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THE DUSTY PATH

2009-2013

There are places to be seen with your own eyes, places and people that deserves a major attention and a deeper perspective. Some places are, even if very far away from us, inherently linked with everybody's life, strictly connected with the world  history.
So meanwhile mankind looks incapable of understanding the day by day events, we need to conserve traces, details, memories. To do this, you need to come to terms with time.
It was just after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto that something clicked into my mind becoming aware that Pakistan was the country I had to see in order satisfy my curiosity and realizing this was my occasion to use this profession to do what I really wanted to do with it since the very first approach to it.  
Pakistan is considered to have had a key role in the start of the war on terror and most probably it will have  a main role on its end. 
This particular war has always intrigued me because its apocalyptic potential and consequences.
My work in Pakistan has started because I convinced myself that this land is at the very centre of this tremendous potential.
This country possesses unique nuclear capabilities in the Islamic world. Not a detail in the general scenario.
Despite this considerable power, this land is the result of more than 30 years of "mistakes", 30 years of democracy failures.
The military were in power for more than half of the country six decades  existence; some civil governments were corrupted, some others are corrupted. Corruption is vicious here, this is a strategic land, and to be in power can be  such a lucrative opportunity.
Pakistan economy is left undeveloped so that dependence from foreign aids remains an indispensable requirement. US is the actual main backer, reason why they wanted a chair around the table in order to influence  and drive the strategies applied to this war.. on an allied nation soil.
During the last 10 years, the annual death toll from terrorist attacks in Pakistan has risen from 164 in 2003 to 3318 in 2009, with a total of 35,000 Pakistanis killed as of 2010 and a financial cost of $68 billion since 2001. Economy is on knees, population is exhausted.
On top of all this, more than 3000 civilians have been killed by US drone attacks, in violation of international law.  and more than 800 people are missing, allegedly kidnapped by Intelligence Agencies because suspected to be part of terrorist organizations.
The strange love story between the two counties is at the bottom of the deteriorating internal situation in Pakistan. To the ethnic divisions we now have to add a huge ideological gap between those who believe Pakistan should continue its support to US in this war and those who simply would end it and construct a much more independent and self sufficient nation.  
Pakistan looks like a man on the wire, ready to fall in the abyss by the first wind. A giant on the dusty brink of its own ruin ready to trigger a horrible domino effect.
This project aims to investigate around the consequences of those implications on Pakistani people daily lives

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