Wounds of Waziristan highlights the stories of those directly affected by drone attacks in Pakistan – in their own words.

Since the drone attacks began in Pakistan in 2004, much of the focus has been on the technology. And, although the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan are endlessly debated and declared upon by journalists and pundits, the ordinary people who actually live there are rarely heard from. Madiha Tahir’s documentary Wounds of Wazirstan records the voices of those who have been either labeled “militants,” or summarily dismissed as “collateral damage.”

On Wednesday, March 12th, see a free screening of the documentary Wounds of Waziristan, then stay for a panel discussion on the documentary, as well as the politics, technology, policy, and people behind it, with filmmaker Madiha Tahir, Professor Manan Ahmed Asif, and journalist Amy Goodman.

This event is sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality; the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma; the Center for International History; the Institute for the Study of Human Rights; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University; and the Organization of Pakistani Students.

Manan Ahmed Asif is assistant professor of history at Columbia University. He is interested in the relationship between text, space and narrative. His areas of specialization include the political and cultural history of Islam in South and Southeast Asia, frontier-spaces and imperial and colonial historiography. He is involved in Digital Humanities projects that examine the relationship between space, location and text. Asif has also written extensively about the contemporary politics of Pakistan, collected in his book Where the Wild Frontiers Are.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.” She is the first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. The Independent of London called Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! “an inspiration.” PULSE named her one of the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009. She is the author of The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings; Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, written with Denis Moynihan; Breaking the Sound Barrier; and, co-authored with her brother, journalist David Goodman, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008), Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006), and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004).

Madiha R. Tahir is an independent journalist and director of the short documentary Wounds of Waziristan about the survivors of drone attacks on Pakistan. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Vice, The National, Guernica, The New Inquiry, PRI and BBC’s “The World”, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Wall Street Journal, Democracy Now! Caravan, Global Post and other outlets. She is co-editor of a volume of essays Dispatches from Pakistan and is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.