Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Sinaloa: The birthplace of the drug cartel system

Clayton Worfolk and Jordan deBree, for the Pulitzer Center

Even before the latest iteration of this drug war kicked off in December 2006 (when President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against the cartels), Sinaloa state had the reputation of being a violent place. It was home to bandits and smugglers who took refuge in the Sierra Madre mountain range on the state’s eastern border.

One writer told us that men here used to settle disputes by locking one arm to each other and, with a knife held in their other hand, dueling to the death. Another man we interview attributes Sinaloans’ reputed propensity for violence to a diet of too much meat and seafood, too much testosterone.

Finding Faith In Myanmar

By Tim Patterson

Loud voices jolt me awake. It’s past midnight and I’m here in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar illegally. Adrenaline pumping, I roll under the bed as shouts shake my hut’s thin bamboo walls:

“Happy Christmas! Merry Christmas! Jesus Christ is born!”

I check my clock. 12:10 am on December 1st. Here in Kachin, the Christmas season has begun.

Unlike ethnic Burmese, who form the majority in Myanmar, the six tribes collectively known as Kachins are devout Christians. Their faith has bound the Kachins together as one people and helped them endure decades of repression, suffering and loss.

For me, a nominal Christian, living among the Kachins opened my eyes to the enduring power of religious faith...

Continue reading this post at BraveNewTraveler.

Arrival

Clayton Worfolk and Jordan deBree, for the Pulitzer Center

We arrive in Culiacán early Wednesday morning, and it doesn’t take long to see signs of the fear that has settled in on the city. Masked federal police patrol the roads in caravans of armored trucks, and by nightfall, the streets are empty.

Over 100 drug-related homicides have been reported this month alone in Culiacán, a city of just under 800,000 people. The daily toll is somewhere between four and five bodies a day. While much of the violence has occurred between narco comandos, as the local newspapers call them, and the police, the brazenness of the attacks, which often occur during the day and in busy parts of the city, have shocked residents.

Many have been caught in the crossfire. Only Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, the border towns that serve as the frontline for the battle between the fractured Sinaloa-based cartel and its rivals in the Gulf of Mexico and on the border, have been bloodier.

On our first day in Culiacán, four people are shot dead, including a 56-year-old doctor executed in his own office.

Go to Mexico: Trouble in Culiacán project page

Myanmar: Understanding the Kachin Conflict

Tim Patterson and Ryan Libre, for The Pulitzer Center

“Myanmar politics are the most complicated in the world,” said Daw Kong, director of the Kachin research and information network, as we settled down for tea and conversation on a hilltop near the Chinese border.  

After three weeks in the small pocket of northern Myanmar held by the Kachin Independence Organization, I still struggled to make sense of the tangled history and delicate balance of power that defines the political landscape of Kachin state. 

In the interest of clarity, here are 11 key points that will help a general audience make sense of the drama unfolding in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar

Rape as a weapon of war in DR Congo

Michael Kavanagh, for the Pulitzer Center

War has raged through the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than a decade — it has been called the deadliest conflict since World War II.

The United Nations estimates that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in that time, some victims as young as three years old.

Both the Congolese army and rebel groups have used rape as a weapon of war.

Armed groups use rape to tear apart families, spread disease and weaken communities. Women are often victimized doubly — first by their rapists and secondly by spouses or family members who then find it dishonorable or socially unacceptable to associate with them.

Continue reading this post that includes a video report Rehabilitating rape victims and families in Congo at World Focus.org

Read more about The Roots of Ethnic Conflict in Eastern DRC

Iraq: Particularly vulnerable

Matthew Hay Brown

WASHINGTON -- The news today that nearly 100 Sudanese refugees in Iraq now are headed to Romania highlights the plight of a particularly vulnerable group: Those who were already refugees in Iraq when the war triggered the current crisis.

The 97 men, women and children fled Sudan in the late 1980s. While they fear a return to that troubled country, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said today, conditions in Iraq have hardly been much better.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, spokesman Ron Redmond said in Geneva, the Sudanese have suffered abuse, blackmail, eviction and assaults by militias. A total of 17 were killed between December 2004 and February 2005.

“Because of this targeting by the insurgent groups, the refugees tried to flee Iraq but were not successful,” Redmond said. They were stranded in a camp outside Al Rutbah town in the Al Anbar desert, some 50 miles east of the Jordanian border.

“Here they were subject to severe weather conditions and harassment by militias,” Redmond said.

The experience in some ways mirrors that of Palestinians in Iraq, a group that was seen as priviledged under Saddam but has since been targeted by militants. A coalition of refugee advocates reported last month that some 3,000 Palestinians remain stranded in three camps along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Read more at The Baltimore Sun

Iraq: A grim milestone, and a horrible dilemma

Matthew Hay Brown

WASHINGTON -- The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees announced on Monday that it had referred its 50,000th Iraqi for resettlement. Buried in the press release is the story of another refugee facing a horrible dilemma.

The woman, identified as “Reem,” fled Iraq for Damascus with a two-year-old daughter after her husband and another infant daughter were abducted by masked men in Baghdad. The release says she has paid US$3,000 trying to find out what happened to them, to no avail.

Now she has been accepted for resettlement to the United States. She cannot decide between continuing to look for her loved ones or moving on. She has until early next week to accept resettlement.

"Sometimes I wish the monsters that did this to my little baby and my husband would call me to tell me they are both dead so that I could leave,” she says. “I'm so tired, so very tired of hoping.”

Read more at The Baltimore Sun

Myanmar: Open Military Camps, Closed Teashops

Tim Patterson and Ryan Libre, for the Pulitzer Center                                                      

Apart from a brief introduction to the Chief of Staff of the Kachin Independence Army, we spent our first day in Myanmar locked inside a hotel room.  Our Kachin hosts were apologetic but firm.  For the moment, it was too risky to go outside.

Iraq: In Northeast Baltimore, a 'typical American family'

Matthew Hay Brown

BALTIMORE -- I was invited to dinner last night by a family that in some ways typifies the Iraqi resettlement experience.

Abu Rawan is a 62-year-old engineer who served as an interpreter and adviser to U.S. commanders and diplomats after the 2003 invasion. His wife is a pediatrician; they have two sons, aged 13 and 14.

After a series of anonymous threats – over the phone, under the door, through neighbors – the family fled Baghdad in December 2006. They spent time in Syria and Jordan before arriving in the United States in May.

Abu Rawan – an Arabic construction that means “father of Rawan” – had asked to be resettled near Washington so he could look for government work as a cultural and political advisor on Iraq. He blames much of the violence in Iraq on a failure by Americans and Iraqis to understand each other.

His wife, meanwhile, wants to resume her medical practice.

For now, Abu Rawan is working as a loan counselor with a Baltimore nonprofit. He wants to pursue graduate study in political science. His wife, who can’t practice here until she passes the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, has found part-time work as a medical interpreter at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Read more at The Baltimore Sun

Nigeria: Durbah Festival images

David Hecht, for the Pulitzer Center

Durbah festival at Katsina December 8, 2008
Photo credit: David Hecht

During the annual Durbah festival, over the period of Eid, the various district heads of each Emirate come to their Emir to show their strength in warriors and horsemen and to demonstrate that they are ready to defend his realm.

In former days, farmers would also seek to demonstrate their capacity in food production. The most productive farmers would be rewarded with courtly titles. But the role of the Emir is now largely symbolic; he can no longer offer incentives to increase production.