← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Driving on Mars
00:28:20
The United States of America: after the election excitement the Obama team start for...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the
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programme we make for the BBC World
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Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, military experts from Africa, the UN and Europe prepare to tackle the Islamist rebels who've taken over in northern Mali. The Arab Spring comes calling in the Gulf state, once known as a place of wind and spiders. Georgians wonder if their new prime minister can restore chunks of their nation now effectively under Russian control. And we have a useful tip about driving on the planet Mars. It's not as easy as it looks. But first, after winning a second term in office, President Obama has returned to Washington, where he faces urgent budget negotiations. Earlier, he'd urged Republicans who retained control of the House of Representatives to work with him to tackle the budget deficit. Unless they reach a deal, automatic tax rises and spending cuts will come into effect in the new year and could, according to analysts, push the country back into recession. But that's a story for the future. Right now, our Washington staff, including Paul Adams, are still looking back at the days and weeks leading up to this week's momentous vote.
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There was a moment on Tuesday night when it suddenly became so obvious when all the other scenarios we'd entertained and discussed for weeks and simply vanished into thin air inside the cold, cavernous convention center in Chicago. It all seemed a bit flat. The scene was set, but nothing was happening at the microphone. Improbably, someone was reciting Green Eggs and Ham. And then, before any significant results were in, the giant screen suddenly came alive with a brilliantly executed montage of presidential highlights. Barack Obama signing landmark legislation announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, campaigning across America, but also playing basketball, wowing an audience with a passable Al Green impersonation, and deftly killing a fly in the middle of an interview before saying, where were we? And in between the videos, with their inspiring soundtracks expressly designed to set spirits soaring, the real results started to trickle in. And as they did, I found myself replaying episodes from the previous two weeks from an exhausting but thrilling journey along the campaign trail, a journey full of clues, some of them obvious, others less so, to the story of election night, a journey now ending as I make my weary way back to Washington. Take Fred, a retired bank employee and registered Democrat in Youngstown, Ohio, encountered on a chilly, rain swept porch in a middle class suburb on a filthy Sunday afternoon just before Hurricane Sandy. He'd already voted, but he wouldn't say who for. As he stood in the doorway, he explained why Obama's economy simply wasn't working. Everywhere you look, he said, pointing to the house next door and another across the road, homes are still being foreclosed. This, he said, is not the American dream. I took him for what he seemed a disillusioned Democrat who'd embraced Barack Obama four years ago but had now, with a heavy heart, switched sides, the sort of person who, in a key swing state like Ohio, the might be the president's undoing. But later I ran into David Betras, the local Democratic Party chairman. He'd canvass Fred just before we arrived, so I asked him if he was concerned. Oh, don't worry about him, david said. He's already voted for Obama. And then, more than a thousand miles away, on the sun drenched streets of Little Havana, in the heart of Cuban Miami, another encounter Gabriel, an elderly exile, reading his newspaper in the shade of a public park. Gabriel's generation is fiercely Republican. For years, their politics was defined by the sense of betrayal they felt at a Democratic president, John Kennedy, who left anti Castro fighters languishing at the Bay of Pigs during a disastrous attempt to unseat Fidel Castro in 1961. But when I asked him about the history, Gabriel was dismissive. The tourists are more obsessed with Castro than we are, he said. The the embargo is a foolish waste of time. Besides, who introduced all the social programs we depend on here in America? The Democrats. To be fair, Gabriel is not exactly typical of his generation. But exile is no longer the only thing that defines Cuban Americans, particularly the young. No longer do they cleave to the Republican Party with the same fierce loyalty. They're socially liberal, and many share the wider Hispanic community's concerns about the Republican Party's strident views on immigration. Amid the blizzard of polling data released on election night, it emerged that a record 40% of Florida's Cubans voted for Barack Obama. Across the state, the president's share of all Hispanic voters was 62%. And finally, the president's legendary ground game, a massive network of volunteers talked about with near reverence by Democrats who put in hundreds of thousands of hours of campaign work in the final stages before Election Day in Madison, Wisconsin, I spent the morning with university students as they fanned out across the city, determined to locate and persuade every last possible voter, armed with clipboards of data and a steely determination not to let the president down, willing to admit that this was not a replay of the great crusade of 2008 but arguing that, if anything, the stakes were even higher. Weary, disillusioned voters willing to give the president another chance to ethnic minorities flocking to the democrats and an army of committed volunteers conducting a ground war on an unprecedented scale. Just some of the elements in play as this long, expensive, bitter campaign drew to a close, each in its own way making Tuesday night's result rather more inevitable than it might have seemed.
