Young girls at the Gudwara Panja Sahib. Photo: Flickr user AlJazeeraEnglish

Worldfocus partner World Pulse is a media enterprise covering global issues through the eyes of women. This post is excerpted from their PulseWire project, an international online forum for women. In it, Nukhbat Malik writes about meeting children scarred by war in the town of Hasan Abdal in northern Punjab, Pakistan, at one of Sikhism’s holiest places.

He is a 13-year-old boy with big green eyes, following me everywhere while I wander around the Gurdwara Panja Sahib, taking pictures. The place is bustling with people of all ages, children running around, old men and women lying in the corridors. This boy appears in front of me when I move towards a quieter corner and looking straight into my eyes, he almost whispers and makes a sign which makes leaves me standing still.

Satish Singh is from Mingora, the largest city in the Swat district of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. He moved to Gurdwara on April 28th with his parents, three sisters and two brothers. He is the eldest among his siblings. I take his hand and lead him to the stairs. He looks around to make sure that no one is noticing him.

And then he says, ‘Maulana Fazlullah looks like a true hero of a movie. He comes there on a horse, and there are always three other people on horses with him, one at his back and two on each side. I wonder how he became such a dashing person. Though I have never seen his face but his personality is very impressive.’

I am stunned, and I ask him to explain the sign which he made earlier.

He looks around to see if anyone is watching and then with widened eyes says, ‘I saw there were three of them, wearing shalwar kameez. Their faces were wrapped in black cloth, excluding the eyes and they had guns. It was about 2:30 pm and I was coming back from school. It’s the Green Chowk where there are different shops and lots of people. They stopped in front of a shop, grabbed a man, knocked him down and beheaded him.’

‘He was an ordinary man, perhaps some government officer, I still think of him and wonder what his fault was?’

It’s hard for me to keep looking at Satish. Just when I try to move the conversation to a lighter tangent, he says, ‘That was the first time in my life when I ran as fast as I could. I entered my house, went straight to the washroom, threw up and fainted. For next three days I was not able to talk to any one. My mother still asks me what went wrong that day, but I am unable to explain, I am speechless when I think of that day, I am scared.’

‘So you never talked about this with any one?’ I finally asked.

He gives me a false smile and said, ‘What should I say? You know our Veer Ji (teacher) and our parents have strictly prohibited us to say a word about Taliban. If my father finds out about this conversation, he will lock me up or send me to India.’

It’s not just the story of Satish. I have met several children over the past week, all those who have a new identity now known as ‘Internally Displaced Persons’.

These children, regardless of their ages and religion have similar things to talk about: bombings, war, shelling, Taliban, blood, killings and the army.

Shehrbano is a 12-year-old girl. She can’t speak Urdu, but I know she wants to tell me something. I request a man standing beside me in the Jalala Camp of Mardan to ask her in Pashto what it is. Shehrbano looks at me for a second, puts her head down, and says, ‘There was a beheaded man, whose head was placed on his body with a note on it saying, whoever will do something wrong, will get the same punishment, I don’t know what wrongdoings they were talking about.’

Seven-year-old Atif has seen people killed in a suicide bombing, 11-year-old Daud Khan has no idea who is killing whom and 13-year-old Salman wonders when all of this will finish.

I have no answers to these questions. I am unable to imagine what sort of a generation this will be. Fear, terror and anger are written all over these children. They don’t laugh or smile anymore. I smile at them and get back an inquisitive look in return.

- Nukhbat Malik

President Obama at the Ft. Hood memorial service. Photo: Flickr user USarmy

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

The implications of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood continue to excite public scrutiny. The US is no stranger to deranged individuals of different religious persuasions indulging in mass murder in the past.

President Obama, in a moving eulogy to the dead, cautioned against a rush to judgment. The facts would have to be painstaking pieced together before a fair approximation of what motivated Hasan’s dastardly attack on fellow servicemen can be arrived at.

The fact that Hasan was an Army psychiatrist administering to the post traumatic stress syndrome issues faced by returning Army soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, added to the puzzling enigma of his act.

