Trailing Technology

Cutthroat Capitalism: Somali Pirates and Insurers Share the Booty

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Off of the coast of Somalia close to 1000 armed men troll the seas praying for a chance to score some booty. Since 2007 Somali piracy has caught the world's imagination and the number of hijacked boats has skyrocketed. But the pirates don't work in isolation. Piracy exists in Somalia not only because the nation is in a near constant state of revolution, but because the people charged with controlling piracy are actively helping to promote the underlying conditions that make hijacking ships so profitable. Not only have ransom payouts begun to routinely top $1 million (a Donald Trump-like fortune in Somalia), but whole anti-piracy industries have sprung up in response to piracy and created profitable business models of their own. Security contractors, insurance companies and maritime lawyers don't have any incentive to curtail the brigands when they reap millions in cash for every vessel they free.

In this month's issue of WIRED I've crunched the data and shown how the rise in ransom payouts in the last year has corresponded with a rise in insurance premiums, hijackings and shipping costs. And while hundreds of innocent crew members are held at gunpoint on their ships, the people who control the shipping industries have written it all off as a business expense.

Check out Cutthroat Capitalism here.

A Photographer who Captures India's Soaring Hights and Crashing Lows

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:24:00 +0000

When photographer Tom Pietrasik caught a flight from Delhi to Chennai he was long overdue for a vacation, but he thought he would bring his camera with him, just in case. A British journalist on the same flight laughed when he saw Pietrasik weighed down with a heavy bag of lenses and camera bodies, saying that there was no way that he would be able to relax if he brought his work with him. Two hours later when they landed an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra sent its massive tidal wave across Asia killing more than 225,000 people and laying waste to the coasts of seven countries. Pietrasik was glad to have his equipment with him.

Just a month after losing their parents to the Asian Tsunami, children play games at a government orphanage in Cuddalore. Tamil Nadu, India 2005.

Unlike many journalists who came in for a week and left when the news turned to other events, Tom Pietrasik has repeatedly returned to India's coasts to follow on the lives of a group of orphans growing up as refugees in Cuddalore. The picture above is one of my favorites of that series.

For the last eight years Tom Pietrasik has documented the soaring heights of India's economic boom as well as the nation's most vulnerable moments. His pictures have appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Newsweek and in an ongoing project with UNICEF. I've had the opportunity to know Pietrasik for the last several years and am eagerly awaiting a chance to collaborate with him on a project. It hasn't happened yet, but hopefully will soon.

Juhu Beach carnys amuse India's rising middle-class, 2002

He's allowed me to post a few of his pictures on this blog, but there is a lot more interesting work on his website http://www.tompietrasik.com.

Ruhelin Bai Bagdaria is among a handful of literate women in a village where only one in four can write their name. Maharashtra, India 2008.

Somali Pirates' Homemade Video

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:15:00 +0000

For the last three months I've been working on a story for WIRED that will explore the economic linkages that keep piracy in Somalia a profitable business. Last week I began interviewing pirates and pirate contacts and came across a small trove of videos that pirates took on board the hijacked Yasa Neslihan. According to my sources, this video was taken by the hijackers to prove that the ship was in good condition before final delivery of ransom. To my knowledge, this is the first such video that has been released to the public, though the practice of recording while on board is commonplace.

What is most interesting to me in this is that the pirates seem to have cordial relations with the captured Japanese crew. You can see them mingling with the pirates while on the bridge. It's also striking that it only took a handfull of lightly armed men to capture several hundred million dollars of equipment and cargo.

Above is the edited version that aired on WIRED News on April 10, 2009. To see the unedited footage follow this link: Somali Pirates Homemade Hijacking Video.

William Morrow (Harper Collins) Picks Up "Red Markets"

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:19:00 +0000

William Morrow, publishers of Freakonomics, has agreed to publish my first book. Tentatively titled "Red Markets", the book is going to explore the economics of death and the movement of body parts between people and across the globe. Spare Parts will offer an expanded view of stories that I've written for WIRED, Mother Jones and Nerve.com.

Two Radio Appearances for Adoption Story

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:28:00 +0000

The response to "Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption" has been overwhelming. People from all over the world have been writing in expressing their support for Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama and wishing for a positive ending. Several people have pledged money, and an adoption agency in New Mexico has offered to help with legal services. I saw Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama two days ago and they were very happy that the story had come out, but were still very sad that they have had no contact with the family in America. "We just want them to call," he told me again.

In the next week I'm going to post an update on Mother Jones about the case and show how the adoption agency in Amercia has been invovled in several questionable adoptions here in Chennai. In 1999 an adoption agent in this city is said to have been involved in as many as 20 similar cases. These children are presumably all across America.

In the meanwhile, I've done two radio appearances that you might enjoy listening to.

The first, was on Here and Now, a nationally syndicated program across the United States that devoted a full half-hour to the topic.

The second, was a shorter (and unfortunately, less coherent) piece that aired on Free Speech Radio News.

(photo: funkypancake @ flickr)

Meet the Parents: When Adoption Means Kidnapping

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:50:00 +0000

Meet the Parents
After hours hunched behind the wheel of a rented Kia, flying past cornfields and small-town churches, I’m parked on a Midwestern street, trying not to look conspicuous. Across the way, a preteen boy dressed in silver athletic shorts and a football T-shirt plays with a stick in his front yard. My heart thumps painfully. I wonder if I’m ready to change his life forever. . . (Read the story at Mother Jones)

Between 1999 and 2002 dozens, if not hundreds, of children were kidnapped off the streets of Chennai by a corrupt orphanage and sold into the international adoption stream. In August, I reported on the story of Zabeen who had been picked up by an employee of the orphange Malaysian Social Services, and wisked away and held until she was ultimately sold to an adoption agency in Australia. A few days after I met Zabeen's parents, I met Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama, in the Puliantope slum on the North side of Chennai. Their story bore distrubing similarities to what happened to Zabeen. On February 19, 1999, according to my investigation, their son was snatched away from them while he played at a nearby waterpump and sold to an unsuspecting American family who believe they were adopting, not buying, a child. In October I followed court documents and leaked files from police sources to the American mid-west where I found the pre-adolescent boy who seemed to be the spitting image of Nageshwar Rao.