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And that was Paul Adams. Details have started to emerge about a military plan to recapture parts of the African state of Mali, which had been occupied by Islamist rebels. The crisis there has become a security worry for Western nations concerned the country's vast desert could become a training ground for militants linked to Al Qaeda. It's believed a force of some 4,000 soldiers will take part in the operation, most of them from West African nations. But some in Mali doubt it'll be a success, as Fwah Hersh has been finding out.
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Like many former French colonial towns in Africa, Mopti in northern Mali was built to maximize luxury for its rulers. In the administrative quarter of the town, a trading post between the Sahara Desert in the north and the Sahel in the south, grand Mediterranean style colonial buildings overlook the picturesque River Bani. The Bani and the River Niger together almost surround the town, creating a deceptive sense of lazy calm and transforming Mopty into a one time tourism hub for Mali and the whole West African sub region. A small jetty on the river is home to a few dozen pinas, traditional covered canoes that not long ago transported tourists all the way from Bamako, Mali's capital 600 miles to the south, to Timbuktu, the ancient town and World Heritage site in the Sahara. Hundreds of foreign tourists savored the slow journey along the river, taking in the savannah landscape, camping overnight and eating local food cooked over small fires by their guides. Now the same guides, mostly young men, sit listlessly on their panasse, playing cards or staring into space. More than half of the longboats have already been taken off the water, they say, their owners, unable to repair wear and tear as their source of income, has steadily dried up. Nearby, the Hotel Kanaga, the grandest of Mopti's hotels, insists it's open, but it's had no electricity for days and hasn't a single guest ever since a military coup toppled the civilian government in March and Tuareg separatists backed by Al Qaeda linked fundamentalists, seized control of the entire north of the country, the once popular tourist hub has been transformed into one of the most dangerous places in the world. Mopti is the last government controlled town in mali and only 30 miles from the area where Islamist control begins. But not all businesses in Mopti are floundering. Papu Sibi, a jovial chubby man, tells me trade is booming. His bar Fiesta, attracts many young women who have fled Al Qaeda rule, enjoying their newfound freedom to dress up and go out for a drink in the evening. My bar is doing fine, said Sibi. Before the Islamists came to the north, these young women were ordinary people. Mali is a liberal society, he told me. These women want to drink, dance, smoke, just like everyone else. But those who stay on in their occupied towns, they are unable to do anything. Sibi added that fiesta was also a popular drinking spot for the numerous soldiers based in the city. They come drinking at 10pm every evening, seeking light relief from the approaching likelihood of a war to reclaim the north. Last month a United Nations Security Council resolution paved the way for an international military intervention in Mali, with the Mali army and troops from regional bloc ECOAS fighting on the ground and the US and EU providing logistical support and training. The situation is extremely serious, says Diko Bokari, editor of the Mali newspaper Mali de Main or Mali Tomorrow. A military intervention is the only thing that can save the country now. It's the least the international community can do to support us. Our so called friends stood by whilst we lived for years with the facade of a democracy and and whilst the army fell apart with no training and no resources. Now we have a tragedy on our hands. How can anyone be surprised? And yet, Bokhari said Malians don't like ecowas. They remember what happened in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The troops did not create a good impression there, he told me. Plus, ECOAS troops don't know the terrain in the north of Mali and they will not be welcomed by the people. It's like Vietnam, he said. It should be the Malian army to recapture the north. If we are given the means and the weapons, then we can do it at the Camp de l' Armee de Terre or Land army barracks. Elsewhere in Mopty, preparations are underway for the impending war in the north. The base is one of the largest under government control. Heavy tanks swelter in the sun and soldiers mill around running errands whilst their superiors sit and drink tea in the shade on the road. Driving from Bamikov to Mopty, we passed not one but four army vehicles, heavily loaded trucks tilting sideways towards the bush as they languished broken down on the side of the road. How can this army fight a war in the desert, said Abe Kadi, who drove with me on the long road north. They can't even cope with the drive to Mopti.
