Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Kashmir: How the Place I Once Feared Became a Second Home

 

Rebecca Byerly, for the Pulitzer Center

“I’m not going to Kashmir,” said my brother defiantly.  We were in the ticket line at the New Delhi airport about to board a flight to Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir.  “I just don’t have a good feeling about going to this place, it’s just too dangerous.”  When I looked at the fear in his eyes, I realized there was no way he would board the plane.

It was January 2008, and I was working in New Delhi.  My brother was visiting me and I’d planned a trip to Kashmir.  I’d heard some of the world’s best snowboarding and skiing was in a place called Gulmarg, a ski resort in the Himalaya.  Avid snowboarders, my brother and I have been boarding since we were teenagers and I thought a jaunt in some of Asia’s highest mountains would make for unparalleled adventure.  Man I sure missed that one.  To my family Kashmir was still very much a war-zone, a place they thought every bit as dangerous as Afghanistan or Iraq.  Dubbed the "most dangerous place on earth" by former President Bill Clinton in 1998, in recent years the security situation in Kashmir has improved.  However, people rarely see any positive news come out of the region.

Government Funding for the Press (with Poll)

 

Mark Stanley, Pulitzer Center

David Westphal, left, and Geoffrey Cowan (photo by Sam Hurd)

This morning, David Westphal and Geoffrey Cowan gave a press briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss their report "Public Policy and Funding the News." Westphal is executive in residence at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and former Washington editor for McClatchy. Cowan is dean emeritus at Annenberg.

The report is an examination of the history and recent role of U.S. government support for news organizations. The authors claim that many commentators, including those in the press, are unaware of the ways in which the government has supported journalism throughout the nation's history.

Kashmir: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

 

Rebecca Byerly, for the Pulitzer Center

Photo by Robert Hubert. This winter many of the mountains (like the ones shown here) in the Himalaya are bare. In the past, Kashmir experienced heavy snowfall in December and January. The past ten years winter snowfall has decreased and temperatures have risen.

As I looked at the Himalaya Mountains, from my window, on a flight from New Delhi to Kashmir last week, I realized that something was missing.  Snow.  The mountains usually snowcapped by December were bare.  My friends in Kashmir had told me that this was an abnormally warm winter and there was no snow, but somehow I just did not realize the magnitude of the situation.  I was not the only one.

The Connection Between Darfur and South Sudan

   

Jen Marlowe, for the Pulitzer Center

Rebuilding Hope (www.RebuildingHopeSudan.org) in many ways grew out of my first documentary film and book, Darfur Diaries (www.darfurdiaries.org). The deeper I became engaged in issues related to Darfur, the more I realized that there is no way to understand the crisis in Darfur without understanding its historical, political and geographic contexts—and these contexts very much include South Sudan.

In this segment, people from Darfur and South Sudan explore the connections between the two regions of Sudan, including how people of Darfur were used by the government in Khartoum against Southerners much the way that Janjaweed militia were later used against Darfuris.

In South Sudan, Schools Still Function Under Trees

 

Jen Marlowe is an independent journalist with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She is currently documenting and writing about education, infrastructure and health care, which remain among the most vital needs in rebuilding South Sudan.

The following is an excerpt from a piece that appeared on World Focus on January 25, 2010.

Tension was under the surface as we negotiated with the contractor, trying to chip away another $10,000 from his bid. The price to build a school in South Sudan, I have learned, is exorbitantly high.

I am here with Gabriel Bol Deng, who is featured in my new documentary film, Rebuilding Hope. Gabriel Bol, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” has been raising money for three years to build a school in Ariang, his native village. We were not prepared for just how costly such a venture is.

Kashmir’s Earthquake: Lesson in Hope and Rebuilding for Haiti

 

Rebecca Byerly, for the Pulitzer Center

On October 5 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.  The eighth most destructive earthquake on record, an estimated 75,000 people were killed.  Millions more were left homeless as entire villages were flattened.  One of the worst hit areas was Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PaK), and the surrounding villages.  Due to the remote location of some of the areas, it took weeks for aid to reach an estimated 500,000 people in need of basic supplies.  Already subjected to abject poverty, the misery of those who survived lingered as the brutal winter with no shelter or food set in.

Nearly five years later on January 12 2010, another massive earthquake struck.  This time it was a magnitude 7.0 in Haiti.  As the death toll in Haiti climbs past 150,000, and hope of finding survivors dwindles, reconstruction plans are underway.  In the coming months, billions of dollars in aid will be spent on rebuilding Haiti’s schools, hospitals, houses, government buildings, and communication centers.  Five years into their rebuilding process, the people of Kashmir offer a lesson in rebuilding.

Sudan...Marriage Saved?

 

David Morse, for the Pulitzer Center

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is a time-bomb set to go off next year.

2011 was the date specified under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (widely referred to as the CPA) signed five years ago by the warring North and South. On that date, the South can vote to secede from a confederation that everyone acknowledges is a marriage of convenience, at best.

Ironically, the 2011 plebiscite was intended as a safety-valve. The rebels in the South harbored doubts about the North's good faith when it came to wealth-sharing and power-sharing. The central government in Khartoum, in the North, had broken the last such agreement in 1983, when oil was discovered in the South...

Read this full post at The Huffington Post.

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Internews: Media Coordinating Relief in Haiti

   

Summer Marion, Pulitzer Center
Images and video by Jennifer Glasse, Internews

A food distribution queue in Haiti this week

Haiti's infrastructural devastation in the wake of last week's earthquake highlights media's critical role in facilitating relief efforts. Mark Frohardt knows this all too well. Frohardt is Vice President for Health and Humanitarian Media at Internews, an international media and development organization mandated to empower local media. He and his team arrive in disaster areas at the height of crises to fill gaps in information sharing and provide local media outlets with the necessary tools to rebuild.

The New York Times and the Great Paywall Debate (with Poll)

   

Mark Stanley, Pulitzer Center

This morning, The New York Times announced it will introduce a paid model for NYTimes.com. Beginning in 2011, it will no longer be possible to receive the wealth of journalism content offered on the site for free.

While the idea of paying for high quality journalism content, as audiences have traditionally done with print newspapers, is intuitive to some, others have had mixed reactions to the Times’ announcement.

Liberia: Of Land, Family and Feuds

Jina Moore, for the Pulitzer Center

This is a slideshow photographer Glenna Gordon and I prepared for the Christian Science Monitor, which features my reporting and her photographs in this week's cover story, "The African Divide."  The article focuses on how land has been at the root of many of Africa's most well-known conflicts -- and the  promising steps some countries are taking to solve the land problem.

In Liberia, that includes giving women like Yar Gegh equal rights to own land.  For years, Yar Gegh worked her family's farm and took care of her dying mother.  Then her brother came back from the war and claimed the plot, "as the man."  Here's what happened:

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