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From Our Own Correspondent
Two Worlds Collide
00:28:04
Reporting the world: correspondents with insight, colour and analysis from Baghdad,...
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You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. And here to introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today the Italians call for help as yet more lives are lost out in the Mediterranean. The Pakistani army in hot pursuit of militants. But are some being hit harder than others? Dolly Parton on one screen, ISIS on another. Two worlds in collision for our man in Baghdad. And what's the correspondent referring to when he says it was the greatest achievement of his life? Here's a clue. It's nothing to do with journalism. The Italian Prime Minister yesterday called on the international community to do more to help stem the now record numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers arriving on his country's shores. Matteo Renzi was speaking in Rome only hours after 800 boat migrants were rescued and taken to safety in the south of the country. But earlier, there'd been dozens of deaths aboard another vessel before the remainder of its passengers were rescued by the Italian navy. Alan Johnston's been following their story.
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The first images were tranquil enough. A fishing boat sat on a bay in Sicily in the summer sunshine. As gusts of wind ruffled the water around her, she swung a little on her mooring. There was nothing in that television picture to suggest that there was anything wrong. But down in her blue hull, the boat carried a dreadful cargo. A hold packed with dead bodies, a great tangle of corpses. As the camera pulled back, you saw figures gathering on the quay. Police and forensic experts all dressed in white overalls with masks over their faces. When the fishing boat came alongside, they would go to work. The first time we'd seen that blue hull, it appeared in footage shot far out at sea by the Italian navy. The boat was loaded with migrants making the journey from North Africa, desperate to reach Italy and all the promise of Europe. Around 600 passengers covered every inch of the deck, and they sat all around the sides of the boat, crammed tight, shoulders pressed against shoulders. As the vessel rose and fell in the swell, a navy boarding party went in to investigate. And the sailors discovered that just beneath the feet of that mass of passengers, there were many dead. Dozens had suffocated in a hole below deck. There were so many bodies in such a small space that out at sea, they couldn't even be counted, never mind unloaded. They were left aboard and the boat was towed into that Sicilian port. Eventually, 45 corpses were brought out onto the quayside. These men, who'd set out from places south of the Sahara, had at last arrived in Europe, the destination of their dreams. But the journey had cost them everything. A 20 year old passenger from Gambia called Ebrima Singhetedi gave his account of what happened. He told La Republica newspaper that when the boat set out from Libya, the hatch leading to the hold had been open. Those below would have been able to breathe. But then the weather became rougher and the boat began to roll. The people in the hold got scared and they started trying to climb out onto the already hopelessly overcrowded, heaving deck. But according to Ebrima, some of those up top were determined to prevent that. They closed the hatch and kept it shut. A Syrian passenger backed up that story. He seemed to suggest that some on deck feared that those attempting to get out of the hold would make the boat even more dangerously unstable. Ibrima said the passengers trapped below screamed for hours, but eventually their cries died away. Not long afterwards, the Italian navy hoved into view. Among the dead were some of Ebrima's friends from his village back in Gambia and a cousin. We know that even on these migrant vessels there can sometimes be a crude division among the passengers along economic lines. Those who pay the people, smugglers a little more might be able to travel up on deck in the fresh air where they're safer. If there's a sudden sinking, the poorer travellers can end up below decks, enduring the heat and breathing the engine fumes. The Syrian passengers fleeing their country's civil war often tend to be more middle class and able to afford a slightly more comfortable journey. The poorer people, like those from villages in Gambia, can find themselves making a harder, more dangerous passage. And it's in the interests of the smugglers to pack their unseaworthy boats as full as they can. Each passenger pays at least £850, so those who herded 600 people aboard Ebrima's boat could easily have earned more than half a million. With so much money to be made and so many people trying to escape war and poverty in the Middle east and Africa, the flow of migrants seems to grow all the time. Around 45,000 landed in Italy last year, but more than 60,000 have come this year and we're still only in July. The Navy's running a round the clock search and rescue operation in the waters south of Sicily, picking up hundreds of people almost every day. The facilities available to receive this influx are being stretched beyond their limits. And Italy feels that it's being left to cope with all this very much alone. Its politicians are making increasingly strident demands for more help from the EU in the effort to address this growing humanitarian crisis. At the gates of Europe.