That story, which appears in this month's issue of Mother Jones, is my first attempt and understanding the vast and lucerative market in kidnapped children. These incidents are not confined to a few corrupt orphanages and officials. They are part of a global problem fed by first-world parents' desire for children and the handsome fees that they pay agencies to arrange adoptions.

It is difficult to know for sure how far the corruption goes up the ladder. Do American adoption services know when the children they bring to America have been ripped away from their birth parents? Or do they simply not ask the right questions when confronted by suspicious circumstances? In some cases, such as when the French agency Zoe's Ark attempted to smuggle 103 children of Chad, the charges of kidnapping stick without much problem. But in others the orphanage director's commitment to doing good puts blinders on their eyes when things start to go awry.

In the case of Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama's child Subash, the adoption agency in America is at least implicated in not trying to rectify the situation once they learned of the allegations against MSS in Chennai. They didn't even bother to notify the adoptive families that there could have been a problem despite admitting to knowing about the scandals when they first surfaced a decade ago. In fact, my subsiquent investigation of their case shows that at least two other suspicious adoptions handled by that agency. In the story that appeared in Mother Jones we chose to disguise their identity, but in the coming weeks as I sort through more documents, we may decide it is in the public interest to reveal that agency's name for other journalsits and enforcement authorities to follow up on.

Nageshwar Rao (center) spent so much money on finding Subash, that he wasn't able to afford an education for his daughter Sasala, 17 (right)

Underneath their reluctance to tackle the issue of smuggled children is the disturbing underlying assumption that as long as adopted children are put in good homes, they are better off living in America than they would be growing up in a third world slum. The crime of kidnapping is easy to overlook when the so-called "victim" gets the benefit of a Western education, health care and a loving family to watch over him. This logic has allowed the FBI and attorney general's office to drag its feet in processing an INTERPOL request to collect DNA samples that could conclusively prove the child's identity. It has also let State Authorities in charge of policing adoption irregularities look the other way.

But ignoring the problem only makes matters worse. Children who need adoptive families are crowded into orphanage dirty cribs two at a time, and are often malnourished and dying. However, western families don't want sick children. They want cute kids who won't cause them problems. So the orphanages look outside their walls for a fresh supply. The children kidnapped off the streets of Chennai had homes and loving parents and are exactly the sort of comodity that will draw in substantial adoption fees. The adoption industry has done little to help India's actual needy children, rather it just treats adoption as a business, and tries to source the best possible products for its customers.

Previous reports in America on child kidnapping an adoption irrecularities have fallen on deaf ears. They have been relegated to the realm of urban myth in the same way we tend to think that kidney thieves don't exist. But other countries are taking notice. After reports in TIME magazine and ABC, The Australian government is taking issue seriously. Officials have begun investigating the role of MSS and other orphanages in illegal adoptions and are currently looking at 30 possible cases of kidnapping and adoption fraud form Chennai. Lawmakers are informing adoptive families who have fallen victim to predatory adoption practices and will likely encourage reunions with the stolen children.

I'm hoping that this story in Mother Jones is a first step in raising awareness of the problem faced by internaitonal adoptions and kidnapping. At some point we need to stop looking the other way, and ask tough questions about our own complicity in creating incentives to support kidnapping rackets.

Chief Minister Refuses to Eat in Response to Riot

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:35:00 +0000

Now in its fifth day the struggle between thousands of disgruntled lawyers and the police has drawn the attention of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi who says he intends to fast until the two groups sort out their differences. The octogenarian politician is currently recovering from a spinal surgery in a local hospital and is apparently guilt-tripping both sides to stand down. He isn't actually taking a stand to resolve the differences that have led to a "shoot on sight" by the police order and severe unrest around the High Court that has resulted in a destroyed police station and the burning of dozens of vehicles.

The lawyers outside the court are of two minds about the Chief Minister's actions. One group of 300 lawyers has decided to follow his lead and start their own fast to shame the police into submission. Another group has kept on with its riotous activities and stabbed a police constable.

Meanwhile the courts have been shut down until next week when they will open up to record case backlogs and the business-as-usual approach that has made a travesty out of the Indian legal system.

Police Orders to Shoot Lawyers on Sight

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:01:00 +0000

The police have issued a shoot-on-sight order to kill any lawyer caught attacking public property in Chennai. The order comes as a response to a riot that broke out between the police and lawyers near the High Court on Thursday and Friday. During the incident hundreds of lawyers from the high court set fire to a police station, four city buses, several rickshaws and motorcycles. The cause of the riot is ostensibly because of the lack of government support towards the embattled LTTE in Sri Lanka, however the rage pent up by lawyers across the state to seek remediation in their cased through the law seems to be the underlying reason for the unrest.

To my knowledge, the police have not actually shot anyone, though there have been several newspaper photographs of bloodied lawyers who had been hit on the heads by riot police.
While I am not an expert on court politics in Tamil Nadu, it seems to me that it is a bad sign for the state of the government. Lawyers presumably have access to the wheels of justice and it is shocking that they would resort to violence rather than attempt to push their disagreements through official channels.

But their actions show that the legal system in India is badly broken. Cases languish in courts. And there is a backlog that can take decades to even get a hearing, and the near endless appeal process means that no decision is ever truly final. While the lawyers I know speak highly about the ideals of the legal system, they are hopelessly bogged down by its processes and rarely believe that courts can effective deliver justice.

With courts impotent, organized crime syndicates have flooded the market with their own brand of justice, and allowed underworld figures to adjudicate decisions on their own. I wrote about this happening in Bangalore for WIRED last year.

The current riots in Tamil Nadu (which are said to be spreading to Madurai and Trichy) are a natural outgrowth of the current system. If the law is completely broken, what incentive do lawyers have not to riot? When lawyers are reduced to street thuggery what does that say about the functioning of the state itself?

