Subscribe and follow:

• Latest Edition Podcast on iTunes
• Latest Edition Podcast via RSS
• The World on Facebook
• Follow @pritheworld
  

The document said it is lawful to kill a United States citizen abroad who is a “senior operational” leader of al-Qaeda or a related group, and that it would be lawful to kill an American citizen who poses an “imminent” threat to the United States.

“And of course most citizens will say, ‘Well what is an imminent threat?’” said Gary Solis, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “The answer is we don’t know in the abstract.”

Solis said the memo obtained by NBC continues an ongoing debate about targeted killings, but provides little new guidance. For example, the memo says the US government “could use lethal force in a foreign country outside the area of active hostilities.”

“And that too is part of the problem in that the battlefield is undefined,” said Solis. “We know that Afghanistan is a battlefield, one can reasonably say that Pakistan is a battlefield. But is Yemen a battlefield? Is Somalia a battlefield?”

In a place like Somalia, there’s no government the US can turn to and say we need you to arrest and extradite this individual. So, Solis asks: Is it not reasonable then to attack an American citizen on foreign soil who poses an imminent threat to American interests? And where could that attack take place?

“I mean if he’s in Paris, if he’s sitting in a sidewalk café drinking coffee, clearly we cannot attack him there because France has a working judicial and political system through which we can work,” said Solis. “But if he’s in ‘blue land’ or ‘red land’ or something like that where they don’t have a functioning government, what then?”

Objections to the Memo

Jameel Jaffer with The American Civil Liberties Union said he’s not comfortable with the guidance the administration is offering in this memo.

“The bottom-line is that the executive branch can carry out these targeted killings without ever presenting evidence to a court or even acknowledging to a court or to the public that the authority they’re claiming has been used. And that really is a pretty chilling proposition.”

Jaffer said the memo is filled with vaguely stated limits that are easy to manipulate. For example, he said the category of people the government claims it can kill is too broad, including not just people who present an imminent threat, but people who pose a continuing threat.

“It’s a phrase that in the administration’s view, no court is going to have the opportunity to interpret. And whatever ‘continuing threat’ means, it’s the administration that will get to decide.”

And Jaffer said remember, this is not just about what the Obama Administration could do. “Even if you trust this particular administration with this power, and I’m not saying you should, but even if you do, this is a power that will be available to the next administration, and it will be available in every future conflict.”

Is Targeted Killing A Good General Strategy?

The topic of targeted killings is sure to get much more attention in the days ahead. President Obama’s pick to head the CIA, John Brennan, has his Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. Brennan was the first official in the Obama administration to publicly acknowledge drone strikes last year. He called them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.”

Bill Martel, an associate professor of international security studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said he’s comfortable with the executive branch making snap decisions to protect American interests. But he wants the process more clearly defined and transparent.

“I would like to think in the course of things that we’d have courts that are reviewing this. I like further to think that Congress would be involved in those kinds of decisions,” sad Martel. “It’s interesting that Congress, according to reports, received this document back in June.”

He’s troubled by the vague language in the leaked Justice Department memo (PDF), and tells anchor Marco Werman why he thinks the lack of judicial oversight in targeted killings is a ‘recipe for disaster.’

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Amos Guiora gave legal advice on targeted killings to the Israeli Defense Forces in the 1990s. Today he is a professor at the University of Utah where he writes and lecturers about counter-terrorism and law. Amos, you’ve read through the leaked Justice Department memo that contains guidelines for the targeted killings of US citizens abroad. So compare this for us with the Israeli approach, which you know pretty intimately. Are the courts a part of a decision-making process there?

Amos Guiora: In Israel because of the High Court of Justice, which is a branch of the Supreme Court, there is very engaged and robust judicial review of the executive decision-making process. That’s in direct contrast to here in the United States, where frankly there really is, in context of something like the drone policy there is no robust judicial review. And so when the Israeli Supreme Court a number of years ago ruled an Israeli targeted killing policy, it very much set down guidelines criteria for the Israeli executive and its decision-making process. And that frankly is in direct contrast to the American system. And if you read through this memo, well if you get into the details of it, in articulates, establishes a paradigm that from my perspective is not really rooted in the rule of law, not really reflective of morality in armed conflict, and raises some pretty important questions about its effectiveness.

