Today, President Obama addresses the nation to reveal a new plan for winning, and ending, the war in Afghanistan—many expect a substantial increase in U.S. troops deployed to the area.

Last week, FRONTLINE/World posted an iWitness interview with journalist Elizabeth Rubin, who was embedded with American soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, a remote area close to the Pakistan border, for two months in 2007. She returned to the valley nine months later to see how the situation had progressed. Her experiences shed some light on the realities American soldiers face on the ground there.

Watch the interview here:

>> Watch additional uncut scenes shot by Rubin in Afghanistan on FRONTLINE/World's iWitness website.

Elizabeth Rubin's reporting in Afghanistan was supported in part by CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund.

Sheikh Eifan Saddun al-Isawi poses with George W. Bush.

Shane Bauer, a CIR correspondent, writes for Mother Jones about how the Pentagon bought stability in Iraq by funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to the country's next generation of strongmen. Bauer writes an illuminating profile of Sheik Eifan Saddun al-Isawi, "the head of Fallujah's Sahwa, or Awakening, council, the Sunni militia hired by the United States in early 2007 to fight its enemies in Iraq." In "The Shiek Down," Bauer hangs out at Eifan's fortress, takes a ride in his black armored BMW, and observes first-hand the corruption that plagues Falluja and prevents the city from successful reconstruction.

Bauer writes:

Eifan is a beneficiary of what some American personnel call the "make-a-sheikh" program, a semiofficial, little discussed policy that since late 2006 has bankrolled Sunni sheikhs who are, in theory, committed to defending American interests in Iraq. The program was a major part of the Awakening, which the Pentagon has touted as a turning point in reducing violence and creating the conditions for an American withdrawal. It was also a reinstitution of a strategy started by Saddam Hussein, who picked out tribal leaders he could manipulate through patronage schemes. The US military didn't give the sheikhs straight-up bribes, which would have raised eyebrows in Washington. Instead, it handed out reconstruction contracts. Sometimes issued at three or four times market value, the contracts have been the grease in the wheels of the Awakening in Anbar—the almost entirely Sunni province in western Iraq where Fallujah is located.

... Five years and hundreds of millions of reconstruction dollars later, Fallujah remains a shell. The "city of mosques" still has minarets with gaping holes left by American rockets during the 2004 siege. Men wander the streets; the World Food Programme says 36 percent of Fallujans have no chance of employment. The city gets no more than eight hours of electricity a day. Sewage fills the streets; a sewer project is four years behind schedule and has cost $98 million, more than three times its original budget. Building after building is nothing but broken-down cement frames. Some have been repurposed by the Iraqi army as watchtowers, others by women drying their laundry. Bullet holes pockmark everything.

I walk down the city's main thoroughfare guided by a police officer. As I chat with a man about the collapsed building beside his shop, my notebook out, a group of men approach, eager to air their grievances. "When any country in the world gets money for reconstruction, it shows. But not here," says a burly man who calls himself Nabil. "The contractors just slap something together and put the money in their pockets," he says, slipping invisible bills into an imaginary shirt pocket. "Reconstruction contracts are deals between the Americans and their collaborators. I don't want to name names, but people who didn't have cigarettes in their pockets now have piles of money and brand-new, bulletproof cars."

Shane Bauer is a journalist and photographer based in the Middle East. This story was funded by The Dick Goldensohn Fund from the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, and New American Media. Read his blogs from Iraq on The Muckraker.

On PRI's The World, anchor Katy Clark interviews CIR correspondent Anna Badkhen about her reporting on increasing violence against Iraqi women. This spring, Badkhen and photojournalist Mimi Chakarova traveled to Baghdad to report on underground shelters where war widows and women who have been raped live in hiding, estranged from their families. Badkhen recently published an article, "Baghdad Underground," for Ms. Magazine's Winter 2009 issue.

+ Listen to the interview online.

+ Watch the FRONTLINE/World video that resulted from their reporting trip: "Iraq: Living in Hiding."

+ Watch CIR's Skype interview with Badkhen and Chakarova, recorded from their hotel room in Baghdad, part of CIR's "The Investigators" web series:

Support for Badkhen's reporting was provided in part by CIR's .

Correspondent Elizabeth Rubin spent the fall of 2007 with Battle Company of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade in northeastern Afghanistan. The Americans and the Taliban have been locked in a dead heat in the Korengal Valley for more than three years. In 2007, Rubin went on a six-day mission with a platoon into the insurgents' mountain hideouts that resulted in the death of three soldiers. Rubin returned to Battle Company and the Korengal in the summer of 2008. Both times, she took a video camera.

+ Watch the videos on FRONTLINE's website.

Elizabeth Rubin's reporting was supported in part by CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund for International Investigative Reporting.

For nearly half a century the U.S. government has protected American factory workers from occupational illness and injury, but a Salt Lake Tribune investigation shows such protections seldom extend to Chinese workers who now make most U.S. goods. In a four part series, reporter Loretta Tofani reveals how Chinese workers are dying slow, difficult deaths caused by the toxic chemicals they use to make products in virtually every industry for export to the U.S. and the world. Tofani visited 25 factories in China. She interviewed Chinese workers in hospitals, homes, and outside of their factories, observing first hand how Chinese workers routinely get fatal diseases or lose limbs making products for U.S. consumers. She obtained their medical records and talked to attorneys, business leaders, government officials, and labor activists. She examined thousands of import documents to reveal direct ties between U.S. companies, unsafe factories, and dying or maimed workers. Her investigation reveals that Chinese workers are paying the true price of cheap U.S. goods from China.

Tofani's story was partially funded by CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund.

>> Read "American imports, Chinese deaths" in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Cuban migrants who set foot on American soil get to stay as refugees. But those caught at sea are sent back. So instead of taking a boat to Florida, many Cubans are taking the long route -- by foot through Mexico. Lygia Navarro reports for Marketplace.

This report was partially funded by a grant from CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund.