By Richard Engel, NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent

CAIRO – The Libyan border with Egypt is a downright creepy place at 3 a.m.

The border crossing point is a big place.  It looks like a storage lot.  There are about a dozen rundown buildings scattered over several dozen acres of concrete.  Soldiers and police mill around.  Cars come and go.  There are no designated lanes for traffic.  People and vehicles just seem to wander around.  For hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans, this ugly concrete plaza is also a prison.  
 
We arrived in two cars to cross into Egypt from Libya.  A sleepy Egyptian officer motioned for us to get entry stamps in a large building.  I’d been inside it many times before. 
 
The immigration hall looks more or less like any airport – tables are piled high with entry cards to fill out and there are stalls with uniformed officers armed with stamps.  As I waited on line for my passport to be stamped, I heard shouts, then screams. 
 
It sounded like a riot in another room. 

It was a riot.

Police starting running.

Soldiers rushed toward a metal door at the back of the immigration hall.

They bolted the door shut.

The screams on the other side of the door got louder.
 
“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the Africans.  They make problems,” a policeman said.

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There are thousands of sub-Saharan Africans from Chad, Niger, Sudan, Somalia and other poor nations still trapped in Libya.  Many have tried to escape Tripoli on fishing boats to Italy.  Hundreds are also marooned at the Egyptian border. 

They’re stuck because their governments don’t care, or don’t have the resources, to evacuate them. Egyptian authorities won’t let them enter Egypt unless an official from their government guarantees that they won’t stay in the country. So they are stuck at the border.  Some have been here for months. On this night, they were rioting. 
 
I could hear slapping sounds.  It sounded like people behind the bolted door were fighting with fists and sticks. 
 
I went back to the counter to see if I could get an entry stamp and leave.
 
“No, you need to go see an official from general intelligence,” an officer told me.

“Where is he?”

“Through that door.”  He pointed to the metal door.  People were still screaming on the other side of it.

“Really?  That door?”

“That door.”

“Come on.”

“Through that door.”
 
So we waited. 

When the screams died down three of us – our Egypt producer Charlene Gubash, cameraman John Kooistra and myself – unbolted the door.
 
We walked gingerly into a hallway.  A man was mopping blood off the floor.  He was pushing it  along with trash out a door.  A Libyan woman had been stabbed, we were told.  A policeman said she was killed. 

Everyone blamed “the Africans.”  Several Egyptian policemen claimed they have AIDS.  It was clear Egyptian authorities were growing tired of the African refugees on their border. 
 
Stepping over the blood, we found the intelligence officer.  He stamped our passports while smoking a cigarette.  He never mentioned the stabbing minutes earlier outside his office.  It didn’t seem to bother him. 
 
But it did bother a young army officer.  He was furious.  He was screaming at a policeman.

“How come you just closed yourself in your office? Why didn’t you do anything!” he yelled.

“I wasn’t afraid, but I don’t have the staff to protect me,” he said.

“You have authorization to shoot!  But you did nothing!” the army officer shouted at him.

“I wasn’t frightened!” the policeman insisted.  It was now a question of honor and bravery. 
 
We decided to leave for the nine-hour drive to Cairo. We had no access to the refugees to interview them about what had happened.

“The Africans” are still at the border.

Related story from Richard Engel: Dizzying times in the Middle East: Where are we now?

By Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent

BENGHAZI, Libya – Al-Qaida’s official statement today announcing Osama bin Laden’s death immediately reminded me of a scene from Mel Brooks' classic comedy “The Producers.” 

In the movie (I never saw the play) con men movie producers search for the worst, most offensive play they can imagine, so that it will flop and they won't have to pay their investors. 

The producers find it in a glowing tribute to Adolf Hitler, the misunderstood artist, a man of culture, panache and style. “Hitler was a great dancer,” the playwright tells the producers. 

They buy his play on the spot.

Hitler, according to his many biographers, also loved music. He was a fan of oil paintings, too. But who cares if the 20th century’s most vile human could waltz like Fred Astaire?
 