Werman: So get into the details then, because from what I read of the Israeli decision, they won’t attack civilians unless the civilians for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities, then they will. So how does that differ from the US construct?

Guiora: It’s probably the wrong expression, but you hit the nail on the head. The two most important sentences in the DOJ memo suggest or articulate that there need not be clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interest will take place in the immediate future. And that’s how imminence is defined, meaning there really is no imminence requirement, and that you’re absolutely right. The DOJ…

[crosstalk]

Werman: So how does Israel define imminent threat then?

Guiora: Imminent threat is defined as imminent threat, that’s an attack that is going to occur, that the plan is well under way, and it’s not abstract, nor ephemeral, and that you need to have clear evidence that it’s a specific attack. It’s not vague. And this DOJ memo, not to wear too much the legal hat, but it’s overbroad with broad breadth and an amorphousness in the context of a clear lack of specific guidelines and criteria. The moment that it says–and I’m reading from the memo–does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interest will take place in the immediate future. Probably the best way to put this in the colloquial, and I apologize for the expression, it’s carte blanche. And there’s nothing more dangerous in operational counter-terrorism than to give a commander carte blanche.

Werman: Is it possible Amos Guiora that there is a strategic advantage to the ambiguity in the Department of Justice memo? There are scenarios that a country just can’t anticipate like of 9/11.

Guiora: Right. I think that this ambiguity and vagueness, I understand it. I have sat at the table of operational counter-terrorism for 20 years. That said, my fear is that we’ve opened the flood gates extremely broadly in terms of the very loose definition of legitimate target/direct participant. The business of counter-terrorism is an ugly business. And the moment that commanders have been given this extremely broad definition by the Administration through the DOJ memo, my great concern is that we’re going to proceed forward in a targeted killing or drone policy paradigm that is not predicated on rational-based decision making, devoid of criteria, with no guidelines and no self-imposed restrains. I find that deeply disturbing.

Werman: And generally speaking Amos Guiora, what’s your take on the morality of targeted killing, target assassination?

Guiora: Targeted killing, I don’t call it assassination because assassination according to international law is of a political leader. Political leaders aren’t being targeted here. Terrorists are being targeted. I think that targeted killing when done, predicated on rational-based decision-making was very strict, criteria and guidelines in the context of self-defense reflects morality in armed conflict. But, a paradigm which is so broad in terms of no clear evidence, that may not take place in the immediate future, I would suggest that this memo morphs into that disturbing gray area where morality crosses into the line or sphere of immorality.

Werman: Amos Guiora, thank you very much for your thoughts on this.

Guiora: It’s absolutely my pleasure, any time.

Werman: Amos Guiora, a legal expert on targeted killing at the University of Utah.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

They hope that their pieces of silver-lined outerwear, including a hoodie and a burqa, will draw attention to a growing culture of surveillance at home and abroad.

The World’s Alex Gallafent checked it out.

It is not uncommon for Rodrigo Medellin to start his day at night.

At the moment, he has a headlamp switched on and is walking into the Cueva del Diablo – the Devil’s Cave – near Tepoztlán, Mexico.

Suddenly, Medellin stops. The ceiling of the cave, just eight feet above his head, is furry and moving.

“There’s a lot of Mexican long-nosed bats over here,” he says.

About 2,000 Mexican long-nosed bats are making soft, high-pitched noises. But looking up at a colony like this is just asking for trouble.

Medellin grimaces. “Ffffft! I’m getting pee on my eyes.”

He turns away to clear his eyes. But, before long, he looks up again and points.

“They’re mating,” he says. “Just look at pairs forming. A male is grabbing a female from behind.”

Click to enlarge.

Medellin is a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and he has been coming to this cave for three decades. It was just a few years ago that he and his students first saw Mexican long-nosed bats mating here, or anywhere.

“From then on, we’ve been trying to find other caves where this endangered species mates,” he says. “And we haven’t found any.”