It seemed that a healer, trained to mend soldiers broken by the awful physical and psychological traumas inflicted on them by war, had himself cracked under the professional and personal strain he had apparently undergone.

There is little doubt that Hasan had increasingly become a misfit in the Army. Reportedly a loner, he found solace in increasing religiosity. As a Muslim-American, he appeared to be struggling to come to terms with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

He had publicly declared that he considered America’s involvement in these wars as a war against Islam. He agonized over whether Islam permitted Muslims to fight Muslims in war. It seems these warning signs were not noticed by his superiors who were about to deploy him to Afghanistan.

If the U.S. Army draws the conclusion that its Muslim soldiers are not to be trusted, this would be a big mistake. Most Muslims soldier and officers have fought bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have given the supreme sacrifice for their country.

Colin Powell personally knew and attested to the valor of one such Muslim officer who died in Afghanistan. He rests in peace in the Arlington cemetery, an acknowledged hero. The acts of one deranged man cannot and should not sway our military leadership. If we succumb to this attitude how can we trust our Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani and other Muslim allies?

Instead, it would be better to reform Army procedures to catch its misfits in time. Such persons who cannot be nursed back to mental normality should be weeded out.

I cannot end without commenting on the ease with which weapons can be procured in America. In most first world countries this is not the case. There it is very difficult, if not virtually impossible to get a license for lethal weapons.

With stringent gun control imposed here, it might just be possible to avoid putting guns in the hands of alienated individuals who can wreak havoc on innocent citizens. Otherwise we are probably fated to see a repeat of such horrific incidents in the future. Civil society should take the lead in asking for reforms of the current gun laws.

When I served in Malaysia two decades ago, I noticed that it was a crime punishable by death to own an unlicensed revolver. Even owning bullets attracted heavy punishment. Crimes such as the recent rampage are unknown in Malaysia. They are also virtually unknown in Europe, although there are plenty of misfits in these countries.

Think about it.

- Amb. S. Azmat Hassan

Ahmad Kamal, a Pakistani diplomat for 40 years and Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United Nations, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Pakistan’s war against Islamic militants and whether the U.S. is paying enough attention to Afghanistan’s neighbor.

Kamal Hyder of Al Jazeera English reports from Pakistan on the deteriorating security situation.

The target was the Indian embassy, and once again, the Taliban claimed responsibility.

Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss Afghanistan’s importance to India and the effect of the bombing on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Wednesday marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The aim was to defeat the Taliban and deny al Qaeda a home base after the September 11 attacks. But today, the Taliban are resurgent, the war has become increasingly deadly for America and its allies, and Osama bin Laden remains a free man. The Afghanistan conflict has gone on longer than anyone imagined it would.

For his part, President Obama says he will not substantially reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan, nor change the mission. But it remains to be seen if he will expand the the American military presence beyond the 68,000 troops already committed as the war becomes increasingly unpopular.

After eight years of war in Afghanistan, are the United States and the world safer from terrorism?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Headline from an English-language Russian news site.

Worldfocus producer Christine Kiernan writes about the reaction to the recently-released report on the Russia-Georgia war.

This week, the European Union released its long-awaited report on the five-day-war that broke out between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. The conclusions — the result of a ten-month-long mission to investigate the conflict’s origins led by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini — were mixed. The report cites as the immediate cause “the shelling by Georgian forces of the capital of the secessionist province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, on Aug. 7.”

However, it also acknowledges that Russia had made preparations for armed hostilities by moving paramilitary forces into the Russian-backed republic, and that the shelling was only the “culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations, and incidents.” The report concludes that all sides violated international humanitarian and human rights laws and warns that the conflict in Georgia continues to threaten peace in the region.

Not surprisingly, both Russia and Georgia seemed to interpret the report’s findings in their own favor. Russian officialdom and media expressed satisfaction, more or less, over the commission’s findings, highlighting as the main conclusion the fact that Georgia started the war. The Russian press secretary said “we can only welcome the said conclusion.”

