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Wouldn’t it be ironic if the popular awakening sweeping the Middle East had the unintended effect of undermining the one established Arab democracy?
Dexter Filkins on how Syria’s War brought down Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, who resigned on Friday: http://nyr.kr/YAb5YA
Photograph by Moises Saman/Magnum.
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How We Forgot Iraq
As we celebrate—what, no longer being there?—let’s spare a moment for Iraq, and the Iraqis…
Continue reading Jon Lee Anderson’s reflection on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war: http://nyr.kr/14crdUd
Photograph: Alex Majoli/Magnum.
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“In Lebanon, Hezbollah is both everywhere and nowhere,” the photographer Moises Saman, whose picture accompanies Dexter Filkins’s piece on Hezbollah in this week’s issue of the magazine, told me. In addition to its military presence, Hezbollah holds a significant number of seats in the Lebanese parliament, yet “most of the leadership and the military wing live secretive lives and detest speaking to journalists, let alone being photographed,” Saman said. However, he was nonetheless able to capture its presence in his photographs of the villages and suburbs that surround Beirut. “The conflict in Syria has given weight to the clandestine nature of this movement,” he added. “Hezbollah’s direct involvement has led to new martyrs, who are buried privately and quickly, making this assignment that much more difficult.” These photos afford a glimpse of the rarely seen but increasingly present resistance.
Click-through for a slideshow, and more from Elissa Curtis: http://nyr.kr/13brcz0
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The Risks of Reporting in Syria
Jon Lee Anderson on Richard Engel’s return and the risks of reporting in Syria: http://nyr.kr/Ubagng
It is a hornet’s nest of potential betrayals…
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The Syrian Sarin Threat
Will Bashar al-Assad use chemical weapons against his own people? Jon Lee Anderson on why the international community should pay attention to the Syrian sarin threat: http://nyr.kr/TL3h15
Photograph by Moises Saman/Magnum.
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Since 1973, seven out of the past nine Afghan Presidents have taken power in Kabul in non-peaceful ways. Steve Coll talks with former Afghan Defense Minister and leader of a coup against his President, Shahnawaz Tanai, and discovers “some of the texture— the human quality— of an attempted Afghan coup d’etat”: http://nyr.kr/TuTBLg
Photograph by Robert Nickelsberg/Time Life Pictures/Getty.
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Will Turkey go to war with Syria? Jenna Krajeski on recent events that have increased tension between the former allies: http://nyr.kr/VppHow
Photograph: Akcakale, Turkey, on October 3rd. Anatolia/AP
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On Wednesday evening, the Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael accepted the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant for Humanistic Photography in a ceremony at the School of Visual Arts. The grant is awarded to support and encourage a photographer working in the spirit of the legendary photojournlaist, and van Agtmael plans to use the thirty-thousand-dollar grant to build on “Disco Night September 11,” his ongoing project on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their consequences in the United States. “As an American of the generation shouldering these wars, I feel a strong responsibility to document their cost,” van Agtmael said.
Click-through for more from Elissa Curtis on van Agtmael, and a slide show of van Agtmael’s images, along with those of Massimo Berruti, who won the W. Eugene Smith fellowship to continue his work on Pakistan. “The Dusty Path,” Berruti said, is a project “about a nation trapped between violence and political corruption. A trembling giant on the brink of a deep abyss.” Also included is work by Michael Christopher Brown, Bharat Choudhary, Jon Lowenstein, Justin Maxon, Ami Vitale, Farzana Wahidy, and Robert Yager, who were all finalists for these grants. See the slideshow.
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“In Afghanistan, everyone has war-related stories to tell,” the photographer Mikhail Galustov told me. “Every family has been hurt by the war in one way or another, and I wanted to find a language of photography that would be different from what I had done before.” In this portrait series, which Galustov began in 2009, he tells the story of war through Afghan faces.Since he moved from his longtime base in Moscow to Kabul three years ago, Galustov’s work has focussed on NATO’s military intervention in Afghanistan, and on what might happen to the country as the international coalition drawns down. He isn’t surprised by recent reports that the U.S. has effectively abandoned what was once the cornerstone of American military strategy in Afghanistan—brokering a peace deal with the Taliban. “Afghans are very pessimistic about 2014,” he said. “The Taliban realize that victory is close, and they don’t need to negotiate. They don’t have to accept compromises. Afghanistan is falling into their hands anyway.”
Which leaves many Afghans desperate to flee before the foreign troops leave. “But most of Afghan society is extremely poor, and they won’t have a chance to leave,” he said. “My subjects are like that. They are ordinary people. They will stay and try to survive and live through the changes. Like they did before, like their parents and grandparents did too.”
Click-through for a slideshow of Mikhail Galustov’s Afghan Faces, and their stories: http://nyr.kr/VlWaAx
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Road Show
Laura Secor writes about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s waning power in Iran, and the United States’s continuing Iran policy conundrum: http://nyr.kr/Q9vZbq