That makes this cave incredibly important. He figures there are about 4,000 of these bats here in all. That is down from maybe 8,000 a decade ago. He fears that people are disturbing the bats.

Medellin shakes his head as he notices fresh footprints in the cave, probably from locals. “They’re not supposed to come in for anything at this point in the year, which is when the bats are mating,” he says.

A Lifelong Love of Animals

While many types of bats are doing just fine in Mexico, Medellin says humans threaten the survival of certain species. People often unintentionally destroy bat roosts and habitat, and in some places villagers intentionally kill bats.

Medellin has made it his mission to help these animals, by studying them and fighting for their protection.

Back in his lab in Mexico City, Medellin says his passion for bats – indeed, for all animals – started early in life.

“My first word was not mama or dada – it was flamingo,” he says.

He read about flamingos and other animals nonstop as a kid. When he was 11, he appeared on a popular national TV quiz show. He was able to choose which subject he would be quizzed on, and he selected mammals.

“I did not win,” Medellin says, “but in the process of spending six or seven weekends on TV, a lot of people saw me – including the people at the University of Mexico that, at the time, were the experts on bats.”

Those scientists invited him to help in the lab and the field.

Medellin was amazed that bats came in such a wide variety of shapes and sizes – “long snouts, short snouts, small eyes, big eyes, huge ears, rounded ears, pointed ears, colorful as can be,” he says.

Click to enlarge

Medellin was hooked. He says everyone should appreciate bats and be grateful to them.

Bats play an important ecological role. They eat massive amounts of insects, disperse seeds, and pollinate plants.

But convincing the public that bats are worth protecting is not always easy. Medellin says he has to persuade people that doing so is in their own best interest.

Engaging Locals to Save Bats

In Mexico, Medellin has hit on something he thinks could be a winning argument.

“Our own Mexican identity’s very closely linked to tequila,” he says.

Tequila is made from the agave plant.

“We would not have tequila if it wasn’t because of the bats pollinating agaves for millions and millions of years,” he says, and contends that if Mexicans want tequila in the future, the country has to protect its bats.

Medellin has started a program to offer a special consumer label to tequila producers who farm their agave plants in a bat-friendly way.

Medellin is also working to save bats in more than a dozen other countries. He says in each place he has to modify his pitch so that it resonates with the local residents.

“If you want to do effective conservation, the leaders have to be the locals because they know the context, the culture, everything.”

Fledging New Researchers

Medellin, 55, says to save bats in the long run, there has to be a younger generation of conservationists ready to take on this fight. So he has been training a small army of researchers. He rarely enters a cave alone.

Rodrigo Medellin treats his students as collaborators, and they often accompany him into the field. (Photo: Ari Daniel Shapiro)

Back at the Cueva del Diablo, Medellin is accompanied by Rubén Galicia, who is working on his master’s degree. He says he loves being around bats.

“I enter a cave and shut off my light,” he says. “Then it’s silent, except for the sound of the bats.”

Today, Medellin’s students have set up a net in front of the entrance to the cave. It is not long before they catch a bat. Medellin untangles it from the net.

He hands the bat – a female – to a student who weighs and measures it.

Medellin and his team want to know when the bats are reproductively active so they can determine the best time periods to restrict visitor access to the cave.

Click to enlarge.

Medellin takes the animal back. He holds it in his hands and prepares to release it.

He says, “We’re going to recharge its batteries, giving it a little bit of guava juice there.” The bat laps it up.

Medellin holds out his hands.

“Okay,” he says. “One, two…”

The bat waits for a moment.

“And three.”

The bat flies off, back into the night.

“Zero Dark Thirty” has been doing well at the US box offices since its release in December. But in Pakistan, where the film’s key action scenes are set, the film has been banned.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Pakistanis from watching the film on pirated DVD’s.

Freelance reporter Michelle Stockman, a self-professed film nut, said she was anxious to get her hands on a bootlegged copy from her local DVD store.

She said the movie had been seen largely by the more educated and English-speaking Pakistanis who were interested in how their country was portrayed around the world.

Stockman said criticism had been against director Kathryn Bigelow who seems to have gone through great lengths to make the film as accurate as possible.

