CorpWatch and KPFA Radio Launch "Afghanistan 2008: Seven Years After the Taliban" Multimedia Project Collaboration
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, October 31, 2008
CorpWatch and KPFA Radio Launch "Afghanistan 2008: Seven Years After the Taliban" Multimedia Project Collaboration.
(Berkeley, CA - October 31, 2008) Seven years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, the country faces an increasingly uncertain future. Award-winning investigative journalists Pratap Chatterjee and Nobu Sakamoto, reported from Afghanistan immediately following the invasion, and now return to the country as part of a CorpWatch/KPFA Radio collaboration to take stock.
"As the United States moves towards perhaps the most critical presidential election in decades, this project aims to bring a spotlight back to both the human cost of war being borne by the Afghan people, and the gross incompetence that has plagued the reconstruction effort here - at significant profit to private military companies like the Louis Berger Group, Dyncorp, and Espial," said CorpWatch project director Tonya Hennessey.
In 2006, Afghan American journalist Fariba Nawa returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction, detailed in the CorpWatch report "Afghanistan, Inc." The findings were tragically disheartening. In 2008, initial observations and interviews show that the situation has continued to deteriorate.
"The reconstruction of Afghanistan has definitely not met expectations. Our research is intended to discover why things have gone wrong and what happened to the money provided for Afghan development," says Pratap Chatterjee, KPFA reporter and CorpWatch Managing Editor and author of "Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation".
In 2007, America's first listener-sponsored radio station KPFA launched the interactive website Warcomeshome.org, featuring hard-hitting stories about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as innovative means of contributing to, and distributing information about, the impact of the conflict on people in the United States. "Afghanistan 2008: Seven Years After the Taliban," is the newest phase of the project, the contents of which are now part of the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.
"Seven years after the US and its allies invaded, Afghanistan has become the forgotten occupation," says KPFA Program Director Sasha Lilley. "KPFA's War Comes Home project had previously told the story of the costs of the occupation for U.S. soldiers. Yet even more significant are the costs for the Afghan people."
In the spirit of CorpWatch's hard-hitting investigative journalism andKPFA's tradition of media innovation, Warcomeshome.org allows visitors to listen to and share stories about the consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, using their own blogs, email lists, and social networking sites. The website features a blog by Chatterjee, as well as audio interviews, photos, video, and resources for activists.
To learn more about "The War Comes Home: Seven Years After the Taliban," go to www.Warcomeshome.org.
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Founded in 1949, KPFA is the United States ' first listener-sponsored
radio station. Broadcasting on 94.1 FM in Berkeley , CA , and 88.1 FM
on KFCF in Fresno , KPFA's signal reaches one third of the state of
California . KPFA website, kpfa.org, serves thousands of listeners all
over the world. Much of KPFA's programming is local, original and
eclectic, with a mix of news, arts, and music.
Press contacts:
Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Managing Editor
Pratap [at] corpwatch.org, Global Mobile: +1-202-580-8393
Tonya Hennessey, CorpWatch Project Director
tonya [at] corpwatch.org, 510 271-8080, 650 273-2475
Sasha Lilley, KPFA Program Director
ipd [at] kpfa.org, 510 848-6767 ext 209
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