← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
22 Sept 11
00:27:59
Katie Adie presents more despatches from foreign correspondents. As forces try to oust...
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You are listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the BBC World Service
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by going from our own correspondent website,
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or indeed to that of the BBC World Service. But here's the edition which goes out on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, as fighters try to oust Gaddafi loyalists in Sirte, our correspondent in Libya ponders the dilemma of keeping the story in the news. In Pakistan, the monsoon season has affected millions once again. With few lessons learned apparently by the government from last year's disaster. We're up close and personal in a wrestling match on the grasslands of Eastern Mongolia. And in New England, we discover why lobster fishing is helping boost the crustaceans numbers. The conflict in Libya has become a war of attrition. Soldiers loyal to Colonel Gaddafi are still holding out, defending pockets of the country such as the coastal town of Sirte. The former rebel troops, now fighting under the flag of the National Transitional Council claim they're gaining ground. But they're meeting fierce resistance and progress is slow. Correspondents such as Alastair Leithhead face the problem of keeping the long running story in the headlines.
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It was too late to buy lamb, so camel pasta it had to be. And it wasn't bad. I guess the little villa on the Med would count as luxury in normal times, but Libyans are still waiting to find out what normal is going to be. It's luxury for us. Hot water, electricity, even some air conditioning. Luxury in an oil workers compound, an oasis and nightly retreat from the front lines closing in on Sirte, where Colonel Gaddafi was born and where what's left of his army is still holding out. We are commuting to war. For an hour and a half every morning and every evening, we drive the long desert road to collect the video footage we need to put a television news piece together. We dodge the potholes and sand drifts, burnt out trucks, wandering camels and erratic rebel drivers, or now I suppose, former rebel drivers. They're the same ragtag band of engineers and teachers, civilians who welded guns to their pickup trucks and took on a standing army. But they are soldiers now. Some bring fearless, almost foolhardy bravery. The professionals among them provide planning and strategy. The advance on Sirte we're documenting has been logical, cautious, well organized and well supplied. They have troops, tanks, artillery, air power courtesy of NATO. And rockets, lots of rockets. And rockets make good television. In a long running war, finding different or dramatic footage keeps the story in the news. Outgoing fire shows the ferocity and Aggression of war. We filmed 30 metres in front of the rockets as they were fired over our heads with a roar and trailing fire. The only warning a quick chorus of Allah Akbar. They were bombarding the pro Qaddafi positions. The effect on screen was dramatic. What we couldn't show was their impact 30km away, where these terrifying weapons were landing, tearing holes in the defensive lines, lines, that is, of other people. The colonel's army have the same weapons without the air power. So, like the troops, we experience and try to record incoming fire. The only reassurance while on the receiving end of rockets is the trick of sound. If you hear a bang, it's already missed you. But it's an occupational hazard rather than good television. At best, it's no more than a whiz, a puff of smoke and a wobbly camera shot. As we race for cover in a world of Hollywood war films, there's something almost disappointing about how real war looks on screen. The desire for better pictures can lure you into increasingly dangerous places. This war is being fought in two ways. Through the precise and remote science of long distance artillery, with angles, bearings and logarithms familiar to the engineers now firing them. And the up close, car to car, gun to gun graft where bullets and shrapnel fill the air. We film the consequences through the steady flow of dead and injured arriving at the field hospital. Pools of rich crimson seeping out of them. They're shocking images which people don't necessarily want to see close up. The temptation is to be out at the very front with them, where the fighting is more dramatic, more filmic. The pictures might lever the story onto a busy news bulletin, but what soldiers do here is madness. It's hard, brutal, bloody, deadly war. Frontline reporting. Capturing and communicating the essence of war is always a gamble, but one where we think we can set the odds. It's a balance of risk and access. The further forward you go, the more powerful the pictures, but the greater chances of being killed or injured. Our flak jackets and helmets are far from invincible. As a cub reporter I was always told never become the story. This week, a freelance friend of mine misjudged that balance. On the other side of Surte, dressed as a rebel, he tore through the desert with his camera, looking for that one image which would say it all and earn him good money. Olivier was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. He survived but is badly injured. I suppose I've thought more about risk in the days since. It's dark now and I'm glad to be commuting home. We'll head back up to the front again tomorrow and again, hopefully get that balance just right. The men fighting will head there too. They do it because it's their future, their country, their revolution. We will be there searching for an image you haven't seen yet, something to keep you following a war far away which isn't any less deadly or significant just because it goes on every day.
