After sunset the city plunges into darkness. I switch on the light of my phone to avoid stepping in the garbage or falling into a pothole. It’s an hour walk from Habana Vieja to my flat in Vedado. The gasoline skyrocketed to 9 dollars a liter and the streets are empty. If I am lucky I can find a ride on a broken 1957 Plymouth almendrón or a pedal tricycle….
The environment is stunning: spectacular blue waters, gorgeous coral reefs, white sands and jungle trails. A Caribbean tropical paradise? Well, not really. At least not for everyone. Mass tourism has brought badly needed hard currency to Roatán, a mid-size Honduran island just off the coastal city of La Ceiba. An average of five giant cruise ships dock each day at the harbor unloading hundreds of mostly American vacationers: they…
Deadly ambushes, violent clashes and cold blood killings are almost daily occurrences here in north-east Syria, where the war against the Islamic State has never ended. Taking advantage of the security vacuum that opened up after the fall of the Assad regime, Isis cells are regrouping, recruiting and increasing the attacks, expanding their operations in the Deir ez-Zohr province and in the Euphrates valley, from the Iraqi border to the…
Ahmad’s eyes fill with tears as he shows photos of his two murdered sons, Ibrahim, 17 years old, and Yusuf, 23, who were abducted, killed and thrown into a well near the village of Al-Shenia, west of Homs. Their guilt: belonging to the Alawite minority, of which president Bashar al-Assad was a member. Yusuf’s wife Susan holds her daughter Qamar, who had been born 19 days when her father…
Well before sunrise 11 years old Samira leaves her shack in the Aboutengue refugee camp where she lives with four little brothers and sisters. She walks barefoot for over three hours along a sandy path, winding past the thorny bushes and rugged rocks scattered across the savannah. To collect wood she must go farther from the camp each day. Those who have donkeys are luckier, they can grind more…
This time it seems I am the only Western journalist in town and my translator is nervous. He keeps getting phone calls from someone who wants to know where I’m going and with whom I’m speaking. And every night he must send a detailed report on my work. Tension in Tehran has grown. In just a few months, the so called “axis of resistance” has crumbled. The ayatollahs’ main ally,…
Searching for dead bodies in a state that is a stronghold for the Sinaloa cartel is not an easy task. Sicarios, the killers, are lurching in the corn fields, undeterred by the heavily armed police and army units. But mothers will risk their lives to find their loved ones. Or what is left of them: a skull, a jaw, a tooth, the tiny calcinated fragment of a bone. A few…
What a hell of a place! Djibouti is a scorched slice of volcanic rock at the mouth of the Red Sea, an inhospitable place lacking natural resources, inhabited by nomadic tribes and a small urban population. But the tiny former “Territoire français des Afars et des Issas” possesses a priceless treasure: a geographic location of crucial strategic importance, not only for the West. Thirty percent of the volume of international shipping containers…
It was 30 years ago and I was just returned from Mogadishu. Two journalist friends, Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin, had been killed. I had to extract the bodies from their bullet-riddled Toyota and transport them to the old port, where a navy helicopter carried them aboard an Italian military vessel. So, I paid no attention to the first reports from Rwanda. But it soon became clear that something monstrous…
As I write the hudna, the temporary truce brokered by Qatar is holding: Hamas is releasing hostages in exchange of Palestinian prisoners and badly needed humanitarian aid, slowly trickling through the Rafah crossing. What next? Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to resume the fighting in Gaza “with full force”, ignoring the mounting international pressure and the intense diplomatic efforts to reach a permanent ceasefire. Everybody knows, even in Israel…