But some of the top objections she said is the portrayal of Pakistanis as speaking Arabic. “Pakistanis speak Urdu or English, not Arabic.”

Stockman wasn’t sure if “Zero Dark Thirty” would ever hit the theaters in Pakistan anytime soon. Distributors have said they don’t want to risk the wrath of the military, intelligence services and terrorist groups over showing the Bigelow’s depiction of raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. We’re smack in the middle of Hollywood’s awards season and on eof the most talked about movies this year is “Zero Dark Thirty.” That’s director Kathryn Bigelow’s gritty account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the raid that killed him. “Zero Dark Thirty” has been doing well at the US box office since its release in December, but in Pakistan, where the film’s key action scenes are set, the film isn’t even officially out. That hasn’t stopped Pakistanis though from watching “Zero Dark Thirty” on pirated DVDs. Michelle Stockman is a freelance journalist in Islamabad and a self-professed film nut. You’ve seen it there, Michelle, how easy was it to get a copy and how much did you pay for it?

Michelle Stockman: It was very easy to get a copy. I had been watching for this video to arrive in my local pirated DVD store for basically every other day after Christmas. And it arrived just about the first or second week in January. So my husband and I went and scooped it up, and we paid just about a dollar for it.

Werman: About a dollar. What about the Pakistanis, have they also been kind of waiting anxiously for it to arrive?

Stockman: You know, it’s just about now, about a month after it’s become available that it really has started entering the conversation here. So I don’t think there were so many people who were as anxious to see it as I was, but now that word is out it is definitely a must-see film here, although many people after they do watch it say oh, well, I’m not gonna recommend that to my friends.

Werman: So who is buying it? I mean what kind of Pakistanis would you see at your local video shop picking up a pirated copy of “Zero Dark Thirty”?

Stockman: These are going to be you know, the educated [inaudible 01:29], I would say, here in Pakistan. These are folks who are really well read, who are watching you know, culture around the world. It’s not gonna be the average Pakistani who you might see on the street. These are folks who are generally Western educated, who speak English very well and who might be interested in the way Pakistan is portrayed around the world.

Werman: So how are they reacting to it, these Pakistani intellectuals? They see this movie as just a good yarn or do they see it as controversial?

Stockman: You know, it’s very interesting. I have spoken to quite a few friends at parties and read a lot of columns that have appeared in newspapers lately that slammed the film for its inaccuracies. Mark Boal, the screenwriter, and Kathryn Bigelow, the director, say they went to great pains to make the film as accurate as possible, but if you’re Pakistani you can pick out just blatant errors. First of all, Pakistanis speak English, Urdu or other regional languages; they don’t speak Arabic as they are portrayed to do in the film. There are some scenes with men in the marketplace or wearing some 17th century headgear. But one friend who works in the public health sector here said, you know, I watched it and it was exciting, it was suspenseful, but it was an absolutely irresponsible piece of filmmaking because there’s one scene that portrays a healthcare worker going to the Osama bin Laden compound and trying to vaccinate the children, to try and get some DNA that might confirm that he’s there. He’s portrayed as a polio worker in the film, and goes inside and is with this child…and the mother comes out dressed in a you know, fully clothed, fully covered, and grabs the child away, something that could be, could be misinterpreted. And since December there had been six polio healthcare workers who have been killed, who were gunned down while they were out on the job trying to vaccinate children.

Werman: Are you saying that’s because of this movie?

Stockman: It’s, it’s not quite yet linked to this movie because again, this movie isn’t very well known amongst the masses here in Pakistan, but the polio program has been linked by the public and by some terrorist groups to the CIA. I mean you have to look back at recent history. Around October of last year there was a film that came out on YouTube that was a very poorly produced film about the life of the prophet Muhammad.

Werman: The Innocence of Muslims, yeah.

Stockman: But there were protests for days. People died in these protests. This film has yet to trickle down I would say to become common knowledge amongst all Pakistanis, but you never know. There could be some more blowback.

