Al Jazeera’s Excellent Journalism — A Short Documentary about Trucking across Pakistan’s Hair-Raising Lowari Pass Road

© 2011 Peter Free

 

16 June 2011

 

 

Truckers risking their lives for a few dollars a month

 

Al Jazeera’s series, Risking It All, is journalism of exceptionally high quality.

 

One example is:

 

Tony Comiti Productions, Pakistani truckers' perilous journey: Facing death ferrying goods across treacherous mountain passes on arguably the world's most dangerous road, Aljazeera English (2011)

 

 

Courage, poverty, and “insha’Allah” (“God willing”)

 

This documentary introduces us to some people’s heroism, smiling acceptance, and steady determination to endure on a genuinely guts-testing drive.

 

 

Evaporating cultural distance

 

The Lowari Pass video shows a side of Pakistan that is too often lost in the contempt and dislike that accompanies our American military misadventure in Afghanistan.

 

 

You won’t see journalism of such deeply life-revealing quality in most American media

 

Thinking in isolation appears to be an American cultural weakness.  It is difficult to formulate sensible foreign policy, without first understanding the people(s) our policies are directed toward.

 

It is also difficult, I think, to watch the Pakistani Truckers documentary without deeply respecting the men who make that dangerous journey every day, simply to feed their families.

 

Poverty creates (but immediately forgets) heroic behavior.  Let’s not do the same.