← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
28 Jan, 2012
00:28:18
From our own curmudgeon. Hugh Schofield finds reasons to be dyspeptic in Paris.
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BBC Announcer
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent.
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Hugh Schofield
You can hear the version of the
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BBC Announcer
programme broadcast on the World Service by
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Hugh Schofield
following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website. To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the
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BBC Announcer
stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well.
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Kate Adie
But now, with the addition Broadcast on
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BBC Announcer
Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Presenter
Today, a nasty smell in the air. As the problems facing the new rulers in Libya begin to pile up, we explore the links between corruption and crisis in the Milton Keynes of Nigeria. Visit the Ethiopian town said to be the world capital of Khat. That's the narcotic leaf, not the furry family pet. And why? One correspondent saying, let's hear it for the Chinese Communist Party, while another admits, when it comes to France, he just can't help being curmudgeonly. The United nations is urging the transitional government in Libya to take control of makeshift prisons around the country to prevent further atrocities against detainees. Its chief spokesman on human rights spoke of 8,000 prisoners being held in 60 different locations and detailed cases of rape, torture and extrajudicial execution. Earlier, the charity Medecins Sans Frontiere suspended operations in detention centres in the city of Misrata because of what it says are persistent cases of torture. Gabriel Gatehouse says the job of unifying this divided country now seems harder than ever.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Three months after he was captured and killed, a strong smell of death still lingers on the spot where Muammar Gaddafi spent his final hours cowering in a drain. I don't mean this in a metaphorical way. The whole area literally stinks of rotting corpses. I was driving through the desert from Tripoli to Benghazi along the coastal highway. As we passed the Colonel's home town of Surte, my travelling companions asked me if I'd show them the place where he'd met his end. I wasn't keen, to be honest. The euphoria of the fighters as they realized their revolution had finally reached its climax was tempered for me by the brutal manner of Gaddafi's death. The sight of an old man being trampled, kicked, beaten, shot and probably sodomized with a sharp object seemed an inauspicious start for a new Libya, even if the victim had himself ruled his own people through a combination of fear and violence. But my companions were adamant and so we went. A car drove by. As we stood around the drain, a young man wound down his window and shouted, gaddafi will be back. After a few more hostile looks from passers by, we decided it'd be best to leave. Oddly enough, I had just phoned the desk in London to check if there was any breaking news. There were, in fact reports that Gaddafi loyalists had driven revolutionary fighters out of the town of Bani Walid and were now back in control of one of the former dictator's staunchest strongholds. Baniwaleed is a medium sized town in the mountains southeast of Tripoli, back in the direction from which we'd come. I considered turning back to investigate the story, but there had in recent weeks been a number of clashes between rival militia groups. In some cases, one side had accused the other of loyalty to the former regime. Each time, the accusation had seemed unfounded, simply an attempt to garner support from other militias in what were essentially local feuds. So we continued on towards Benghazi. It's a long way and I had plenty of time to ponder the reason for the overpowering smell. I thought it unlikely that the cause would be the dozen or so charred bodies left over from the NATO airstrike that same morning three months ago. I wondered if perhaps the cause was something more recent. In the days immediately following Gaddafi's killing, there had been reports of his supporters being rounded up and shot, their hands tied behind their backs. Perhaps there was a mass grave nearby. In the months that have passed since, some of Libya's revolutionary fighting brigades have turned from heroes into villains. Earlier this month, I went to the mortuary at Tripoli's main hospital to see the body of a man who'd clearly been tortured to death. His corpse was badly bruised. The nurse who assisted in the autopsy said he thought he'd been subjected to repeated electric shocks. The man's name was Izzedine El Ghul. He was a brigade commander who'd been captured by members of a rival militia from a neighbouring town. They'd accused him and his entire town of supporting the old regime. I visited both places in the following days. It seemed clear that in this instance, the term pro Gaddafi had little real significance. In a world where Colonel Gaddafi was dead and most high ranking members of his regime were either in prison or in exile, there were simply local rivalries at play, exacerbated by a proliferation of weapons and an acceptance by some young men scarred by months of brutal conflict of violence as a legitimate way of doing business. When I reached Bani Walid two days later, the there were no green flags of the former regime flying from the rooftops, in public and within earshot of our two local minders. Everyone was agreed there were no Gaddafi loyalists here. But something was not right. Whenever our minders turned their backs, we would be approached by young men declaring their love for Colonel Gaddafi. As soon as the minders returned, they melted away. Many in the town complained of arbitrary arrests, disappearances and torture. In public, the official line is Gaddafi, his regime and all it stood for are gone for good. But when we met the head of Bani Walid's local council, he locked us in his office and told us a different story. We're surrounded by Gaddafi loyalists, he said. His hand shook as he told me he feared for his life. I thought back to Sirte and the man who said that Gaddafi would be back. Perhaps he was right. Could Libya be witnessing a resurgence of his methods of violence to consolidate power? Could the brutal manner of Gaddafi's death be a harbinger of things to come? Perhaps that smell around the drain was a metaphor after all.
