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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; The Zika Virus and the Next Pandemic; Economic Innovation in France; Five Years Since the Arab Spring; Honor Killings Highlighted in Film "A Girl in the River". Aired 10-11a ET

Aired January 31, 2016 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00] FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I am Fareed Zakaria.

We have a terrific show for you today including the 44-year-old outdoor, adventurer and former school teacher who is now the leader of America's largest trading partner. I'll introduce you to Canada's new very charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: We want to be positive players in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Also the ever spreading Zika virus caused the White House to call a meeting in the situation room. And the World Health Organization to convene an emergency committee. We'll tell you what you need to know.

And you know what life is like in France -- 35-hour workweek, six weeks of vacation, great wine and food. Not quite. The country's economy minister busts some myths about La Belle France.

Then five years ago, Cairo's Tahrir Square was packed with protesters trying to topple a dictator. This week it was nearly empty but for pro-government protesters. What happened to Egypt and the Arab spring? I have a Harvard scholar and a great journalist to tell us where it all goes.

And honor kills. One of the most barbaric brands of murder. A woman shot by her own family because she loved the wrong person. I'll talk to an Oscar winning filmmaker who has made a stunning about one such horrific case.

But first here's my take. To understand why the current conservative crack up is so confounds the Republican establishment, you have to recognize that the party is facing two separate revolts that are taking place simultaneously. One led by Ted Cruz, the other by Donald Trump.

The first one is well-described by E.J. Dionne in his important new book, "Why the Right Went Wrong." For six decades he explains conservatives have promised their voters that were going to roll back big government. In the 1950s and early '60s they ran against the new deal, Social Security. Then they railed against the great society, Medicare, today it is Obamacare. But they never actually did anything about these programs.

The simple reason for this of course is that while Americans might oppose it in theory, in practice they like the welfare state. The bulk of the government spending is on the middle class, not the poor. But whatever the reality, Republicans kept promising something to their base and never delivered on it.

This has led to what Dionne calls the great betrayal. Party activists are enraged that they have been hoodwinked, and they view the Washington establishment as a bunch of corrupt compromisers. They want someone who will finally deliver on the promise of repeal and rollback.

Enter Ted Cruz. How did a first-term senator despised within his party both in Washington and Texas get so far so fast? By promising to take on those party elites and finally throttle big government. Cruz declares that he will appeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with a 10 percent flat tax. Oh, he'll also enact a constitutional amendment to balance the budget which would mean hundreds of billions of dollars of spending cuts.

Trump supporters on the other hand are old fashion economic liberals. In a powerful analysis, drawing on the most recent and (INAUDIBLE) survey data from the Rand Corporation, Michael Tesler shows that the Trump voter is very different from the Cruz voter.

Tesler writes, quote, "Cruz outperforms Trump by about 15 percentage points among the most economically conservative Republicans, but Cruz loses to Trump by over 30 points among the quarter of Republicans who hold progressive positions on health care, taxes, the minimum wage and unions."

Trump is well aware of this fact, which explains why he has said repeatedly he won't touch Social Security and Medicare, he denounces high CEO salaries, promises to build infrastructure and is against free-trade deals.

Trump's voters reflect an entirely different revolt. Ever since the 1960s, a part of America's white middle and working classes has felt uncomfortable with the changes afoot in the country. They were uneasy with the social revolutions of the 1960s, dismayed by black protests and urban violence, and enraged by the increasing tide of Hispanic immigrants. In recent years, they have expressed hostility toward Muslims.

[10:05:08] It is this group of Americans, many of them registered Democrats and independents, who make up the core of support for Trump. In his analysis, Tesler shows that, statistically, quote, "Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African-Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups," end quote. Now could this twin revolts have been prevented? Perhaps, if the

Republican Party had been honest with its voters decades ago and explained that the welfare state was here to stay, that free markets need government regulation and that the empowerment of minorities and women was inevitable and beneficial.

Its role was to manage these changes it should have argued so that they develop organically and not excessive and preserve America's enduring values. But that is the role for a party that is genuinely conservative, rather than radical.

