Reflections: The End of a Divided Germany
BY Siri Schubert

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former Polish leader Lech Walesa (center) and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. PHOTO: EPA.

Some dates are so significant that they define the identity of whole nations. For Germans, November 9, 1989, is such a date. It was the day the heavily mined border known as "the death-strip" between East and West Germany was opened or, as popular shorthand would have it, the day the Berlin Wall came down. It was a day of celebration, hope, incredulity, and exhilaration.

As the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote from Berlin this week: That night, the whole city celebrated a new Day of German Unity.

The fall of the wall changed the lives of millions of people so profoundly that even after 20 years, some are still struggling to make sense of the day that united a nation but divided their lives into two chapters: before and after the wall.

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Peru: Kiva's Web-based Microfinance Growing Up
BY Joe Rubin

In 2006, when we first broadcast our story about Kiva's first micro-lending experiment in Uganda, the San Francisco-based nonprofit was already a modest success. The concept was simple: web surfers with a little bit of extra cash could use their credit card to provide microcredit to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

At the time, Kiva had just surpassed $500,000 in loans. This week, Kiva celebrated its fourth birthday, and its growth since our story aired has been nothing short of meteoric. Kiva is closing in on $100 million loaned and expanded its reach to small businesses across the planet.

We thought we'd check in with the company on its anniversary and find out how it's working with locals in a beautiful and remote high Andean outpost in Peru.

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Honduras: Standoff at the Embassy
BY Joe Rubin

Honduras' left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed in a coup back on June 28, has returned to the country. He reportedly traveled over back roads from El Salvador, hidden in the trunk of a car, and has been given refuge at the Brazilian Embassy.

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China: Wall Scholar
BY Joe Rubin

There is apparently no formula to becoming an expert on the Great Wall of China. David Spindler was a graduate student in Beijing back in the early 1990s, when, as a hobby, he began trekking the wall through its thousands of miles of nooks and crannies, and studying ancient documents to reveal its secrets.

In 2002, he left a lucrative career as a corporate consultant to become a full-time "wall scholar."

Recently, he teamed up with photographer Jonathan Ball and set out on a mission -- to take huge panoramic photos along the wall on the anniversaries and in the exact locations of historic Mongol and Manchu battles.

We spoke to him over web cam from Beijing on the eve of two exhibits of Spindler and Ball's work opening in San Francisco and New York.

Afghanistan: A Stolen Election?
BY Joe Rubin

Over the last year we've been checking in with Jason Motlagh, a photojournalist who has been all over Afghanistan, including on military missions assigned to try and make the country safe enough to hold elections.

As Motlagh described back in February, it's a "hard fight," with fierce Taliban resistance, mounting civilian casualties and endemic corruption.

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Swaziland: The King and the Web
BY Joe Rubin

Swaziland is a country of haves and have-nots. King Mswati III (the country's absolute monarch) has 13 wives, 20 armored Mercedes and his net worth is estimated at more than $200 million.

Meanwhile, his subjects are among the poorest in the world (more than 60 percent of Swazis earns less than $1.25 per day) and plagued by a huge public health crisis. The tiny southern African nation has the world's highest per capita rate of HIV/AIDS.

Swaziland is also not particularly tolerant of dissent. Anti-sedition laws and self-censorship make criticism of the king rare. So, we wondered, what happens when the Twitter revolution comes to town?

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Jailed In Iran, A Reporter's Story
BY Joe Rubin

This is not your expected tale of a three-week stint in an Iranian prison. Photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden, who was in Iran covering the recent disputed elections and massive protests that followed, was trying to leave the country ahead of his visa expiring when he was arrested and charged with espionage. He spoke to us over Skype from his parents' home in Greece shortly after being released from prison.

As you will see, there are moments in his retelling that are both humorous and terrifying. The fact that Athanasiadis-Fowden has spent several years reporting from Iran, speaks the language, and understands the culture certainly helped his cause.

His work frequently appears in The Washington Times and is supported by our partners at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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Guinea Bissau: A Narco State in Africa
BY Joe Rubin

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.

He shares with iWitness how he captured such intimate portraits of assassins, addicts and prostitutes caught up in a trade that is relatively new to the country but leaving a devastating mark.

Vernaschi's work in Guinea Bissau is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Read more in his riveting blog, where he investigates West Africa's growing drug trade and connections to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the region.

Afghanistan: After an Airstrike
BY Joe Rubin

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 Farah province, 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. The story he pieces together offers some measure of why the U.S. and NATO are reassessing how they fight the war in Afghanistan.

Motlagh's ongoing coverage from Afghanistan is funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is part of a joint reporting venture between the center and FRONTLINE/World. Read his recent article in Time, "How Afghanistan's Little Tragedies Are Adding Up."

Pakistan: Education's Fault Lines
BY Joe Rubin

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.

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Burma: One Year After the Deadly Storm
BY Joe Rubin

On the eve of May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Burmese delta killing 100,000 and leaving millions more homeless. A year on, our correspondent in the region, who has made a number of clandestine reporting trips into Burma, takes the measure of recovery in the devastated area and finds tent cities and surprising pockets of renewal. He also travels to the mysterious city of Naypyidaw, the new multibillion-dollar capital still under construction and home to the reclusive generals. Security is so tight and the government so secretive about its new center of power that filming in Naypyidaw can land you in prison for three years. Safely out, he shares his impressions and footage with iWitness.