A headline in the “Gazeta” newspaper read: “The Russian Kremlin and Ministry of Defense welcomed the EU commission’s conclusion that Georgia began the war in South Ossetia.” The article noted that Russia’s ambassador to the European Commission, Vladimir Chizhov, deemed the report  “Pro-Russian.” Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said it was about time the truth came out; the Echo Moscow radio station quoted him as saying Western politicians owed Russia an apology.

You can read an official reaction on the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Web site. There is little mention of the finding of Russian responsibility for ethnic cleansing and of disproportionate use of force by the Russian side, or the report’s refusal to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent entities.

My ability to interpret Georgian reaction is limited. But I did come across an English-language version of an official statement issued by the Georgian government. The Georgian government’s takeaway: “Almost all of the facts in the report confirm the Georgian version of events.” The government’s statement failed to mention that the EU mission put responsibility for the immediate commencement of shelling on Georgia. Instead, it stressed the report’s finding that Georgian civilians and peacekeepers were under attack, on Georgian soil, before August 7, and cited the “most important fact documented by the Commission [...] that regular armed Russian forces and mercenaries illegally crossed into Georgia before August 8, 2009.”

Will the report’s release change anything? Probably not. Both Russia and Georgia will continue to adhere to their own version of events and blame the other side. My main takeaway comes from an editorial written by mission-head Tagliavini and published in Wednesday’s New York Times. In it, she focuses not on “whodunit;” instead, she raises the question of what responsibility the international community bears for failing to prevent the conflict. Are there actions Georgia’s and Russia’s neighbors could have taken to avoid the escalation of tensions? Did the involvement of outside powers harden positions, as Tagliavini claims, rather than build common ground? What is the role of the international community at large in deterring conflicts that arise between nation-states? Perhaps it is questions like these that merit further investigation.

- Christine Kiernan

Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Himel reports from Israel.

For more:

• Read Martin Himel’s blog: Heroes, Hollywood and making it through the day
• Read commentary from a Jerusalem film scholar: Israeli cinema: Growing up

Abu Absal Shurrab stood in front of his red jeep  and waved energetically when he saw me. I walked towards him. “Salaam aleikum!” we greeted each other warmly, and Abu Absal indicated that I should get into the jeep.

Abu Absal stands next to the car that he and his sons were shot in.

My heart stopped momentarily as he stepped out of the way and the vehicle became fully visible. The windshield was splattered with bullet holes. This was the car Abu Absal was driving the day he was shot and his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, were killed.

I climbed inside the passenger seat, trying to discreetly count the bullet holes as Abu Absal guided the car onto the road. Twenty that I could see, including the semi-shattered rear-view mirror. Abu Absal noticed my preoccupation.

“Kassab was sitting exactly where you are now,” he told me. “Ibrahim was in the back seat, directly behind him. When the shooting started, I shouted for them to crouch down low. But the bullets went through the front of the car. I tried to replace the windshield, but because of the siege, there is no glass available anywhere in Gaza Strip.”

The final days of 2008 and the first weeks of 2009 saw a large-scale Israeli military bombardment and invasion of Gaza Strip. Israel termed the incursion “Operation Cast Lead,” saying it was intended to protect the citizens of the southern community of Sderot, 24 of whom had been killed by Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza over the past eight years.

According to a recently released report by the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, 1,387 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day attack, over half of them civilians, including more than 300 children. Several thousand more innocent people were injured, more than 3,000 homes were destroyed and 20,000 were damaged. United Nations schools, clinics and other humanitarian facilities were bombed.

On January 16, 2009, towards the end of the onslaught, I received an email with the horrifying subject line:

“Help me save my dad’s life.”

It was from Amer Shurrab. I’ve known Amer for 10 years, since he was 14 years old. Amer is from Khan Yunis, Gaza, but had recently graduated from Middlebury College and had just moved to Washington, D.C.

With dread, I opened the email. Amer wrote:

“My father’s car was bombed today, he was in it with two of my brothers. My older brother 27 was killed while my dad 64 and my little brother 17 have been bleeding for over 14 hours and Israeli troops blocking ambulances access.  Please contact any media outlets, your congressmen, senators, any international organizations and try to get them help.”