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Alan Johnstone in Rome. The Pakistani armies this morning continuing a ground offensive against militants it says a holed up in the tribal area of North Waziristan. Earlier, warplanes had hit targets described as rebel hideouts. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. Thousands of civilians displaced from their homes. There's some speculation that the operation in North Waziristan is not just about eliminating terrorists. It's also an attempt attempt to secure borders ahead of NATO's withdrawal from neighbouring Afghanistan. Andrew north has been along to ask the army a few questions.
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The army press briefing started exactly on time, like in a regimental formation. The general sat with individual microphones at a central table. The ranks of attending journalists seated in two rows either side with printed name cards to mark their places. The Pakistani army was keen to tell the world about its operation in North Waziristan, the tribal area bordering Afghanistan, which the spokesman said had become Pakistan's biggest terrorist sanctuary. For the past few weeks, Pakistani aircraft and artillery have been bombarding suspected militant hideouts there. The army's chief goal is to break the Pakistani Taliban, who've used the isolated region to launch scores of suicide attacks in Pakistani cities, killing thousands. But North Waziristan has become a haven for militants of all shades, including Al Qaeda and Uzbek fighters who claimed they carried out last month's devastating assault on Karachi airport. The Afghan Taliban have been another regular presence and others who are thought to have worked with Pakistan's ISI military intelligence service at one time or another. So some see this operation as the military trying to clear up its own mess after the carnage the country has suffered in recent years. And officials have been saying they will not distinguish between so called good and bad. Taliban terrorists of all hue and color are being hit was how the army spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa put it. The briefing was slick, with multicolored maps and charts projected on the wall, along with the kinds of lists beloved by all armies. Sanctuaries destroyed, terrorists killed, bomb making, factories neutralized. Against the wall, a table full of snacks was waiting, including several plates of rich looking chocolate brownies. But first it was time for questions. Could the general explain how they defined who was a terrorist? And did that include the Haqqanis? His face tightened perceptibly. The Haqqanis are seen by some as the deadliest of the insurgents sheltering in North Waziristan. The but are also believed to be one of the most loyal clients of Pakistani military intelligence. They're allied with the Afghan Taliban and are sometimes seen as a kind of militant special forces allegedly responsible for a string of high profile attacks in Afghanistan on NATO forces and on diplomats from India, Pakistan's old enemy. The Americans have been pushing Pakistan's generals to go after the Haqqanis for years. But unlike the Pakistani Taliban, this group hasn't attacked Pakistan. So the Haqqanis have come to be seen as good Taliban. And it was clear the general didn't want to mention them by name, his body language revealing as much as his answers as he repeated all terrorist sanctuaries were a target. As another journalist asked the same question, the general and his aides looked hopefully towards the table of Brownies. A minister came to their assistance saying whether Haqqani or not, all terrorists on Pakistani soil would be eliminated. That sounded a more definitive answer. There are, however, widespread reports that the Haqqanis were indeed no longer on Pakistani soil because they'd been tipped off before the operation began and had crossed over into Afghanistan. Later, I was talking to some Pakistani journalists who said the Haqqanis were just a Western obsession and they were no longer so rele. But there's no doubt that the operation in North Waziristan has again highlighted the continuing ambiguity of Pakistan's often painful relationship with Islamic militants. A few days before the briefing, I met a man allegedly involved in this clandestine world. The US and India say Hafiz Saeed was the Mastermind of the 2008 attacks on Mumbai. He says he had nothing to do with it and that Pakistani courts had cleared him after rejecting India's evidence as propaganda. But the US is offering a 10 million dollar reward for his arrest. With that kind of bounty, you'd expect he'd be in hiding. In fact, we just had to ring his office and drive to Lahore, where we met him in one of the madrasas or religious schools that he runs there. There were no guards outside or security checks when we arrived. Surprisingly, perhaps, he also takes a relaxed attitude to American products. His aides brought us Coca Cola and Heinz ketchup for the heaps of chicken drumsticks they set before us. Why was he not worried about being arrested? I asked. The people of Pakistan love me, said Hafiz Saeed. No one has tried to get this American bounty. There's little doubt, though, that the state is shielding him and he firmly backs the offensive in North Waziristan. The message from that operation is that the hand that was bitten and is now striking back. But it appears some are being hit harder than others.
