Wed, 2 Jul 10:22:33 GMT17

 
Saeed Taji Farouky
Saeed Taji Farouky is a freelance journalist and photographer who specialises in the politics and culture of the Arab world. His work has been published by British newspapers The Observer, Telegraph and Independent, as well as Aljazeera Online, BBC Online, The Economist Group and Open Democracy, among others. He's also co-director of a documentary production company Tourist With A Typewriter and is a consultant to the board of the Arab British Centre. He is working on a documentary about the Western Sahara.
Burundi demining mission aims to defuse explosive tensions
01 Jul 2008 12:26:00 GMT
Author: Saeed Taji Farouky

My lungs feel like they’re about to burst. At an altitude of 2,000 metres (6,500 feet), and in the heat and humidity of Burundi’s remote Bubanza province, I’m trekking up a steep, loose dirt path, carrying all my camera equipment.

Ahead of me is a Burundian de-mining team, carrying more equipment and already exhausted after hours of work in the searing heat, wearing heavy helmets and blast-proof jackets.

 ... 
 
Factional violence turns Gaza into 'hell on earth'
17 May 2007 12:49:00 GMT
Author: Saeed Taji Farouky

I've hardly left the house in three days. Last night, I took shelter in the bathroom as bullets flew past my fourth floor window.

The situation on the ground in Gaza was already dire, even before May 13 and the latest intense escalation in violence. "Gaza is hell on earth," Fareed told me unsentimentally as we sat in his comfortable East Jerusalem apartment only last week. It was so easy, then, to take a taxi back to my hotel and walk around the corner for a coffee and a late dinner.

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Western Sahara's explosive legacy
27 Apr 2007 16:36:00 GMT
Author: Saeed Taji Farouky

The view over Tifariti, in the freezing morning air, is one of beautiful desolation, of unbroken sheets of red sand. But this calm hides a morbid legacy: the ground here is laced with about seven million landmines and thousands of unexploded munitions. Landmine Action (LMA), a UK-based organisation, is here to deal with the ordnance. I'm here with sound-man Brendan Butler to film a documentary about their work.

Tifariti – deep in the Western Sahara some 2,000 km south-west of Algiers - is the capital of what people here call the "Liberated Zone". When Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975 following Spain's ill-planned decolonisation, they were met with armed resistance from the Polisario Front, the independence movement of the indigenous Sahrawi population.

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