For more go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

Every year at Davos there's a country that stands out, attracting attention and admiration. This year it was not so much a nation, but a person.

Justin Trudeau, the new 44-year-old prime minister of Canada, was the star of the World Economic Forum. Hollywood actors and CEOs took selfies with him. Women seemed particularly impressed perhaps because he has appointed a cabinet that is 50 percent female.

Trudeau is an abashed liberal with plans to legalize pot, raise taxes on the wealthy and take climate change seriously. In doing this he continues the legacy of his father, Pierre Trudeau, who was perhaps Canada's most famous prime minister.

Davos was his debut on the world stage and my interview was his first with a non-Canadian broadcaster. Listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Mr. Prime Minister, you campaigned on the idea that you were going to do deficit spending to build infrastructure, that you were going to reverse Canada's denial on climate change issue and embrace an active climate change policy despite the fact that Canada is a major oil producer, a new inclusion policy for aboriginals in Canada, tolerance even in the face of terrorism. There's this remarkable moment I remember in the campaign when there was talk about -- Prime Minister Harper said one should strip Canadians who are affiliated with ISIS of their citizenship. And you said no, you disagreed with that because you didn't think the government should have the power to determine who is a Canadian and not in that fashion.

So I guess my question is, how on the earth did you get elected?

TRUDEAU: I spent the past few years as a politician having honest open conversations with Canadians in which I listened an awful lot and from a young age I had the opportunity while my father was prime minister to travel across the country and meet with people and listen to people and understand the values of positivity, the optimism that underscores Canadians' world view.

So in this election, at a time where so much has been made about the power of attacks in politics, of strategic division, of negativity as a powerful motivator to get people out to vote, we decided that by presenting a positive vision, not only if it worked out would we be able to get elected, but we would then have to kind of strong and inclusive mandate to provide a positive and good government for the Canadians.

So our focus on this was very much, let's bring forward who Canadians are and want to be instead of focusing on what we're scared of. And I think that has served us in good set.

ZAKARIA: Do you worry that if there are a few more terror attacks like the one in Paris, of course like the one that took place in Canada itself, it would be difficult to maintain your policy of tolerance and inclusion and, you know, the welcoming of refugees? You've already slowed that down slightly.

TRUDEAU: I think -- I think people are open to not choosing to live in constant fear. There's -- there are terrible things in the world, terrible people who want to attack free and open societies.

[10:10:05] And we have to make a choice about how much we're going to close and limit and crack down within our societies in order to protect it, because if you do that too much you lose part of the free and open nature of society. And I have a tremendous level of confidence in ordinary people who go through their lives, don't think a lot about politics, don't think a lot about terrorism. I think a lot about their families, about their job, about their future, and about their community, and I want to see things work in the right way.

And yes, one of the primary responsibilities of any government is to keep its citizen safe. But one of the other primary responsibilities is keep us free and true to our values. And getting that balance right in a responsible way as opposed to way that raises fears and anxieties is I think what people are looking for.

ZAKARIA: When you look at the Western world today, it seems as though the problems in Europe, the United States is facing some new challenges -- I'm talking economically now. Do you worry that we are in for another global recession?

TRUDEAU: I can't help but be tremendously optimistic. You know, conversations like I've had here, like I've had with business leaders across the country over the past month, conversations I've had with Canadians, people are very optimistic about the challenges that are coming and our capacity to build on them, to look at innovation, at the disruptions that's happening right now to many old models as an opportunity to create great advances.

Yes, there are difficult times and, you know, there are many people around the world who are facing real challenges, but I have tremendous confidence in our capacity as governments, as private sectors, as citizens to solve these challenges.

ZAKARIA: Is President Obama a model?

TRUDEAU: I think President Obama certainly showed that a progressive, intellectual smart world view can provide tremendous leadership. Obviously there are challengers in each country in getting that world view into policy, but I have been impressed with how he has reached out and drawn together a very powering, cohesive vision for the future that will have long impacts into the future in the United States.