Interview With Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
BY Joe Rubin

Editor's Note: "I believe in telling the truth," says filmmaker Sharmeed Obaid-Chinoy. In this webcam interview, she tells us why she undertook such a dangerous journey in her native Pakistan to document how the Taliban are repressing young girls and recruitIng children to carry out suicide attacks. She provides an update on some of the characters in her documentary and chilling behind-the-scenes details about her meeting with a Taliban commander. Watch her full report, "Children of the Taliban," online and share your reactions to the film.

Pakistan's Taliban Generation
BY Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Editor's Note: "I believe in telling the truth," says filmmaker Sharmeed Obaid-Chinoy. Over webcam she tells us why she undertook such a dangerous journey in her native Pakistan to document how the Taliban are repressing young girls and recruitIng children to carry out suicide attacks. In this gripping interview, the filmmaker gives an update on some of the characters in her documentary and provides chilling behind-the-scenes details about her interview with a Taliban commander. She also offers field notes, below, from her reporting across Pakistan.

* * *

A peace deal was officially signed this week between the Pakistan government and Taliban leaders in Swat Valley, a truce that guarantees the imposition of Sharia Law across this once peaceful tourist haven, home to approximately 1 million people. In return both militant and government forces have agreed to a ceasefire.

It's an uneasy settlement on many fronts, both for Pakistani moderates and for an international community that sees Pakistan as a critical security concern. The Taliban have been spreading their strict ideology across Swat and other parts of Pakistan for the last two years, often using violent reprisals. Through their growing network of religious schools and military training camps, they are raising a whole new generation of radicalized children.

In new developments, The New York Times just reported that the Taliban are now cutting deals with militant groups in Punjab, making inroads into Pakistan's most powerful and populous state.

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Bangladesh: The Mystery of a Mutiny
BY Joe Rubin

David Montero is no stranger to Bangladesh -- he lived and reported there between 2004 and 2005. But he had only been back in the country for a few hours earlier this week when a full-scale mutiny by a branch of the Army brought the already chaotic capital of Dhaka to the verge of civil war.

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Afghanistan: A Hard Fight
BY Joe Rubin

As President Obama announced this week that the U.S is sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we spoke with reporter Jason Motlagh, who has just returned from spending two months with U.S troops in several troubled Afghan provinces along the Pakistan border.

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Cambodia: Confronting Its Past
BY FRONTLINE/World Editors

Editor's Note: This week, and 30 years in the waiting, an international tribunal was convened in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to try leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the death of an estimated 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s. In 2002, reporter Amanda Pike traveled to Cambodia in search of the infamous leaders and to find out what happens to a country where perpetrators of a genocide still live side by side with the families of their victims. She found the second most powerful man in the former regime, Nuon Chea, known to some as "Pol Pot's Shadow," living deep in the country and showing little remorse. In the dispatch below, Pike explains why she doubted that he and others would ever be brought to trial in a country where the prime minister once urged everyone to simply "dig a hole and bury the past."

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Pakistan: An Unsettling Peace
BY FRONTLINE/World Editors

Just a few days after U.S. special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke finished touring Pakistan's strategic Swat valley, the Pakistan government struck a surprising deal with the Taliban, which has taken control of most of the region. The agreement lays out that government forces and Taliban militants will stop fighting in return for putting the region under strict Islamic law called Sharia.

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Zimbabwe: A Harsh Reality
BY Joe Rubin

Just as a power sharing agreement between Robert Mugabe and the opposition MDC party was announced today in Zimbabwe, we talk with our correspondent -- who must remain anonymous for her own safety -- about the situation there.

She describes a terrifying reality, with human rights activists reportedly being tortured and languishing in jail and a worsening cholera epidemic that has already killed at least 3,000 people. She says Zimbabweans find hope in Barack Obama, a president they view as a fellow African, but, in her view, the only way to bring about real change might be with military intervention.

In a reporter's diary to be published in the Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday, our correspondent says that she is not optimistic that anything will change soon. "I find it hard to celebrate [the power sharing agreement]. Mugabe remains powerful under the new government, still controlling the state coffers, the military, the police and the media. I sigh as I think of the problems ahead."

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Virtual Gitmo: Human Rights in Second Life
BY Joe Rubin

Video blogger Bernhard Drax talks about the "Gone Gitmo" project, a re-creation of Guantanamo Bay in the virtual world Second Life. Bernhard Drax, better known as Draxtor Despres in SL, has carved out a niche as a virtual reporter specializing in international issues and human rights. Looking like a caricature of a curious NPR reporter, Draxtor showed up at a recent protest in SL's Virtual Israel where Palestinians and Israelis debated who was at fault for the bloodshed in Gaza. Draxtor talked with iWitness about his work and in particular a report he did on the "Gone Gitmo" SL site that has drawn international attention.

Second Life (SL) is an interactive three-dimensional virtual world with about sixteen million users around the world. Using digital tools, one can create an online persona called an avatar and communicate with others using voice, text chat or even break dancing if that strikes your fancy. To be sure there is a strong element of living out a fantasy life through an alter ego, but there is also a more serious side.

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At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item
BY Siri Schubert

Siemens headquarters in Munich, Germany. Photo: EPA

Editor's Note: This reporting is the result of a joint investigation of international bribery by PBS FRONTLINE, ProPublica and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. A documentary will air on FRONTLINE on April 7, 2009 at 9 P.M. ET on PBS. Check back on this website beginning January 2009 for a series of investigative reports and in-depth features on international corruption.

This story was published by The New York Times on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008.

MUNICH - Reinhard Siekaczek was half asleep in bed when his doorbell rang here early one morning two years ago.

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