Several hours later, I got another email from Amer with more details about the incident and an update. The morning of the attack, his father and brothers had gone to check on their farm during the daily three-hour humanitarian “ceasefire.” On their way home, his father’s red jeep was bombarded by a hail of bullets from IDF troops who had commandeered a house approximately fifty meters away. Amer’s older brother, Kassab, was shot in the chest and stomach 18 times and died on the spot. His father was shot in the arm and his younger brother, Ibrahim, was shot below the knee.

Abu Absal shouted to the soldiers that he and his sons needed medical attention. They shouted back for him to call an ambulance. He did, via cell phone, but was told by the Red Crescent that the Israeli army would not permit them access. Abu Absal managed to contact media and human rights groups, who launched an immediate campaign to pressure the army to allow medical care to reach the wounded civilians. Nearly 24 hours later, the IDF permitted an ambulance to reach Abu Absal and his sons. By then it was too late for Amer’s younger brother. Ibrahim had already bled to death.

Abu Absal parked the jeep outside an apartment building in Khan Yunis. “Here’s where we live,” he told me. “Any time you are in Gaza, you should make this your home!” We climbed the steps and entered. Abu Absal introduced me cheerfully to his wife and his two daughters. Heaviness and grief was palpable in the home, especially in the eyes of Amer’s mother and sisters. Nevertheless, Abu Absal was determined that my visit be an occasion for happiness. He instructed me to sit in an easy chair, next to his.

“We must speak of many things!” Abu Absal said brightly. “Your visit is like a breeze of fresh air to the family. Only…” He leaned towards me and adopted the tone of a fatherly scolding. “You are not staying long enough! So early tomorrow morning we will visit the farm, before you have to return to Gaza City!”

“Do you go to the farm often?” I asked his university-aged daughter, hoping to engage her in the conversation.

“Not really,” she replied, barely making eye contact.

“The girls no longer like the farm,” Abu Absal explained. “They blame the farm for the death of their brothers. After all, if we hadn’t gone that morning…” He didn’t complete the sentence.

Abu Absal shows off his farm.

The sun was just beginning to rise the next morning when Abu Absal and I climbed back into his battered jeep.  The sandy roads of Khan Yunis were bathed in golden light and early morning silence. We turned off the main road after passing the European Hospital. Less than a minute later, we approached an intersection. Abu Absal slowed down. “This was where they were killed,” he said. “You see that brown house?” he pointed. “That’s where the soldiers shot from. I didn’t know they were there. If I had known, I could have taken another route…”

Amer had told me how close the hospital was to the scene of the killings, but seeing it for myself felt like a punch in my gut. Kassab could not have been helped, but Abu Absal and Ibrahim, even with their injuries, could have made it there, walking or crawling or both. But the soldiers had threatened to shoot them if they moved.

Ten minutes later, Abu Absal was giving me a tour of the farm, pointing out with love and devotion each fig and citrus tree, every pepper, the collection of bee hives. From the window of the elevated farm house, he asked me if I could see the fence and the military tower in the distance. I could. “That’s the border with Israel,” he told me. “I watched dozens of tanks roll into Gaza from there. I must guard the farm every day to make sure no one uses it to launch rockets. I don’t want the Israelis to have any excuse to destroy my farm.”

The destruction was not always related to rocket fire. The day before, I had filmed the remains of a school bombed by fighter jets, a clinic that had been shelled and a residential neighborhood reduced to rubble. I had also seen a mosque sprayed with bullets from a recent shootout between Hamas and an Islamic militant group. But in the midst of this destruction, I also witnessed resilience and ingenuity. I saw tent-dwellers whose homes were destroyed tap into a main power line, providing their families with electricity. I watched a youth soccer tournament and broke the Ramadan fast with families at sundown. Though people were going about their daily lives, loss and pain in Gaza still run very deep.

Abu Absal tenderly showed me his baby eggplants nestled in rich soil. He offered me a ripe pomegranate dangling temptingly off a tree. A warm light glowed in his eyes.

“Your farm is beautiful,” I said, hoping my appreciation would further boost his spirits.