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Andrew North In Pakistan, it's Several weeks now since the Sunni militants of ISIS took control of Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, and announced their intention of marching on the capital, Baghdad. ISIS have now changed their name to the Islamic State, a self proclaimed caliphate incorporating large tracts of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria. Its leader has called on Muslims around the world to pledge allegiance and join the fight. Paul Adams is in Baghdad and says the city hardly looks ready to repel an attack.
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Two worlds didn't so much collide last Sunday as sail in opposite directions on either side of a vast ocean. Sitting here in the BBC's house in Baghdad, its garden an oasis of green amid concrete blast walls sporting elaborate murals, I watched on one screen the latest extraordinary video from isis. The group was rebranding itself as a revived Islamic caliphate, rising from the modern Arab world's slough of religious and political despond. It drove home the message with a guided tour of a dusty demolished border crossing between Iraq and Syria. The title read the End of Sykes Picot, the 1916 Anglo French Agreement, which redrew the map of the Middle east and set it up eventually for a terrible fall. But for all its medieval overtones, zealots with wild beards racing through the desert, this was a very modern spectacle, expertly filmed and uploaded onto social media. Our guide to the old border post where buildings lay shattered and prisoners cowered in a darkened room, was Abu Safiyeh, a fighter from Chile, speaking in an effortless combination of modern English and 7th century Arabic. Here in the cradle of civilization, jihad is perhaps more globalized than ever. But what of that other world, I hear you ask? Well, that, I confess, belonged to Dolly Parton. Because just as ISIS was ripping up Sykes Picot, Dolly was tearing up Glastonbury in a plunging white cat suit, hair and chest gloriously fake. A hundred thousand delirious fans at her feet in the midst of England's green and pleasant land. In their own very different ways, both visions were equally challenging. But as I flipped between Dolly and Abu Sophia, I found the combination almost too much for my slightly fried brain. There's already enough to take in here. The centrifugal political and ethnic forces driving Iraq to the edge of extinction, the backroom machinations among Shia politicians as they squabble over who should succeed the embattled Prime Minister Nouriel Maliki, the preparations among Kurds who've long waited for such an opportunity to go their own way, and the Russian, Iranian and American hardware and advisors all here trying to do the same thing, stop the militants, a trio of newly arrived. Iraqi air force jets has just screamed low across Baghdad, a gesture, perhaps to the citizens of this baking, nervous city that the military is not quite as powerless as recent events might suggest, a message reinforced by somewhat unconvincing footage on state television of the army battling to push the insurgents back. But the signs of weakness are everywhere in parliament's failure to rise above narrow factional interests, in a prime minister who still talks about sinister plots and doesn't seem willing to admit that he, with his divisive sectarian style of governance, may be part of the problem. And at a rather more prosaic level, in the fact that all over the city, policemen and soldiers manning checkpoints and gateways, including to our own barricade street continued to make use of a fraudulent British made bomb detector sold to Iraq in a contract worth $85 million by a company whose founder was jailed last year as a metaphor for the recent failure of Iraq's expensive but ineffectual military. It seems sadly telling. After Tuesday's fractious meeting of parliament, we went looking for comment. It's Ramadan, and a street vendor who called himself Jimmy was preparing kebabs for sundown customers. He seemed utterly unfair by the mood of political deadlock. Inshallah, he said, all will be well. But on Al Fattah Square, in front of an elaborate sculpture of Aladdin's lamp, I spied a group of about 20 men sitting cross legged on the grass. Deep in conversation, they told me they were former soldiers discussing whether or not to volunteer in the fight against isis. I sat down next to Najm, a man with perfectly groomed hair and a spotless white dish. Dasher, he said. He was a former general in Saddam Hussein's army. He didn't have much time for today's politicians, who, he said were too busy bickering among themselves to deliver the sort of government Iraqis badly need. Do not let my children be slaughtered on the street, he said, suddenly passionate, while you fight over your seats in Parliament. All over the city, armed men loll in the crushing summer heat. Baghdad can feel almost sleepy. But make no mistake, as Hajimad told me as he shopped for sticky sweets amid piles of freshly made baklava, this crisis has only just begun.