ZAKARIA: You have had an extraordinary situation in which you are now in the office that you probably remember from the time you were 4, 5, 6 years old when your father was prime minister. But you were not groomed to be prime minister, you went off and did all kinds of things including being a snowboarding instructor.

What part of it has been -- you know, what part of it has brought back memories the most now that you're in this job?

TRUDEAU: Just the contact with Canadians. And that's something all of my life, whether it was a school teacher or yes, a brief stint as a snowboard instructor, and can I say Davos is lovely but you've got to come to Whistler, and there's no time difference for Americans to come up to Whistler. The fact is, meeting Canadians and connecting with them on the values basis, on a positive, hopeful outlook, trusting Canadians and focusing on getting people to step up.

I mean, my father always challenged us as his kids but he challenged Canadians as well to be better than we thought we were. And I find that very much the way he raised me to be as a person and now as a prime minister.

ZAKARIA: But he, your father, also always saw himself as having a role and a message larger than Canada. Do you believe you have a progressive voice that you want to spread beyond Canada?

TRUDEAU: I think Canada -- yes, I'm going to be typically Canada and certainly say that it's not my place to tell anyone what they should be doing or shouldn't do. But I think Canada has a model that works fairly well at a time where people are looking for how to create pluralistic, successful opportunities in which there's tremendous opportunity for everyone to succeed. We're working very, very hard on continuing that . We want to be positive players in the world.

And I think it's certainly nothing we can impose on everyone but if we can showcase the solutions around harmonious diverse communities are there to be had and there to be built then it's easier to think positively towards each other and be open and respectful than it is to be angry and mean. I think that's a important lesson to share with the world and I'm glad to be sharing it.

[10:15:11] ZAKARIA: Mr. Prime Minister, pleasure to have you on.

TRUDEAU: Real pleasure, Fareed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, everything you need to know about the Zika virus and the scariest part of this pandemic. It tells us how unprepared we are for the next one.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ZAKARIA: The Zika virus is spreading explosively says the World Health Organization. It is a pandemic in progress says America's top infectious disease doctor.

[10:20:06] This once obscure virus is now found in a wide swath of the Americas well over 20 countries or territories in all according to the CDC. It is believed that for most people the virus is a minor medical hiccup but the CDC has warned pregnant women not to travel to the danger zone. Why? Because there is an association doctors are still investigating between Zika and a sometimes deadly birth disorder called microcephaly, where babies are born with abnormally small heads.

Joining me now to help us understand the big picture is Sonia Shah, author and investigative reporter. Her next book is called "Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond." It comes out next month.

Pleasure to have you on, Sonia.

SONIA SHAH, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: Thanks for having me.

ZAKARIA: So can this spread to the United States?

SHAH: Yes, and it probably will. We've already had other viruses that are carried by the same mosquitoes that are present in the United States. So it's prettily likely that it will take hold in the U.S. at some point.

ZAKARIA: But when you look at things like dengue and other mosquito borne illnesses, they don't spread like wildfire in the U.S. the way they do in South America, why?

SHAH: Well, the places where -- Americans don't live in as crowded cities as in, say, northern Brazil. That's one part of it. So in the places where we have these vectors, these mosquitoes that carry the diseases, people don't live that closely together, so we have fewer people in those places for one thing. But it's also the way that we live. You know, we have electricity so we have air conditioning, so we go inside, we have screens on our doors and on our windows and we're protected from mosquito bites. So in all these ways where our lifestyles are such that we don't get as exposed to mosquito bites as people like, say, poor people in a Brazilian slum might be.

ZAKARIA: But sometimes strange things cause these diseases to spread. You point out that the houses crisis in Florida actually help dengue spread. Explain why.

SHAH: During the foreclosure crisis we had a lot of abandoned homes. And because that's Florida, that meant a lot of empty swimming pools and gardens, and when the rains came they filled up with standing water, and they became giant mosquito hatchery. So essentially no one was home to notice and no one was home to let in the mosquito inspectors and then of course a year later we had the first epidemic of dengue in Florida and 5 percent of the population of Key West was found to have been exposed. ZAKARIA: El Salvador has told its people, its women, not to get

pregnant for the next two years. Many other South American countries have issued similar kinds of warnings, though not quite as extreme. Is this an overreaction?