Al-Qaida’s statement today was equally misguided. It could have been written by the same man who loved Hitler, the dancer.  

---

The statement began by saying of bin Laden, “You Lived a Compassionate Life and You Died a Martyr.”
 
Compassionate? 

It's not the first quality that comes to mind.
 
The statement continues like a love poem, extolling the kinder, gentler side of the world’s deadliest terrorist. It describes bin Laden, on the run for a decade, not as a fugitive, but as a traveler spreading his message like a monk, wandering the earth in search of justice.
 
“Congratulations to the Ummah of Islam (the Islamic community) with the martyrdom of her pious son Usama; as after a life full of work and efforts, determination and patience, encouragement and jihad, generosity and open-handedness, migration and traveling, advices and good management, wisdom and practicality.”
 
Al-Qaida also tried to explain away the fact that American troops were able to gun down its leader face to face.
 
“The Americans were able to kill Usama, that is not shameful or disgraceful, and wouldn’t the men and heroes be killed except in the battlefields. Every fate has an ending, but can the Americans with their media, agents, machinery, soldiers, intelligence and forces kill what Shaykh Usama lived for and killed for the cause of?”
 
Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida wants the world to remember him as a compassionate philosopher – a Socrates killed by the state for refusing the status quo – not as what he was, a mass murderer of innocent civilians.  

In a devastating blow to journalism, award-winning photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed while covering a battle between rebels and Libyan government forces in the city of Misrata on Wednesday.

Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, has spent over a decade reporting from war zones across the Middle East, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and most recently on the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. 
 
In a phone interview while driving back into Libya from Egypt after a brief break, he discussed the tragic deaths of Hetherington and Hondros and why war reporters do what they do.

When something like the deaths of these two photojournalists happen, people always ask why do war reporters do it? What motivates them to risk their lives to tell the story?
Engel: I think Tim and Chris were doing this because they clearly loved it. They were in a position to experience world events first-hand and to make a difference. Their work portrayed war in a close-up fashion that showed the world what conflict is really like, what it’s like for the victims and what it’s like for the soldiers.

I think that unique experience and perspective compelled them to do what they did. And it inspires all of us to do it. And in this community of reporters, their loss is very deeply felt. There is a palpable feeling of loss among their colleagues today. 

---

Did you ever work with either of them?
Engel: Tim was one of the co-directors of the documentary “Restrepo.” He and Sebastian Junger spent a lot of time in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Coincidentally it was the same outpost that we made a documentary about it called “Tip of the Spear.” So I know what they went through because we also spent a great deal of time at the same outpost called Restrepo.

It was an incredibly dangerous place with very poor conditions – hiking for hours a day up and down mountain sides. To do this kind of work it takes tremendous dedication, tremendous willingness to put yourself at risk and tremendous physical stamina. Tim was 41 years old, but he was running up and down mountains alongside U.S. troops  who are on average 22, 23, 24 years old.

I unfortunately never had the pleasure of knowing Tim, but I know his work and was envious of the incredible material he got. We were at the same place, but he got so many pictures that I wish I had gotten myself.

Chris was definitely a part of the community of reporters;  everybody knew him. There is a very small group of war correspondents – people who you consistently see. In Baghdad, in South Lebanon, in Afghanistan, in Libya now – there are maybe a couple of hundred people – and that includes Europeans, Americans – that’s it.

Our community has taken an incredibly hard blow since 9/11. Every few months it seems, or certainly every year – but it seems now more like several times a year – we lose somebody. And that is difficult. Some new people join, but I’ve been covering the Middle East for 15 years and I can’t remember another period where every few months it seems like we lose another colleague. 

Iraq was terrible, Afghanistan has been terrible and Libya has been very rough on reporters.

Chris was one of the guys you saw everywhere. He knew everyone. We’d go out to the same restaurants and often hang out together in the same hotels. So there is a definite bond. While soldiers talk about a bond that develops in a platoon,  among this small group of reporters there is also the same kind of solidarity and feeling of family that grows.