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Paul Adams in Baghdad so the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region plans a referendum on independence within months. Masoud Barzani, who has always called for full independence for the Kurds, said the ISIS led rebellion by Sunni Arabs had left Iraq, effectively partitioned. His Kurdish peshmerga fighters have now moved into previously disputed areas which have been abandoned by the Iraqi security forces. One of these is the oil rich region of Kirkuk. Hannah Lucinda Smith has been hearing people there talk of their hopes that peace for the region can somehow emerge from the present instability. Among them the footballers of Kirkuk fc.
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With his gleaming smile and fashionable gelled haircut, Ramya Ahmed is the very picture of an archetypal football cap. But we're not meeting in an expensive restaurant or paparazzi stalked bar. Ramyar hasn't been paid since November, so we're eating lunch in a kebab house. I've brought you to the best area, he laughs as gawky young waiters stare at him in amazement. This is a famous place for roadside bombs in Kirkuk. Ramyar's club, Kirkuk fc, was founded in the best of times and has survived through the worst. The walls of the offices are lined with faded photos of teams throughout the decades, and in the dusty trophy cabinet, shiny silverware jostles for position. Its ground used to be the envy of all the other football teams in Iraq. The elegant old spectators stand looks as though it has been transplanted from a village green in the heart of England. It was built by the British as a cricket pavilion in the 1940s and the people of Kirkuk kept and treasured it when it was converted into a football terrace. It is just the same as the first day. Nothing has been renovated, says Sawan Nejim, Kirkuk FC's financial officer, as he shows me around the ground. All the other clubs wanted to play here. This club is unique in Iraq, but today the pitch is bumpy and the grass is yellow. The changing rooms are empty and the whole club is riddled with an air of forlorn abandonment. In 2007 we were raided by rats, Exclaimed Sirwan. There is a sewer nearby and they came under the field and they dug their way out. Our goalkeeper was about to kick the ball and then he jumped back in shock. A rat had popped his head out. For the past nine years, the ethnically diverse city of Kirkuk has been torn between two would be masters. The Kurdistan Regional Government in their bill say that this city should belong to them. They claim it as the Iraqi Kurds historical capital. The Iraqi government in Baghdad disagree. They have always refused to let it go. Kirkuk's vast oil reserves make it too valuable an asset for either side to give away. While Baghdad and Erbil are both desperate to cling onto the city, neither wants to take responsibility for its football team. Kukuk is not part of the Kurdistan Regional Government, so it cannot get funds from them. Perhaps because of the team's large number of Kurdish players, it does not get funding from Baghdad either. Kukuk FC stays out of politics. Its team plays in both national leagues, the Iraqi and the Kurdish, and its players come from all of the city's diverse communities Arabs, Kurds, Christians and Turkmen. On the pitch, they're all just teammates. But as last season swung into action, the money finally ran out. Kukuk FC's players were not well paid. To begin with. Ramyard's salary was little more than £200amonth. But suddenly they were told that they had to play for free. I tried to explain to the team that this is about sport and not money, says Ramya. But the players were only getting paid just enough to survive anyway. Once they lost that, they lost the motivation. For now, it looks as though the team will not have enough funds to compete in either league next season, and that's if there's even an Iraq left by the time the first game kicks off. But the outcome of the current crisis in Iraq could decide Kukuk FC's future and maybe even save it. Since the collapse of the Iraqi national army earlier this month, The Peshmerga, the KRG's armed forces, have taken control of Kirkuk. The city has become part of a de facto Kurdish state. And with the government in Baghdad on the brink of collapse, Kirkuk looks set to remain in Kurdish hands for a long time to come. Ramya is hoping that Kirkuk will stay under Kurdish control because he believes that if the club is funded by a bill, then it can be saved. Meanwhile, he says that Iraq's leaders should look to his club as an example of how a peaceful Iraq should look. Kukuk FC is special. This is a fact, says Ramier. When one player scores a goal, all the other players cheer. Whatever ethnicity or religion he is, I hope that someday our politicians will act like our footballers. If they did, Iraq would be a much better place.
