← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
26 Jan 2012
00:27:56
Twenty-six planeloads of Libyans arriving in Amman: Matthew Teller on how the downfall...
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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 broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on
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the top of our website.
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To keep up with our latest reports
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and get a sneak preview of the
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stories, you can sign up to our
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Twitter feed as well.
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But now, with the addition Broadcast on
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Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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We never thought Greece would join the Eurocrats who dreamed up the single currency on what's gone wrong. Thousands celebrate Republic Day on the streets of Delhi. But do people really dislike this city, conceived as the capital of the British Raj? The police take a close interest as we investigate Western Sahara's troublesome relationship with Morocco. And there are squeals of delight, but not from the pigs at a wedding in the hills of Papua New Guinea. Frantic efforts continue this week to try to ensure that Greece doesn't default on its debt. The government in Athens is trying to work out with representatives of banks and bondholders how to reduce the size of its debt to a sustainable level. It hopes to be able to make an announcement before the end of the week. But how is it that a member of the Eurozone is able to get into such trouble over its economy? Alan Little, who has been making a series of programmes about the Eurozone crisis, says that when the single currency was first dreamed up, it was never thought so many nations would use it.
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Dietrich von Kehlho is one of those great Europeans, a man for whom the building of the European Union was part of his life's mission. Compare the Europe into which he was born to the one he helped build. He was born in the 1930s. Adolf Hitler was all powerful in Germany and was about to lay waste to most of Europe. Von Kio's father, whom he never really got to know, was a German officer killed on the Eastern Front during the invasion of Poland in 1939. He remembers as a 10 year old fleeing across half of Europe as Soviet troops advanced from the East. My mother, he said, was determined that if we were to surrender, we would surrender to the British. These she considered the most civilized of our enemies. Little wonder so many of his generation of Europeans devoted themselves to building a Europe in which war between the European powers would not just be undesirable, but actually impossible. The European project was a way to normalize Germany, to Europeanize the country that twice in living memory had sown such destructive havoc. Dietrich von Kehlhuh became Germany's ambassador to the European Union in the 1990s and played a key role in the building of the single currency. For him, it was above all a continuation of the process that had begun in 1945, the process by which Europe turned its back on a thousand years of settling its differences and by force of arms. But for the Germans, there were other, more material motivations. Germany is Europe's great exporter. A third of its economic output is down to exports, most of that to the European Union. By the early 90s, Germany was growing exasperated with Europe's fluctuating currencies. A sudden devaluation in a neighbor's currency could make German exports prohibitively expensive. Germany had come to see this as a kind of backdoor protectionism. Only a single currency could complete the single. We wanted to stop Italy devaluing the lira, for example, Herr von Kehlho told me it has to do with things like Bavaria needing to sell surplus milk to Italy, or Volkswagen in Lower Saxony wishing to keep competition with fiat within certain limits. How did it all go wrong? The former British ambassador to the eu, Sir John, now Lord Kerr, is candid. Twenty years ago, when we were working this out, he said the rules were first bent to let Italy in. Italy had a national debt close to 120% of GDP. Under the eurozone's rules, it had to be below 60% to qualify. Italy was a political problem, a former advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl told me. But Italy had an unusual debt in that most of that money was owed to its own people. It was internal, not external. So people began to say the Italians must be in. That opened the door to the rest. I went to see a Greek economist called Miranda Zafa. She was working for Salomon Brothers in London in the 1990s and was watching in dismay Greece prepare for membership. I used to take my clients to see the head of the National Statistics office in Athens. She said we used to call him the magician because he could make everything disappear. The deficit, inflation, disappear. How did Greece cook the books? The state railway company, she told me, was losing a billion a year. It had more employees than passengers. One finance minister declared that it would be cheaper to send everyone by taxi. Did this billion euros appear in the national budget? No. Why not? Because the railway company issued shares that the Greek government bought with that money and wrote it down as a financial transaction, not an item of expenditure. A technical loophole allowing the cost to be hidden. And so the debt mountain accumulated and now threatens to bring down the whole currency. Germans, proud of their hard won reputation for fiscal discipline, blame feckless southern neighbours Greeks blame Germany for imposing an unelected prime minister on them and casually show on television caricatures of Angela Merkel dressed as Hitler. It is a financial crisis with far reaching economic consequences, but it is not war. Dietrich von Kehlho and his colleagues made mistakes when they locked 12 and then 17 national currencies together, but they at least bequeathed to us a continent that settles its differences without recourse to arms.
