This World

On his second day in office, President Obama pledged to close the Guantanamo Detention Centre within a year. Michael Portillo reports for This World on why it has proved impossible for him to keep his promise. Over the past eight months, Portillo's visited the prison camps, and travelled to Yemen, Bermuda and Washington to investigate what could be done with the 240 remaining prisoners - some of whom are thought to be too dangerous to release, but impossible to successfully convict. As a former Defence Secretary, Portillo has first-hand experience of the political conflict between security and civil liberties. He looks at how the President has got stuck between a rock and a hard place. What way forward can Portillo see for Obama?

It has been quite a year for America's first black president. Promising change and appealing for unity, Barack Obama won his way into two wars and the worst recession since the 1930s. But his freshman year soon became a bitter battle over cash, colour and capitalism. Across the USA, This World has followed the lives of ordinary Americans, among them a reformed gangster and the wife of a US airforce captain. They voted for Obama and had high hopes for his presidency; but how have their lives been changed in Obama's first year? Can the president deliver on the huge promise of his candidacy, or will their hopes be dashed? One year on, they give their verdict.

The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 was just the beginning, for those who survived. A massive earthquake caused a tidal wave that killed a quarter of a million people, but many millions more found their lives changed forever. This documentary tells the powerful story of how the survivors have tried to rebuild their lives. In Thailand, a mother fights property developers to protect the memory of her drowned daughter. While in Indonesia, villagers now live under strict religious law in the belief that the catastrophe was a judgement from God.

Violence is running out of control in Mexico as rival drug cartels battle over the smuggling routes to America. Mexico's president has declared war on the gangsters but the only result appears to be an escalation of the killings. Katya Adler journeys deep into the heart of a shocking conflict, uncovering the human stories behind the seemingly random and disturbing violence. She asks whether the continuing freedom of the world's most powerful drug runner, Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman, is evidence that the Government's war is toothless.

Reporter Lucy Ash travels to Chechnya to investigate the extraordinary practice of bride stealing. Young women are being kidnapped off the street and married to men they may never have met. Although officially disapproved of, this centuries-old tradition is flourishing. From the moment a young woman is snatched, to her wedding one week later, Lucy follows the twists and turns as two families struggle to negotiate a compromise. She’s also with the mullah whose job it is to arbitrate between the two families and prevent the incident spilling into bloodshed. After a week of tense negotiations, she attends the colourful wedding celebrations where it seems there are as many guns as guests. Chechnya’s President, Ramzan Kadyrov, is an ally of Moscow and governs the Republic with a firm hand. In an interview he explains he is promoting a particular Chechen interpretation of Islam. Lucy joins a state-sponsored patrol on the streets of Grozny. Its job is to persuade women to wear headscarves and dress appropriately. Lucy also meets human rights campaigners to learn how dangerous it can be to oppose the authorities. Lucy Ash also visits the new Islamic Medical Centre. Many thousand troubled and disturbed women have been sent there for treatment. Lucy witnesses a harrowing and violent exorcism performed on a woman in an effort to cure her unhappy marriage. What emerges is a picture of a country and its people struggling to balance the often contradictory forces of Russian Law, Islamic Sharia law and ancient Chechen tradition. Six weeks later Lucy makes a further trip, this time to Kazakhstan, to meet up again with the newly-weds to find out how they are adapting to married life and how the bride is getting on with a husband she barely knew on her wedding day.

The earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January caused death and destruction on a massive scale. Tens of thousands were killed instantly, thousands of others were buried under the rubble and a lucky few were dug out alive. Filmed over the six months after the disaster, This World follows four of the few who were rescued from a death beneath the rubble: a three-year-old child, a musician, a student and a family whose daughter was rescued after nine days. Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was ill-equipped to cope with a catastrophic earthquake. But as the months pass, the film shows that life for its survivors is hard, but not without moments of hope.

Since the Iraq War began, 17 US soldiers based at Fort Carson, Colorado, have been charged or convicted in 14 murders, manslaughters and attempted murders. Many of these crimes involved men who had served in the same battalion in Iraq, and three of them came from a single platoon. The Wounded Platoon tells the dark tale of the modern-day 'Band of Brothers', and how the war followed them home. It is a story of heroism, grief, combat, drugs, alcohol and brutal murder, and a shocking portrait of what multiple tours and post-traumatic stress are doing to a generation of American soldiers.

Ingrid Betancourt was the world's most famous hostage. On February 23rd 2002, Ingrid, a presidential candidate in Colombia's elections, was kidnapped by the left-wing FARC rebel group along with her assistant and friend Clara Rojas. She was held for over six years in the jungle - with only occasional news coming out including a shocking picture which showed her clearly on the verge of collapse, if not death, in 2007. This is the first documentary account of what happened in the jungle in her words and of those who were there with her: Clara Rojas, her Campaign manager and Marc Gonsalves, one of three Americans who were also held by FARC for many years. The film tells how Ingrid and Clara fell out, ending up virtual enemies with completely different strategies of survival. The film explores the dynamics of captivity, including remarkable interviews with both the FARC soldier who kidnapped Ingrid and Clara - along with their main camp commander, who actually presided over Clara's caesarian section in the middle of the jungle. The film ends with the most daring rescue mission since Entebbe. The Colombian Military sent in twelve unarmed men and women pretending to be aid workers and lured the guerrillas into believing that they were transferring them on a humanitarian mission.

The fastest-growing political movement in the US today is the so-called Tea Party - a right-wing grassroots revolt with hundreds of thousands of supporters and local branches all over the country. Now as the US prepares to vote in crucial mid-term elections, political journalist Andrew Neil is off on a whistle-stop tour of the country to find out what is behind it and why it is spreading like wildfire. The Tea Party wants to change America - but their first target is the Republican Party. Urged on by the likes of Fox News' most prominent host, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party darling Sarah Palin, they are trying to replace established Republican politicians with Tea Party candidates. But as Andrew Neil discovers, their real target is the man in the White House. They believe Obama is an out-and-out socialist and the Federal Government well on the way to what they see as tyranny. This extraordinary eruption of anger is certainly changing the face of America.

Documentary. Doctor Shershah Syed is a man with a mission - a famous surgeon from Karachi who has spent his life caring for vulnerable women in Pakistan. Now he's caught up in the greatest disaster to hit his country in living memory - the floods. Jane Corbin travels with Doctor Shershah through flood ravaged Sindh province as he performs life-saving operations and delivers medical aid to desperate people.