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Alistair Leathead the figures from last year's floods in Pakistan are staggering. More than 20 million people affected, hundreds of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, and a death toll somewhere near 2000. The government pledged to help those who'd lost everything and ensure better coordination and support if such a disaster should ever strike again. Well, it has. This year's monsoon rains began over five weeks ago. Ali Maqbool has been travelling through Sindh, one of the worst affected provinces, and found that people feel abandoned by their own government and the world.
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It is astonishing and depressing that this is all happening again and only this time for the people of southern Pakistan. Things appear even worse in traveling the vast flood hit areas as we have been doing, what's striking this year as compared to last is the massive number of people who tell us they've had no help at all. Not from the aid agencies, not from the army, and not from the government of Pakistan. On the same day, Prime Minister Yusuf Razagilani gave bold assurances that flood victims could stay in government relief camps as long as they wanted and would get all the shelter and food they needed. We were traveling through rural Sindh on the highways that hadn't been swallowed by the waters. We saw thousands sleeping out in the open. On the roads. Close to his destroyed village of Komar el Sharif, we found Aladino. What camps? He asked us. We've been everywhere around here. There are no government camps here. The more and more we travelled, over hours and then days, the more we heard the same thing. People in the district of Mirpur Khas, living close to the carcasses of drowned livestock told us they were so desperate they'd even been drinking the stagnant flood waters close to the town of Kandiari. A group of women stood in the road in front of our jeep, crying that their children were dying and that no one cared. On the side of the new vegetable market in the city of Hyderabad, though, was a sign that did say government medical relief camp run jointly with a charity. 2000 people were living in the enclosures meant for market traders. But even here, they said for the most part they'd been Left to fend for themselves. It was in that camp that we met Sami, a young mother rocking back and forth with her one year old son Nisar in her arms. She was crying. Hours earlier, her four year old daughter Mayra had died. When I asked what had happened, she told me how her family's home had been submerged by the floods, how they'd come to the camp and that Myra had become weak. Then she pointed to her son. He is in the same condition, she told me. Nisar looked bony and gaunt and fragile, she said he hadn't eaten for days. Even in the camp, they hadn't given proper food. We took mother and son to the camp's doctor, who pronounced Nisar severely malnourished and in need of milk. So why doesn't someone give him milk? We asked. The doctor told us it wasn't his job. We found someone who claimed to organize the camp. Is money the problem? I asked. Oh no, not at all, he told me, pulling thousands of rupees from his back pocket. These are poor people. They were malnourished before they came here, I was told. We told him we'd feed the family properly ourselves. You bring food for one, you'll have to bring food for them all, he told us. We reminded him that was what he should have been doing. And we left with a promise that all the children in the camp would get fed that night. But Sammy's story and the apparently avoidable death of her daughter continued to trouble me, as did the lot of the thousands who hadn't even got shelter. I raised these issues at the home of two brothers, Rais and Shafiq. And who put us up that night when our car broke down in Mirpur Khas town? People from here are the poorest in Pakistan, said Raees. They have no voice. That's why you can't see any aid coming this year. If a poor child dies, who will care? And Shafiq tells me Pakistanis themselves. Otherwise a generous people hesitate to give to official relief funds. Now no one believes the money will be spent properly, he tells me. Andy predicted international help could no longer be relied on. The world doesn't believe Pakistan anymore, he said. And why should they? We have all the resources a country could want, but everything is badly managed and we always have our begging bowl out. The authorities here will tell you they're already economically stretched, fighting a war against militants, amongst other troubles. They also say no country in the world could have coped with a disaster affecting so many millions of people. But incompetence, neglect and a now deep rooted culture of corruption are undoubtedly adding to people's suffering. Many Pakistanis bristle at the suggestion their country is a failed state. But Pakistan is now failing Sami and her tiny son Nisar, and hundreds of thousands of its most vulnerable citizens. And the world hasn't yet yet come to their rescue.
