Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Yemen: ‘Trust in God but tie your camel first’

Ginny Hill, for the Pulitzer Center

The British think-tank Chatham House (also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs) published my paper on Yemen last week. Claire Spencer, head of Chatham House’s Middle East programme, chaired a round-table discussion for an invited audience, including representatives from the UK Foreign Office and Arab diplomats.  

I started by presenting a broad outline of my paper Yemen: Fear of Failure and argued that Yemen appears to be in denial about its precarious future. I quoted CIA Director Michael Hayden who said earlier this month that Yemen is a “country of concern, a place where Al Qaeda is strengthening. We've seen an unprecedented number of attacks this year. Plots are increasing not only in number, but in sophistication, and the range of targets is broadening.” 

I talked about Yemen’s strategic location and pointed out that the infectious nature of state failure would make every problem in the region more intractable, should Yemen slide towards collapse. I argued that criminal networks on both sides of the Gulf of Aden have already forged close ties between Arabia and the Horn of Africa, and I cited the UN Monitoring Group on the arms embargo to Somalia, which lists Yemen as the source of a significant number of weapons in circulation in Somalia. 

Oman’s ambassador to the UK pointed out that the West has left Somalia to rot – I’m paraphrasing here – which has made Yemen vulnerable to problems that are not of it’s own making. And a representative from Yemen’s embassy in London rightly pointed out that Yemen is not yet a failed state. The discussion highlighted an urgent need for Western governments to engage Yemen’s Arab neighbours – Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States – to influence events in Sana’a.

I ended my presentation by arguing that policy-making towards Yemen must start from a realistic assessment about the true nature of power in Yemen. I said that a distinction must be made between the Yemeni government, which legislates fairly freely, without power, and a shadow elite, which is running the country as a private interest. I asked what leverage – if any – the West and Yemen’s neighbours can bring to bear over the shadow elite? 

I ended by quoting an Arab proverb – ‘Trust in God, but tie your camel first’. The West, Yemen and Yemen’s neighbours all seem to be leaving Yemen’s future to chance – but are we doing enough to tie Yemen’s camel before it's too late? 

The session raised plenty of questions, but not enough answers. 

Carteret Islands: Five Flights and Three Days Later

Jennifer Redfearn, for the Pulitzer Center
Written September 15th

The Carteret Islands are some of the most remote islands in the South Pacific.  Three days after leaving New York City and five flights later, we arrived in Buka at the tip of Bougainville, where we plan to catch a boat to the Carterets to document how climate change is impacting this low-lying atoll.

The trip was marked by serendipitous encounters including a chance meeting with my main source on the island, Ursula Rakova, at the departure lounge in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Ursula founded Tulele Peisa, an organization with a mission to relocate the Carteret Islanders to mainland Bougainville over the next ten years.

Our plan was to film the first five families as they traveled from their homeland on the Carterets to higher ground on mainland Bougainville, but Ursula told us yesterday that the relocation is on hold. The houses they are building for the families in Tinputz, a district located in the northeast corner of Bougainville, are incomplete.

Carteret Islands: Welcome Ceremonies

Jennifer Redfearn, for the Pulitzer Center
Written September 29th

Carteret Islands:

We’ve been on the climate change awareness tour for four days. The group usually wakes around 5:30AM – when the roosters warm their vocal chords – and bathes in the nearest river or in the sea. Breakfast or kai kai in pidgin, the common language spoken on tour, is usually a plate of rice, soupy noodles with tin fish, and kaukau or sweet potato.

(On tour the Carteret Islanders are eating three meals a day, which is rare on the islands these days. The government sends an emergency shipment of rice to the islands two to four times a year, but when the supply runs low most families survive on one meal a day.)

After breakfast the group piles into the back of a flatbed pickup truck. The ride is thrilling. The truck thunders down the road like a roller coaster cart on rickety tracks stirring a cloud of dust in its wake.

William and Mary Students Explore Water Wars

By Brian Mahoney
Pulitzer Center William and Mary Student Liaison

To bring home the gravity of the emerging water crisis, filmmaker Sanjeev Chatterjee traveled to 15 different countries. To bring it even closer, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provided a web portal.

Chatterjee, associate dean of the University of Miami's Knight Center for International Media, is the co-producer and director of One Water, a documentary that spans from Las Vegas to Lake Victoria exploring the ways that water access and sanitation affect the lives of ordinary human beings.

On Nov. 13, Chatterjee brought his film to the College of William and Mary's Maasai American Student Association, which used the film -– and the Water Portal –- to talk with students and professors about how water is becoming an increasing concern for the world's poor -– and what the world's affluent population can do to ensure that water access remains a basic human right, not a luxury for those who can afford it.

Project:Report Round 2 Roundup

Alex Amend, Pulitzer Center

Round 2 of the Pulitzer Center/YouTube Project:Report has come to a close. The assignment: to find a local story and present its global significance. The 10 semi-finalists and 13 other aspiring journalists submitted another diverse batch of stories told very well, and thanks in large part to YouTube featuring Project:Report, this round saw the largest viewership and amount of comments posted. There were almost 1 million combined views of the five finalists and five runners-up!

