Crossing Continents

In 2000, President Robert Mugabe introduced "fast-track land reform" to Zimbabwe in a wave of often violent takeovers of mainly white-owned farms.

Led by veterans of the second Chimurenga - the Zimbabwe War of Liberation of the 1960s and 1970s - the takeover was seen internationally as a disaster. It was widely reported that cronyism and corruption meant only the country's politically-connected elite were benefiting from the land reform programme, and in the process were leading Zimbabwe's lucrative agricultural export industry into freefall. But what is the situation a decade on?

Martin Plaut travels across Zimbabwe to investigate new research which suggests that farm production levels are recovering. He meets some of Zimbabwe's new black farmers - some of whom took part in the land seizures - who reveal how land reform has transformed their lives.

He also examines the fortunes of Zimbabwe's remaining white farmers and the black farm workers they employed and asks if country's wider economy has recovered from the massive disruption caused by land reform.

Reporter: Martin Plaut

The main focus of the violence in the North Caucasus these days is in Dagestan, Chechnya's neighbour. Shoot-outs between police and Islamist militants occur almost daily, and suicide bombings and assassinations have become common. In response, the authorities use what many see as excessive force and the violence spirals still further. In the past two years suicide bombings in the Moscow metro and a Moscow airport have been traced to the region. In Dagestan it's a war that has touched almost every community and family, and one where differences between the opposing sides are apparently irreconcilable. For the authorities, Dagestan is part of Russia and subject to its secular laws; for the militants the region should be a sharia state independent of Moscow.

After ten years trying to combat the militants and their appeal, Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov has hit on a new idea - football. Sports facilities and pitches are being built across this impoverished and deeply conservative Muslim republic, encouraging young boys and men to play on the pitch rather than join the militants in the forest, and girls to watch them instead of withdrawing behind the veil. Dagestan's top club Anzhi Makhachkala has been bought up by the pro-Kremlin Dagestani billionaire and now he is buying world-class footballers, including Samuel Eto'o, currently the highest-paid player on the planet.

Lucy Ash asks whether this is just bread and circuses for the masses or whether it is making a real difference in this restive Russian republic. Mr Kerimov is bankrolling many other projects from mosque building to job creation, from a glass factory to a glistening vision of an entirely new city. The reclusive billionaire's representative in Dagestan says he is trying to find an economic solution to one of the poorest and most troubled regions in Russia. The government is also trying a new tactic; it has recently set up a commission to persuade young fighters to lay down their arms and return to a peaceful civilian life. Lucy watches an anti-terrorism policeman lecturing university students in the capital, Makhachkala, on the dangers of radical Islam.But with entrenched corruption, heavy-handed policing and a blatant disregard for law, the Islamic underground shows little sign of retreat. More alarmingly, it looks as if the insurgency is spreading from the north to the traditionally peaceful and secular south of the republic. Lucy visits the village of Sovetskoye where in May this year police beat up dozens of young Salafists. A few months later the head teacher was murdered, allegedly because he'd banned the hijab in class. Can a massive injection of cash really neuter deep-seated pressures for change?

Rupa Jha investigates how local-level campaigners against corruption in India face threats and violence - despite promises that the government will stamp out graft. She tells the stories of two whistleblowers in two different states who faced ferocious intimidation after they tried to challenge powerful individuals on the take.

Mukul Devichand goes on the road with young children travelling alone on a journey of desperation, danger and hope - south from Zimbabwe and across the border to South Africa.

David Shukman reports on the thousands who have become ill from the toxic dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept 11th. The buildings released a cocktail of deadly carcinogens including, asbestos, lead, mercury and PCBs.

Frontline responders such as fire-fighters, police and emergency medical workers breathed in the contamination for several weeks as they toiled at Ground Zero. The fires burned for a hundred days and many of the emergency workers toiled without respirators or proper protection amid the dust and debris.

Now officials say more than 18,000 people have received medical treatment in the last 12 months for World Trade Center related conditions - many of them serious. The head of the federal programme overseeing victims compensation says he expects more people to die because of their exposure.

Nearly three thousand people perished on the day, but the suffering resulting from the attack is far from over.

On the 18th of February 2011 a Palestinian engineer by the name of Dirar Abu Sisi boarded a train in eastern Ukraine. He was travelling to Kiev, where he hoped to apply for Ukrainian citizenship. But when the train arrived at its destination the following morning, Mr Abu Sisi was no longer on board. He had vanished.