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Alim Macbool in Hyderabad since the civil war ended in 1990, Beirut has slowly been regaining its place as one of the most vibrant and elegant cities in the Middle East. The central district, devastated by conflict, has been restored and reinvigorated with a plethora of shops and restaurants as in pre war days. Designer clothes and jewellery are very much in evidence on the streets and conspicuous displays of status seem even to have reached the maternity wards, as Georgia Patterson Dargham found out in a hospital where she recently gave birth.
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There's an old saying here in the Middle east that a woman's grave remains open for 40 days after childbirth. So I guess now is a good time to reflect on my recent experience of the maternity ward of a large hospital here in Beirut. That's far from the only adage I've heard over the last nine months. Folk wisdom is heard in higher esteem than white coats, and I was warned against a great many evils, from ketchup to crossing my legs. My local well wishes spurned modern ultrasound and confidently told me the baby's gender, basing their conclusions on what I ate and whether I looked more or less attractive than pre pregnancy. Admittedly, their gender predictions were only wrong half the time. The few who were not categorical invariably told me, inshallah, it's a boy, God willing. Given this traditional social backdrop, I wasn't sure what to expect during my brief hospital stay for the delivery, so I dropped by for a tour of the facilities. The facade was shiny and modern, though the effect was somewhat undermined by signs warning visitors that firearms are strictly forbidden in the hospital. In the delivery suite, I innocently asked the doctor whether there would be a mirror on the day to see the crowning. As in some European hospitals. No, he told me, deadpan. That's what you get for giving birth in the Third World. The irony became apparent when the midwife showed me round the accommodation options, which have clearly been borrowed from a hotel brochure. This first class, second class, junior suite and vip, she said. The top end rooms boast a separate sitting room, a fridge, a PC, WI fi and a webcam. I looked at the plaque on the door of the sitting room, marking it as the exclusive reserve of the patient's guests. That must help. Keep all those visitors out of your way, I suggested, and she made a face. What's the no frills option like? I asked. She showed me rooms shared by two beds with an ensuite loo and the shower down the corridor. Not exactly hardship. Still, what would people think? In death, perhaps all are equal. But for the Lebanese, social distinction is just as important in sickness as in health. The fact that a hospital does better business by reducing its patient capacity is in order to provide hotel style creature comforts is rather telling. In this tiny country where first world meets third, luxury has become almost mundane. Extravagance is not just for the rich. The lower middle classes are getting their dose too. Domestic help epitomises this trend. Here, live in maids are more common than dishwashers. Unlike the latest electrical appliance, they still work during the daily power cuts and they've got a lot more functions. And just like those one time luxury machines in the west, immigrant workers are now cheap enough in Lebanon for families on a very average income, costing about 150 pounds a month. But cheap labor is not the only factor behind this generalization of luxury. Society here feels an overriding need to be seen living the high life. The civil war shook up the fortunes of many, and new money has been decisive to the way that people have tried to redefine their sense of identity. When dozens of friends and family turn up the day after you've given birth, because they will, it now matters that you have a VIP lounge with your name on it and a fridge to store the delicacies they bring. Once home, having hired staff, open the door to your guests in a frilly apron is just another way to keep up with the neighbors. In fact, 247 home help is so run of the mill in Beirut that new distinctions are needed to establish one's social standing, giving free rein to racial prejudice. A Filipino with pale skin and good English may be favored over a Bangladeshi, while a Malagasy import tops the charts for many who want their children to grow up speaking French. As I leave the hospital, I give the parking guy my pink ticket, because valet parking isn't just for the posh restaurants and hotels, it's for anything from corner shops to fast food chains. He expects a decent tip, of course. After all, aren't all Westerners rich? I wonder what he would think if he knew that back home we park our own cars when we're not on the bus, and that most people giving birth share a ward with another three to five women. Thinking back as My grave prepares to close again. I reckon there are harder places to dodge death for 40 days.
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Georgia Paterson Dargham in Beirut. The holiday season is drawing to an end in Boothbay Harbour in the United States, described on a local tourist website as a quintessential New England maritime village. During the summer months, yachts far outnumber the traditional fishing boats in the area, established as a fishing camp by English settlers in the 17th century. As the swimming trunks and picnic hampers are packed away, lobster pots come to dominate the quayside once more. And with stories about the dangers of global overfishing prominent in the press, Maine seems to have found a way to actually help increase lobster numbers by catching them. As Julian May has been finding out.