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Alan Little and you can hear the first part of his series Europe's Choice on Radio 4 this Sunday afternoon at half past one. The new authorities in Libya have a major challenge on their hands after fighters said at first to be loyal to the deposed dictator Colonel Gaddafi seize control of the mountain city of Bani Walid. The uprising comes after violent protests in the country's second city, Benghazi. Libyans, angry at the slow pace of reform, stormed the headquarters there of the ruling National Transitional Council. There have also been outbreaks of violence in the capital, Tripoli. But while the new rulers struggle in their bid to unify the country, their revolution is having tangible benefits elsewhere. As Matthew Teller has been finding out.
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For hoteliers in the Jordanian capital, Amman, January can be miserable. It's the lowest of low seasons for Western tourists who prefer the temperate months of spring and autumn and long stay. Arab tourists who escape the heat of the Gulf to spend cooler summer holidays near the Med won't arrive for another six months. Yet this week, even in the depths of winter, the smiles are broad all across Jordan's hospitality sector. Thanks to an unexpected Libyan windfall, Amman is a highland city. When I drove in from the airport, it was not so much raining as condensing. The misty air was grey and saturated, and it was bitter cold high above sea level amid precipitous urban hills. The lobby of my hotel was steamy and crowded, with pretty scruffy looking characters lounging in tracksuits on the sleek, ultra modern furniture, arguing in an accented Arabic I couldn't place. We are suffering a bit, hotel manager Ibrahim Karaje told me. These Libyans are not well educated and they talk loudly, but they're making good revenue. This is very low season for us, but I'm having to turn business away. Jordan was a key Arab ally for Libya's rebel armies during last year's revolution, supplying logistical and military aid. Now, it seems payback time has come. Lacking both hospital infrastructure and medical expertise, post war, Libya is flying thousands of its citizens abroad for treatment, including at Jordanian hospitals widely regarded as the best in the Middle East. Medical bills, lodging and three meals a day are being paid for by Libya's new government, the National Transitional Council officials tour Amman weekly, settling hotel and hospital bills in cash and handing out the $300, roughly 190 pounds per person per week, as pocket money. The arrangement began last summer for fighters who'd been seriously injured in combat, but the trickle has become a flood since the death of Colonel Gaddafi Three months ago, I sat in on a discussion between Michel Nazal, president of the Jordan Hotel association, and Nayef Al Fayez, Jordan's minister of tourism. Every three, four and five star hotel in the capital is full. 26 planes arrived last week from Libya. Amman, they told me, is hosting 14,000 Libyans. But the minister is not complaining. We need them, he said with a genial smile. It's good for business. That is undeniable. From those figures, I'd estimate Libya is pumping around 10 million pounds a week into the Jordanian retail economy. That excludes income from hospital bills, which could also be substantial in a modest resource poor country which saw a 40% drop in tourism last year. That's no small windfall, according to hotelier Charles Toal. The Libyans are saving a man across town in the private 300 bed, Jordan Hospital administrator Aman I. Khattab told me. Since November, they treated 465 Libyans as inpatients, but many more as outpatients. Minor cases would have surgery during the day, and then, she explained, they'd go back to the hotel and return next morning. She walked me along broad, brightly lit corridors, spotless and quiet. Doctors smiled in greeting. At bed 128 on the first floor, 62 year old Saleh Mohammed Suleiman passed a tired hand over a white beard. He'd arrived three weeks earlier from his home in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk for treatment for chronic hypertension. We were relying on foreign doctors, he told me, but they all went home. During the war, two of Suleiman's sons fought against Gaddafi. Libya has a good future, he said, gesturing with his cannulated right hand. The people running the government are young. They know what's best. On another corridor, Ali Mohammed al Bucefi was on crutches. His leg had been fractured in Zawiyah early in the fighting, and then he'd fought in Zintan before, spending the summer smuggling weapons into government held Tripoli. We'd come in at night, the 24 year old told me, bringing guns in rubbish bins or under cars. Then in October in Bani Walid, his convoy had taken a direct hit. He'd been thrown high in the air, landing on rocks, breaking his nose and teeth, damaging his hearing and tearing muscles in both legs. It's a fantastic feeling, he said with a hollow eyed smile. But we never imagined any of this before. What had life been like under Gaddafi? I asked. I don't want to rewind, he said, gazing at the floor. We have strong national bonds. And then he twined his fingers together to demonstrate. Then he shrugged angrily, a mixed up young man who'd already seen too much violence in his life. With pathos and some despair, he added, I want to keep on fighting. I just don't know who. Even though Libya is successfully outsourcing treatment, healing, it seems, must start at home.
