attack was one of the deadliest in Kabul in years. Read more →

Al Jazeera
April 2017

Journalists allege threat of drone execution by US

WASHINGTON, DC — Two journalists who say they have been targeted by the United States have filed a complaint against the American government, accusing it of putting them on a "kill list" and demanding to be taken off it.

The complaint was filed in the US District Court of the District of Columbia on Thursday on behalf of Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan - a dual Pakistani-Syrian citizen who works for Al Jazeera and Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American, who has occasionally contributed to Al Jazeera and other media organisations. Read more →

Al Jazeera
November 2016

Progress and regress: Obama's mixed Afghanistan legacy

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — It's America's Longest War and one that President Barack Obama promised to end in 2014.

But two years later, the security situation in Afghanistan is in a downward spiral, with the Taliban and Islamic State fighters (ISIL) making gains in several provinces.

Although Obama slowed his original timeline of troop withdrawals, his scaling back of troops, coupled with the rise in drone strikes - up to two a day over the summer, according to watchdog Bureau of Investigative Journalism - have increased the insecurity here, which puts the fragile gains made in Afghanistan in danger. Read more →

Al Jazeera
October 2016

Yazidis hope to rescue ISIL-held family members

QADIYA, NORTHERN IRAQ — Nova and her sister, Bafareen, did not think they’d ever see each other again. The two - along with their entire family - were captured by ISIL fighters when trying to leave their village of Kocho in August 2014.

The two girls, members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, described how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) separated the men from women and children, and then separated Nova, 24, from Bafareen, 18. Read more →

Al Jazeera
November 2016

A hard winter: Afghan refugees return from Pakistan

KABUL AFGHANISTAN — Caught in the middle of political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are some two million Afghan refugees - registered and unregistered - who now face the option of either returning voluntarily or being deported from Pakistan.

And it couldn't happen at a worse time.

Winter in Afghanistan can be bitterly cold. The country is also experiencing a spike in violence, with increased attacks from the Taliban and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters, leading to peak levels of civilian casualties and internal displacement as people flee the fighting.  Read more →

Al Jazeera
September 2016

'Massive crisis' as 1.5m expected to flee Iraq's Mosul.

DIBAGA CAMP,  IRAQ — In a stifling hot office with more flies than oxygen, Rzgar Abed does not hesitate when asked about the biggest challenge in managing the camp for Iraq's internally displaced people (IDPs).

"Space ... we're at 31,000 and that is our capacity. Thirty-one thousand," said Abed, who works for the Barzani Charity Foundation, whicg oversees a number of camps, populated by Iraqis displaced people fleeing fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in the Kurdish region.

That number is set to increase rapidly. Read more →

Al Jazeera America
April 2015

Selling American Girls

LOS ANGELES, CA — On a cool, quiet Thursday night, crimes of all types unfurl on South Figueroa Street.

This is one of the main tracks for prostitution in Los Angeles, a strip where sex can be purchased from teenage girls on almost any given corner, where pimps, some of them gang affiliated, carefully guard their turf and property.

At about 200 blocks, most of them rough, the Fig, as it’s called, can hide a lot. In April it was hiding a 16-year-old named Stacey, missing since December.

She contacted a cousin on Facebook earlier that month, using someone else’s phone. She was with a pimp, she said. Then a big break: She called her mother from a blocked number, saying she didn’t know where she was and that she was scared. Read more →

Al Jazeera America
June 2015

Lebanon's Immigrant domestic workers remain vulnerable to abuse

BEIRUT, LEBANON — At a meeting of domestic workers in the Wata El Msaytbeh neighborhood on a sleepy Sunday, 20 women from Asian and African countries gathered to do what seemed impossible just a few months ago: Create an action plan for a newly formed union to protect the rights of domestic workers.

In the Middle East, where domestic work is rarely classified as labor under the law, a formal proposal in late December for Lebanon’s government to form a union for domestic workers attracted international attention.