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Rush hour starts early in Boothbay Harbour. Newcomers to this little town in Maine are woken by diesel engines at half past four in the morning. It's not the roar of trucks, but a low throb and thrum. After a while, it's reassuring, restful, the sound of the lobster boats heading out. They're not large, about 35ft long, some crewed by their owner alone, most with one hired hand, the stern man. They stream out in the morning and come home in the evening like city commuters. But the lobsterman's commute is much more impressive. Past rocky islets, under ospreys nesting on marker poles, surprised by seals suddenly alongside porpoises and sometimes mighty whales. Don't be deceived by the small boats. The fishing effort here is immense. From the shore, out beyond the reefs and islands, the surface of the sea is dotted with brightly coloured cylinders a foot tall, curving to a point at the bottom, each with a short pole sticking out of the top like giant anglers. Floats attached to each of these thousands of buoys. Buoys, they call them. Here is a pair of lobster traps. There are more than 200 boats in the area, Glen Townsend, the assistant harbour master, tells me. Each licensed for 600 traps, and they tend to fish to the limit. I couldn't see how the lobster stock could withstand the onslaught. But Finn Carroll, stern man on the optical illusion, says the lobster population is growing and growing because rather than in spite of the fishing, there are strict controls. Finn explains over a dogfish head. That's a beer, not a seafood delicacy. In Robinson's Wharf, if we catch a buried hen, a female carrying eggs, we cut a V notch in the right flipper next to the middle of her tail. Then we put her back. You can't land a notched lobster. It takes two moults for the notch to grow out, so the female has a chance to spawn for at least another two years. As well as hauling the traps, extracting the lobsters, re baiting and setting them again. It takes a couple of days to do them all. Fin says wearily. I spend my life measuring lobsters. They have to be three and a quarter inches from eye socket to where the tail begins. Any shorter, they go back. Many fisheries have a minimum size limit. In Maine, there's also an upper limit. If a lobster is more than five inches from eye to tail, it goes back two. Many will be male, so as well as the high proportion of breeding females, this ensures there will be lots of big mature males scuttling about the seabed. Booth Bay Harbour lobster traps are carefully designed for the comfort and safety of crustaceans. They won't damage their claws on the way in. The bars are so spaced that the little ones can come and go. To avoid ghost fishing. One wall is biodegradable. So should a trap be parted from its buoy and lost, its inmates will, after a while, stroll free. I think in my next life I'd like to be a 5 inch plus male lobster in Maine. As much food as I can eat with all that bait, lots of girls, and always a lobster trap handy to shelter in from predators. If it wasn't for us, there wouldn't be nearly as many lobsters. Finn says. They're usually solitary, fighting for scarce food, even eating each other. What we're doing is more farming than fishing, really. Finn's happy tonight. He and Nick Hawke, who owns the Optical Illusion, have just unloaded their catch. 800 dark blue live lobsters weighing more than a thousand pounds. At $2.75 a pound, that's a good day's work. It's no wonder then, that lobster fishing in Boothbay Harbour is not the easiest of industries to get into. The number of permits is limited. Sons tend to take over from their fathers. If you serve your time, though, at least two years as a stern man, there's a chance you'll get one. There's a lot to learn, the law as well as the law. Each lobsterman's buoys are painted differently. I show Finn one I found washed up. He knows whose it is immediately. Theoretically, lobstermen can set their traps anywhere. In reality, people have territories, and if someone intrudes on another's, as might well have happened here, their gear will be cut as well as a chart in the boat. The lobsterman carries another in his head. Cutting gear is one thing. Stealing lobsters from another fisherman's traps. Quite another, Finn tells me of a lobsterman with an expensive narcotics habit caught doing this. Fisheries protection officers coated another fisherman's trap lines with ink that shows up under ultraviolet light. The culprit's hands glowed a guilty purple. He lost everything, finn whispers. His license, his boat, everything. He had to leave town.
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Julian May Mongolia is still recovering from last year's bitter winter when, according to United nations estimates, 17% of the country's livestock perished the yaks, camels, goats, sheep and horses. It was a further blow to a nation where over a third of the population are on the poverty line. The Soviet Union began to withdraw its financial support from Mongolia when the country decided to embrace a democratic constitution over 20 years ago. The economic collapse has meant millions have left the countryside to seek work in the capital, Ulaanbator. But the rituals of traditional nomadic life still survive, as Robin Irvine recently had the opportunity to experience at rather close quarters.