Of course the police's current order to shoot lawyers on sight shows the low esteem in which the government holds the legal profession.

India Today's 10 Crore Fake Rupee Boondoggle

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Are Pakistani spies flooding vast amounts of fake cash into the Indian economy with the intend ot devaluing the rupee? That the question that India Today wants you to ask this week with its cover story titled Fake Currency, The New Threat. It's a solid topic for an investigative piece, too bad they don't have any evidence for the claim.

Quoting a mid-level minion on Maharashtra's Anti-Terror squad named Param Bir Sing, reporter Malini Bhupta claims that 8 out of every 1000 notes are counterfeit. Never mind that the anti-terror squad doesn't have jurisdiction over currency matters, the rate of .8% isn't exactly staggering.

Which is to say, in absolute terms, peanuts.

The real story killer comes when you start to read the data they've collected. In 2007, when counterfeiting in the country was at its absolute worst, the police seized about Rs. 10 crore (about $4 million) worth of fake notes. In addition to those busts, all commercial banks in the country combined reported receiving rs 5 crore ($2.5 million).

By contrast, in 1993 alone, the US seized $120 million in counterfeit currency.

Even if they were off by a factor of 10, and there was $70 million worth of fake rupees changing hands in a year, it would barely be a hiccup on India's road to development.

Given that India's GDP is $3.319 trillion. It would take billions of fake notes to even come close to making a dent in the economy. Counterfeiting isn't much of a problem at all. In fact, the total fake currency detected by the government between 2001 and 2007 comes to just 61.7 crore rupees, or about $15 million. Which is to say, a little less than a nice apartment in Mumbai.

There is no way that a story like this should pass through even a rudimentary fact checking process, let alone end up on the cover of a national magazine. India Today is becoming the Fox News of South Asia. The claim of a counterfeit menace doesn't even stand up to its own internal logic and seems only aimed at scaring readers into believing that Pakistan is up to no good dirty tricks.

Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say. From the New York Times

With intelligence agencies backing up the links between ISI and lakshar e toiba it seems like only a matter of time for the Pakistani government to crack down hard on its rogue elements or risk destabilizing the entire region. It will be interesting to see the response in the coming days. Stay tuned.

The Observer also reports that it has located the family of captured Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab in a small village in Pakistan's Punjab state. By reviewing electoral lists and cross referencing regional maps, Saeed Shah met the family of Kasab and found that the local people there say that they knew his identity immediately after shootings. It is notable that a journalist tracked down the family before Pakistani law enforcement was able to. It shows how slow the wheels are turning despite rhetoric to begin investigations of their own.

When Rats Ate My Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:58:00 +0000

My car has been acting a little funny lately. At low speeds was jump and was real shaky until I got moving at a steady clip. The alarm stopped working and I could never seem to keep any water in the windshield wiper reservoir. I don't really know much about cars, so for a while I blamed it on the rain. Or maybe, I thought, I needed to change the oil. Just in case it was something serious, I decided to send it over to the Hyundai dealer to see if he could sort out the problems.

Yesterday morning I got a call.

"Hello, Sir?"
"Yes"
"You have rats in your engine."
"Rats? Are you sure?
"Yes, many rats. They have eaten most of the wiring? There are droppings everywhere."
"Can't you think of a better excuse to void my warranty, what's the proof?"
"I'll send you a picture, hold on."

Five minutes later he takes a picture of my spark plug caps and e-mails it to me. Yes, those are teeth marks. Some time in the last couple months the giant raccoon-sized rats that feed on temple scraps downstairs (this is a real problem, there are festivals every other day sponsored by the temple in my building and they leave lots and lots of food (aka rat food)in my parking lot overnight...but I digress) climbed into my car's engine and snacked on the tasty plastic bits.

Or, as this New York Times article on the engine rat problem in New York suggests "“They hang out, and during the night they must get bored, and they eat the wires.” Indeed, a rat expert Paul D. Curtis, an associate professor at Cornell University who specializes in wildlife management, said rodents in general tend to be attracted to plastic tubing and wires. “They do need to chew constantly to wear down their incisors,” he said, “and there’s something about the texture of the plastic that they really like.”

So the question on the table now is does anyone know of a substance that I can sprinkle on my engine to make it taste bad.

The New Indian Express "Bobitises" Itself

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:35:00 +0000

Amid the array of conflicting stories in the Indian media over the Mumbai attacks last week comes an article that tests the true strength of the local newspaper industry. I'm reprinting it here as it appears on page 9 of today's New Indian Express. Tell me if you think anything is amiss.

Lady dentist bobbitises lover

Bangalore: A city-based private dentist bobbitised her lover with whom she continued to have a relationship even after her marriage.

"Arshad Ali, 33, a Mysore-based practicing doctor, was bobbitised by his lover Syeda Amina, 32, a dentist running her own clinic in Bangalore, on Saturday." Deputy Commissioner of police, South-east division, Soumendhu Mukherjee said on Tuesday.

"Though the motive could be jealousy or sudden change of mind, it is still surprising, since Ali who has known Amina for the past ten years had informed her about his marriage. His wife infact knew of their relationship, which continued even after the marriage," Mukherji said.

"It could be a sudden feeling of jealousy, a perverted mind which made Amina call Ali, who had come home to Bangalore on some work to her clinic. She gave him a glass of juice with sedatives and then bobbitized him in a state of semi-consciousness," he said. Amina then admitted him to a private hospital here on November 20, he added." - Press Trust of India

____

So it's official, "bobbitise" has been accepted as a verb by the Indian news media. Did the reporter just not know what the word "bobbitise" meant, but decided to write the story assuming that his readers would, or was PTI so squeamish about printing its meaning that they decided that only readers familiar with the famous John Bobbit case should know the news of the day.

Addendum: I've noticed a surge in traffic from people looking for the official meaning of "bobbitize" and I realize that I haven not answered their pressing questions. The word comes from the famous incident in 1993 when Lorena Bobbit cut off her husband John's penis with a kitchen-knife and threw the member out the window of her car. For more information check out the Wikipedia entry.

