Category: international

Did He Lie, Mom? by Fiona Tinwei Lam

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“Talking to my son about the scandal over Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea” TheTyee.ca

Greg Mortenson, author

Like the four million others who had purchased Three Cups of Tea, I was moved by Greg Mortenson’s story of how he came to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Back in 2007, the book’s focus on cross-cultural understanding and forging strong grassroots relationships with local communities seemed to provide a much-needed counterweight to news stories about the Taliban, suicide bombers, and realpolitik manoeuvring by western states in the Middle East and central Asia. In view of increasing troop deployments to Afghanistan, and mounting combat and civilian mortalities with no end in sight, Mortenson seemed to offer a higher-minded, peaceful and effective strategy to address the roots of terrorism.

I read the kids’ version of the book, Listen to the Wind, to my son several times while he was in kindergarten. The picture book version depicts Mortenson’s journey to the impoverished community of Korphe, where he is nursed back to health after a failed mountain-climbing venture, and where he decides to build his first school. My son had heard about the war in Afghanistan and had asked about the reasons behind the conflict and the casualties. I wanted him to have a more balanced, complex view of the situation that would go beyond media stereotypes of intolerant hostile religious fanatics or passive, hapless victims. The book showed him that there were children just like him living in that part of the world, who had parents and leaders that deeply valued what education could bring to their communities.

Continue reading “Did He Lie, Mom? by Fiona Tinwei Lam” →

Naheed Mustafa: an interview, stories and radio documentary

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Naheed Mustafa is an award-winning journalist and writer.  This interview with Naheed and a story – “We Felt No Mercy” – are featured in the Spring 2011 issue and website of maisonneuve, a quarterly of arts, opinion and ideas  – an award-winning Montreal magazine. Listen to Taking the Oath, her CBC radio documentary on immigration. Her story  Three Meals in Afghanistan is published in The Walrus.
 

When covering important political stories, some journalists talk to the major players. But other writers strive to let the underdogs be heard. In her new Maisonneuve cover story “We Felt No Mercy,” which appears in Issue 39 (Spring 2011), Naheed Mustafa offers an unmediated look at the lives of Afghan citizens. Neamatullah Arghandabi, a former mujahed who helped fight off the Soviets, opens up about life as a young soldier and the current state of his country.

Mustafa is an award-winning print and radio journalist. We talked to her about the difficulties of foreign correspondence and how to tell personal stories from countries in conflict. To read “We Felt No Mercy,” pick up a copy of our Spring 2011 issue or contact us to order it.

Mick Côté: Can you tell me about the initial contact with Arghandabi?

Naheed Mustafa: It was straightforward. I basically phoned him up and just asked him. Obviously, I had to tell him how I got his number and then I just asked him if he was interested in trying to meet. He said sure. The issue was nailing down a time with him because he was really busy. He comes to Kabul once every few months. The other thing that I found while working in Afghanistan—and not just there—is that people don’t really stick to their times.

MC: Was he reluctant to share his story?

NM: He didn’t really understand what I was trying to do. Not in terms of literally understanding, but he didn’t really “get it.” He didn’t really understand why I was interested in his story and he didn’t really understand why I wanted to construct this particular piece.

The project is actually a lot bigger than this particular item. I’ve been collecting stories for a while, but I’m not really sure what I’m going to be doing with them. It’s an opportunity I take when I’m working on other things over there. He asked, “What’s the point? It’s not really a story. I’m not anyone famous or particularly influential.” But to me, that’s what was interesting. That’s the story I wanted.

MC: In the article, you allotted a lot of room for quotations and very little for narration. How did you make this decision?

NM: This was the first time I’ve tried this type of format. The model for it was Studs Terkel’s book, The Good War. He collected stories of people who participated, in various ways, in World War II. He has these long types of discursive quotes. I’ve seen that style in other places but I hadn’t ever done something like that myself. The point of the oral story is to get people to tell their own story, and that seemed like the most obvious way. I was pretty nervous about using that style, and I wasn’t sure that people would find it compelling.

I’ve done long feature-style narrative from Afghanistan in other ways. I’ve done it in broadcasting, and I’ve done it in other print features. But part of the effort for anybody is: how much of ourselves do we insert into that story? We’re going to insert ourselves in various ways. The most obvious way would be that first-person narrative about who you’re meeting and who you’re talking to and your impressions. The other part of it is really about what we choose to quote.