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Therefore, Hirsch. In northern Mali, Prime Minister David Cameron's back from his business mission to the Gulf states and his negotiations over the sale of British made weapons. He told the BBC he wasn't apologising for talking to Britain's friends in the region. Their security, he said, was important for our security. The Sultanate of Oman is one of the countries keen to buy European built fighter jets. It's usually seen as one of the more tranquil states in the region, but it does have a history of political turmoil within its royal family. The current ruler, Sultan Qaboos, took power in 1970 by overthrowing his father in a palace coup. Since then he's introduced some reforms, but as Matthew Teller's been hearing, ushering in change while still honouring tradition can be a hard act to pull off.
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I woke to the roar of total silence. Isa, an Omani Bedouin of the Al Mashani tribe, made tea as the orange lit theatrics of sunrise began just behind us. It was just him, me and the soundless dunes of the Empty Quarter. Dinner had been Issa's, too. Chopped camel meat fried in camel fat, chewy and delicious, washed down with ginger tea. Afterwards, we chit chatted companionably in the dark, staring upwards as the Milky Way slid across a pinprick sky like the arch above Wembley Stadium. We were camped in what the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes had called a place of wind and spiders. In his day it was known as Fasad, or decay. The spot had since been euphemistically renamed Al Hashman, meaning wholesome but with its broken walls and its foully undrinkable spring water that struck me as an oddly mirthless piece of spin. There's a lot of that in Oman these days. As the country paddles ever harder to maintain its trademark swan like serenity, the Arab Spring has come knocking. Last month a local journalist was jailed, accused of slander, the most high profile of so far 42 court cases related to issues of public protest. Like most of its neighbours, Oman saw street protests last year and earlier this year, though protesters were calling mainly for salary increases and lower living costs rather than revolutionary overthrow. The result, unusually, was a flurry of reforms. Oman's autocratic ruler, Sultan Qabus, created tens of thousands of new government jobs, raised the minimum wage and introduced cost of living allowances for public sector workers. He also reshuffled his cabinet three times in 12 months, purging unpopular ministers. This nimble response took the wind out of protesters sails in the southern port city of Salalah, a local business leader chuckled. What the people wanted, they got, he told me. There's nothing to protest about anymore. But not everyone agrees. Omanis I talked to expressed concern that the sultan's populist initiatives are merely an attempt to postpone genuine structural reforms. They might keep people quiet for five years, even ten. But then what? And like the failed dictators of Egypt, Libya and Syria, Qabus has personally identified himself with the Omani state. He is childless but has named no heir. It's illegal to insult him, but what counts as an insult is open to interpretation. A man who told me Sultan Qabus is thinking like it's the 1980s refused, perhaps wisely, to give me his name. Over ice cream sundaes in Salalah, I talked with Abdullah Al Amadi, a systems analyst. Change is already affecting this country in healthy ways, he said. But it is going very slowly. For Abdullah, one key marker is social media. From desert herders to fashionable young students, almost everyone you meet is on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or all three. The ubiquity of social media and the impossibility of controlling them is causing panic. The government has been busy all summer prosecuting and jailing dozens of online activists. Yet the red lines aren't fixed. Instead, it's all about self censorship, lawyer Riyad Al Balushi told me. The law is deliberately kept ambiguous. The barriers to freedom of expression are not legal, he said. They are internal. Oman's coastal capital, Muscat, lines up like sugar cubes on a narrow shelf. It is seductively calm. Holidaymakers and Western expats move from villas and malls to the glittering new opera house freely, without hindrance. But wait at the coffee shops after dark to talk to some of Muscat's bloggers and tweeters. And a different picture emerges of tell tale clicks on the line during phone conversations and of unusual activity on Facebook pages. One prolific Twitter user, a young Omani woman in a headscarf, gives me an old fashioned look. Of course the government is reading my tweets, she says. The country's most popular political website is Sabla, a chat room allowed to operate as a safety valve. Omanis joke that the first thing new ministers do is log on to Sabla to see what people are saying about them. As a local journalist explained, the authorities will generally let whatever is said in English pass, but they care deeply about what is said in Arabic to the point of jailing dissenters. Yet showing one face to the neighbors and another to the world is a strategy that rings hollow for Oman's globally connected youth, who were easily able to join the dots for themselves. It seems only a matter of time before Omanis start using social media to hold the government to account. As one young Omani told me, everyone loves Sultan Qabus, but older people love him more. With the monarch about to turn 72 but almost three quarters of his population under the age of 25, Oman's generation game is coming to a head.