Do you think that feeling of community among the reporters makes it possible to do what you do?
Engel: I think we definitely look out for each other. I’ve been in many circumstances where fellow colleagues put themselves at great risk to help other colleagues.

I remember in Iraq, a good friend of mine stayed behind and stopped reporting so he could try to get his colleagues out of jail. You see things like that.  In Iraq, when one of the media hotels was bombed, it was reporters who carried fellow reporters down the steps and into vehicles to try to help them get some medical attention.

And again yesterday, it was reporters, as well as some Libyans and hospital officials, who were carrying their colleagues to safety  to  this triage center in Misrata. So there certainly is a feeling of not only community  but of support. You are trying to look out for each other because when you are out in a war zone behind an enemy line,  there are only so many people you can rely on.

And this conflict in Libya is very different from Iraq or Afghanistan. Most of the time in Iraq or Afghanistan when Western reporters went out on the front lines, they went on embeds with American troops. Here you are going with the rebel movement that doesn’t have medics with them or any of those kinds of support mechanisms.

I know you are driving into Libya right now, but do you ever get scared? Think to yourself, 'Gee, should I keep going?'
Engel: I wouldn’t say it scares me or changes my perspective. I accepted this kind of life long ago, so I know what the dangers are. What I really feel today is a tragic loss for these colleagues.

It’s an incredible loss for their families, Chris was about to get married. Yes, it could happen to any of us, but yesterday it happened to them. It’s such a terrible event. My heart goes out not only to them individually, but to their families.

They were both young but so experienced. And there is nothing you can really do when you are running around in a war zone and people are firing shells from the sky and RPGs on the streets. You can take precautions – and I’m sure they did try to take cover – but you need to be there to get those images and to tell the story of what’s going on. Sometimes you can’t avoid the dangers and you are just exposed.  

The whole point of going to these places seems to be the hope that the stories and pictures have an impact? Is that what keeps people going?
Engel: I think we are all to a degree motivated by the fact that people will see these images and understand what war is all about. That people will understand what is happening right now. The costs that are associated with our military actions or military inactions. And I think that desire to expose current events for what they are motivates us.

No one who is professional – and these two were certainly professional – is motivated by some sort of chasing of a thrill or the adrenaline rush. Both Tim and Chris had been out there long enough that any naïve desire to chase adrenaline was long gone.

These were serious people who were professional and had tremendous experience. Maybe some people start out with the excitement of war – it seems new, it seems exciting, running around with flak jackets behind enemy lines. Once you’ve done that once or twice and you decide to stick with it, you are sticking with it not because you are chasing adrenaline, it’s because you believe what you are doing is important.

Otherwise, you could go bungee jumping for a living – it gives you much more of a rush and it is relatively safer. For these guys  that’s not what it was about.

The amazing thing about Libya is that you’ve got people who are really experienced – the New York Times journalists who were detained by Gadhafi’s forces and abused were among the most experienced reporters you could get. Tim and Chris were also among the most experienced war photographers that you are going to find anywhere. That is certainly sobering,  but at the end of the day it is just more tragic. They are a loss to their families and a loss to journalism.

But would the world be worse off if people didn’t have access to war zones and didn’t know what was going on in places like Misrata? Who would benefit from that? I can only imagine it would be war criminals, murderers, rapists, dictators, war profiteers – they would be the ones who would benefit by a lack of exposure in conflict zones.

We are heading into Tripoli now. Obviously when something like this happens you have to take precautions and think about what you are heading into. But I don’t think you are going to see a mass exodus quitting their profession.

I think people are mourning this loss. Certainly people are reflecting on the loss of a friend, a loss to our very tightly knit, but dwindling community. People are just very sorry about what happened. 

Related links:
See a slideshow of Tim Hetherington's photographs
See a slideshow of Chris Hondros images from Libya 
PhotoBlog: A loss for photojournalism 

Richard Engel, NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, called in this report on what transpired in Tripoli Friday. 

TRIPOLI, Libya – Today was supposed to be the opposition’s day of rage, the day they were going to have protests in Tripoli. I spoke with opposition leaders yesterday and they thought today was going to be a possible turning point, that they would be able to muster huge demonstrations against Gadhafi. There was an expectation of bloodshed.

In the morning, the government was clearly concerned that there would be violent clashes, and that these clashes would trigger a chain of even more violent events.

So the government minders told journalists that we were not allowed to film the opposition protests. When the protests didn’t really materialize – there were some relatively small clashes that were fairly brief in one outskirt neighborhood – the government minders relaxed their ruling.

There is now a large demonstration of perhaps 10,000 Gadhafi supporters in Green Square.

And I’ve spent the last five hours driving around Tripoli today – like a police officer, circling, circling, circling – and I did not see any opposition demonstrations in the capital city.

Nothing.

This is a company town. It remains a Gadhafi town – it is clearly still in the grip of the government. I’m not saying that everyone here loves Gadhafi; but today, if there was an attempt to have opposition demonstrations all over Tripoli and topple Tripoli – it failed absolutely.

---

‘What situation? Everything’s fine’
This city continues to live in a state of denial. I repeatedly asked people today, “What do you think about the situation?” I got answers like, “What situation? What are you talking about?” “Everything is fine. Gadhafi is 100 percent,” meaning he is great.

I asked somebody else, “What do you think about what’s going on?” The answer I got was, “What’s going on? There is just a problem with terrorists, with al-Qaida – they are trying to destroy Libya. You in the media are exaggerating it. It’s no big deal.”

I spoke with a school teacher. She said she’s afraid for her family in Benghazi (a city in control of the opposition). 

The people here in Tripoli, at least the people I saw today, are apparently accepting the government line that is being repeated and repeated and repeated. That this is an international plot, that al-Qaida is responsible, that the foreign media are fueling this and that the poor, defenseless people of Tripoli are under siege by terrorists and foreign journalists. 

People really seem to believe it. And I have no reason to believe that these people were paid.  I spoke with school teachers, construction workers, taxi drivers, an athlete, a university professor  –  too many people and too much at random for them to have been organized.  I was in many different neighborhoods over the course of five hours and I got very consistent answers.

And I didn’t get the feeling that people were hedging their bets. I didn’t get the feeling that they were telling me what they wanted me to hear. These people were going out of their way to tell me this.

If someone is scared and sitting on the fence, it’s better to not say anything. You just stay quiet.  But these people were actively coming up to me to correct me and tell me that I was getting it all wrong.

A city in a bubble
Now, to a certain degree, they have a point.

As soon as I came back, after five hours on the streets, I turned on the television and the first and only image I saw on Arabic-language TV was tear gas and images from the brief clashes. They were being replayed almost in a constant loop. But that is not what 99.9 percent of Tripoli looked like today.

So I can understand, to a degree, people’s frustration. If you are living inside this bubble and your only information is state TV, which is painting such a radically different picture from the foreign channels, then I can see the problem.

Inside the bubble, Tripoli looks good. Markets are open. Stores are open. I went to a coffee shop, sat down and had an espresso. My cameraman had a cappuccino –  and it was good. 

So if you turn on the TV and you see an endless cycle of the one clash that took place in one neighborhood on the outskirts of Tripoli, I can understand how people here would say, that’s not representative of what we are seeing.

That said, in the town of Zawiyah, which is about 30 miles from Tripoli, we did hear eyewitness reports of heavy fighting. We have heard conflicting reports on who is in control. There seems to be some running battles, real battles.

But the heart of Tripoli itself remains a Gadhafi stronghold.

Opposition silenced
I’m not saying that are not people here who oppose the government –  there clearly are. When we were walking around yesterday – which was a much quieter day – people felt more comfortable to come up and slip us furtive notes. Today those people didn’t dare do that.

The Gadhafi supporters were not only out on the streets in large numbers, but they also have the backing of the military. Around the pro-Gadhafi rallies are police checkpoints, police vehicles, and many people in uniform taking part in the demonstrations.

So if you were going to slip a journalist a note saying you oppose the regime, today would have been a very risky day to do that.

I’m not saying all these people went away and that everyone suddenly fell in love with the leadership here – but today they stayed home. The government was out, pro-Gadhafi supporters were out, the military or the uniformed services were out cheering and shouting in the main square. 

If you live in the bubble – the city was normal. Inside Tripoli there is a state of denial and total disconnect with what is going on in the rest of the country.

Richard Engel, NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, is now in the eastern Libyan city of Tubruk and was able to call in this report to MSNBC cable. Watch the video or read a synopsis below:

I think it’s fair to say that eastern Libya is no longer under the government’s control.

I’m now in the city of Tubruk, in eastern Libya, and there is no government presence here.

I spoke with some former soldiers earlier and they said that once they learned that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was using the army to attack the Libyan people, they refused to fight. They are actually handing over their weapons – including heavy weapons like mortars, artillery shells and RPGs – to the protesters. They are also giving out uniforms to give the people on the street a more consistent look.

This protest movement is no longer a protest movement, it’s a war. It’s an open revolt.

---

The speech by Gadhafi has not been received well in places like this. They say they will march and continue to fight and spread from their stronghold here in eastern Libya, near the Egyptian border, all the way to the center of Libya, until they reach Tripoli.

This is a tribal society, and one by one, the tribes are turning against Gadhafi. And when the tribes turn over, we’re talking about tens of thousands of people or more at a time defecting and joining the resistance. They are organized internally through their tribal leaders. 

I also spoke to a Libyan Air Force officer  who said the planes that Gadhafi’s forces have been using to attack cities are not being flown by normal Libyan Air Force pilots, but they belong to an elite squadron that is paid for and loyal to Gadhafi.

Communications are extremely difficult out of Libya right now. But there are some journalists, like me, who are here and others heading in. So the media presence is growing. We watched Gadhafi’s speech on the local Arabic language TV – they had a split screen between Gadhafi’s ongoing speech and ongoing demonstrations across the country.
 

When Gadhafi says that he has not ordered violence against his people – that is something people here certainly do not believe. I spoke with some military officers who told me they were specifically given the order to attack their own people and that is why they refused to fight. 

They also talked about the wide scale use of foreign mercenaries. I met some protesters who had captured several dozen soldiers who belonged to Gadhafi’s guard and among those prisoners were foreign African military personnel.

Stay tuned to MSNBC and NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams for more from Richard Engel later today.

Unable to communicate by phone after crossing from Egypt into Libya on Tuesday, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reported via text messaging and Twitter that he encountered only protesters and military defectors in the eastern region of the war-torn country.

Days after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the current wave of protests sweeping the region, Engel said the opposition was in control along the country’s eastern border.

“No army presence in border area,” he wrote, noting it was now in “protesters’ hands.”

Later, he reported from Tubruk that the city had “fallen" and the army forces were with the people. “All soldiers tell us they are with the people. … Army switched sides in this area.”

“Soldiers tell us they refuse to fire on own people..'our army like Egypt. Won't kill its people,'” he said.

He witnessed people cheering “Libyans unite,” saw a partly-burned army base near the border and signs on the road calling for tribes to stay united. He was told by a gunman: “I’ll say this openly … we must go on to topple the regime.”

Tribal members told Engel that some soldiers had resisted joining them, while others had turned in their weapons. He reported seeing some former soldiers alongside “sons of revolt” and encountered several informal checkpoints – organized by tribes – that were manned by men with hunting rifles and clubs.

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Engel also reported that some Libyan demonstrators said they had "captured a group of mercenaries...including at least one from Niger."

The streets of eastern Libya were calm, Engel wrote, though people complained of shortages of rice, flour, sugar and oil. Graffiti on one wall read: “Down Gadhafi.”

In a reminder of the protests sweeping the region and which toppled the government to Libya’s east, Engel noted thousands of Egyptians crossing the Libyan border to head home.