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Matthew Teller in Amman, Jordan Huge crowds have been lining the stately boulevards of New Delhi this morning. It's India's Republic Day, when the country formally celebrates the moment its new constitution came into Force in 1950. It's only a few weeks since the city marked the centenary of its foundation. It was King George V who decided it would be India's new capital and its grandeur would reflect the might of the British Empire. Those celebrations back in December were denounced by one influential Hindu nationalist organization. It described them as disgusting and dispiriting because the city had been built as the capital of the British Raj. But Mark Tully, who's lived in the capital for more than 40 years, argues that most Indians live there quite happily now that it has been swamped by the vast, sprawling urban area that is the Delhi of today.
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No one was surprised that the Rashtraswayam Sevak Sangh, always known as the rss, should disapprove of the founding foundation of New Delhi. After all, it provides the hard core of the main opposition party in India, the right wing Hindu nationalist Bharatya Janta Party, or bjp. It was surprising that the RSS issued such a thundering denunciation of the centenary celebrations, which were remarkably low key. The chief minister of Delhi did release a special book on the city, but even then she was quite cautious, saying there is ambivalence in what to celebrate in this anniversary and how to celebrate it. The centenary celebrations were in sharp contrast to the Grand Darba, or assembly, which gathered to pay homage to George V and hear him proclaim that the capital of India would move from Calcutta to Delhi. 20,000 soldiers were on parade that day and there were 100,000 in the audience. The king, Emperor and his queen, robed in purple and gold, sat on two silver thrones to receive the homage of 562 Maharajas the Special Crown, designed for the occasion and studded with jewels including more than 6,000 diamonds, weighed about 2 pounds. Not surprisingly, the King complained of a headache. In an omen of how the self confident high noon of the Raj was was to turn into its setting sun, the ruler, the princely state of Baroda, insulted King George V by deliberately turning his back on him. The city the British built had the splendor to match the grandeur of the Durbar. At its heart was a grand vista. A statue of George V stood at the east end, staring imperiously down the vista that has now gone. At the other end of the vista, the palace, with 360 rooms built to house the Viceroy, has become the home of the Indian President. In front of the palace, the two massive wings of the pink sandstone secretariat are now filled with Indian ministers and their civil servants, diligently perpetuating the bureaucratic legacy bequeathed by the British. John Marshall, who was head of the Archaeological Survey of India when New Delhi was being constructed, thought its buildings were monstrously pretentious structures that no one in India wanted. Judging by the Sunday crowds who come to stroll, picnic or play cricket on the lawns lining both sides of the vista. Indians do want the buildings Marshall found so pretentious. Perhaps this is because they are busy living their lives in the vast new city that now swamps New Delhi. And so the Raj buildings have joined the ranks of the ancient mosques and palaces of Delhi that are only relevant as sites to enjoy. One visitor to the Durbar described the Delhi of those days as lying on a malarial plain surrounded by melancholy vestiges of ruined and departed alien greatness. Its population was half a million and even when I arrived In Delhi in 1965, the population was still under 4 million. For most of the citizens, bicycles or tongas, horse drawn taxis were the means of transport. It was a city of bureaucrats. Now there are even more bureaucrats, but they've been joined by multinational executives, bankers, estate agents and every other profession which finds it convenient to be near the seat of government. Half a million people, it's estimated, migrate to the capital every year in search of work. The population of the capital region has swollen to 22 million. As the busy world of newer Delhi dims the memory of New Delhi, the authorities seem anxious to ensure it doesn't entirely fade away. The British Raj. Statues of Delhi, including the statue of George V, had been unceremoniously dumped on the site of the Darba, which had become wasteland. This year the wasteland is being converted into a park complete with the statues. So RSS or no rss, the memory of British Delhi will live on.