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They announced me as Reuben, a young wrestler from Scotland, the correct pronunciation of my name lost in the excitement as I was thrust forward into the arena, a patch of stony grass on an open hillside. Someone had spotted my broad Western shoulders among the crowds of slim Eastern Mongolian horsemen and decided it would be amusing to invite me to wrestle. I didn't feel much like a wrestler as I clumsily put on a borrowed dharg, a traditional faded pink open chested top with long sleeves, and fattened it over my very white torso. I was supposed to be here researching Mongolian horses and horsemanship, not grappling surprisingly strong herders under the merciless stepson. I'd been told that Eastern Mongolian men were not great wrestlers because they did not make and drink Erik, a tart drink made from fermented mare's milk, which, as a white food is said to give strength. Instead, the milk was reserved for the foals of the famous local racehorses. This was small comfort as I watched the competitors wheel and turn confidently in the pre match Eagle Dance. They looked pretty daunting, slapping their heavily bronzed and rather muscular thighs in their skimpy blue and red costumes. My Eagle Dance was anything but coordinated, but the watching crowds, some sitting on the ground, some perched on rugged horses, certainly seemed to enjoy it. I was at a small local naardum, the Mongolian equivalent to my native Scotland's Highland Games, an opportunity for the far flung herding families to gather to wrestle and race horses. This naardhum was taking place to mark the blessing of the ruins of Tug Temple, destroyed during the Soviet era and now earmarked for restoration, the Buddhist temple was the place where a black banner representing Genghis Khan's war spirit was kept after the local baroque people migrated from inner Mongolia in 1945, seeking more peaceful pastures and fleeing the Japanese advance, I certainly felt like fleeing the advance of my stocky opponent. Bare chested, in tall riding boots and jeans, he didn't look like he was going to give me an easy fight. He might have been small, but he looked decidedly solid. Small and solid are characteristics often used to describe Mongolian horses. But many of the racehorses seen at Naardums in central Mongolia and indeed the local barrack horses, are often a bit taller than expected. There is an idea of the pure semi wild Mongolian horse, but Mongolia is a huge country, three times the size of France, and has a rich history of crossbreeding horses. Eastern Mongolia, where I was about to compete in my first Naarden wrestling match, traces its good racing stock back to the Qing administration period between the 17th and 19th centuries, when the Manchu Emperor's iron herd was cultivated by crossbreeding here. Since the transition from socialism to democracy 20 years ago, Horse racing in Mongolia has once again become big business. Increasingly rich owners are now looking outside Mongolia to boost the speed of their horses at the local level. This has created a divide between those who can and cannot afford to feed their horses oats, inject them with vitamins, and even import English, thoroughbred and Arab bloodlines from Russia. Maybe I could have been compared to a crossbred horse as my shorter, stockier wrestling adversary and I circled each other. I may have been taller with longer legs, but as the bout progressed under the hot sun and my opponent secured a good grip on my Zodig while I struggled for purchase on his naked torso, his endurance began to tell. There is no time limit in Mongolian wrestling, and the local word for wrestling, bukh, literally means durability. A similar story plays out in horse racing. Over shorter distances of 10 to 15 kilometers, crossbreds have the advantage. But over longer distances of 25 to 35 kilometers, the strongest characteristic of the Mongolians comes through the capacity to keep going, to endure pushing and pulling my foe desperately trying to move his solidly planted feet so I could bring my greater height to bear. I did feel encouraged that I was still standing after a few minutes. Back at home, where I do judo, my opponent would have been penalized for passivity. But here, surrounded by his fellow herders cheering us both on in their festive best, he had all the time in the world, and he knew it. He waited and waited until I made my mistake and overstepped, swiftly finding myself flat on my back in the dust. Much like Mongolian wrestlers. I suspect that even in the face of foreign competition, the tough little Mongolian horses who alone can survive harsh winters on the steppe will endure.
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And Robin Irvine's close up and personal encounter on a Mongolian hillside brings us to the end of this edition. There'll be more from our own correspondence on Saturday at half past eleven, so please join us then. Goodbye.