Engel and his crew were unable to establish a voice connection with a satellite phone, but he was able to text messages to NBC’s London bureau, where a producer was publishing them via Twitter.

Follow Richard Engel on Twitter.  http://twitter.com/richardengelnbc

 

Update 3:12 p.m. ET: Ben Wedeman of CNN reports on Twitter that Al Arabiya correspondent Ahmed Abdullah has been found in a hospital, where he is being treated after having been "severely beaten."

_____

Msnbc.com's Ian Johnston writes:

Mubarak supporters have attacked several journalists — including CNN's Anderson Cooper — during violent clashes with anti-government supporters in Egypt today.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that four Israeli reporters have been arrested.

NBC News' Richard Engel, in a message on Twitter, said journalists in Cairo had been "mobbed on the streets" by people angry with foreign press coverage.

---

 

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a Twitter message that it was "concerned about detentions and attacks" on the media in Egypt, saying that the civil society the country "wants to build" included a free press.

Cooper, in a video published on CNN's Web site, said he and a TV crew had been trying to reach the "no man's land" between the two groups of protesters in central Tahrir Square when they were attacked by people who tried to grab their camera.

• Watch CNN's report

Cooper said they began walking away as calmly as they could, but the punches and kicks continued.

"It was pandemonium. Suddenly, a young man would come up, look at you and then punch you right in the face," Cooper said. "The instinct is to try to punch back ... but in a situation like that you really can't, because that just inflames the crowd even more."

The Middle East-based Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya networks also appeared to be unpopular with the pro-Mubarak crowd.

Al Arabiya reported that one of its correspondents, Ahmed Bagatu, was injured when he and his crew were attacked. Bagatu taken to a hospital, it said.

Reuters said placards carried by supporters of the government accused Arab media of broadcasting anti-Mubarak propaganda. One said: "Down with Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya."

The Associated Press said two of its correspondents had been "roughed up" by the crowd.

It also reported that a Belgian journalist had been beaten, detained and accused of spying by unidentified people in civilian clothes.

By Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent

BAMAKO, Mali – The Aga Khan, now 73 years old, is one of the most active philanthropists in the Islamic world, yet is remarkably unknown. 
 
He is the wealthy leader of a religious group with millions of followers, a Harvard graduate, the grandson of the former president the League of Nations and the stepson of Hollywood bombshell Rita Hayworth; yet when I ask most people if they know who he is, I am usually met with blank stares.
 
I first thought to interview the Aga Khan in the fall of 2009. I was in a kebab restaurant in Kabul along with Afghans, who, between bites, were looking up somewhat inattentively at a television. 

On the screen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was being sworn in for another term. Like most political events in Afghanistan, the inauguration was highly choreographed. The seating and order of the speakers are highly studied and, at least to those involved, very significant. There were lots of red carpets, big hats, turbans and gold chairs. And prominently seated close to Karzai, was the Aga Khan. I wondered why.

I discovered the Aga Khan and his foundations are among the biggest private donors and employers in all of Afghanistan. His work focuses on cultural development. The mandate is to give both pride and economic empowerment to poor communities by engaging them in the renovation of art, music and architecture. I’ve since seen his projects in Afghanistan, Egypt and Mali.
 
I met the Aga Khan in Mali’s capital Bamako. He was in Mali to open a park he had funded the renovation of on behalf of the city. Although he has been interviewed for American documentaries and European television stations, he told me this was the first interview he’s ever done with an American television network.  

---

 
Who is the Aga Khan?
The Aga Khan is a title. It belongs to the leader of a Shiite Muslim community. The world’s Muslims are generally divided into two basic groups: Sunnis and Shiites.

The reality is that Islam is much more diverse. Among Shiites, there are divisions, factions and theological differences. The Aga Khan is the leader of one branch of Shia Islam and his followers are called Ismailis.