SHAH: At this point, I don't know that it is. I mean, we don't know enough about the connection between Zika virus and this horrible birth defect. And the other problem is we can't really surveil for it very well because you can't really tell if you have it until it's kind of too late to do the best test. Right? so you have -- you can see if you have it within the first five days of infection, but you don't have symptoms then so you're going to be unlikely to go out and see if you have it anyway and do the blood test.

So we don't have a good way to track this disease and then of course we don't have any treatments for it or any prevent -- you know, any vaccine for it. So it's really going to be nine months later when you have the baby that you'd realize that I had -- you know, that this thing had happened to you. So at this point not getting pregnant, you know, it's really -- it's an incredible public health warning. I haven't heard of anything like that before.

And we think of pandemics as causing death rates to go up. But in this case, this could be a pandemic that actually has sort of an opposite effect which is, you know, birth rates might fall.

ZAKARIA: You know, so this is all happening in part because of globalization, trade, travel, people moving around. And you see I think you point out there are 300 brand new infections in the last 50 years. What's the solution? Because we -- we're not going to stop, we're not going to wind back that clock and not travel, and you know, goods are going to be moving from place to place. What should we be doing?

SHAH: Well, we need to do a lot better surveillance for one thing. Now we can't know which pathogen is going to cause the next sort of big epidemic. But we do know where these things -- are more likely to happen because we know how it happens. So we know that in places where there's rapid urbanization and a lot of slums, intensive livestock production, a lot of air con connections, all of these different ways in which these pathogens can emerge, we know that's how it happens.

So we can look at a map and we can see, well, where are the hot spots where this is most likely to occur and we can do intense surveillance in those places. And people are already starting to do that in sort of ad hoc way. But I think that's something we really are going to need to step up in the future.

ZAKARIA: And do we need to in countries like the United States, developed countries that would be the recipients here have a different kind of public health investment and response?

[10:25:04] SHAH: I think so. I mean, right now we usually have a kind of bio medical response to these disease outbreaks and that is to kind of isolate the cause and, you know, the mosquito in this case, or the virus and kind of surgically target it with the chemicals and drugs, but what we're seeing with a lot of these new diseases is that they're moving from wildlife into human populations or livestock into human populations. They're being driven forward by social and political factors, large scale diffused environmental factors, so we really need sort of a collaborative approach. You know, we need veterinarians, wildlife biologists, social scientists, political scientists, as well as our bio medical experts to really come together to start a much more collaborative approach to solving these health crises.

ZAKARIA: And the stakes are very high.

Sonia Shah, thank you so much.

SHAH: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, we all know the French have incredible wine and great cheese. But what about their tech start-ups? Really? Find out how this bastion of socialism and leisure might be becoming the Silicon Valley of Europe.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:03] ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. When you think of France, you probably think of fine wine, exquisite cuisine, great works of art, but not of an economic powerhouse. It's that quintessential example of European-style socialism, known for leisure instead of long hours, 35-hour work weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, and crippling labor unrest every now and then.

But a week ago I met someone at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, who painted a much different picture of "les Gaulois," the country's economics minister, Emmanuel Macron.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRENCH ECONOMIC MINISTER EMMANUEL MACRON: France is the next big thing, because it's all about innovation.

ZAKARIA: Macron points to some surprising facts about France's economy.

(off camera): Take labor productivity. That's the measure of how much the average worker can produce in an hour. France has one of the highest levels of the European Union, Macron points out. And that 35- hour work week?

MACRON: Thirty-five hours a week is not a reality because, on average, people work 37 to 38 hours. It turns out that the French actually work more hours, on average,

than the Germans, although still much less than the Americans, according to the OECD.

ZAKARIA: And what about unions? It sometimes seems from across the pond that French workers are always striking. Well, unions in France are powerful, but they don't actually have many members. Less than 8 percent of French workers are unionized, according to the OECD's latest tally -- far less than the United Kingdom and actually less even than the United States.

(on camera): Perhaps the biggest surprise about France is that it turns out to be an entrepreneurial nation that is becoming a worldwide hub for the technology industry.

MACRON: We are number one in start-ups creation in continental Europe. Last year we created 1,500 start-ups.

ZAKARIA (off camera): At the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this year, which is one of the marquee events of the tech industry, nearly one-third of the start-ups were French, according to Fortune. Paris plans to host what is hoped to become the world's largest start- up incubator, housing 1,000 start-ups.

MACRON: You have a new generation of entrepreneur, because "entrepreneur" is a French word; it's not an American one.

ZAKARIA (on camera): "Entrepreneur" is a French word, but "dirigiste" is also a French word, which is state control of the economy, and France has a long tradition of the state being deeply involved in the economy.

MACRON: You're right that sometimes you have overinterference and overintervention from governments, and -- and -- I mean (inaudible) -- that's something we have to streamline.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Macron is trying to push through measures to spur France's anemic growth rates and curb its high unemployment, which is around twice the level of Germany and the United Kingdom. For all of us who love France, let's hope he succeeds.

Next on "GPS," believe it or not, it has been five years since the Arab Spring. During those early heady days of the revolution, dictators were deposed in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia. Mass protests sprung up all over the Arab world. But what does the region have to show for it today? Not much. We'll explore when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(PROTESTERS CHANTING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Five years ago, the world marveled at the brave protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo, fighting back against a repressive dictator, yearning for freedom. Well, they got rid of that dictator, but many observers say the current regime, that of President Sisi, is just as repressive as the Mubarak regime that was deposed. Some say it's worse. The results of much of the rest of the Arab Spring are similarly bleak. Libya is in chaos and Yemen is in civil war. The only other nation to overthrow its rulers back then, Tunisia, is the one relative bright spot.

What went wrong?

Joining me from Harvard University is the scholar Tarek Masoud, who is an associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government there. He is an author of "The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform.

And in London is Leila Fadel, NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo. She covered the Arab Spring for The Washington Post.

Leila, let me start with you. Looking at it on the ground in Cairo, isn't it fair to say that General Sisi's regime is more repressive along many dimensions than the Mubarak regime that was deposed?

LEILA FADEL, NPR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think that's very fair to say. Five years on, just before this anniversary, we were seeing mass arrests, people being arrested for starting Facebook admin groups, people's homes being raided near Tahrir Square so that police could check their Facebook, see if they were organizing protests. There are laws now that basically criminalize any type of protest, five years on. And we're seeing the faces that really led Egypt's revolution in 2011 -- all those faces are in jail.

ZAKARIA: Tarek, the regime will say that they have to do this because there's a serious threat from what they regard as terrorist organizations. They regard the Muslim Brotherhood as the nice face of a much more virulent Islamic jihadi terrorist movement.

Is there much evidence for that? How would you describe what they're doing?

TAREK MASOUD, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIV. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOV'T: I think, certainly, that the government thinks that it is confronting a terrorist threat. And, look, they really are. If you look at what's happening in the Sinai, which is this peninsula -- peninsular province in the northeast of the country, there is a great deal of unrest in the Sinai. There is a terrorist organization that claims allegiance to ISIS. It's called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. And this organization has actually been doing things, challenging the authority of the Egyptian state even before Mohamed Morsi was overthrown.

So, look, one thing we know about revolutionary upheavals of the kind that Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Libya experience is that it's often accompanied by a diminution of state authority and an explosion of violence and instability.

And it's clear that the Egyptian military saw this, which even -- you know, it was existing during Morsi's time. And they saw this and they felt that the Egyptian state was on the verge of collapse. And so a lot of their repressive actions today need to be understood in that light, that they are basically seeing themselves as shoring up the Egyptian state against this season of instability which has claimed so many other Arab polities, most recently, of course, and most tragically, Syria.

ZAKARIA: Leila, when you talk to people who were out in Tahrir Square, those millions of people, suddenly hundreds of thousands, that we saw, and when you -- when you -- you know, when we would see the up-close interviews, these were often young, idealistic, democratically-minded people -- where have they gone?

What do they think of what has happened to Egypt?

MASOUD: Well, that was a very different time. And at that time, we saw a cross-section of society. I remember, when Mubarak stepped down, speaking to a 60-year-old professor who wept in the square, saying that finally he had a voice.

Today this is a very divided society. People are afraid of becoming Syria, of becoming Yemen. They don't want blood on the streets in Cairo. And so you have a lot of people who say, "Listen, I'd rather take some stability than full freedoms; I want somebody to take control, to take the reins here."

And the state has done a very good job of -- of scaring people. There are fears about the Sinai, as Tarek Masoud said. There are fears about terrorism, about civil war. But, also, there have been what some have described as really crimes on behalf of the state, state violence like we saw two years ago, where nearly 1,000 people were killed in the middle of Cairo to break up a sit-in.

And it's a time where all opponents, all critics of the governments seem to be being jailed. And many of the people we spoke to back then who stayed on this path of reform and change that they wanted, even when they opposed the Brotherhood as well as, now, the military -- a lot of those leaders, so to speak, those young leaders, are in jail.

ZAKARIA: Tarek?

MASOUD: This question that you asked Leila about, sort of, where the revolutions are and where the revolutionaries are, it's really difficult for me to think about Egypt's revolution without alternatively feeling either really stupid or really callous.

Because, you know, I remember back -- being on your show in January of 2011 and totally believing with every cell in my body that Egypt could and would move from Mubarak to a liberal democracy. And now, of course, that that dream has really come apart, we can come up with multiple reasons why the dream was never a rational one to begin with. And everything that I was taught in graduate school should have caused me to not be optimistic about the chances of democracy.

So I feel really, sometimes, stupid when I think about how optimistic I was. But then, when you think that, look, democracy could never have succeeded and really all they can hope for in those places is some kind of stability, you feel really callous and you feel really -- you feel really brutal, because, as Leila pointed out, many of these young people who were at the forefront of trying to agitate for a more hopeful Egypt, or more hopeful countries throughout the region, are now behind bars. And it is a very sad fact of life that today everybody is excluded, not just Islamists but liberals and secularist -- they're also excluded from governance. And you have to ask yourself not just if Islamists are going to be

radicalized but if this entire population is going to be alienated and atomized, and what kind of politics is going to result from that? It can't be pretty.

ZAKARIA: Tarek, Leila, pleasure to have you on.

Next up, an assassination attempt: A woman shot in the face by her father, for what? For falling in love. We'll bring you that story and the struggle against honor killings when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Four weeks from tonight the world will have a new best picture Oscar winner, best actor and all the rest. There are a lot of movies I liked this year, but one of my favorite films of 2015 will be up for a documentary short award, and I want to tell you about it.

It's called "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness," and it delves into a despicable practice, honor killings. That is what it is called in a handful of societies, most of them Muslim, when a girl or woman is killed because she is believed to have brought dishonor to her family.

What would spur someone to kill a family member? Usually the women and girls are killed either for falling in love with the wrong person or having been the victim of rape. Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid is bringing this barbaric brand of murder out in the open with her film, which debuts on HBO on March 7. I spoke with her recently in Davos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: You have a character, Saba, 18-year-old girl, and she is found almost dead in a river. How did that happen?

SHARMEEN OBAID, FILMMAKER: So Saba wanted to get married to a young man out of her choice, and her uncle opposed it. And they took her straight into the dead of the night into the woods.

ZAKARIA: And this is her uncle and her father?

OBAID: Uncle and her father -- and then shot her.

ZAKARIA: In the face?

OBAID: In the face, put her in a gunny bag, and threw her in the river.

And she survived. Miraculously, the water brought her consciousness, got a hold of some reeds along the way, rolled out of the river bed, found a fuel station, called emergency services, landed up in a hospital.