The Danger Ahead

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Within hours of when the last bullet was fired in Mumbai Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi began positioning himself for his own attack on the sitting government. His request for a review of internal security is likely a continuation of his campaign to crack the whip on domestic Muslims. In 2007 Tehelka reported that Modi had inside knowledge of the planning of the Gujarat riots where an estimated 2000 people--mostly muslims--lost their lives. His visa to the United States was denied in both 2003 and 2008 on allegations of genocide.

Modi and the rest of the Hindu right--from Bal Thakery's Shiv Sena to the RSS cadres --will use the assault on Mumbai to shore up support for their parties and direct communal fervor against millions of innocent Muslims in India. Even if the sequel to the Gujarat riots does not happen, we will likely see the passage of a POTA like law (India's stronger version of the Patriot Act) and an internal and arbitrary crackdown on suspected terrorists.

And this, of course, is exactly sort of result that the elements in the ISI that most likely planned the attacks would have wanted. I have already written on how these attacks play into the ISI's strategic advantage. In the last eight years India's economy has boomed and it's military position has strengthened, putting Pakistan's own position in South Asia much weaker. The assault on Mumbai was planned and executed by trained professionals, not random rural jihadis who just picked up their first machine gun.

However, if the Hindu-right takes the bait, they could easily spin the events of the last three days into something far more sinister. By passing laws that crack down on innocent populations in the name of combating terror and possibly drumming up support for violent pogroms, there is a chance that India could end up cannibalizing itself.

The Case Against Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:24:00 +0000

Terrorist in Victoria Terminal Sebastian D'Souza / Mumbai Mirror

As the siege on lower Mumbai stretches into its third day it has become clear that that attacks were not orchestrated by an unknown terrorist group, but that they had been planned, financed and carried out by elements within the Pakistani Intelligence agency known as ISI. It is still unclear if the intelligence agency acted alone or if high level members of Pakistan’s government had signed off on the operation, or whether individuals within the agency broke away with their own agenda. However, if the Pakistani government does immediate action against its rogue agency this assault could be considered an act of war.

Internally Pakistan is in chaos. The government has almost no presence in its Northwest Frontier Provence (NWFP) and has sacrificing its military sovereignty to American forces for the war on terror. After almost 60 years of stalemate on the Kashmir issue, Pakistan has begin to fall behind India. As its claim on Kashmir is losing strength hard-line Islamic militants and Taliban remnants are setting up shop across the country.

While at present, Pakistan is a major rival to India, ten years down the line the country could well be obsolete. India is becoming a major regional power, with a booming economy, a recently passed nuclear deal and a growth rate that touches on 10%. From an intelligence and security perspective, Pakistan has to either take strong measures to improve its domestic situation or hope that its rivals similarly falter.

With little hope of improving the problems within its own borders, ISI has opted to pull a card from the CIA’s former playbook and attempt to destabilize the region.

For almost forty years from 1960s through the 1990s the Central Intelligence Agency planned and executed several operations in South America, Asia and Eastern Europe, aimed at destabilizing the regions. Always operating under a guise of plausibly deniability, and without the broader support of the American people the CIA was successful at clandestine operations. By financing a war by proxy in Afghanistan, a guerilla army in Tibet, assassinations in Chile, a failed coup in Cuba and arming Contras in Nicaragua, the CIA bet that by destabilizing competing nation states the could further secure America’s position in the world. And, despite some terrible public relations, the CIA’s efforts worked.

The ISI has every motivation to do the same thing in India.

In the past six months there have been ten major terrorist attacks across India, the highest rate of violence in more than a decade. Bombings in Hyderabad, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Delhi and Bombay spread panic across the country, and the groups claiming responsibility were new and apparently homegrown. These so-called “Indian Muhajaddin” use hit and run tactics and claim to have fundamentalist politics—but released very little information about its political demands claiming that it was practicing Jihad for Jihad’s sake. At best their ideology is just meant to signal general Islamic discontent. In other words, the ideology is a thin veil for ISI to claim plausible deniability.

The Indian versions of these so-called Islamic fundamentalists do not appear to have a legitimate ideological base. This separates them from every other terrorist group in the last 40-odd years that had specific political demands. The IRA strove for independence from Ireland, Basques from Spain, Hezbollah for an independent Palestine, the LTTE for an independent Tamil State, and Naxalites for a communist revolution. Even Al Qaeda’s rabidly fundamentalist politics expressed a political ideology for independence from the west and establishing a government according to sharia law.

Local terror groups in India did not seem to have any concrete ideology apart from spreading violence, and perhaps inter-ethnic conflict. At best they have the political savvy of the Columbine school shooters. Their motivations are ultimately inscrutable—and patently false.
Many reports show shady linkages kept to Pakistani immigrants and ISI funding, not local radical mosques preaching jihad. Only a few months ago even the CIA fingered ISI behind the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul. At best the half-hearted proclamations of the Indian and Deccan Muhajaddins to “free Islamic fighters from Indian prisons” were only a thin veil to disguise their real agendas.

Now, with a tactical attack on southern Mumbai that used military tactics, and even satellite communication with a base in Karachi it is clear that there is no homegrown anti-India Islamic agenda. Instead, it seems that Pakistan’s intelligence agency has been trying to spread instability across India to achieve its own strategic ends.

India now must contemplate a response to the actions of ISI. Many segments of Pakistan’s government want peace with the India, and it is likely that the agency has been acting on its own without approval from elected officials. But unless the government is able to regain control of ISI the recent attacks on Mumbai could be construed as an act of war.

**UPDATE: Some changes have been made to this post. In the original version I was more certain about the role of ISI, but reader feedback has made me reconsider some points. While it is apparent that the assailants on Mumbai had help from Pakistan, and likely from members of the intelligence service, it could be that factions from within the security agency acted without authorization from the top-brass.