Obviously, even the way that I’ve done it—even in selecting these particular passages—that’s still mediating his story. But I think it comes closer to an unmediated story than if I had written my version of what he was saying. That’s one of the things that I was struggling with a lot. It’s not always easy to figure out how to quote people because people don’t always just talk in short form. When you look at those kinds of interviews, people have a lot to say about themselves, and they tell you because they want you to hear it.

Part of that discussion for me, internally, is: how much of a duty do I have to report that? If I’m there to talk about people’s experiences, then how much should I keep myself out? I thought it was one way to get a story out, with as much content as I could in the style that he would tell it….more

This interview with Naheed Mustafa can be read in full here on the maisonneuve website.

Linda McQuaig – Canada mines African discontent

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Linda McQuaigTanzanian uprising against Barrick Gold leaves seven villagers shot dead

Originally published in The Toronto Star
 

While Canadians may think of ourselves as best known for owning the Olympic podium, among Africans we may actually be better known – and not particularly liked – for owning their natural resources.

Once beloved on the continent, Canada is no longer so fondly regarded in Africa.

The new, less enthusiastic view of Canada was vividly illustrated last month when more than 1,500 desperately poor Tanzanian villagers picked up machetes, rocks and hammers and stormed the mining compound of Canadian-owned African Barrick Gold.

The uprising – leading to the shooting deaths of seven of the villagers by police and security forces at the mine – is a startling reminder that theories widely held in the West about the benefits of foreign investment for the developing world are not always shared by people on the receiving end.

In theory, Barrick’s arrival in the 1990s has been a boon to the Tanzanian economy, pushing it toward development.

In reality, Tanzania has collected only a pittance in taxes and royalties from Barrick and other foreign multinationals through contracts that are shrouded in secrecy. So, although it sits on massive gold reserves worth more than $40 billion, Tanzania remains one of world’s 10 poorest countries.

A 2008 investigation funded by Norwegian church groups concluded that Tanzania collected an average of only $21.7 million US a year in royalty and taxes on more than $2.5 billion worth of gold exported over the previous five years. The investigation also estimated some 400,000 Tanzanians, who formerly mined for gold with nothing but their own picks, shovels and ropes, have been left unemployed by the giant mining operations.

Two months after that report, a government-appointed commission headed by retired Tanzanian judge Mark Bomani strongly urged imposing higher royalties and taxes on the foreign mining companies.

With growing popular pressure for tougher legislation, the Canadian government intervened on the side of the multinationals, pressuring the Tanzanian government and parliament to oppose Bomani’s proposed reforms. Continue reading “Linda McQuaig – Canada mines African discontent” →

Rachel Giese writes on Canadian myths about crime & immigration

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Rachel Giese 

writes in The Walrus June 2011

“Arrival of the Fittest”

Canada’s crime rate is dropping as immigration increases. Is there a connection?

Late last summer, the MV Sun Sea, a small Thai cargo ship, entered Canadian waters off the British Columbia coast, where it was intercepted by the navy and the RCMP. Crowded on board were 492 Tamils, including women and children. The vessel’s arrival was not unexpected; in fact, the government had been monitoring its journey for months and had intelligence that it was smuggling refugees from Sri Lanka. Canada has been a popular destination for people fleeing the ravages of the twenty-six-year civil war and a 2004 tsunami: there are now 20,000 Sri Lankans here, and more coming all the time.

A few days before the Sun Sea reached the coast, public safety minister Vic Toews was in Toronto giving a luncheon speech on national security to the Economic Club of Canada and announced, “I can assure you that we are concerned about who is on that ship and why they might be coming to Canada.” He was referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers, which has been banned in Canada as a terrorist organization. The previous year, when a rusty ship called the Ocean Lady carrying seventy-six Tamil men arrived off the coast of Vancouver Island, the government arrested the passengers and held them for months, alleging that a third of them were Tamil Tigers sent to infiltrate Canada and set up operations here. (No evidence was ever found to support that claim, and they’ve since been released. All are pursuing refugee claims.)

That the point person was Toews, and not Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship, immigration, and multiculturalism, was telling. It framed the Sun Sea situation as a potential danger to the public, and prompted a swift response. The passengers were put into detention (nearly sixty of them remain there, and in March two were ordered to be deported because of ties to the Tigers). The government also introduced Bill C-49, which would allow officials to detain smuggled migrants for one year, and bar them from applying for permanent residence and sponsoring family members for five years.

The public was unsympathetic…

Read the rest of the article at The Walrus

For an audio interview with Rachel Giese about this essay, see: