← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:28:24
Today: we hear from Aleem Maqbool in Pakistan where it's easier to blame others for to...
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Hi there.
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You've downloaded the BBC Radio programme from our own correspondent. We make two versions and if you'd like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iplayer. This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Today we hear from Pakistan, where it's easier to blame others for your troubles than to really face up to them. We're in Berber country in Algeria, where until recently, kidnappings and killings were commonplace. We visit the Liberian countryside, where they're dreaming of the good old days when some people had a monthly salary. And our correspondent is in the burning Kalahari with his charcoal pickles. The huge floods in Pakistan have receded both on the ground and from the headlines. But millions of people, 7 million according to the United nations, are still living without shelter and struggling to get food and clean water. It's just one of the many crises that seem to engulf the country. Terrorist attacks, the battle with the Taliban, corruption in sport and political uncertainty are just some of the major problems Pakistanis have to face. But as our correspondent Ali Maqboul explains in Islamabad, there doesn't seem to be the will to truly tackle them.
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In Miamwali, in Punjab, by the banks of the River Indus, we surveyed the impact of the floods with a local businessman and landowner. All around, we could see the devastation caused to his farms and the effect that would have on hundreds of labourers. I asked him whether he believed money had in the past been embezzled instead of going into flood prevention projects, as many have suggested, and who generally he blamed for the lack of preparedness. His response was surprising. You know, we've never had so much water come down the Kabul river and flow into the Indus, he said. Strange, isn't it? I took a moment to digest the question, then asked if he was trying to suggest Afghanistan or America had something to do with the floods. He paused for a moment. India, he said without a hint of irony. Slightly taken aback by what this educated, erudite man was saying, I suggested there had been the highest rainfall ever recorded in Pakistan. And surely that couldn't have been caused by India. He scoffed. Don't you know they have the technology to create artificial clouds and send them across the border? I decided to leave the discussion at that. But in Pakistan, there does seem to be a bogeyman for every one of its multitude of crises. That often, of course, diverts attention from the underlying problems and serves to shield those with true responsibility. Take the huge cricket scandal this year, in which Pakistani players were accused of cheating in return for large sums of money. Initially, there was shock and a sense of shame. But very soon Pakistani politicians and diplomats were accusing the British press, and, yes, the Indians, of a conspiracy to destroy Pakistani cricket. This week, Pakistan's cricket board may have been pushed into announcing a new code of conduct for its players, but no one here really believes that much will change. The board's chairman, who was accused of not providing enough security when the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked by gunmen here last year, who was in charge during a disastrous tour of Australia when rumours of cheating resurfaced, and who is seen by many around the world as having handled the latest crisis badly, remains comfortably in charge. President Zardari even sent him a note of congratulations this week following the news that at least one match was found to be free from cheating. The West, Zionists, the international media, all often prove handy bogeymen. But so too does Asif Ali Zardari himself. It seems the focus of hatred and blame doesn't have to be foreign. In over a year, living and working in Pakistan, a country I have a lot of affection for, I've not been able to escape a sense that this is a state, in many ways in denial of just how big the issues it's facing are. Look at suicide bombings in the last couple of years. Hundreds upon hundreds of civilians have been killed in these attacks. I remember meeting 14 year old Adnan in Peshawar a a couple of days after nine members of his family, including his parents and all his siblings, were killed in a bombing in a packed marketplace. I remember visiting the site itself with bits of flesh still clinging to the masonry. But Adnan is unlikely ever to get a comprehensive inquest. The bombing which killed his family and well over a hundred others, was out of the newspapers in a matter of days. On most occasions, the innocent victims are reduced to little more than a body count. It has been the same pattern, attack after attack, crisis after crisis. In the past few weeks we've travelled the country and witnessed scores of people fighting over scraps of aid following the floods. Whole families sick through the lack of clean drinking water and thousands and thousands of homeless with no means of earning a living. But astoundingly, all this barely registers with Pakistan's 24 hour news channels and newspapers anymore. Instead, for much of the last fortnight, the media here has been focusing on a highly technical battle between the government and the judiciary. A sophisticated and some would say, manufactured crisis when people's much more basic needs require urgent attention. Perhaps people have decided there's simply nothing they can do to change things. So it might be better just to pretend everything's fin. But it may also be that the ruling elite here from the political classes, the army and the powerful intelligence agencies don't really think things are all that bad. In any case, for them, at least, there is such huge potential in Pakistan, with its enterprising people, its rich swathes of arable land, and its beautiful northern resorts. But if the adage that recovery starts with an acknowledgement of the problem is true, then many will be worried for Pakistan, because there are plenty of serious problems here, but seems to be very little appetite for really confronting them.
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Alim Maqbool in Islamabad until recently, parts of Algeria were no go areas because Algerian security forces were fighting an extremely violent insurgency by Islamic militants and Berber separatists. It lasted almost 20 years, and all sides perpetrated unspeakable horrors. The Jujura Mountains, east of the capital, Algiers, was an especially dangerous area. But as Jonathan Fryer recently discovered, local people are now trying to put aside painful memories and return to a normal life.
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The road that runs out of Tizi Uzu up into Algeria's Jujura national park starts by gently snaking through wooded hills alongside an enormous turquoise reservoir. At every major road junction and at each end of every bridge, there are army checkpoints. The young conscripts in their concrete pillboxes look bored. There hasn't been a bomb for three weeks, one officer tells me cheerily as he waves our car through. It's hard to believe that not all that long ago, this was one of the most dangerous places on earth. I would have been unlikely to come out unscathed. Kidnapped at best, killed at worst. You can see up there where the army burnt all the trees down as the forest was providing cover for Islamists who sought sanctuary here, my young Berber companion, Hakim, tells me, pointing at the approaching mountainsides. But soon the hairpin bends of the narrow road take us well above the tree line, and there, perched on the tops of crags like eagles, nests a burb of villages, fortress like surveying the whole landscape below them. In winter, they're often cut off by snow for weeks at a time, and they remain tight, closed communities. There's not a word of Arabic to be seen anywhere in these villages except on a few still unvandalized road signs. Everything here in Kabyli is in French or in Tamazigd, the native language of the Berbers who predate the arrival of the Arabs in North Africa. They have not only their own language very much looked down on by many Algerian Arabs, but also their own culture and traces of pagan traditions. Numerous Berbers wear their Islamic faith lightly, if at all. Many of them long for more autonomy, some even for independence, though publicly calling for the latter can lead to harassment, imprisonment, or enforced exile. Hakim's mother is younger than I am, but she doesn't look it, and I soon understand why. When she was 8 years old and the French were still trying to hold on to Algeria in a bloody war of independence, French soldiers rounded up the men who were left in her village, including her father and and shot them in front of her. I can still see those three stains of blood seeping through his shirt, she says. The terrified girl ran back to her house, only to watch it being set alight by soldiers. With her mother still inside, she's grateful none of her own children had to witness family members being killed, even though at least 150,000 people died in the more recent Algerian civil war that broke out in 1991 after army generals refused to countenance a likely election victory by an overtly Islamic political party. Appalling atrocities were carried out by both sides, with whole villages being wiped out in acts of terror and reprisal. During those years, much of Algeria became a no go area for foreigners and and even locals couldn't move around safely. But now the whole country, including Kabyli, has picked itself up off the ground and is trying to make the best of the new piece. The first shoots of a tourist industry are beginning to appear when Hakim takes me up to the very highest point of the Jujura National Park. We stop near a long abandoned ski lift. The the ski resorts hotel has recently been refurbished and reopened. I'm a little disconcerted as we're sitting outside in the sun having lunch to see that all the people staying there have a limb missing or else are in wheelchairs. Then I notice from the T shirt worn by one of their accompanying minders that they're all members of the Tunisian National Paralympics team up here for high altitude training. After lunch, we drive over a ridge leading to a magnificent peak called the Jew's Hand. On each side of the narrow road, without any guard wall or rail, there's a precipitous drop. Then suddenly we're at a little alpine meadow where a flock of sheep and a few cows are grazing. Come over here. Hakim shouts excitedly as he rushes towards a gigantic pothole in one corner of the meadow. He picks up a large stone and throws it down. But there's no sound of it hitting any rocks or water you see down there is the end of the world, he says.
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Jonathan Fryer it's now been five years since Liberians elected Africa's first woman president. Harvard educated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was quickly at pains to point out that her country was open to foreign investment. But years of civil war before her election had destroyed what infrastructure the country had, and it still remains one of the poorest nations on the continent. Some foreign firms have signed deals with the government, but as Chris Simpson found, there are plenty of skeptics who wonder who is benefiting.
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Breakfast time conversations with fellow hotel guests in Monrovia often turn to doing business in Liberia. Where can you make money? What are the pitfalls? Who are the men to meet? Is there a market for a new downtown fried chicken emporium? What about a car dealership or real estate? I have disappointingly little to contribute to these discussions, having no capital, few useful contacts and certainly no financial acumen. But I do occasionally, over coffee, urge potential investors to hang on in there and not be deterred by red tape or rumours of civil strife. Liberia needs investors great and small. Seven years of peace and modest reconstruction have seen waves of aid workers and development gurus passing through, offering expertise and assistance on everything from judicial reform to irrigation, turning Monrovia into the workshop capital of the world. But as the country's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has frequently pointed out, Liberia can only claw its way out of poverty and under development if it makes more of its own resources. Most of the wealth Liberia could have generated from its abundant iron ore, rubber and oil palm has been squandered. An ugly combination of feeble ministries, cynical corporations and rapacious warlords wrecked the economy while Liberia was pilloried internationally for its illegal logging operations and trade in blood diamonds. That is all in the past. The lessons learned, or so the head of the National Investment Commission told me. Richard Talbot gave up a fast track business career in the United States to help make Liberia open for business. Sitting in his office on a late Friday afternoon, Mr. Talbot summoned subordinates who brought in bulging folders containing the latest concession agreements signed with foreign companies. Here were corporations he had seen at work in Southeast Asia and elsewhere who could prove solid friends and partners for the the new Liberia. But away from the lavish signing ceremonies and bold statements of intent, you find no shortage of dissenting voices. Flawed it may be, but Liberia's democracy is up and running. And when the president herself admits ruefully that corruption remains endemic, it is not surprising that each new deal struck generates lurid accusations and counter accusations, as well as glowing headlines. A newspaper editor, fresh from yet another stinging editorial on Liberia's investment strategy, warned of bruising revelations to come. All these deals, but I don't see any jobs, he told me. What is really happening here? On the outskirts of Monrovia, two environmentalists confident of their research findings, took turns to warn of government short sightedness and a door being held open for unscrupulous operators. Up at the parliament building on Capitol Hill, a ruling party MP launched a scathing attack on a rubber and oil palm concern that had set up in his constituency. He brandished photographs and talked animatedly of slave labour and broken promises. Some of the attacks are unfair and patently exaggerated. Some of the critics in Monrovia are clearly playing to the gallery. But the shrewder incoming corporations know that the real battles will be fought in Liberia's impoverished interior, winning the confidence of communities that have waited for years for hints of a better life ahead. That means providing not only jobs, but looking after workers, families, ensuring there are schools and medical care, and that life becomes easier for all. Liberian bosses know what this entails. A slightly careworn plantation owner, family heir to a large concession west of Monrovia, drove me round his home region on a wet Sunday morning. We inspected the derelict factory, wondering how much it might cost to renovate the wrecked storage tanks. We dropped in on a district commissioner, polite but slightly despondent, recalling a time when his village had a clinic and discount stores for the workforce subsidised by the company. Former employees, some now in their 60s, talked wistfully of the pride and security that used to come with a monthly salary. People had heard about the new concession deals being signed. The younger ones were curious about job prospects elsewhere, but wanted to know first of all, would anyone be coming to their area to pick up where others had left off? I shrugged. We had to get back on the road. My host was getting irritable, worn out by the constant questions and the discreet requests for handouts as we went from village to village. He was proud of the plantation, proud of his family's long association with the trees that stretched in all directions. But it was, for now, an empty kingdom.
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Chris Simpson In Liberia, there are more than 3,000 islands which make up modern day Japan, stretching from the freezing north to the tropical south. At the bottom of the archipelago you'll find Okinawa, which some believe is the birthplace of karate. It's also an island that has prided itself on its music, history and language different from the rest of Japan. As Philippa Fogarty explains, there are some Okinawans who are determined to do what they can to preserve their distinct culture.
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The Okinawan capital, Naha, is a crowded, steamy, busy place. The main street, a long, neon lit avenue of bars and shops selling T shirts and noodles, is packed with tourists from the Japanese mainland. Groups stare at shelves holding the local delicacy, rice wine with a sharp, fanged, pickled snake at the bottom of the jar. Others cue to buy terracotta models of shisa lion dog gargoyles dating back hundreds of years to when Okinawa was an independent kingdom. Trading across Asia. Shisa were first found around Shuri Castle, the elegant hilltop pavilion in Naha where Okinawa's rulers once lived. Now the kings are gone, but the lion dogs remain. They sit in pairs on the roofs of houses, apartment blocks, shops and offices, their presence meant to drive evil away. They are a reminder of the island's unique culture, something that is very much under threat. Okinawa has been hit by two strong Japanese assimilation policies and a heavy US military presence. After Japan annexed Okinawa in the late 19th century, it banned the use of local languages. As the years passed, fewer and fewer parents passed them on to their children. By the time World War II broke out, serious damage had been done and more was to follow. As the Second World War neared its end, fighting devastated okinawa. At least 100,000 civilians died there and on nearby islands. After the surrender, the US governed Okinawa for 27 years. It built military bases on land seized from farmers, a deal later formalized with Tokyo as part of the Japan U S Security Alliance. Today, Okinawa is the reluctant host to more than 30 US bases, from huge airstrips to jungle training facilities and amphibious warfare camps. The modern day island looks very different from the agricultural paradise described by a visiting U.S. navy captain a century and a half ago. Its population has burgeoned. Residents are packed tightly around the base's high fences. Traffic is gridlocked. Fighter planes roar overhead. Subsidies aimed at boosting the local economy have paid for big construction projects. So the coastline has been slathered with concrete, and ugly seawalls have been built, and the local languages are almost extinct. Only pensioners speak them now. But that does not mean that Okinawans have forgotten their culture. On a trip north, I met Michiru Sakai, a cheerful, funny eco warrior who insisted I call her by her nickname, Manchan. Her mother was born in a cave in the north of the island. During the last months of the war, Manchan spends her days protesting against a plan to build a new US Air base on reclaimed land in a beautiful bay where critically endangered dugongs feed from a tented sit in camp close to the proposed base site. She drives the protest boat out into the bay to show visitors the sea grasses and corals that the new base would destroy. The sit in has been going on for 13 years, since the air base plan was conceived. Manchan and her colleagues say they will not end it until their precious section of unspoilt coastline is safe. Byron Fija is another fighter he never knew. His American father and his Okinawan mother flitted in and out of his life. Raised by an aunt and uncle, he decided to embrace his Okinawan roots after an identity crisis in his 20s. Every week he visited an elderly stage actor to learn Okinawan language and music. Now he works as an ambassador for the language, teaching groups and playing folk songs on his sanshin, an instrument like a lute. For the last five years, he has also hosted an Okinawan language radio show, and he is passionate about keeping the language alive, even if he suspects he is fighting a losing battle. A third proud Okinawan is Tetsumi Takara, dean of law at the island's top university and one of 19 leading academics who signed a letter to Barack Obama last year demanding a reduction in the US troop presence on the island. He says that local people are being discriminated against, that their rights have been consistently subordinated to Japan's security needs. A quiet, humorous man, he always wears a hat. This, he says, is because people in hats are not allowed into the Japanese parliament. His point is that the same rights should be available to all, not denied to some because of unchallengeable government rulings. The parallel with Okinawa is unspoken but clear. Residents forced to live on a militarized island while their mainland compatriots go about their lives in peace. In Naha, on the main street, I saw one shop selling a shisa, one of those traditional lion dog guardians painted in the stars and stripes of the US flag. Perhaps it is a reasonable metaphor. Okinawa's culture still exists, albeit in the shadow of the huge US military presence. And with people like Manchan, Byron Fija, and Tetsumi Takara fighting to preserve Okinawan identity, the islanders have their own kind of soldiers on their side.
