Stories

• Widening the Strand

  Myanmar’s return to Market

  

• Still Lifes from a Vanishing City

  Yangon and the Abandonment of Empire

  

• Khost

  In eastern Afghanistan, US troops find themselves on a new frontline in the decade-long war against the Taliban.

  

• The Syrian People

  A national uprising has put the Syrian people at the centre of a popular struggle over the future of their nation and has propelled them to the forefront of international politics. But who are they?

  

• Deconstructing Yangon

  Dismantling colonization from the inside out

  

• The Golan Heights

  Though life may be beginning again in the Syrian Golan Heights, Israeli occupation continues to haunt this land.

  

• Skyscrapers and Ghost-houses

  Exchanging wet-rice agriculture for traffic circles, megaplexes, and pre-planned mini-cities.

  

• Reimagining Raqqa: Of Tradition and Of Wheat

  While Raqqa province has traditionally been exalted as a symbol of Syria's past, as the preservation of an historical legacy, its current cultural shifts and economic struggles may come to define Syria's future.

  

• A Room of Her Own

  Photographs of women’s bedrooms in Hanoi, Vietnam.

  

• Black Dust

  Labourers in Iraq's Dickensian brick factories endure searing heat, poisonous soot and roof cave-ins, working alongside their children, with few prospects besides an early death.

  

• Afghan National Army

  As the US and Nato prepare to start withdrawing from Afghanistan, the ANA is still far from ready to take over security.

  

• On The Borderline

  One of the Iraq war's enduring issues of contention - that of insurgents crossing the frontier from Syria - may be coming to a close.

  

• The Other Side of Summer: A City I Saw in a Dream

  After the tourists go home and the summer slips away, the Syrian coast is reborn. But secret paradises are fated to fade.

  

• Suddenly She Goes Crazy And Tries To Run

  For many women in northern Afghanistan, the dangers have increased since the fall of the Taliban regime.

  

• Mosul: a city still at war

  Mosul is a devastated cityscape. Soldiers, deployed on the restive east side, still man bleak outposts, crouched behind machine guns and scarred blast shields, fingers on triggers. While the US military celebrates newfound stability elsewhere in Iraq, bombings, shootings and kidnappings remain commonplace here.

  

• Change

  The powerful elite that monopolised oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan for two decades was delivered a shock in the July 2009 elections. For the first time, voters turned out in large numbers to support a new political party, one promising change.

  

• Drug Addiction

  Infamous as the world's main supplier of opium, Afghanistan now faces its own drug addiction problem.

  

• The Last Arab State

  Despite a recent diplomatic thaw, Syria is the only country in the Arab Middle East that can truly claim to be independent from the US, and Damascus remains an obstacle to American regional ambitions.

  

• The House of Dignity

  This Syrian asylum is neither an old age home nor a mental institution, although it serves some functions of both. Within its walls live men and women who have failed -- or refused-- to live life according to society's rules.

  

• Kut Central Prison

  Inside Iraq's detention centers, where "fairness isn’t high on the list of priorities.”

  

• Dispatch From Kunduz

  Kunduz, once considered safe, is being sucked into Afghanistan’s widening war.

  

• Sons Of Iraq

  Portraits of insurgents turned peace-keepers in the 'triangle of death'.

  

• Islamic Schools in Syria

  Private Islamic schools in Syria, once largely unregulated, are being brought under tight control after a former student took part in a suicide bombing in Damascus that left 17 people dead.

  

• An Awakening in the 'Triangle of Death'

  How an uneasy calm came to settle over one of Iraq's most dangerous regions.

  

• The 101st

  Soldiers of the 101st Airborne stationed in Iraq’s 'triangle of death'.