Here's a rundown of the finalists:

Kim Fischer's "Factory Town Blues" explores a small town in Missouri facing the prospect of a new smelting plant that would produce jobs but also pollution in an already over-polluted area. Some of the comments evoked similar situations that are occurring all over the U.S. where old forgotten factory towns are also looking to re-establish industry.

Continue reading Project:Report Round 2 Roundup

Carteret Islands: Sacred Stones and the Rough Sea

Jennifer Redfearn, for the Pulitzer Center
Written September 22nd

Carteret Islands:

This morning one of the elders, John Sailik, stood at the northern tip of Han Island, whispered sacred words into a handful of stones, and cast them out to sea.

Nicholas, the youth tour leader, told us later that John inherited an ancestral power to control the sea, though John wouldn’t admit. He definitely seemed concerned; repeating to us throughout the morning that he hoped we would have a safe trip. His fears are justified. The community called on its strongest youth to represent them on the climate change awareness tour. If anything happens to the boat, the community would lose its family and its future leaders.

The banana boats, small single-engine motorboats, left the atoll mid-morning carrying seventeen young Carteret Islanders. We traveled in a boat with 10 islanders and over 12 bags. The open ocean no longer resembled a smooth expanse of glass. Instead wind swept across the ocean creating ripples along the surface and swells that surged toward the front of the boat. The boat crashed through the sea.

Carteret Islands: A Good Omen from the Sea

Jennifer Redfearn, for the Pulitzer Center
Written September 21st

Carteret Islands:

Today the community held a church service to commemorate the youth from the Carteret Islands who will travel to the mainland to discuss climate change and the relocation (the islanders plan to relocate from the Carteret Islands to Tinputz on mainland Bougainville).

The Carteret Islanders share the same clans – the eagle, dog, chicken and hornbill – and a similar culture and language with the Tinputz community. The elders are concerned, however, because some of the communities on Bougainville still have guns from the crisis – the 10-year civil war between Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. Violence can be a problem on the mainland.

Yet today they received a good omen from the sea. The tour leader, Nicholas, caught up with us after the service and invited us down to the beach where a fisherman was divvying up his catch – a giant stingray.

Carteret Islands: Every Drop Counts

Jennifer Redfearn, for the Pulitzer Center
Written September 18th

Carteret Islands

The first person we met this morning on the Carteret Islands was Nicholas, a 32-year-old fisherman with an easy smile who will lead the youth tour (climate change awareness tour) to Tinputz in the northeast corner of Bougainville. Tall with short spiky hair, Nicholas speaks three languages occasionally spicing up conversation with archaisms like “drunkard fellow.”

He agreed to an interview and we spent the morning walking around the main island. Han is approximately .6 miles long and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk across the width of the island. Small huts crowned with palm leaves line the white sand beach from point to point. Handmade canoes drifted past the island and young boys climbed coconut trees, their legs bound with cloth for support. Often a soft melodic voice could be heard singing in the distance.

Bolivia: Coca Si, Cocaina no?

University of Texas journalism students talk coca and multimedia reporting with Pulitzer Center grantees By: Lindsey Mullikin, University of Texas Pulitzer Center Student Liaison Earlier this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales suspended U.S. Drug Administration operations in his country. This coupled with the expulsion of a U.S. Ambassador accused of inciting riots in the country, are only the most recent indicators of the strained relations between the two countries since Morales’ election in 2006. The point of tension between the two governments revolves around coca production within Bolivia, a production that the U.S. claims is on the rise because of the increasing demand for cocaine. During his first year in office, Morales implemented a policy meant to encourage the legal production of coca while discouraging its use for narcotics. His gesture was not well-received by the U.S. government. On Tuesday night, journalist Ruxandra Guidi, and her husband, photographer Roberto Guerra, presented work focusing on Bolivian coca farmers to young journalists studying at the University of Texas School of Journalism. The university’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists sponsored the event. Through audio slide shows and radio broadcasts the two reported on the significance of the coca leaf to the country economically, medicinally and culturally. Their work deepened the international conversation on Bolivia by approaching the topic from a fresh, more humanized angle.

War's Lasting Legacy

By Christie Aschwanden

Editor's note: Christie and Phung Tuu Boi will partake in a panel discussion at George Washington University this Friday 11/14 at 12pm

It's been 18 months since Phung Tuu Boi gave me a tour of his Agent Orange remediation projects in Vietnam. Now I get a chance to show him some of my country.

Mr. Boi is in the U.S. this month to speak about his work to scientists, students and journalists. Last night George Lerner and I joined with Mr. Boi and Susan Hammond of the War Legacies Project for an informal discussion of Agent Orange in Vietnam at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation.

This afternoon I discussed our Agent Orange project with students from Bill Gentile's Foreign Correspondence course at American University.

Tonight, Mr. Boi and I will join David Bosco for a roundtable at American University.

Go to Christie's project page