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Philippa Fogarty, now back from Okinawa. Being on the road is part and parcel of being a foreign correspondent, sometimes travelling for miles or days to get that crucial story or interview. It can be exciting, tiring, tedious, and frightening. In places like Iraq or Afghanistan, there are roadside bombs to contend with, or the dangers posed by Insurgents. Elsewhere, it's the treacherous roads themselves that are risky. As Jonah Fisher travelled through the Kalahari Desert, he knew it would get hot. But not quite as hot as it did.
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I've just been for another inspection of our vehicle. It doesn't get better with time. Nothing more can be saved. A black pickup has now turned completely white. The tyres have gone, the windscreens melted into the dashboard and the steering wheel now faces disconsolately towards the ground. A few things that we'd packed for the trip are still just about recognizable. For some reason. I find it strangely satisfying to discover a jar of pickled gherkins. The glass is badly warped, but it's still intact with the lid on. I open it to find about 20 perfectly formed charcoal gherkins inside. A little reminder of the far away comforts of home. I'm writing this under the patchy shade of one of the biggest trees in this part of the Kalahari. It's a desert of sand and shrubs and this thorny bush is little more than two metres high. Gringo, my colleague, is lying in the partly melted tent that was our shelter last night, while Germander, our fixer, is sleeping, hat over his face, under another tree a few steps away. Thankfully, there is a breeze keeping our small fire going and taking away some of the blazing heat of the midday sun. Point to the very middle of Botswan on the map and and you wouldn't be far from where we are now, stranded in the world's second largest game reserve. Every sound, every buzz, every rustle of the tent distracts me from writing this. Everything seems like it just could be the noise of a vehicle in the distance coming to pick us up. This trip was supposed to cover the long running conflict between the region's Khoi people, or Bushmen, and the government. Eight years ago, the the Bushmen were evicted from their land not far from where I am now. The government said it was because they couldn't provide schools and services in such a remote spot. Critics pointed to the presence of diamonds in the area and a rapidly expanding tourist industry. Then four years ago, after going to court, the Bushmen were allowed back in, but only on condition that the government would give them no help. Now they are back in court, demanding that they be allowed to open a borehole for water instead of having to transport it in tankers through the desert sand. Getting this close to meeting them hasn't been easy. The Botswana government, the success story of African democracy and development, doesn't like this particular tale being told. So our long Journey to this hot and sandy spot began in the capital, Haberoni, with a series of permits to be acquired. Then it's a day's drive to the west and and another day travelling into the centre along roads that were often little more than rivers of deep sand. There is no infrastructure in the central Kalahari, so all the fuel, food and water that we would need for the next three days were packed in the back of our vehicle. Yesterday afternoon, about 70km short of the Bushman settlement, the sand became too much. Our pickup, stuffed with supplies, ground to a halt and our fixer, germander, leapt out. Flames were licking out from underneath our front wheels and snaking quickly towards the back. As the fire spread, we frantically tried to grab what we could. The cans of fuel we yanked free from the back. A satellite phone, some water and, I feel slightly guilty saying this, my cameras. Then, as the tyres started to burst and the windows melt, we made our retreat, watching from a safe distance as our transport, shelter and food all all went up in a huge belching plume of black smoke. Dusk was falling and having raised the alarm by satellite phone, we put up the tent and collected wood. Germana had just spotted some lion prints in the road's soft sand and a fire would apparently scare them off. After a poor night's sleep this morning, a small plane flew overhead, pinpointing our position and dropping reassuring handwritten notes. The nearest gate of the Botswana Parks Authority is. Isn't answering the phone, so a tourism company, Wilderness Safaris, is now managing our rescue. A vehicle has apparently been dispatched from their nearest camp, but it could still take a day to get here. We've no food, but it's water that's the most important resource, and we've got plenty of that. One thing is clear, we're not going to get to speak to the Bushmen this time. All of us are desperate to get out of the heat and get home. But this brief and somewhat scary experience in the Kalahari has given me a new respect for the Bushmen. While we struggle to escape, they're fighting for the right to live in this barren, isolated place, cut off from the modern world, testament to the remarkable pull of a place that they can call home.
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And with that, from Joan of Fisher. Now back safe and sound with fresh gherkins. We've reached the end of this edition. There'll be more from our own correspondence this Saturday at half past eleven, so please join us then. Goodbye.