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Matthew Teller, there, the new prime Minister of Georgia in the Caucasus, has been flexing his muscles, and mainly at the expense of President Mikhail Saakashvili, who's due to step down next year. Prime Minister Bidzener Ivanishvili says he's considering slashing the presidential budget, closing down his headquarters and scrapping his personal jet. Mr. Ivanishvili, a billionaire and political novice, says he wants to improve relations with Moscow. But Martin Plout, who's just back from Georgia, says this may not be entirely straightforward. There's a long history of tension between the two countries.
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The nun's voice rose, strong and pure, the notes echoing round the church's ancient vault. Then the monk joined in, his tenor melding with the harmonies. The small congregation bowed, their heads, crossing themselves. The ritual practiced in the Anunnori church for nearly 500 years was profoundly moving. Set beneath the snow capped Caucasus mountains, the church is surrounded by high, crenelated walls. It needed to be. This Georgian outpost is just a short distance south of the Russian border. For hundreds of years, invaders have marched down this gorge, its foaming waters having carved one of the few routes into this kingdom. The exterior walls are decorated with the most exquisite stone carvings. A giant cross on the backs of two dragons. Deer nibble at the twined grapevines frozen in honey coloured stone. My guide, Alex, sighed when I marveled at the sight. The church was ruined, he explained. Tsar Nicholas I visited it in the 19th century. The interior was remodeled in the style of the Russian Orthodox Church. The frescoes were whitewashed out. Such a pity. And his gaze turned northwards up the valley from where so many threats seemed to come. Reading Georgian history is enough to make anyone's head spin. So many wars, so many invasions caught between the Russian, Turkish and Persian empires. It could hardly be otherwise. Its rich valleys and fertile plains attracted many envious eyes, as the high towers dotting the countryside testify. To be a Georgian is to be constantly on one's guard. Incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920s and only freed in the 1990s, many Georgians have a visceral hatred of their northern neighbour. Yet they cannot disentangle their histories. Stalin, after all, was a son of Georgia. A museum to the dictator still stands in his hometown, Gorey. Built around the one room dwelling in which Stalin was born, in it remains untouched. A loving homage to his achievements. It is, the bright young curator told us, a museum within a museum. We must preserve the past as it was, she explained. Only one small room has been added commemorating the thousands shot, deported and tortured by the Bolsheviks. In the capital, Tbilisi, the top floor of the National Museum is dedicated to the 800,000 Georgians who are who died during Soviet times. Giant photographs portray the politicians and priests who were killed. There is the side of a freight train riddled with bullet holes in which many died. There are the steel doors hung from the ceiling behind which they were beaten. The suffering was immense. But this tiny nation of 4 million people has an extraordinary resilience. One photograph shows Patriarch Ambrosius the the head of the Georgian church. In February 1923, the patriarch and members of the church council were arrested and humiliated in a public trial. Below the picture are his concluding words. My soul belongs to God, my heart to Georgia. You, my executioners, can do what you will with my body. But such was his popularity that the Communists didn't dare kill him and the Patriarch was imprisoned instead. Nor is it just a question of the past. Vast chunks of Georgia have been lopped off down the centuries. The latest were South Ossetia and Abkhazia, now effectively under Russian control. I met David Mahradzi in one of Tbilisi's many restaurants. David served as deputy foreign minister in a previous government, eating aubergines stuffed with walnuts and sipping Georgian wine. David looked tired and drawn. He explained that he might be called on to serve in a government once more. Someone has to try to get the South Ossetians and the Abkhars back into the fold, said David gloomily. He, like everyone I met, is determined that they should once more be part of Georgia. The problem is that the Georgians have little to offer the people of these enclaves, politically or economically, and they are deeply suspicious of their neighbour. Perhaps we can tempt them back by our good example, he said. Certainly Tbilisi looks attractive. Bright, modern buildings are going up while preserving its ancient center. The election was peaceful and a new government is in place. There's a feeling of prosperity and progress. It'll certainly take all the finesse and the subtlety that a skilled negotiator can muster if David is to succeed. But living in this difficult part of the world teaches skills that few in established Western democracies can dream of.