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Narrator/Presenter
And that's Gabriel Gatehouse. The chat at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week hasn't only centred on whether the Western world is peering into a recessional abyss. The developing countries, and China in particular, have featured in discussions both public and going on behind closed doors. The delegates would love to know whether the Chinese economy can keep powering ahead and to what degree tentative Western investors should get involved. But it's a difficult place for foreigners to read, especially when the issues are frequently fogged by politics and ethics too. China is not, after all, a democratic country. It's often accused of abusing human rights as well. One recent visitor was Jeremy Paxman.
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BBC Announcer
It was just after we'd left Mr. Chen's guest house that the conversation turned to politics. Mr. Chen was a lean, smiling peasant of 51, whose diet of home grown vegetables and the occasional home killed chicken had given him the sort of figure which could have earned him a decent living as a health and fitness guru. In a Western newspaper. You could have fitted four of him inside. Eric Pickles Mr. Chen lives 20 minutes walk from and almost directly below the Great Wall of China. And in the spirit of moder China, he started a rough and ready guest house for the occasional hikers who come to his valley. Not that there were any of them. This winter Sunday, when the sky was high and blue and clear and the wind blew Sicily, it was minus four or five. Mr. Chen has used the proceeds of his guest house business to build on a couple of rooms to his single story house. So now he has two bedrooms and another which doubles up as a dining room and home for his television. The curtains are plastic and very thin and there's an enormous poster of a youthful Mao Tse Tung on the wall. The road up to Mr. Chen's village is littered with piles of bricks. They've been ordered up by local peasants frantically building extensions to their houses. At the bottom of his valley, there's an enormous green billboard advertising a new tourist development to be built by one of the corporations whose shareholders you can never quite discover. Private enterprise, officialdom, or officialdom with benefits, as you might term it. It's to be built on land owned, as all land supposedly is, by the state. Peasant householders like Mr. Chen will be compensated on the basis of the extent of their floor space. Hence the piles of bricks build now while stocks last. Mr. Chen has no choice in the matter. His village directly beneath the wall, looks good to developers. And in this people's paradise, the money doesn't just talk, it gives orders. I could see why he had a poster of Mao on his wall. Mao might have been a monster who condemned 30 million to starve to death in the so called Great Leap Forward. But he came from genuine peasant stock and at least claimed to revere the peasantry. As we left, as I say, the talk turned to politics and elections and whether if they had them in China, they'd really be much better off. And in that sneery Western way, we admitted our prejudices in favour of democracy. And how awful it was to hear the stories, now commonplace in China, of the unaccountability of the rich. If he lived in England, Mr. Chen could play his part in getting his MP chucked out and changing the government, and he could certainly take his planning dispute to some tribunal or other. But then we fell to discussing the upcoming elections in France and America and whether Sarkozy would fall, why Obama has been such a disappointment, and whether all American candidates for president really do have to look like advertisements for over 50's vitamin supplements. We all get comfort from our prejudices. And the West's great consolation is that while the main things we successfully export to China are our jobs, we are at least democratic. When was the last time you heard the poor huddled masses, you yearning to be free by going to Beijing? China may have paid the bill for America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Americans, or people elected by Americans, got to decide whether to fight those wars. And of course it's true. At least it's partly true. But when we reached Beijing and the smog which rasps at your throat like sandpaper, I picked up a copy of the English language version of the official China Daily. It had the usual quotient of drivel. Yet it also carried an enthusiastic front page report about the inaugural Debutantes ball in Shanghai. Workers of the world, unite. You've nothing to lose but your tiaras. And there was disquiet too. The trade surplus had shrunk a little. Oh, for an economic problem like that. And I looked out of the window at the highways and railways being thrown up all over the place, the signs of a country literally as well as metaphorically on the move. And I thought about the fact that in the last 30 years Britain has had no less than 20 different politicians in charge of our transport policy with a multiplicity of often contradictory ambitions in the job. On average, a magisterial 18 months. And just for a moment I thought, let's hear it for the Chinese Communist Party.
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Narrator/Presenter
Jeremy Paxman, the president of Nigeria this week sacked the country's police chief after the wave of bomb and gun attacks in the northern city of Kano, in which at least 185 people were killed. President Goodluck Jonathan has also ordered a comprehensive reorganization of the police force. Earlier, the authorities in Nigeria had been accused of failing to respond adequately to widespread demonstrations against petrol prices. Mark Doyle has been covering both stories and begins his dispatch in the capital, Abuja.