Werman: I wonder if it’s just going to stay on DVD, pirated DVDs. I mean it seems like “Zero Dark Thirty” could be so provocative of film in Pakistan, do you really think it’ll be released there?

Stockman: I don’t think it’ll be released there. Many film distributors have already come out saying that they don’t wanna risk the wrath of the military, of intelligence, of terrorist groups to show a film that shows one of the most embarrassing incidents in Pakistani history. So again, I think this is going to be something that if you hear about it you can easily find in your local DVD shop a pirated copy.

Werman: Journalist Michelle Stockman speaking to us from Islamabad, thank you very much.

Stockman: Thank you.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

And in the movie, British actor Ricky Sekhon has the job of playing the al-Qaeda leader, mostly after he is killed.

Sekhon’s appearance in the film was brief, but his preparations were not.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Ricky Sekhon about being Bin Laden.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Zero Dark Thirty is nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture, best actress and best original screenplay. Ricky Sekhon is one of the actors in the movie. Here is the scene where he first appears.

Movie scene: Osama!

Werman: The Navy Seals are in his compound here.

Movie scene: Osama! Down.

Werman: And that’s when they shoot and kill the fugitive al-Qaeda leader. Sekhon’s on screen time goes by pretty quickly because he’s the one playing Osama bin Laden, mostly when he’s dead. Ricky Sekhon describes the process of becoming bin Laden.

Ricky Sekhon: I come from a background in physical theater and for me to learn as much about the character, I guess about the history of the character, you know, from education through to you know, what he did in his life, I guess you know, the wars he encountered, you have to try and pick from that against as much evidence of physical nature, characteristics that you can actually perform. You need to try and take as much from the history of this man to try and piece together an actual person.

Werman: And for that history what was the best book you read or best bit of research you found to kind of get you into that head.

Sekhon: I’d say yeah, it would have to be Peter Bergen with The Osama I Know, which is a really, really fantastic collection I guess of firsthand accounts on Osama.

Werman: Hm, now Peter Bergen can’t know what it’s like to be a dead terrorist in a body bag. Here’s a clip from that scene though. You are playing dead in the body bag and this is the moment when you’re back at the Seal team base and the CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain opens the bag for confirmation it’s bin Laden.

Movie scene: Sir, the agency expert gave visual confirmation. Yes, sir, a go, 100%. Yes, sir.

Werman: And Jessica Chastain zips the body bag back up. Ricky Sekhon, this is not the first film you played a terrorist, I gather. Is this becoming a habit for you? Are you going to be typecast now?

Sekhon: Hopefully, in my life there will be more range, more variety for me in terms of my future roles. I’m going up for a lot of really interesting parts now.

Werman: It’s been helpful, this role?

Sekhon: Yeah, yeah, completely, but I’m going up for a lot of interesting, mm, definitely not as extreme characters–I don’t think you can get much more extreme than this, but definitely not as extreme characters. And I like that. I like soft, interesting characters.

Werman: Now aside from the research you did in preparing for this role, you also had to lose a lot of weight.

Sekhon: Yeah, I think, I think physically he’s a very different character to me. I’m quite broad. I’m 6’4″, but I carry quite a lot a bit of weight, but a lot of it in muscle and a lot of it in chubbiness.

Werman: How much did you have to lose?

Sekhon: Yeah, I lost about 15-16 kilos, which is like

Werman: About 30 pounds, yeah.

Sekhon: Something like that, in like eight weeks, which is not healthy. I wouldn’t advise it. And plus I had to lose a lot of it in muscle, so I couldn’t work out.

Werman: What about portraying somebody who’s a good 20 years older than you?

Sekhon: Yeah, I spent a lot of time hanging around, kind of loitering outside Regents Park mosque in London. I just wanted to see you know, physically how older gentlemen would interact with each other, to get relationships with each other, with children and just try and really use that…and try and take from that as much as I can.

Werman: Final question, where are you gonna be watching the Oscars?

Sekhon: From my sofa in London.

Werman: Actor Ricky Sekhon. He played Osama bin Laden in the film Zero Dark Thirty. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

Sekhon: No worries, Marco, nice talking.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The band’s name, Praagaash, means “From Darkness to Light,” and the teenage rockers credit The Beatles and Billie Joe Armstrong as some of their musical influences.