A cloud passed over Abu Absal’s face. He fingered the rubbery leaves of his olive tree silently. Finally he spoke, echoing, it seemed to me, the sentiment of thousands of Gazan civilians. Those who lost loved ones, their homes, their schools. Those who saw crushed in front of their eyes whatever hope they still nurtured, whatever shards of a normal life they had managed to preserve throughout decades of occupation and years of escalating violence.

“It is very beautiful here indeed. But the beauty means nothing since my sons are gone.”

- Jen Marlowe

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai defended the integrity of the country’s presidential election on Thursday. He also admitted for the first time that there was fraud by government officials who support him, but said there was fraud as well by those supporting his main opponent.

The final but uncertified count gives Karzai more than 54 percent, but European election observers say about one-third of the votes were suspicious and should be examined for fraud. Karzai called on them to respect the votes of the Afghan people.

Should the U.S. demand a recount or accept the results?

Tell what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

As the goals and the strategy are debated in coming weeks, the chairman of the joint chiefs — the top U.S. officer — told Congress on Tuesday that more U.S. forces in Afghanistan are probably required.

But Afghanistan is not the only battleground in the U.S. fight against extremists and terrorism. There have also been developments in Pakistan and Somalia.

Is the United States being aggressive enough — or too aggressive — in its efforts to combat international terrorism?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Juan Carlos Zarate, a senior advisor on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss strategies in the fight against terrorism. He says that in some cases, the Obama administration has actually been more aggressive than the Bush administration in fighting the so-called war on terror.

Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and former U.S. State Department analyst on Afghanistan, discusses civilian casualties and the setbacks to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Kenji Kohno is the Washington bureau chief of the Japanese television network NHK and discusses what this historic election means for Japan and U.S. relations.

Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Institute of the State University of New York and a former NBC News correspondent and anchor and Rana Foroohar, senior editor of Newsweek’s international editions overseeing coverage of business and economics, join Martin Savidge to discuss the top stories of the week.

A man overlooks damage in Gori, Georgia. Photo: Onnik Krikorian

On Friday, Russia and Georgia marked the first anniversary of the war that erupted a year ago.

Last summer, Georgia launched an attack on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia to drive out Russian-backed separatists. Russia responded with a massive counterattack, pushing deep into Georgian territory.

The five-day war killed at least 390 people, displaced tens of thousands and left fear that more fighting could erupt. Tensions between the countries are still running high, with both sides making accusations about the other.

Ivan Krastev is based in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy. He writes at OpenDemocracy about the lasting political fallout from the brief conflict for Russia, Georgia, Europe and the U.S.

It took less than a hundred days for the Russia-Georgia war of 8-12 August 2008 to be eclipsed as a history-shaping event. The guns of August were silenced by the thunders on Wall Street. A war that seemed momentous at the time became subject to instant amnesia: a non-event. But it was a non-event with consequences.

A year on, a measure of these consequences seems appropriate. The post-war balance-sheets of the leading actors - Georgia and Russia themselves, but also the United States and the European Union - in many respects resemble those of the Wall Street financial institutions hit by the global economic crisis: undeclared losses and inflated profits.

Indeed, amid the fallout of this toxic conflict it is easier to see losers than victors. In August 2008, Georgia lost its dreams, the Kremlin lost its complexes, Washington lost its nerves and the European Union lost its sleep. But as the poet said, there’s no success like failure; and the messy aftermath also reveals collateral benefits for some of these and other powers.

Russia is at the centre of every calculation. The war was the occasion of Moscow’s first large-scale military operation outside the territory of the Russian Federation since the end of the cold war. The Kremlin’s subsequent recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was the first revision of inter-state borders on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Russia emerged from the war as a revisionist power and broke the illusion of the existence of European order.

[...] In assessing the consequences of the Russia-Georgia war the real question is: does the post-August 2008 world giving us a better chance for negotiating a legitimate and just European order, or is it making such a order even less likely?

Two answers are possible: the desperately pessimistic or the moderately optimistic.

Pessimists will claim that by turning the Russia-Georgia war into a non-event the west has encouraged the Kremlin to repeat its “success” in other parts of the post-Soviet space - thus making European order an illusion.