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And that was Martin Plout. As you heard earlier, one of the first items on the agenda as the dust settles after this week's American election is the so called fiscal cliff. The government is deeply in debt, and unless a new budget compromise is reached, Americans face drastic tax hikes and public spending cuts. One part of government that might be severely chopped is the space agency NASA. There's talk that a tenth of its budget could be lost. That budget was at a high nearly 50 years ago during the race to the Moon, but the money spent on American rockets has since crashed to Earth. The agency scientists, however, remain enthusiastic about conquering new frontiers. In August, they guided a vehicle called the Curiosity rover onto the surface of Mars. Richard Hollingham has been to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to meet the team in charge of the spacecraft and try his hand at interplanetary driving.
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The rover's single artificial eye swivels at the top of a stalk. I jump as the machine starts towards me, grinding through the dirt. Given that the rover moves at a slow walking pace, is attached to a snaking bundle of wires, and isn't fitted with any weaponry, there's nothing to fear. But I must confess to feeling a little overwhelmed. For a space reporter, this is like meeting a celebrity. With one and a half million Twitter followers, extensive media coverage, and even a tribute video, NASA's Curiosity rover has plenty of admirers in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's test area, or Mars yard. You can see why the rover here is an exact working copy of the real thing on Mars. And it's impressively big, equivalent in size to a family car. The surfaces of its metal wheels, boxy white body cameras and instruments glint in the California sunshine. To borrow the language of motoring presenters, it's a beast. No wonder the engineers were pleased when they landed this thing. The Mars yard is more like a dusty field around the size of a football pitch. If you ignore the surrounding trees, you can almost imagine you're on the surface of the Red planet. The ground is covered in sand and strewn with rocks and boulders. There are hills and even a cliff face, all designed to put rovers through their paces. Better to try it here first than have a problem 125 million miles away without a breakdown crew in sight. I watch alongside engineers and rover drivers Dan and Justin as the machine creeps forward. I liken it to a full size remote control car and imagine drivers sitting at the NASA equivalent of a games console. But I'm wrong. It's a common misconception. We're joysticking it, says Dan. In reality, the rover drivers plan each day's excursion in advance. They study images and examine the landscape to plot the smoothest route to the next scientific destination. Then, as a new day dawns on Mars, the commands are uploaded from Earth to the rover, and it sets off on its journey on its own. As Curiosity rumbles its lonely way across the Martian surface, it relies on cameras and sensors to make its own decisions about whether the path ahead is safe. The drivers have to trust it to do the right thing. Curiosity and its identical Earthbound twin have another sibling, Scarecrow, so called because, explains Justin, it doesn't have a brain lighter than the real rover. It weighs the same on Earth as Curiosity does in the lower gravity of Mars. Scarecrow is designed to test the mobility of the rover, to assess which boulders it's capable of crossing and which will see its body helplessly grounded, wheels spinning. And whereas Curiosity is controlled by teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians, Justin runs Scarecrow from an app on his smartphone. Have a go, he says, handing me the phone. He shows me how to spin the virtual tumblers on the screen to set the angle and distance I want the vehicle to move. Then I press the start button and off it goes. I begin with a few cautious movements and gentle turns. A touch on the screen and its wheels pivot and motors whirr. Before long, I've sent Scarecrow off towards a circle of boulders. Justin and Dan assure me I can't do any damage. As Scarecrow advances on the rocks, we talk about the excitement surrounding this mission. They're pleased that it's getting so much attention. But when I mention the music video put together by fans we're NASA and we know it. Sung to the music of I'm Sexy and I Know It. Currently notching up more than two and a half million hits on YouTube, they seem slightly embarrassed. I sense they'd rather just get on with their jobs. Still, in an age where space agency budgets are being cut with Curiosity, space enthusiasts have found a mission to celebrate. I was born in 1969, so can't remember men walking on the moon. The experience is always going to be second hand. But watching the live images from mission Control as Curiosity landed on Mars, or following the daily Twitter feed from the rover, maybe my generation and younger can tap into some of that same excitement. Although I probably won't be allowed to drive a Mars rover again. No one's done that before, exclaims Dan as the rover comes to a halt, one of the middle wheels jammed on a rock. Driving on Mars is harder than it looks.
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Richard Hollingham there, and they tell me he's a much safer driver here on planet Earth. That's it. More from our correspondents around the world and maybe beyond on Saturday morning. Do join us.