Ismailis, who live in over 25 countries around the world mostly in central and southern Asia, believe that the Aga Khan is the legitimate heir to the Prophet Muhammad. There are an estimated 12-15 million Ismailis worldwide who revere the Aga Khan as their spiritual guide. They donate part of their annual incomes to the Aga Khan’s foundations, which he, as leader, re-distributes. Not surprisingly, the Aga Khan’s claim of Islamic heritage is contested by non-Ismailis.  
 
The Aga Khan today
The current Aga Khan assumed the role in 1957 when he was 20 years old. He took the title from his grandfather, the late Aga Khan, who was also one of the presidents of the League of Nations.  Most Americans, however, remember the current Aga Khan’s father, Prince Aly Khan who was married to Hollywood bombshell Rita Hayworth. 
 
Much of the Aga Khan’s time today is focused on his charity, the Aga Khan Development Network. During our interview we spoke about the charity, but I also asked his opinion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing tensions and mistrust of Muslims by some Americans.
 
Engel:  We are meeting in a park you have renovated in Mali. Why Mali?

Aga Khan: Mali is a rather unusual country in Africa because first of all it has an effective cultural hub in northern Mali, which is unusual in sub-Saharan Africa ... and we want to work with that. Secondly, it has a form of pluralism in the interpretation of its faith, which is very welcome in the Islamic world.  
 
Engel: I have seen many development projects around the world, particularly American projects. They tend not to focus on cultural development. They focus on economic development, sanitation and works projects. Why do you focus on culture?
 
Aga Khan: I discovered through work in the architectural field that the cultural dimension of the Islamic world was an extraordinarily powerful trampoline for development. There is a phenomenon that the populations of these cultural sites are often the poorest in the country for reasons which would take too long to explain. So acting in culture, you’re actually developing the quality of life for the poorest people who’ve been recently urbanized.  You’re re-establishing value to the culture, you’re giving old a new form, new forms of productivity and you’re creating a totally new economic, socioeconomic environment. In the past it was done with dams for irrigation and agriculture. It was done with roads to sell agricultural goods.  It’s being done with microcredit. All of that can link to the cultural programs also.  
 
Engel: There’s also a role of dignity attached to cultural projects. They don’t just make people richer, they give pride. Is that a goal?
 
Aga Khan: It's giving value back to the cultures. It's helping generations come together because acculturation is one of the problems we’re facing in the Islamic world. The fact that we’re able to rebuild pride in this culture – which is not a culture in the past, but must be one of today and tomorrow also – brings a totally different psychological attitude to the process of change.

Engel: What is the role of the Aga Khan today?
 
Aga Khan: Well, I’m a Shia imam. I am the only hereditary Shia imam within the Shia community of peoples. And an imam in Islam is responsible for the security of people who are referred to him. He is responsible for the interpretation of faith and he is responsible for their quality of life so those three areas are areas, which are my responsibility.  
 
Engel:  Mali isn’t part of your community. Other countries where you do projects are not part of your community. Why reach out?
 
Aga Khan: We [Ismailis] are obviously a minority in the Islamic world. I don’t think any minority can live divorced from the majority and our interest frankly is to see the countries of the Islamic world move forward in a peaceful and organized way to achieve a better quality of life, but without losing their values. I think that can be best achieved by a series of multiple inputs. Some touch value systems, some touch education, health care and economic sustainability, so that’s why the Aga Khan Development Network has tried to create capacity in all of these areas.
 
Engel: You have served as the Aga Khan for more than five decades now, do you have a mission? Do you have a goal that you want to achieve?
 
Aga Khan: I think that the nature of the office of the imam, whether it’s a Shia imam or a Sunni imam, is to have the capacity to achieve results. When my grandfather died in 1957, the Ismaili Imamate did not have the vehicles in the structured manner that it has today to act in these various fields internationally. Today it has that capacity.
 
Engel: I was surprised, and I think a lot of our viewers will be surprised, by the extent of your activities around the world.  Half a billion dollars given out in charity and development every year.  It’s a huge network.
 
Aga Khan: It is a very big network. It’s grown obviously over the years and it’s been driven by recognition of need as time has gone by. We have felt that working in Africa, working in Asia, there were needs that have come up that we did necessarily [have] in 1957.