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And that's Mark Talley. Western Sahara is often referred to as Africa's last colony. Its status has never been resolved since the Spanish ceded control in 1975. Morocco seized most of the desert territory, fighting for 15 years against the Polisario Front, an independence movement based in refugee camps in south western Algeria. But Morocco's claims to sovereignty have never been internationally recognized. Embattled activists continue to press for a better deal for indigenous Sahrawis and for their right to self determination. And as Aidan Lewis found out during a brief visit to the region's main city, the situation remains tense.
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My flight had been delayed by a large and rather unruly group of Sahrawi pilgrims catching a connection in Casablanca on their return from Mecca. Arriving in Laiun, they spilled happily out into the desert night, robes flowing, I was made to stand to one side while a suspicious looking plain clothes policeman noted the name of my hotel and wandered off to make some calls. Western Sahara remains a deeply sensitive subject for Morocco, and it was clear that foreign journalists were neither regular nor particularly welcome visitors. My first meeting was with some Sahrawi civil society groups on the first floor of a family house. We sat on carpets drinking sweet tea as they told tales of suffering and discrimination. After an hour and a half, it was announced that the police were at the door. Outside, I asked if there was a problem. Yes, replied a stocky man in a shiny suit. How could I expect to wander around meeting people without their permission? How could I be sure of my own safety? His slightly more menacing sidekick inquired. In fact, I felt much safer inside the house than out. But the policemen retreated to their car with my passport and saying they would return it only at the hotel. When I peered out of my hotel window a little later, a man watching from the opposite pavement shifted awkwardly behind a tree. In the morning I reported to the local branch of the communications ministry, housed in a particularly salubrious area of Laiun full of whitewashed villas and bougainvillea. Having confirmed that I needed no written authorization to work, I received the first of two unconvincing apologies for the misunderstanding of the previous evening. However, fears that the authorities would try to monopolize my limited time were confirmed when I was told that both the mayor and the governor had found space in their busy pre election schedules to see me, and I still attracted Suspicion. On the 10 mile drive to Lyuns fishing port, I was stopped at several checkpoints and more calls were made before the car was allowed to pass. At the bustling modern port, countless fish were being unloaded from a large fleet of trawlers. Fishermen grilled sardines for an early lunch. Fishing is one of the industries that sustains Western Sahara economically, but which activists say has benefited Moroccan settlers from the north ahead of indigenous Sahrawis back in town, the mayor and no fewer than three of his deputies lined up to dispute this. Jovial and dressed in traditional Sahrawi tunics, at pains to stress their local roots, they said Sahrawis had Morocco to thank for their roads, schools, electricity and hospitals. The governor, a suited bureaucrat with a worn face, said Moroccans led by the king had made a gesture of solidarity in developing Western Sahara, and he warned that separatists, guided by Morocco's regional rival Algeria, were working to undermine that effort and destabilize a volatile region. Yet the activists I met seemed far from the image of dangerous subversives that the authorities liked to portray. One was matu Dambar, a 37 year old woman whose brother was shot dead by a policeman a year ago. The authorities claim it was an accident, but the family are demanding an autopsy and have still not collected his body from the morgue. Another was Aminatou Haidar, who won some rare international media coverage two years ago when she staged a hunger strike in an airport on the Canary Islands. As I was meeting another campaigner, she swept into the room wearing wrap around shades, her mobile phone ringing loudly to a pop tune. She stared down the ever watchful plain clothes officers as we drove to the airport and directed some choice words at the local police lookout as we passed, her punchiness belied the reality of her plight, a lonely struggle for an obscure cause against apparently overwhelming odds. Laon looks like a neat, orderly city, the pride of Moroccan governments that have invested billions in the region. But a heavy military and police presence betrays Morocco's continuing insecurity. Despite the tight controls and a long history of abuses by Moroccan authorities, some are still prepared to venture spontaneous political gestures. As I wandered in the city center, a group of teenage boys called out to me, welcome to Western Sahara. Not Morocco, Western Sahara. Later, a hotel receptionist pressed into my hand a card with his contact details and an offer in capital letters, I can help. Even so, it's impossible to tell how much latent support there is for the activists and their demand for self determination or independence. And Morocco is certainly not encouraging anyone to find out.
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Aidan Lewis in Western Sahara there's news this morning that an army Mutiny has been foiled in Papua New Guinea. There have been weeks of instability since the Prime Minister was deposed last year. Papua New guinea is not a place our correspondents get to very often. Pauline Davis, though, was there recently for the marriage of her niece.
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It was a wedding I couldn't pass up. A traditional tribal ceremony in the remote southern highlands of Papua New guinea, and I was invited as family. Kamia village was once home for Moses, the bridegroom. After being abandoned as a child and on the verge of starvation, he was taken in by an Australian couple and ended up in Melbourne. There he met Daniel, my niece. They were only 13. But romance slowly blossomed and a decade later they decided to marry. Though outwardly a dinky dye Aussie who works as a nurse, Moses retained his cultural roots. So the young couple decided they would journey back to Komia for their wedding. Moses entered the world as the fifth child of the fifth wife of the clan chief. When his father died, his mother remarried into a rival clan. But her children weren't welcome and so had to stay behind and fend for themselves. They were rejected by their large extended family, unable to grow enough sweet potato, the staple crop, to feed the extra mouths. But in a strange twist of fate, Moses was now returning triumphant with an unknown bride from an unfamiliar place in Komye. This had never happened before. From a small airfield in the provincial capital, Mendi, our wedding party bounced its way along the pitted highway that cut through the lush rainforest. Throughout the three hour journey, locals waved at us, bringing our vehicles to a stop. They wanted to chat to Moses and peer curiously at all of us white skinned foreigners. Animated conversations took place in a mix of English and pidgin, some of the more than 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. News of the big event had evidently spread far and wide. Hundreds of people walked to Komia for the ceremony. Marriage in this part of the country is a commercial transaction. The groom's family negotiates a price with the family of a woman from another village. If he can afford her a a deal is struck and she'll move to the hut he'll build on his land. The bride price is measured in pigs and shells, but these days banknotes are often thrown in for good measure. In Port Moresby, the country's capital, our taxi driver told us he'd paid 30 pigs for his second wife. This made me realize what a bargain Danielle had been. My niece had been deemed a four pig bride and some of the hapless creatures fattened for a year would be slaughtered, baked and eaten at the bridal feast on the wedding day, a soft rain fell. The women separated from the men. A group of giggling bare breasted women surrounded us females and gently removed our clothes. They dressed us in two grass aprons open at the sides. Our faces were carefully painted in the village style, white from nose to jaw with yellow streaks above the brows and on the cheekbones. Along with the face paint, the the men were given spears or bows and arrows. They wore leaves at the back, a chest pad made of shell and stringy fiber, decorative armbands and headgear containing brightly feathered dead birds. Then the village women linked arms and we bounced up and down rhythmically while making a strange hissing sound. The men standing opposite did the same. Young girls in the crowd squealed with delight and Danielle and Moses were married. Then the handing over of the pig ceremony began. The villagers lined up on four sides of a square facing the tethered animals in the middle. The bride's relatives were summoned to inspect the pigs that done. Their ropes were untied and they were handed over to Danielle's mother. In the interest of establishing a good relationship with the in laws. She returned two of the pigs to the groom's family. The other two had already been earmarked for next day's wedding feast. This was to be held on a patch of land belonging to Moses brothers. The pigs were baked on banana leaves in pits filled with hot stones. We'd brought balloons and frisbees for the village children, and as they giggled and jumped, the adults sucked the thatch from the young fern leaves that had cradled the pork meat as it cooked. Papua New guinea is not a poor country. It has substantial mineral wealth and and a liquefied natural gas pipeline in construction that will bring in vast amounts of money. But so far, little of this wealth has trickled down to the people in Komia, who live without electricity or water in woven huts with dirt floors. As dusk gathered and the villagers hiked barefoot through deep mud to their homes, they didn't have a candle between them yet. When I glanced at my smartphone, I I noted the excellent signal. Whatever basic services the villagers here lack, texting is not a problem.
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And with that from Pauline Davis in Papua New guinea, we've reached the end of another program.