WarShooter™

Zoriah has updated a series he did on the Northern Pakistan Earthquake, also known as the Kashmir Earthquake. I have posted them below with his earlier write-up. Other previous series by Zoriah concerning AIDS, the tsunami that hit Thiland in 2004 and life in Gaza can be viewed here, here, and here.

From Zoriah:

People often ask me to compare disasters and I find myself struggling to provide them with an answer that feels truthful. In all honesty, after five years of focusing on disasters and humanitarian crisis, I find that everything begins to look the same. Faces, no matter which country or continent they hail from, closely resemble each other when they are framed in rubble and surrounded by smoke. Buildings and trees and landscapes look about the same when they are flattened on the ground, whether the cause was a hijacked airplane, a massive wave or powerful tremor. It is often far too easy for me see a disaster zone as nothing more than a familiar scene, another day of work.
Whenever I get this feeling that I am back in the mundane, I try to look in the eyes of the people I photograph. I try to remember that although this has become a common site for me, this is the extraordinary for those that it affects. I think that the western world , armchair observes of disaster and strife, need to dig deep inside themselves and try to realize that even though the news is their entertainment, it is also quite real. They need to open their eyes to the fact that beyond the now familiar pictures presented to them on their morning paper and on the evening news, there are people struggling with a situation that has turned their lives upside down. I believe that as photographers we need to focus more on documenting emotion in our photos and that editors must make sure that these images, no matter how graphic and painful, reach the eyes of the people that can actually make a difference. In actuality, it is our job to open peoples eyes. To create works of art that touch peoples hearts and open their minds, showing them not only what someone else’s life looks like, but what it feels like.

Technorati Tags: aftermath, earthquake, kashmir, pakistan, zoriah

Tues 14th March - I was fortunate to be introduced to Betty Bigombe, the Museveni/LRA Peace Talks Mediator, yesterday. She told me that she was sad that the talks were not proving to be successful, but that she will remain in contact with the rebels as long as there is hope. I travelled from Gulu to Lira in the evening, just after nightfall. Not the wisest of moves, especially considering that now the rains have started, the vegetation is growing, which always initiates renewed rebel attacks. There have been a number of attacks in the last couple of weeks, always following the same pattern - Vehicle shot at until it stops; driver killed instantly; others robbed of shoes, clothes and possession and then shot. Driving these roads at night requires nerves of steel and a heavy foot on the accelerator.

Wed 15th March - Left Lira this morning after a flying visit to the Rachele Rehabilitation Centre, set up three years ago by Els De Temmerman, a Belgian Journalist.

The following is an update on the situation in Sudan with words and photograph provided by Dan Morrison, a freelance journalist currently in the region. His Sudan reports can also be found here, here and here:

The danger and want in Darfur cannot be both an emergency and a chronic condition, and yet it now has the attributes of both. Two years after ethnic cleansing of the region's non-Arab tribes reached its height, more than two million people continue to live in camps as captive dependents of the world humanitarian community, cut off from their homes and livelihoods. Residents I interviewed at camps in South Darfur and West Darfur states were adamant that they could not and would not return to their homes in an atmosphere of continuing attacks by Arab militias. ``When they kill the Janjaweed, then we can go back,'' was a common statement. Another deterrent placed a distant second to the memory and fear of the government-backed marauders - opportunity. Widows described their pleasure at sending their children, including their daughters, to UNICEF-funded schools inside the camps. It will be a long time indeed before international community and its ``partners'' in the government of Sudan are able to replicate the range of health and educational boons that exist inside many of Darfur's displaced-person camps. It was the absence of such services that helped push the region into civil war. For those who continue to live in the countryside, outside the sometimes- protected perimeters of the camps, conditions are growing less safe and international aid more scarce. Increasing banditry, fighting between rebels and government troops, and harassment by state security services have all reduced the flow of aid to rural areas. All eyes were on January 2007, when diplomats and aid offiicals assumed a UN force would take over from the underfunded and underequipped African Union force. Sudanese diplomacy and bruised egos at the higher levels of the African Union secretariat have combined to delay that by at least six months. Peace talks in Nigeria have withstood the combined arbitrage and hectoring of the UN, AU, EU, US and UK secure in their dysfunction. Most dangerous is a projected gap in food aid that could leave 2.8 million people without food in Darfur over the coming months. ``It's big and it's frightening,'' says Carlos Veloso, the World Food Program's emergency coordinator for Darfur.

Technorati Tags: abuse, african union force, darfur, ethnic cleansing, janjaweed, morrison, genocide, sudan, world food program