For more than a week, nothing was heard from Mr Abu Sisi, a manager at Gaza's main power plant. Then his wife got a phone call: her husband was in an Israeli jail. Now he is awaiting trial, accused of being the brains behind Hamas' rocket programme.

Only twice in the country's history has Israel abducted someone on foreign soil to bring them back to face trial at home. Adolf Eichmann, one of the principal organizers of the Holocaust, was kidnapped in Argentina in 1960, and subsequently tried and executed. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was drugged and smuggled out of Italy after revealing the existence of Israel's nuclear programme.

So who is Dirar Abu Sisi? Did he really study rocket science at a Ukrainian military academy, as the Israeli indictment claims? Is he a senior Hamas operative? Or is he an innocent victim of mistaken identity? What role if any did the Ukrainian authorities play in his disappearance from that train?

In this edition of Crossing Continents, Gabriel Gatehouse unravels the mystery of Dirar Abu Sisi, tracking his journey across Ukraine and beyond, to Israel and Gaza. It's a story that involves the secret services of at least two nations, and goes to the very heart of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

In December, Ghana turned on the taps and began pumping its first commercial oil. Production will top 100,000 barrels a day this year -- enough the government believes to more than double the country's economic growth. At the centre of this oil rush is the once sleepy city of Takoradi. Already things are starting to change here: new businesses setting up to service the offshore oil industry, an increase in population, and, spiralling expectations. So can Ghana - one of the most stable countries in Africa - escape the curse of violence and corruption that has afflicted other big oil producers on the continent? Rob Walker visits Takoradi to find out, and he'll be returning to observe the transformation of Africa's newest oil city over the coming years.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans leave home and travel north overland, hoping to make a new life in the United States.

This has always been a difficult journey. Now it is perilous. Mexican drug cartels have seen a business opportunity in the migrants: they are being systematically kidnapped en route, and held to ransom. Often they have been killed, and Mexico is currently investigating a number of mass graves.

With the Mexican government's hardline military campaign against the cartels, these criminal organisations are moving south. The northern Guatemalan department of Peten - an area through which many migrants cross to Mexico - is vulnerable. On May, 27 farmworkers were killed at a remote farm in Peten. This was apparently revenge for a drug debt, and the killers are believed to be Zetas - the bloodiest Mexican cartel. The Zetas are battling other organised crime groups to take control of Peten. There's a fear that if they succeed, not only will they terrorise the local population, but they will begin to kidnap, extort and murder some of the thousands of migrants moving through - as they do routinely in Mexico.

Crossing Continents follows part of the migrants' route - from Peten in Guatemala, to the southern Mexican town of Tenosique. Linda Pressly meets two Hondurans who were lucky to escape with their lives after an encounter with the Zetas. She hears from a Franciscan monk dedicated to protecting migrants. But the story of migration is complex. Not only do the cartels abuse the migrants, they also recruit them. And alongside the hopeful, innocent travellers travelling north, come criminals. In Tenosique, she speaks to a local businessman whose son was kidnapped and killed.

Tim Judah travels to Senegal to report on the Mourides, an increasingly powerful Senegalese Muslim movement that stresses the importance of hard work

Many of the African street sellers in cities like Paris or Rome, and on Mediterranean beaches, are in fact Mourides. Far from being chancers who washed up on Europe's shores and now barely scrape a living from selling fake designer handbags or miniature Eiffel towers, they are part of a very organised and supportive brotherhood that now wields great economic and political power in Senegal.

Thanks to their strong work ethic and the unparalleled networking opportunities the brotherhood provides, Mourides now dominate many sectors of the economy.

They are said to constitute up to 40% of Senegalese Muslims (who make up over 90% of the population.) So not surprisingly, senior politicians, if they are not Mourides anyway, are courting the Mouride vote by going on pilgrimage to the Mouride holy city, Touba, several hours' drive east of the capital. The president of Senegal is a Mouride, as is the man who is probably the most famous Senegalese of all: singer Youssou N'Dour, who tells Tim why his Mouridism matters to him, and why it could be a way forward for Africa.

So who are the Mourides? What do they believe and what matters to them? Tim travels to Dakar and the fabled holy city of Touba to find out.

Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Lucy Williamson reports from Seoul on the dangerous trade of the people brokers, smuggling desperate people out of North Korea to the safety of the South. She investigates the way the South Korean government tries to integrate refugees from the North into their own modern, open society - and the challenges this creates for people who have only known poverty and extreme political repression.