IJAsia16 I Covering Conflict: Afghanistan, India, Nepal

Covering Conflict: Afghanistan, India, Nepal

War is deception, as the Chinese general Sun Tzu said—and it’s left to investigative journalists to strip away the deceit. Who’s really commanding the battle, and what do they get out of it? Who’s funding and arming them? What back-door dealings are underway while the country’s in turmoil? Amid the violence and chaos, it takes a cool head and strong gut to make sense of it all, and unpick the details that are truly history-making.

We have three great journalists who have years of experience in doing just that, on diverse warfronts, and will explain on how to nail down what’s truly important: Kunda Dixit, whose trilogy on the Nepal civil war is a landmark work; Malini Subramaniam, just honored with CPJ's International Press Freedom Award for her gutsy work on India's Maoist conflict; and veteran Afghan correspondent Mirwais Jalalzai.

Moderator: María Teresa Ronderos – Director, Program on Independent Journalism, Open Society Foundations
Maria Teresa Ronderos, as the director of the Open Society Program on Independent Journalism, oversees efforts to promote viable, high-quality media, particularly in countries transitioning to democracy.
Ronderos comes to the Open Society Foundations from Semana, Colombia’s leading news magazine, where she served in a range of senior editorial roles. Together with the Ideas for Peace Foundation, she has been the creator and editor-in-chief of VerdadAbierta.com, a website that has covered armed conflict in Colombia since 2008, and she has just finished a book on the subject, Guerras Recicladas, which will be released in September 2014 (Penguin Random House).
She serves on the boards of the Garcia Marquez Iberoamerican Foundation for New Journalism and the Columbia School of Journalism Cabot Awards. Until she joined Open Society, she served on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Flip, Colombia’s Foundation for Freedom of the Press, where, as chair, she worked to protect the lives of journalists in danger.

Speakers:
Kanak Mani Dixit – Founding Editor, Himal Southasian

Mir Wais Jalalzai – Reporter and Producer, TRT News & DW
Mirwais is a freelance journalist who covers mostly conflict related issues and contributes to TRT World, a channel produced by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, Turkey’s national public broadcaster. He started his journalistic career in 2000 at The Kabul Times, which was under the control of the Taliban. In 2011, he contributed to the Washington Post as a freelance journalist and later joined Yonhap News Agency, a South Korean media company, as a senior reporter from Afghanistan. In 2009, he joined Radio Voice of Germany (Deutsche Welle) as a reporter and producer.

Malini Subramaniam – Journalist, Scroll.in
Malini Subramaniam is a Indian freelance journalist and development professional. This year she was among four journalists honored with an International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for her courageous reporting on human rights abuses and the conflict between Maoist groups and state forces in Chhattisgarh.

Recorded on September 24th, 2016, in Kathmandu, Nepal.