Imtiaz Tyab

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Imtiaz Tyab
Correspondent | Canada
Biography
Imtiaz Tyab, based in Toronto, is Al Jazeera English's Canada Correspondent. Imtiaz joined AJE from BBC World television where he was a London-based reporter. Prior to that, he was a Washington, DC correspondent for BBC News and World Service Radio. Imtiaz has reported extensively from around the United Kingdom, as well as from continental Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and Haiti.

Latest posts by Imtiaz Tyab

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on September 15th, 2011

This is the second time I have covered widespread floods in Pakistan.

I spent a month here last year when more than 20 million people were affected by the worst flooding disaster in the country’s history.

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on August 3rd, 2011

The constant clanging coming from the four-arm swinging power-looms was deafening. I had only been inside the tiny silk cloth factory for 10 minutes but already had a pounding headache from all the noise.

And yet, produced out of that dark, dingy, space came some of the most beautiful cloth I have ever seen.

Karachi's Banaras town has long been a destination for shoppers looking to buy the country's finest silks.

Situated in Orangi - one of the city's poorest slums - the locally produced material has long provided an economic boon to an otherwise depressed area.

But not any more. Business is down by more than 50 per cent. Local traders say the city's chronic and often deadly violence is to blame.

At the factory, I met a young man named Naveed Ansari whose family has been in the silk business since before Partition.

He told me no one can remember business ever being this bad.

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on July 27th, 2011
[GALLO/GETTY]

When we met Khaleda Bibi, the heavily pregnant mother of one was brimming with excitement. 

It wasn’t because an international TV crew had come to film at her remote village in central Sindh province that excited her: it was the person who had travelled there with us.

With us was Tasnim Akhtar, a Karachi housewife who - for the past 32 years - has devoted much of her life to volunteering for the needy.

It had been a long while since the two women had last seen each other, and there were smiles and hugs all around as they caught up.

They had met only a year ago, at a make-shift relief camp for flood survivors. Tasnim would go there every day to hand out basics like food, water, soap and clothing, all of which she paid for out of her own pocket and with donations by friends.  

The women she met, however, soon started asking her for other necessities like medicine or cash. In some cases, they even begged her.

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on May 4th, 2011
Photo by AFP

For hours, the local Abbottabad police kept us a fair distance away from the house that Osama bin Laden was killed in.

Every time we tried to set up our camera to film the imposing three-storey white house from a distance, angry officers rushed over to stop us.

Then, in the early afternoon - on whose orders we'll never know - the police allowed the media to get close to the sprawling compound.

Correspondents and camera operators rushed to the tall green gates to start filming – jostling each other for the best position.

Behind them, a stream of neighbours that turned into a flood of curious onlookers; most more interested in the crowd of journalists than in the house the world's most wanted fugitive is believed to have lived for around five years.

During the height of the frenzy, a moment of macabre humour, when a bin Laden look-alike came to the area.

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on September 1st, 2010
Photo by AFP

One month - that’s how long floods have been devastating parts of Pakistan.  

The misery began in the north-west of the country with the onset of the annual monsoon rains. The seemingly endless torrential downpour led to the worst flooding in the nation’s history. 

After receding in the north-west, the floods moved southwards and enveloped large parts of Punjab, Baluchistan and finally Sindh province, where hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee from their homes only a day ago.

At this stage, an area the size of England has been affected.

Seventeen million people are directly or indirectly impacted by the waters and around 5 million have lost their homes. The numbers are sobering, but the toll of this disaster on young people is heartbreaking.  

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