But now after a slew of threatening messages on Facebook and a fatwa issued over the weekend by a top Kashmir cleric, the girls have called it quits.

Anchor, Marco Werman, interviews Nazir Masoodi, bureau chief of NDTV, an Indian TV network, who has been speaking with the teenage band members now in hiding.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Still, entertainment in that world doesn’t quite work by the same rules as it does here. A case in point can be found not too far from Abbottabad across Pakistan’s disputed border with Indian-controlled Kashmir. That is a pretty rare sound in Muslim-majority Kashmir. It’s a song performed by the first ever all girl rock band in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The band is called Praagaash, which means darkness to light. The three high school rockers created quite a buzz this past December as the only female group at a battle of the bands show held in Kashmir. It seemed like a great start. Then came the threatening comments on their Facebook page, and this past weekend one of Kashmir’s top Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against the trio. Overwhelmed by the attention, the teenage rockers turned to Facebook and announced they quit. One of the band members explained her reasoning to the BBC earlier today: “We didn’t do anything wrong. We wanted to pursue music, but we just quit now because in Islam it’s not allowed, so we won’t do anything against their wishes because people are that unhappy, so we can’t continue. That’s it.” A top Indian official in Kashmir has offered the girls protection, and the three band members have decided to keep a low profile for now. Their managers told reporters they are scared and just want the controversy to go away. Nazir Masoodi is the bureau chief for NDTV news network in Kashmir. He’s been in contact with the teen musicians.

Nazir Masoodi: These girls literally have gone into hiding. Today they told me that they are not going to perform anymore. These are all teenage girls aged between 15 and 16.

Werman: Well, they’ve only performed twice. It sounds as if they didn’t really do anything. Is it just the fact that it’s a female band that earned them this fatwa?

Masoodi: Well, it is not the first time that Kashmir has had female musicians or artists. We have here a great tradition of music. Nobody has ever objected to the performance of women, but this is something-a rock band is some new form of music, and the one cleric in Kashmir is saying that this music is un-Islamic. It is forbidden in Islam.

Werman: Now I know in Pakistan there’s a lot of tension over musical expression, especially hard line clerics, but this fatwa came in India-controlled Kashmir. Do you find that odd?

Masoodi: That is most unusual in Kashmir. As I said, there’s a great tradition. We have here the Muslim singers who have been performing and singing the music, which is about the religious faith of the Hindus. And the Hindu singers, they are performing the music which is related to Islam. So, great tolerance-no one has raised a question mark on it all these years, but now all of the sudden three girls just perform twice, and there’s a huge outcry, and these girls have been forced to quit this band. If they go against it, they won’t feel safe anymore.

Werman: Why do you think Praagaash got the fatwa?

Masoodi: These girls have chosen guitar.

Werman: It’s the aesthetics of it. It’s a modern music. Is that right?

Masoodi: Yeah, it is a modern music, it is a rock band, and this is something perhaps it will take a while to digest. There have been offers from Bollywood. They have invited these girls. They say that no, they can’t do it simply because of fear. Kashmir has a history of violence. Thousands of people have died in this conflict, and that’s why the fear of guns has forced these girls into silence.

Werman: Nazir Masoodi with NDTV news network. He’s the bureau chief in Kashmir based in Srinagar telling us about a fatwa declared on the rock trio Praagaash. Nazir, thank you very much. You can see a video of the teenage trio Praagaash rocking out before they disbanded. That’s at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Here’s a video of one of the their performances — there have only been two:

Islamists extremists have been pushed out of Gao, but there are still dangers on the road.

Lynch says the French military found a few explosive devices on the way to the city.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. In Northern Mali, the job’s not over for French and Malian troops. They successfully pushed Islamist militants and other rebels from key cities in the North, such as Timbuktu and Gao, but they’re still working to reclaim other areas where extremists are still in control. Today, French troops moved into the city of Kidal, the last Jihadist bastion in the North. CBC’s correspondent Laura Lynch is in Central Mali. Earlier, she travelled to Gao with a French military convoy.