Optimists tend to believe that the Russia-Georgia war marks the simultaneous failure of two projects: Russia’s for reviving sphere-of-influence politics in Europe, and the west’s for constructing Europe without Russia.

If the pessimists are right, these are the early stages of a long night. If the optimists are correct, the death of these two projects means that now is a proper time to start thinking about the gestation of a third.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo and article available under a Creative Commons license.

Worldfocus was nominated for an Emmy in the “Best story in a regularly scheduled newscast” category for our coverage of the “Crisis in Congo” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center, Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Taylor Krauss). The “Crisis in Congo” videos also won the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international television category.

Pascal and Vestine are alive, but still not home

Rape as a weapon of war

Worldfocus was also nominated for an Emmy in the “Outstanding feature story in a regularly scheduled broadcast” for our coverage of “21st Century Africa” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Martin Seemungal, Producer: Yuval Lion).

China strengthens trading ties in Africa

Middle class sprawls in Nairobi, Kenya

Tech advances rev up across Africa

Rwanda aims for one laptop per child

They discuss the U.S. offensive in Afghanistan, the American pullback in Iraq and unrest in Honduras following a military coup.

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores tensions in South Sudan, the site of a two-decade civil war between the Muslim north and mostly Christian south that killed more than 1.5 million people. The south is also home to 80 percent of Sudan’s oil.

The war came to an end in 2005 with the signing of a peace agreement that exempted the south from Islamic Sharia law and established a regional southern government as well as a system of shared oil revenues. But with increasingly deadly tribal violence in South Sudan and a humanitarian crisis that could soon eclipse that in Darfur, trouble is brewing once more.

In a conference on Sudan in Washington last week, leaders from the north and south pledged to avoid a return to war.

South Sudan is set for a referendum on independence in 2011 and many in the region hope that the vote will allow a break from Khartoum once and for all, creating a new African nation. Others remain wary, pointing to corruption and incompetence on the part of South Sudan’s government and accusing leaders of squandering oil revenues.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Jen Marlowe is a filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. She traveled to South Sudan for the forthcoming documentary “Rebuilding Hope,” funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has spent the past 10 years researching Sudan. He has testified several times before the Congress and served as a consultant to human rights and humanitarian organizations in Sudan. He is the author of “A Long Day’s Dying,” a book about Darfur. He contributes to the blog Making Sense of Darfur.

Sunday Taabu left South Sudan at the height of the civil war in 1991. She is the founder of the South Sudan Institute for Women’s Education and Leadership and previously worked for the Government of Southern Sudan’s Mission to the U.S.

The show also includes audio clips from:

A Worldfocus interview with Scott Gration, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, on the importance of the region to the United States.

Peter Wankomo, who fled Sudan during the civil war and now lives in Canada. He’s the editor of a website, “South Sudan Nation,” which lobbies for the south’s independence.

A clip from Jen Marlowe’s forthcoming film, “Rebuilding Hope,” featuring a minister in the government of South Sudan and a woman living in the rural village of Akon. Both comment on what’s changed since the peace agreement and the end of the war.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie ventures through Lebanon’s vineyards.

Below, she blogs about her experience in the field.

From the Field

Let’s be up front about it: this story is unapologetically biased. I love Lebanese wine.

Putting together this story wasn’t exactly a hardship assignment. There are so many excellent producers in Lebanon, but I chose Chateau Belle-Vue because Naji and Jill Boutros represent a new generation of winemakers. It’s not just about the product — they are creating meaningful social change in their village while producing organically grown, award-winning wines. Jill made sure we had tasted plenty of samples from the oak barrels, which is where the wine from each specific grape variety lies for two years until it is blended to create a new vintage.

Chateau Ksara is one of Lebanon’s oldest producers, and aside from the consistent quality of their wines, the miles of mysterious, Roman-era subterranean tunnels fuel speculation as to what they were used for. Ksara graciously opened their doors, and their wine cellars, for us to film.

Another top producer not to be missed is Chateau Kefraya, which produces a reliably crisp Blanc de Blanc for about $6. For travelers to Lebanon, it’s available, along with many others, at Beirut’s airport.

Sahtain! (Cheers!)

- Kristen Gillespie