I will give you an example.  If you look at the Islamic world, you will see that its geography is heavily concentrated in the worst seismic parts of our world. Well crisis response and anticipation of these crises wasn’t part of our thinking.  Now it would be very silly to ignore for another 50 years the fact that the Islamic world has places where there are earthquakes and people die.  
 
Engel: You live a very private life, you don’t do very many media interviews.  It’s a very different public persona than your father. Why have you chosen to stay out of the limelight?

Aga Khan: I have always taken the attitude that it’s better that the work should speak rather than the individual and I have wanted the projects to be meaningful to my community and the people around them.  I prefer to let the people who work with me do their work, hopefully effectively.
 
Engel: How would you describe the state of Islam? Do you think your projects help encourage a more moderate discourse and encourage elements who stand up to extremism?
 
Aga Khan: I think the Islamic world is suffering from a number of stresses. It’s suffering from stresses within the interpretation of the faith.  It’s suffering from stresses in modern statehood, governance. It’s suffering from economic, inherited political stresses, which are today seen as theological stresses, where as they weren’t born in theology. They were born in politics. I think it’s important to create an environment where these stresses don’t become so aggressive that they cause conflict.  
 
Engel: How do you see the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan affecting the Islamic world?  Do you see stability in that part of the world?
 
Aga Khan: I think it will take a long time. I think it’s very dangerous to generalize about these situations, but there are some characteristics that are common and one of them is acute poverty.  Northwest Pakistan, northern Waziristan, southern Waziristan, most of Afghanistan, these are areas of the world with horrible poverty. So I think the first thing is to try to replace that fear of poverty and the pain that goes with it by some sense of hope in the future, that things don’t have to be that way but they can change. 

Secondly, what is the process of change?  How do you bring stability?  I believe very strongly in civil society. What I’ve seen in the past 50 years is that civil society is the best guarantor of change. 
 
Engel: Do you think the U.S. military approach is going to be successful? Is it playing a positive or negative role?
 
Aga Khan: I think it can play a positive role, but it’s not a single solution. There’s no such thing as a single solution. I think there must be to be a process of reduction of conflict and its replacement by the process of development. It's much better that it be done by the police rather than by the military. These are things that have to happen, but they happen too slowly.
 
Engel: The American global war on terrorism is often seen as a war against Islam on the popular level.  Do you think the wars that have been launched by U.S. administrations over the last decade or so have done more harm than good?
 
Aga Khan: I certainly think the invasion of Iraq was a serious mistake. We had crisis situations before that. We had them in Kashmir. We had them in the Middle East. If you look at the origins of those crises, they were political not religious. At the moment, it’s the horrible conflicts which are dominating the image of the Islamic world and I can say without one iota of fear that is totally wrong, totally wrong. You had wars in the Christian world, you had wars in the Jewish world. But you don’t define them in theological terms anymore, except Northern Ireland.
 
Engel: You talked about the invasion of Iraq as being a big mistake. What about Afghanistan?
 
Aga Khan: Well I think the situation in Afghanistan was very, very uncomfortable indeed.  It was born of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and that’s where the whole thing started. Then, of course, it degraded because there were all sorts of external influences to try to push the Russians out of Afghanistan.  At the time, sadly people didn’t realize that there was such a fracturing of society in Afghanistan.
 
Engel: Right now there is tension, and you can feel it on the streets, in the United States, in Western Europe, in relations with Muslim communities. What can be done to improve that and why do you think that tension is there?  
 
Aga Khan: I’ve always referred to it as a conflict of ignorance and I still believe that’s the root of the problem. It’s very difficult. 

If you look at the history of education in the industrialized world, you go back to the 1960s, there was no presence of Islamic culture. It was amazing. The Muslim world didn’t exist. Why? Because your educational background was a Judeo Christian background. No problem with that, but it didn’t adjust to the new world dimension. It must adjust to that new world dimension and that’s what’s happening now.