Video

When Marco Vernaschi, an Italian photojournalist, decided to head to the West African nation of Guinea Bissau, he knew that cocaine traffickers had already destabilized the tiny former Portuguese colony. But when he arrived on the scene shortly after the country's president and army chief were brutally assassinated last March, Vernaschi saw a place spiraling into a gangster's paradise. He has documented the chilling impact of the drug trade in places like Bolivia, and spent months in Guinea Bissau getting to know drug gangs from the inside.

Began airing on Foreign Exchange June 19, 2009

A truck depot is about the last place on earth you'd expect to find an art scene. But in Pakistan, the tradition of painting and detailing trucks adds glitter and glamour to the transport business, and offers a colorful distraction in a country tormented by war and political instability.

Video by Alex Stonehill for the Common Language Project

Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

In the last parched weeks of the dry season before the monsoon arrives-- an eight month drought that has starved the fields, wells, and power generators on which Nepal depends-- the villagers of Pattan take the hulking figure of a rain god from his temple home and parade it through the streets in a plea for better hydrological fortunes.

Jason Motlagh has been reporting from Afghanistan for several months, first embedding with U.S. troops and more recently looking at the other side of the conflict -- the growing numbers of civilian casualties. Over webcam from Kabul, Motlagh tells iWitness what happened when a recent U.S. airstrike hit a village in the province of Herat, killing scores of civilians. Sharing dramatic footage and images in the wake of the bombings and interviewing victims and U.S. military, Motlagh reports conflicting accounts of what took place.

Journalists Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill spent six weeks crisscrossing Pakistan to report on the country's growing education crisis. Both are funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and spoke recently with iWitness from Karachi about their experience.

A Karachi-based group bent on eradicating child labor is offering school lessons outside working hours.

A couple of days ago we got a powerful glimpse of the psychology of water. Jyoti Sharma, President of the water related ngo FORCE invited me to witness the situation in and around the C sector in Vasant Kunj, South Delhi. Here, everyone stocks up on water. But whereas the slum dwellers only manage to fill their buckets and small containers from a public water tanker with little more than the 20 liters a human needs per day, the rich acquire thousands of liters during the one hour of running water the Government provides for them -just in case there will be no water tomorrow.

Anna-Katarina Gravgaard introduces our latest water project, direct from the field in Nepal.

For many, Nepal conjures up notions of Mount Everest, Buddhist monks, and hippies seeking a Himalayan high. But this next story shows another side of Nepal -- a country recovering from a decade of civil war in which Maoist rebels recently brought down the long-standing monarchy. It faces the age-old problem: how to integrate former adversaries into a single army.

Produced and reported by Jason Motlagh

Edited by Robin Bell
Bell Visuals

Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Fred de Sam Lazaro introduces his reports from Malawi and the ongoing debate over the benefits of providing cash or crops to recipient nations. He also looks into the growing effects of domestic farm law on world food markets.

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