India's New Terror Age

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:22:00 +0000

Victoria Terminal in Mumbai after a blast last night AFP/Getty

A coordinated series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai today signals a new age of extremism and sectarian violence that will likely increase over time. Since 2001 there have been 24 major terrorist strikes in India resulting in at least 966 deaths. The last five months have been the most harrowing with 302 dead from ten different attacks. As a hostage standoff continues in Colaba that number could rise even higher before the day is out.

What is most troubling about the recent assault on southern Mumbai is the sudden change in tactics. In the last several years most terrorist attacks have come in the form of coordinated small explosive charges, mostly left in nylon bags in commercial districts or IEDs made out of tiffin containers placed on the backs of bicycles in crowded shopping areas. What happened today doesn't fit the pattern of previous events. This wasn't a terrorist attack, this was a coordinated military assault on southern Mumbai executed with precision and calculated to inflict economic, civic, human and symbolic causalities.

Insurgents armed with automatic weapons ran lose on the streets, raided upscale hotels, took hostages and may have specifically targeted foreigners. They set fires in buildings and hijacked police vehicles. Unlike in previous events they weren't afraid to show their faces. These isn't hit and run tactics. This is urban warfare.

Police outside the Taj Hotel in Collaba, Mumbai Prashanth Vishwanathan, NYT

While there is no clear indication of who is behind the most recent string of attacks they must have had significant training and solid financial backing to carry them out. Armed with AK-47's, several boats, satellite phones, grenades and high explosives the group was able to take lower Mumbai completely by surprise and outwit anti-terrorism squads that have been on high alert for months. This level of coordination shows that terrorists here are most likely well networked with other insurgent groups and that they probably share materiel and tactical knowledge. They also have the manpower to embark on large scale operations without putting their entire organization at risk.

While the previous bomb blasts around India could have been carried out by a few dozen dedicated assailants, this attack shows that there must be at least several hundred people planning, training and carrying out logistical missions.

One possible--and even likely--explanation is that whomever is behind this is has been sharing experience and material with any one of the other dozen armed separatist movements across India. The attack today resembles the organizational resilience of other veteran separatist movements in India like the Naxalites, Lakshar e Toiba or even the Sri Lankan LTTE.

This sort of knowledge sharing is not unprecedented. In the past, the LTTE and Naxalites have shared tactical information with groups as far away as the FARC, and while there are vast ideological differences between these groups they are all involved in similar tactical operations and urban warfare. Rediff.com reports that the attackers were in contact with people in Karachi, Pakistan via satelite phone during the operaiton and that the e-mail that claimed responsibility for the attacks had been sent from a source in Russia.

While instances of direct links between terrorist outfits are often difficult to establish concretely, in 2001, three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were arrested in Columbia after sharing bomb making and tactical information with the Farc. These two totally different organizations saw it to be mutually beneficial to share resources, even though there was no ideological connection.

It will be interesting to know what sorts of explosives were used in the attacks last night. Some reports have indicated that they used the explosive RDX, which has both military and industrial applications. A little over a year ago Naxalites stole several tons of explosives from an Essar Steel mine in Chhattisgarh that have been used repeatedly in operations across the country. (At the left is a photo of captured explosives recovered from an unexploded IED that I took while visiting police outposts on the front line of that conflict. Other photos from that story can be found at this link). The haul captured by the Naxals would have been far too much for them to use in their operations against the police and paramilitary forces that the combat in the jungles of central India. There is likely a market for their excess explosives. And what better customer is there than another insurgent group that is trying to destabilize the government?

There is every indication that there will be more attacks to come and that even police successes in capturing terrorists have little impact. When Delhi police raided the house of several suspected terrorists belonging to an outfit called "The Indian Muhajaddin", they found a laptop had illustrated the organization's hierarchical structure. The police conducted dozens of raids across the country and for a while everyone here breathed a little easier.

But the structure of the organization was far from destabilized. Within three months they have been able to mount the most destructive attack in years. The sad fact is that terrorists are gaining ground in India and whomever is behind planning their operations is safe and celebrating the success of their operations.

If anything, this is only the beginning of a new age of terror in India.

Mobgalore: How Organized Crime Took Over Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:59:00 +0000

Since the beginning of India's IT boom Bangalore has been the darling of globalization pundits and and development dreamers. The gist, as Thomas Friedman articulates it, is that the world is flattening so that workers and companies can compete for opportunities from anywhere on the planet. Bangalore, of course, is the shiniest example of globalization's success. However, what has been occluded from the discussion is how the massive investments and capital flows into Bangalore have also contributed to the rise of a powerful and violent mafia. Bangalore's economy is growing much faster than its judicial, regulatory and enforcement systems. The gap has proved to be fertile ground for an unregulated, informal and often criminal systems to fill the space.

In this month's issue of WIRED magazine I wrote a story called "The Godfather of Bangalore" where I showed how underworld dons have taken control of many of the city's land dealings by providing an alternate judicial system to mediate land claims. There is no easy way to solve a land dispute in India. Inherited parcels are often contested by dozens of semi-legitimate claimants and court cases routinely take 15 years to come to a judgment. But the pace of land development is relentless, and companies and wealthy individuals don't want to wait for the wheels of justice to finish, they want immediate resolutions.

Muthappa Rai is one of the most feared men in Bangalore

And this is where the land mafia comes in. Rather than go to courts, a land developer can approach one of the five or six major dons in the city and ask them to mediate a dispute, and seal the deal with threats of violence.

In the course of my research I met people who killed with guns, knives and swords. They fought each other and they fought local people for rights to the land. And most of them got rich along the way.

The most famous don (who says that he is now reformed) is Muthappa Rai, who has beaten the rap on several murder and extortion charges, but is commonly referred to as the most powerful underworld figure in the city.

I have been working on this story for three years, following the story of several different underworld figures through newspapers, government reports and on the ground reporting. In July and August I was able to meet the most influential people in the underworld, and the authorities charged with keeping them in check. The picture I've come up with is pretty grim. In effect, very few people have any faith in the law to resolve problems in Bangalore. Mafia dons act with impunity, and routinely defeat legal cases against them.

