Project

Taliban Militancy: Is the Game Over in Swat?

Shaheen Buneri, a Prague-based journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, returns to his native Swat Valley in Pakistan to produce a series of reports on the lingering resentment two years after the government deployed 25,000 troops to wrest control of the region from the Taliban. His project focuses on reconstruction and rehabilitation issues as well as socio-cultural and environmental consequences of the conflict between Pakistani security forces and Taliban militants. The conflict displaced 3 million people from Malakand Region, of which Swat valley is a part, and left the health and educational infrastructure in ruins.

Shaheen is reporting for the Pulitzer Center as a 2011 recipient of the Persephone Miel fellowship.

Pakistan: Poetry Fights Back

The Taliban’s opponents in Pakistan-Afghanistan border region are fighting back using the arts that religious fundamentalists seek to destroy—poems adapted to traditional Pashto music.