Videos

Afghanistan
Homa is a powerful example of what is right and wrong in Afghanistan. She’s able to go to school, unlike under the Taliban when girls were banned, but years after the invasion, her ‘school’ is sitll a collection of simple, canvas tents. She and her family are safe from beatings by the Taliban for violating Islamic law, but they face a growing threat of terrorist violence. Unlike people in most Muslim countries, Afghans like Homa continue to give America the benefit of the doubt, but their confidence in us is fading.
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Egypt
Gameela Ismail is an Egyptian democracy activist and wife of jailed opposition leader Ayman Nour. The Bush administration encouraged her husband to challenge Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in presidential elections in 2005. But when Mubarak sent Nour to jail son after the vote, the US has barely protested. The impression Gameela and other Egyptian activists have is that the US is interested only in propping up a friendly regime, rather than supporting democracy in Egypt or anywhere else in the region.
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Iran
Babak Zamanian helped organize one of the boldest public protests Iran’s fiery President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ever seen. When the president came to speak at Babak’s university, several students interrupted him, burning his photograph and shouting “Death to the dictator.” Babak wanted to show the world that not all Iranians agree with Ahmadinejad’s belligerent rhetoric. Since then, he’s been imprisoned once and sentenced to a second term. He’s risking his life fighting for American-style freedom, but wants no American help. In fact, he says the U.S. is hurting his cause by threatening war, which he believes strengthens Iran’s hard-liners.
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