In my view, Bangalore isn't only an example of the best that India has to offer. Instead Bangalore shows how the worst elements of Indian society can co-exist with a ultra high tech and modern image. Bangalore today isn't much different than it was three hundred years ago when kings ruled the land. The kings of today are power brokers, IT captains of industry, underworld dons and government ministers who play by their own rules. Bangalore isn't neo-colonialist as some people have claimed. It's neo-feudalist.

Check out the video slideshow that I did for WIRED News for more information on the bangalore mafia that didn't make it into the WIRED magazine story. I've also posted more photos that I took during my research here.

Kidnapping for Profit: The Ugly Side of International Adoptions

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:58:00 +0000

The only memento that Salia has of his daughter Zabeen is a small photocopy of her face.

For the last week I've been working on a story about kidnapped children who have ended up being sent abroad by international adoption agencies. This story came out in this week's edition of The Sydney Morning Herald and Asian Age. This is only the beginning of my research into this issue, there is a lot more to come.

______

'Maybe now, we will get justice'

NOVEMBER 11, 1998, was like any other day in Chennai: hot and humid. Fatima, a young housewife with three children left her house for a grocery run across the street while two of her children, Zabeen, 2, and Sadaam Hussein, 4, played in an alley.

A three-wheeled auto rickshaw pulled up at the alley entrance and the children peeped inside. A woman reached down and grabbed Zabeen and Sadaam and dragged them into the rickshaw. The driver, a man, sped away but Sadaam managed to break free. He ran home to an empty house and cowered under a small wooden bed.

"I can still remember their faces," says Sadaam, now 15.

While his parents searched the neighborhood, the kidnappers were meeting with the owners of Malaysian Social Services.

Police records indicate the MSS orphanage admitted Zabeen under the name Suji and claimed that her mother had abandoned her and another child.

"The documents were obviously forged," says D. Geetha, a human rights lawyer who is representing Zabeen's family. "The woman who signed it wasn't a relative, it was her kidnapper."

According to court documents the kidnappers sold children to MSS for 10,000 rupees ($280) each. Since 1991, MSS has sent almost 300 children to Australia, the Netherlands and the United States.

The orphanage demanded large donations to manage the international adoptions and collected almost $250,000. Zabeen was sent to Queensland under her new name.

"They took my child because she was beautiful," Fatima says.

Indian orphanages are often overcrowded, but many of those children may not be as attractive to foreigners as healthy children raised by their parents.

The next five years were the stuff of nightmares. Fatima and her husband, Salia, immediately filed a report with the local police, but were not encouraged by their response.

"They barely looked at the report, it wasn't a priority for them. There were no detectives, nothing," Salia says.

Instead, Salia and Fatima stopped working and spent their days scouring the city for news of their daughter.

"We had to sell the jewels from my dowry and most of our property just to keep going," Fatima says.

Then, in 2005, as news reports of adoption scandals rolled across India, a police officer asked Salia to pick out Zabeen from some photos. He identified her immediately.

The police officer told him that his daughter was safe in Australia, but that it would be difficult to bring her back. The news gave Fatima some relief.

"Every day I searched the streets for some sign of her. I had gone mad. But once the police told me that she was OK, I began to feel better. I could sleep again," she says.

Now after almost 10 years, what they want most is news of their child. "If I could only see her and know that she is in a good place, getting a good education that is enough for me. She can stay in Australia, but we should still give her a choice to come back to her family," Fatima says.

Until then, all they have of Zabeen is a small, photocopied picture of her aged two.

"Maybe now that the world is watching, we will get justice," Salia says.

[Link to article in the Sydney Morning Herald]

[More photos of Zabeen's family here]

The Key to Productivity for Internet Addicts

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:14:00 +0000

I have no willpower when it comes to the Internet. I can't tell you how many days I have spent surfing my favorite websites, updating my status on Facebook and pretending to research new articles by trolling the back alleys of social-networking websites. Out of a typical week, I'd say that I waste at least three days not doing the work that I'm supposed to, instead I spend most of my time checking e-mail and generally wasting time. In the few hours a day when I'm able to focus I can get a lot done, but at heart, I'm an Internet addict. Often, when I know that I have to get work done, I leave my house and set up shop at cafes in the city that don't have WIFI so I'm not endlessly wasting my time.

But there's hope for people like me.

I found a program that will give me control over my own addiction by cutting it off at the source. Freedom, a new shareware program for Mac users lets you schedule strategic internet outages so that you can focus on the important things. It cuts off all access to the internet through Ethernet and WIFI ports for a set number of minutes (up to six hours) and the only way to quit the program before then is to restart the computer. Without internet access I won't have any excuse but to be productive. I'm might actually be able to write this book I've been thinking about.

Goodbye idle browsing. Hello productivity.

Sadly, freedom is only available for OSX, windows users will have find some other way to grow their backbones and hunker down to work.

[link to the program]

Want a Job in Journlaism? Try India

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:39:00 +0000

Today Salon is running an article contrasting the shriveling opportunities for journalists in the United States and the booming media market in India. Arun Venugopal writes, "2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms last year, either through layoffs or buyouts, leaving the industry with its smallest workforce since 1984." However, the market in India offers salaries as high as $180,000 and now a few American journalists are making the jump to India.

Arun contacted me early last week to get my opinion on the market for foreign journalists in India. Here's the section where I come up.

"I have met foreigners working at the Hindu, Mint, GQ, the Hindustan Times and Times of India," wrote Scott Carney, a Chennai-based journalist who freelances for NPR, Wired and National Geographic TV. "They all work on Indian salaries, don't speak the language, and all seem to be having a ball. Since there are so many new publications opening up in India, there is a lot of demand for native English speakers and people who can bring higher reporting standards to local papers."

Carney says he turns down two or three assignments a month.

"I pretty much stick only to big investigative stories on subjects that I choose, and leave the daily reporting and feature pieces to other journalists. I have noticed that some American media houses are pulling back their freelance budgets (just try getting an assignment past the foreign desk at NPR these days!). But I bet that freelancers in America are feeling the pinch much more than I am while living on the rupee."