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Hannah Lucinda Smith well, from Kirkuk FC to the Tour de France, which this year is also, of course, the Tour of Yorkshire, London and various points in between. Today's first stage began in Leeds and ends in Harrogate. The second one finishes in Sheffield tomorrow. Our correspondent John Donison, now based in Sydney, is a Sheffield boy. He's also a keen cyclist. In 2002, he rode the whole length of the Tour de France, mountains and all, getting up early in the morning so he could complete the stages ahead of the racers. It was hard going, he says, but great for working up an appetite.
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Professional cyclists are a funny looking lot. On the bike, they're tanned, healthy and muscular. Whip it thin, sleek in multicolour Lycra. Off the bike, they look more like death warmed up, gaunt and frail, with the hollow cheeks of a heroin addict and the bulging veins to match. Bikeless. The reality sets in that pretty much nobody looks good in Lycra, especially when you strip off to reveal tan lines that make the body resemble a German national flag. This is pretty much how I looked in July 2002, having just ridden the entire 2000 mile route of the Tour de France. But while my appearance might have been a shocker, I'd never felt better. Fit as a fiddle and high on life as well as endorphins. Twelve years on, it's still the greatest achievement of my life. I'd happened upon the idea during a cycling holiday in the south of France, so I bought myself a fancy pants Italian road bike and began to pound the famous seven hills of Sheffield. And that's just about all my Yorkshire home town has in common with Rome. The general consensus was that I was one spoke short of a four wheel, one sprocket shy of the full cassette. Bonkers. The day the race started, the great Irish cyclist, Tour de France winner Stephen Roach, told me as much when we appeared together on BBC radio. Crazy, he said. I hope you know what you're letting yourself in for. The truth is, though, nothing can really prepare you for cycling 100 miles a day for three weeks while the pro cyclists are in the saddle for five or six hours a day in order to cover the same distance. I was pedalling for more like 9 or 10. Millions of people lined the route. Most offered an encouraging allez, allez. Or a shout of Chapeau, the French for hats off to you. Much is often made of the grim nature of professional bike racing. The pain, the suffering, the slogan. But if you're not in such a rush, you get to take in the beauty. The 2002 race took us through the lush green wine countries of Alsace and Champagne, wheeling amid neat rows of ripening vines, then on to the wind swept twisting back roads of Brittany before descending south to the big beasts of the Pyrenees, the Col du Tourmalet and Le Plateau de Bay. For those who've never cycled up a mountain or several in a row, it's difficult to put across just how arduous it is. Take Le Mont Ventou, the Giant of Provence, the Bald Mountain, the Ventou with its white moonscape Peak is arguably France's most iconic climb. It was here that the British cyclist Tommy Simpson collapsed and died in the 1967 race, beaten down by a scorching sun. Just a mile or so from the summit, the Ventoux is just shy of 14 miles long with a gradient of around 8%. Fourteen miles uphill, the pro pedallers go up it in about an hour. For the amateur wheelers, you're doing well if you get up it in two at the best of times. The Ventou is a bugger, however, not one to make things easy on my epic journey. Having failed to find a hotel, I embarked on the climb, having slept in a Provencal barn the night before. It's fair to say that when I arrived at the summit, I looked rough and smelt ripe, the complexion of a robust red, but with the nose of a sweaty Camembert on a warm day. Of course, that brings us to culinary matters. The 2002 race was won by Lance Armstrong, powered, as we now know, on a cocktail of performance enhancing drugs and souped up blood. Squeamish of needles, I opted to be fuelled by fine food. One of the perks of pedalling from dawn till dusk is that you can eat like a pig. Steak, frite, cassoulet, coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon. You name it, I nosed it. No stranger to the sweet trolley, I always put away a few post stage patisseries for good measure. Indeed, the only ailments I suffered during my 2000 mile odyssey were a sore liver, too many piches of wine and toothache, too many pastries the race has ever finished in Paris. There to meet me on the cobbles of the Champs Elysees and tucking into a nice piece of humble pie was Stephen Roach. He presented me with a signed yellow jersey and a single word of Congratulations, Shepple. Hats off to you, John Johnison.
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And there are some correspondents, I think, who'd be happier staying at home with those pastries than heading out on a 2,000 mile bike ride. That's it. More stories from correspondence far and wide on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do please join us. Goodbye.