Now, you can imagine -- this is a small town. But you can -- the services worked. The emergency services came. The hospital was able to operate on her almost immediately. The police then apprehended her father and her uncle.

ZAKARIA: And her father is -- interestingly, is unrepentant. He essentially tried to kill his own daughter and he thinks he was doing the right thing.

OBAID: Absolutely. In fact, in jail, I speak with him and he says, "I would do it again. I would kill him and her. And she brought dishonor to the family. How dare she run away. I looked after her, and this is not something that I could have tolerated."

ZAKARIA: And, interestingly, he thinks of it as about Islam. But, of course, there's -- there's nothing about this in Islam. It's some kind of tribal custom that exists in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But he has fused the two in his mind.

OBAID: Oh, absolutely. In his mind, he was doing something that was permitted through culture or religion. And when I asked him, in his ideology, that was the case. However, honor killings are definitely not part of Islam at all, a religion that gives women a lot of rights.

And I think one of the biggest problems in Pakistan and in the countries that honor killings are prevalent -- you know, there are, around the world, by some estimates, 20,000 women being killed a year in honor crimes. In Pakistan alone, the reported number is 1,000 and the unreported number could be -- could go up to 2,000 or 3,000, because honor killings are hidden from the world. A father kills the daughter; the body's never found; no one ever goes to jail for it. And even when they do, there is a loophole in the law that allows for a wife to forgive her husband or parents to forgive their son if they kill their sister.

ZAKARIA: What I'm struck by is Saba seems willing to forgive her family. She, sort of, reconciles with them.

OBAID: Saba initially fought the case. She wanted to fight the case. But the laws are weak on honor killing and societal pressure was so much that she was forced to forgive.

ZAKARIA: You have some good news at the end of it all, which is that the prime minister of Pakistan has come out in favor, or talked about the movie.

OBAID: You know, I think, with an Academy Award nomination, the prime minister made a very bold statement. He acknowledged that there are elements within Pakistan that grapple with honor killings and that he wants to work with all the stakeholders to eliminate honor killings. And, you know, that's a very, very bold statement from a prime minister who seldom talks about women's issues. But I really feel that he wants to leave a legacy in Pakistan that includes women, and of late he has been making a number of gestures that seem that he wants to empower women in Pakistan.

ZAKARIA: Sharmeen, thank you so much. Fantastic movie.

Next on "GPS," the oldest constitutional democracy in the world relies on some really old technology. I'll tell you why it needs to change when we come back.

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ZAKARIA: As the world grapples with a refugee crisis, U.S. presidential candidates repeatedly warn of an immigration influx. And in fact, the United States does have more immigrants than any other country, with 14 percent of the population having been born in a foreign country. But what about the world at large?

It brings me to my question this week. What percentage of the global population resides in a country different from the one they were born in? Three percent, six percent, nine percent or 12 percent?

Stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.

This week's book of the week is the one I mentioned at the start of the show, E.J. Dionne's "Why the Right Went Wrong." Dionne was a Goldwater baby and still has great respect for conservative ideas, which is why this intelligent history of Republican ideology and politics is so compelling.

And now for the last look. We are just one day away from the Iowa caucuses, when American voters will begin the official process of selecting their next president. It brings to mind a recent report from the Brennan Center that finds that, when Americans finally do go and cast their ballots on November 8th, many will do so on antiquated voting machines prone to error.

Forty-three states use voting machines that will be at least 10 years old in 2016. Polling places in 14 states will be relied on voting machines that are at least 15 years old. Think about it. How many of you are using cell phones or computers that are 15 years old?

America is the world's oldest constitutional democracy, richest country and leading technology power. Surely, we can do better than this.

The correct answer to the "GPS Challenge" question is A. According to the United Nations, in 2015 roughly 3 percent of the world's population, 244 million people, were living in a country other than where they were born. The number has grown by more than 40 percent in the last 15 years, and two-thirds of all migrants now live in just 20 countries.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.