"If anything," he wrote in his e-mail, "I'd like to see more freelancers move to India. There are too many stories to cover and just not enough time to get to them all."

Check out the rest of the story here.

What Happened to My Girlfriend? And Other Key Sex Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:18:00 +0000

For the last couple months The New Indian Express has been publishing a column called "(Queer)ies: Your Personal Sex Advice Kiosk" in the Saturday supplement Zeitgeist. It's India's first serious sex advice column (that I'm aware of, anyway) and adds a few raised eyebrows to the national discourse on intercourse. The column in the paper is edited down for content, but the archive online is raw, uncut and uncensored. Which is to say, much more fun to read.

And who is behind this, you ask? Why none other than my fabulous roommate Padma, founder of the Shakti Center and all around marauding killer bee in high lace-up boots. A couple weeks ago, a question she answered about women masturbating drew the ire of readers from across South India. Funnily enough, the same question about men masturbating went unchallenged. Coincidence, or conspiracy? You decide.

I am a 19-year-old girl. Madam, I am addicted to masturbation twice in a week. I don’t know whether is it good or not, but it is uncontrollable. Will this affect my health?
–Is This Weird?

Twice a week?! Frankly, I don’t think you’re masturbating enough. Masturbation is a very empowering sexual act: it can help you become better attuned to your body, your desires, and your fantasies, and all in a safe and non-threatening way. Get in there, get busy, and stop worrying about it. And no, masturbation will not affect your health. [link]

The response to this by a "doctor", is simply smashing. Check it out.

Bush Blames Foreign Fuel Subsidies for Gas Crisis. Forgets About America's

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:53:00 +0000

Today the New York Times is running a story about how fuel subsidies on gasoline and diesel throughout the developing world are increasing the demand for oil, and raising the overall price of gas at the pump. The article seems critical of how governments in countries like Indonesia, India and China artificially lower the price of fuel in order to gain their economic footing on the world market. Citing BP, it says that developing world fuel subsidies account for 96% of the increase in fuel prices in the last year.

The problem is so rampant that ten days ago, on July 15th president Bush admonished the trend, saying,

“I am discouraged by the fact that some nations subsidize the purchases of product, like gasoline, which, therefore, means that demand may not be causing the market to adjust as rapidly as we’d like.”

But should the president of the largest fuel guzzling nation in the world, with some of the lowest fuel prices, really be targeting the developing world as the main culprit for the increased cost of gas? As newspaper headlines flash the seemingly absurd photos of pumps asking for $4 per gallon, many Americans feel that they are being unjustly punished for their morning commutes. But with a per-capita income of $44,000, and huge fuel subsidies of its own, the real cost of gas in America is the lowest of anywhere else in the world. In Europe it is common to pay $7 per gallon, and as a result there are massive subsidies for a top notch public transportation infrastructure.

In most cities in America, public transportation is, at best, a secondary option.

There are two petrol stations across the street from my house, each charging 55 rupees per liter of regular unleaded gas, or about $5.50 per gallon. Two weeks ago when a ship carrying diesel failed to dock in port on time, there was a major fuel shortage and some pumps charged as much as $10 per gallon. All of this in a country where the per-capita income is about $820 a year.

Why should the president of United States blame the modest fuel subsidies abroad, when the domestic subsidies at home are much more aggressive? How, can he, in good conscience, say that in a place where people earn 1/50 of an average American salary should actually pay more at the pump?

My suggestion to Bush is that if he wants to lower fuel consumption by increasing the price of gas, then he should start by increasing the price of gas at home.

[Link to NYT story], [photo Bitzcelt on Flickr]

Limits of the Body

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:42:00 +0000

I began to feel uncertain about my body over breakfast.

On the table in front of me I had a freshly prepared bowl of oatmeal and I was contemplating what would happen if I ate it. The rolled oats, sugar and fruits in the bowl would enter my mouth, cruise down my esophagus and eventually be absorbed into my blood stream as nutrients. The waste eventually would inevitably find a way out. But at what point does that bowl of oatmeal become part of my body?

For the most part we are content to accept that the limits of our body end at our skin. We are convinced that there are finite limits to who we are. But we over look all of the things that get past that skin barrier. Even the things that change it. How do we define the bacteria and viruses enter our body and make us sick, or the medicines come and cure the sickness? How about the million of bacteria that live symbiotically in our intestines and help us digest food? Or the DNA, our own genetic blueprints, that we let fall out with our hair in the shower?

If we break a leg and a doctor uses bolts or a cast to fix it, are those parts of our body? How about a man in a wheelchair or a ventelator, for whom the external device is essential for life itself? Or someone who has donated a kidney to a friend or relative? Is it possible that one organ could belong to two different bodies at the same time? What about a person who lost a leg in a car accident, and yet feels phantom pain in the missing limb? And for that matter, when I dream, I am almost always wearing clothes. In waking life if someone tried to rip them off of me, I would feel violated. Might my body also extend to the barrier of my clothes?

For the most part we don't really need to care about the final limits of our bodies. We can go through our lives without a precise definition. However the question gains salience in today's world where our bodies are commodities that are bought and sold on world markets. Over the last several years I have reported on kidney brokers who steal organs from poor people and sell them to richer ones, and bone thieves who rob graves and sell skeletons to medical schools. This year in Uttar Pradesh blood pirates locked patients in a room and siphoned off their blood to provide a stable supply for local hospitals. But not all buying and selling body parts is illegal. Bio-prospecting companies collect genetic material from indigenous people in order to develop the next generation of wonder-drugs. Multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials that test experimental drugs on humans.

In all of these cases, outside forces defined what was valuable about a body and placed it on the market. Often times without the consent of the people whose bodies were used. If we think that our bodies are special in some way, and that outside interests should not be able to violate them, then we need to start by having a better conception of what our bodies actually are.

This means starting with breakfast. What exactly is the relationship between that bowl of oatmeal and the limit of your body?

photo: LoreleiRanveig at flickr

Ant Goddess and the Sponge of Doom

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:10:00 +0000

There have always been ants in our apartment. When we first moved in, near-microscopic red ants scurried across the kitchen counter looking for dropped morsels of food. Winter came and they slightly larger black ants took over until they were eventually replaced by an even larger variety. Now, in the heat of the summer the small red ants are back and they have managed to find their way into every Tupperware barrier we set up against them. They've crawled into the refrigerator, into the rice, and invaded our stash of walnuts. If we don't scrub down the counters after making tea a hundred ants will suck on the residue where sugary water dripped over the side of the cup.

Over the last three years my wife has sealed the cracks in the walls with duct tape and poured eucalyptus oil into their hideouts. She has sprayed their dens with insecticide and sponged away countless ant carcasses from our counter tops. But the ants keep coming back. There are more now in our apartment than ever before. But something that happened over the weekend has made me question her fundamental relationship with this apartment's most numerous inhabitants.

After years of countless ant murders and countermeasures my wife went into the kitchen to find a herd gathered around a dollop of honey. She says that there were at least 50 of them in a circle "lapping up the nectar like antelopes at a waterhole". There is nothing in the world more pleasing to an ant than honey. Rather than her normal reaction of immediately scrubbing the honey and ants into the sink, she bent down over them for a better look. Sensing her gaze--and impending doom--the ants scattered in every direction. They abandoned their sugary stash and ran for the cracks where they came from.

This is unusual behavior. I have to emphasize that that ants didn't run after she had begun to squish their bodies into the counter top with her finger one at a time, or even after preparing a sponge in the sink. They ran after they saw her looking at them. This leads me to believe that after years of wiping out this same colony of ants, they are beginning to respect and fear my wife (as she is their appointed exterminator). She is their fickle and unruly goddess.

We see them as pests that pollute our food and occasionally bite us with their envenomed pincers. But from an ant's perspective we are giving them mixed signals. One day we fill the counters with tasty food droppings, glittering in honey and flower particles that feed and grow their colony. The next day she removes the offering and eliminates the workers that they send out to collect the food. She poisons their colony and wipes them from the face of the earth. She is both the source of their sustenance and the agent of their demise.

Back in the safety of their colony, the ants must gather around their queen and ask for her to interpret the various moods of my fickle wife. Is she an agent of good, or one of evil? Is there a way to appease her, or are they doomed to her random acts of kindness and murder? Right now, the counters are clean, and the ants are likely preforming elaborate rituals to honor my wife and forestall her wrath.

My wife is the ants' goddess. Right now she could be preparing the sponge of doom, or a cup of tea with honey.

photo by Binux on Flickr

Chennai Runs out of Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:36:00 +0000

Today the Chennai ran out of gas. By noon the few remaining pumps that were open had lines that wrapped around the block. A few, like the Indian Oil pump across from my house went for more than a mile. In the center of the city I passed a stalled Hyundai Santro with a woman in tears behind the wheel. She had run out of gas while going from station to station looking for a place to fill up. By ten at night, the few remaining pumps had police posted outside of them ready just in case a riot broke out. I saw people filling jugs for drinking water, apparently hoarding the fuel just in case the gas supply doesn't get turned back on.

I stopped at several different pumps and asked attendants why there was no gas and got conflicting answers. A police officer with several stars on his eppillete outside one bunk told me that there was a strike. Fed up by paying $5.30 a gallon, truck drivers refused to supply gas to stations across Tamil Nadu in a bid to the government to lower petrol prices. In a country where the median income still overs around $300 a year, the current price of petrol is far higher than just prohibitive, it's downright obscene. However another source at a local newspaper told me that gas supplies were slow to come in from abroad and that this could be a sign of things to come.

There is still no clear consensus about whether this is merely a blip, or the beginning of a trend in Tamil Nadu. I expect that the issue won't be resolved tomorrow. There will probably be a lot of stalled cars on the roads in a few days.

Could a Nano-Size Pricetag Mean Chaos?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:31:00 +0000

The Tata Nano isn't just one more small car ready to enter the world's stream of endless transportation options; it's a revolution. Costing just a little over $2,500, it's half the price of the next cheapest car on the road today which means just about anyone with a mid-sized call center paycheck can pick one up. For this month's issue, WIRED sent me out to explore how the Nano will change the Indian economy. I tracked down powerful city planners and iconic environmentalists in Bangalore and sat inside a Nano prototype in the Tata factory in Pune. After criss crossing the country on the Nano-trail I think I have a good idea about what to expect when the car finally hits the roads. It's not a pretty picture.

On its own, the Nano is a great automobile. The engine is small and fuel efficient, it meets most environmental standards, and it is a whole lot safer than a motorcycle or scooter. But with 350,000 set to be produced in the first year, and untold millions in the years after that, the Nano portends a massive strain on India's already stressed infrastructure. The crux of the problem is that developing world governments aren't able to keep pace with private industry. There are already too many cars on the road and there don't seem to be plans to adapt to the coming influx.

We can't blame the Nano for being a cool car that a lot of people will want to buy--it is much nicer than the Maruti 800 which sells for $5000, and I'm beginning to think that it even puts my own Hyundai Santro to the test--but at the state level, there don't seem to be solutions in the works. At one level it is just a problem of geometry, as more people drift from two-wheelers to four wheelers, there will be less overall space for vehicles to navigate. At the same time, a lot fewer people are taking buses (who would want to when they are so cramped?). As citizens depend increasingly on private transportation the whole system tends towards gridlock.

And now that automakers know that it is possible to produce cars in the nano price range engineers from Germany to Japan are making plans to mass-assemble their own versions.

At $2,500 people who were never able to afford cars before suddenly can. According to figures I culled from World Bank data, the global pool of potential car owners could increase by as much as 800 million once ultra-compact cars are available world-wide.

This means big problems for administrators who are trying to keep developing world cities moving. Streets that are already clogged will get worse. Fuel prices that are already high will go higher.

Check out the story in this month's issue of WIRED. Or just click this link.

____________

In other news, I wasn't able to go to this year's SAJA awards in New York. That's a real shame because I was the finalist for the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Story about South Asia: the conference's top award.