Laura Lynch: We came out with the convoy this morning and it was actually not as big as it was yesterday and it certainly seemed to go a lot faster than it did yesterday. Now that may have been because of the fact that, on the way up, we went very, very slowly. There were concerns about roadside bombs and in fact those concerns were validated later in the day when French forces found what turned out to be three devices on the road ahead of us. They had been looking up and scouting out for it. So we had to stop for the night. We had left earlier in the day from just about here, where I am tonight, and made our way up very, very slowly and we didn’t get to Gao because of those devices. So we ended up being on a makeshift Malian Army military base and we essentially had to get out of our cars and sleep under the stars because we had no other option. The soldiers of course had their own on the road accomodations, but we weren’t quite ready for that. So it was just something that we had to do, but we sure got our alarm the next morning and it came with a loud bang and that was when the French forces safely detonated those three devices. Only after that did we get out on the road again and we made our way again, very slowly, up to Gao with no further incidents but I will tell one thing that we saw. We saw quite a big crater in the middle of the road and that crater was left by another roadside bomb that had exploded just days ago and it killed four Malian soldiers.

Werman: Yeah. So the security situation is still dicey in some parts. There is a sense of success though with Islamists pushed out of cities like Gao and that of Timbuktu, but now there are these dire warnings about what might happen. What might transpire in Mali if the French troops up and leave. So what’s the mood among the French troops right now? What kind of sense did you get this morning?

Lynch: I think that the troops are feeling pretty darn proud of themselves. They think they’ve come in there and done a really good job very quickly and managed to get rid of the Jihadists by and large in all of the places they wanted to. There still is active fighting going on through in the city of Kidal and French jets are bombing bases where they think Jihadists are hiding out for now. So for them the battle isn’t yet over and they know that there is still work to do, but there is also a desire for them not to stay too long. To be able to see other West African nations bring forces in. To be able to see the Malian Army improve so that it can actually fight because, let’s face it, a year ago when the Jihadists moved in a lot of the Malian Army just melted away and beat a retreat and didn’t stand up to them and that’s why people, a lot of people, are so concerned about the French leaving. They don’t trust the Malian Army to protect them.

Werman: Now you’ve covered other wars other, Laura. How does this conflict in Mali compare?

Lynch: Well when you look at how quickly the main part of the main phase of this battle has ended, it’s actually quite remarkable. I mean it was almost over before the reporters got there to cover it. So in that sense, it’s been very, very different. The other that for me, as a reporter, has been interesting and at times very frustrating is the difficulty in actually being able to go and cover what’s been going on. That road that I went up today has been inaccessible to almost every Western journalist for days now. We were able to get in only because we fell in with a French military convoy. So we were able to get through those checkpoints. Now we’re told by the forces that the reason they’re not letting people through is because they’re concerned about people’s welfare. Well roadside bombs maybe make that credible, but there are other concerns among journalists that perhaps the Malian Army is more interested in preventing us from seeing what human rights organizations had accused them of, which is abuses in their own right. Abuses of those who they believe are Jihadist sympathizers. So difficult in that sense to be able to cover it. I didn’t get anywhere near the front lines to see what was going on and nor did any other journalists. They got there after the fact when the so-called liberators moved into town and the crowds filled the streets cheering them on.

Werman: Laura Lynch who is in Malti in Central Mali covering the conflict there for The World and the CBC. Thanks so much, Laura.

Lynch: You’re welcome, Marco.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

And a new box set gives new scope to the history of all this great music.

It’s called “Reggae Golden Jubilee 50th Anniversary, Origins of Jamaican Music.”

It was compiled by Edward Seaga.

He’s the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, serving during the 1980s.

Before that, he led the JLP, or Jamaica Labor Party.

And before that Seaga was a record producer.

Over the years, Seaga has watched as Jamaican music production and musical culture changed.

Here’s Edward Seaga talking about the historic moment in 1978 when Bob Marley coaxed him and political rival Michael Manley on stage the One Love Concert.

And watch the historic moment from the “Marley” documentary by Kevin MacDonald.