But little has changed since then, including what the women who work in people’s homes — cooking, cleaning and looking after children — say is their need for protection from unscrupulous recruiters and abusive employers. Read more →

Al Jazeera
March 2014

Can Japan revive its nuclear ghost towns?

NIHONMATSU, JAPAN  — It's from a distance that Naoki Kobayashi tries to manage the reformation of his town Namie, which sits empty 10km away from the leaking nuclear plant that has wrought chaos on the lives of those in its radioactive reach.

In the relocated town office in Nihonmatsu, roughly 66km west of Namie, Kobayashi and his colleagues are wrestling with a major dilemma: How do you rebuild a town when you're not sure anyone - especially the young - even wants to go back?

At least that's the upshot from questionnaires sent to former residents.

Of the 60 percent who responded, about 30 percent said they don't plan to return to Namie, and another 30 percent indicated they're not sure they'll ever go back.

"We had 21,000 people in Namie, but it's impossible to rebuild for 21,000 … It's mostly the younger people who don't want to come back, and the main reason is fear of radiation," said Kobayashi, an administrative officer for Namie's revitalisation and recovery department. Read more →

Al Jazeera
August 2013

Smell of death lingers in Carior's Iman mosque

CAIRO, EGYPT — One day after Cairo police cleared two sit-ins held in support of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, the capital city was slow to wake.

Hours after the state-of-emergency curfew was lifted, traffic and signs of life began to appear by late morning on Thursday.

But in some quarters, life was not going back to normal after at least 525 people were killed in the clearings in Cairo and ensuing clashes here and across the country.

In Giza, hundreds of Morsi supporters set fire to the local government offices, prompting the government to authorise the use of live ammunition on anyone attacking state buildings.

And in the al-Iman mosque in Nasr City, the neighbourhood where a massive, 47-day vigil was held at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, hundreds of bodies from Wednesday’s violence still lined floors of the makeshift morgue.

Wrapped in shrouds and kept cool with blocks of ice, most of the bodies bore gunshot wounds, but a number were charred, making them hard to identify for family members. Read more →

PBS - Frontline

Notebook
January 2012

16 Days in Evin Prison

TEHRAN BUREAU — "We've convicted people with thinner files and less evidence," a judge told me on my first morning in Iranian detention.

Pointing to a thick folder, he continued, "You might as well just tell us which American agency you work for."

Ending up in Evin is every Iranian's nightmare. It's not the only prison and detention center in Iran, but it's probably the most infamous.

Horror stories pouring out of Iranian prisons are in no shortage, and cases of torture and rape have been reported by opposition and foreign media, as well as rights groups from the Shah's time and since.

I was in Evin in May after the Syrians (who didn't care for an Al Jazeera journalist reporting the events there) alleged that that I was a spy and forced me onto a flight to Iran. But not before locking me up and interrogating me for a few days in one of their own hell holes -- a secret detention center not far from the Damascus airport.

Those three days in Syria were all blood, screams and cruelty meted out casually to Syrians, with me as a witness.

Despite all of that -- including the 16 days of solitary confinement and interrogation in Evin (after which Iranian authorities released me, saying only that there was "nothing wrong" with my passport) -- it's clear that I am among the fortunate. I have multiple citizenships, so there would be more to answer for in harming me, and the intense social media campaign launched by my high-profile employer, family, multiple rights groups, and network of amazing friends put extra pressure on my captors to free me.  Read more →

Al Jazeera
May 2011

Dorothy Parvaz: Inside Syria's secret prisons

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — I was standing in two fist-sized pools of smeared, sticky blood, trying to sort out why there were seven angry Syrians yelling at me. Only one of them - who I came to know as Mr Shut Up during my three days in a detention center, where so many Syrians 'disappeared' are being kept - spoke English.

Watching them searching my bags, and observing the set of handcuffs hanging from the bunk bed wedged behind the desk in the middle of the room, I guessed that I was being arrested - or, at the very least, processed for detention.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Shut up! SHUT UP!" said Mr Shut Up.  Read more →