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Kate Adie
Forget the news from Nigeria for a moment. Forget the police stations attacked by Islamic militants in the northern city of Kano. Forget the noisy protests about petrol price rises in other Nigerian towns. They're two very different stories. There is a link between them. But for now, come instead to Abuja, Nigeria's capital. If you haven't been there, it's probably not the place in your imagination. Abuja is a modern, relatively well organized city. It has glass clad office blocks and a huge pink government secretariat complex. The color of the complex always makes me think of a giant wedding cake. And there are shopping centers that wouldn't be out of place in Europe. It's not Dubai or New York. Think rather a giant Milton Keynes. As big cities in the developing world go, it's clean and well on the face of it, normal. The contrast with the northern capital, Kano could not be more stark. This ancient city on the southern edge of the Sahara desert is dominated by the palace of the Emir of Kano. The emir has horsemen in his retinue. One evening I watched as the horses were galloped out of the palace gates for exercise in an incongruous modern touch. The horses then mingled in the road with hundreds of buzzing tuk tuks. Three wheeled motorbike taxis imported from India. Nigeria is a Land of contrasts. The variety here between Abuja and Kano, for example, or between the mainly Christian south of Nigeria and the largely Muslim north, could be this country's strong point. But it also makes Nigeria vulnerable. I first came here this month to help cover the demonstrations against an increase in the price of petrol. For most ordinary Nigerians, cheap fuel is all they get out of living in one of the world's major oil producers. They think most of the oil money is cornered by the elite through various corrupt practices. As the demonstrations went on, coalitions started forming between the different protesters. Trades unionists, teachers, civil servants and students all joined in. And while petrol price rises were the catalyst, the agenda grew as demonstrators condemned corruption. I watched a documentary filmmaker in Abuja address a rally. This is not just about petrol, he said. It's about cleaning up Nigeria. We want our country to be the biggest, best black democracy in the world. The crowd loved was as if the demonstrations about a fuel price increase had brought an awakening, a new awareness. There was even heady talk of a people power revolution to overthrow the corrupt elite. Then suddenly, the attacks by the Islamist militants in the northern city of Kano saw Nigeria lurch into a new crisis. The awakening had been replaced on the national agenda by what has become a new and frightening problem for this country, Islamic militancy. Parts of Kano resembled a war zone. Police and army checkpoints started appearing around the burnt out police stations that had been the main targets of the attacks. Suspected militants were forced to kneel on the ground in the streets for interrogation. In the aftermath of the attacks on the police stations, I expected to hear a wave of sympathy for the police. But I didn't. Instead, witnesses whispered that many of the people killed after the attacks by the militants were shot by the police, possibly by mistake, possibly on purpose. And anyway, others said, out of earshot of anyone else, they're all corrupt, those police, they all steal from us. And this is the link between the petrol price story and the Islamic militants. Most Nigerians think their leaders are hopelessly corrupt. They tried to resist the petrol price increase because they thought they should have at least a tiny slice of the oil wealth, which they think the men and women at the top are all grabbing illegally. And even in the face of a major Islamist militant attack against their police force, some people were not as sympathetic with the police as you'd expect. The Nigerian Nobel prize winner, the writer Wole Shoinka, said this week that corruption in Nigeria is systemic. It also helps explain the background to many events in this country.
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Narrator/Presenter
Mok Doyle, the US special forces who rescued two Western aid workers from kidnappers in Somalia earlier in the week were helped, it seems, by the locals love of the narcotic plant cat. The men who were supposed to be on guard were in fact comatose after several hours of chewing the leaf. Possession of cat, which is especially popular among people from the Horn of Africa, is banned in the US but remains legal in the uk. Mary Harper has just been to a town in Ethiopia where life centres almost entirely around it.
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Mary Harper
Drive along any road between Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia and you're likely to see pickup trucks piled high with bundles of fresh green leaves hurtling past you at terrific speed, horns blaring, lights flashing a bit like ambulances or fire engines. Land at any airport and you'll see planes stuffed with the same green leaves being unloaded at frenzied pace. Whether there's war, drought or famine, the leaves get through the cat industry booms. I used to wonder where all this cat was coming from. Now I know. The small town of Awadai, in between Ethiopia's most holy Muslim town of Harar and its big eastern city of Deirdawa. I first arrived in Awadai late at night. Unlike the other towns I'd passed through, it wasn't quiet, dark and asleep. It was wide awake and madly, crazily busy. Every scrap of pavement, every building, room and shack was devoted to the sorting, the weighing, the bundling and the selling of catch. There was a fresh, slightly bitter smell of vegetation. I stood on floors soft, smooth and silky with glossy, discarded leaves. Man, woman and child sat on these floors, rapidly chopping stems, picking through the leaves to choose the most succulent and tender. There was something medieval about the process. Nothing was mechanized. Everything was done by hand. Delicate weighing of the highest quality leaves, which fetch many pounds a bunch, was done with tiny brass weights on metal scales. In each and every room, a man sat with a giant ledger, carefully noting down weights, prices and other figures. This is the cat capital of the world, one man told me. This whole town is a cat factory. We harvest the leaves from the fields nearby, then we rush them to Awadai for sorting and pricing. This is our cat stock exchange. We all work from late afternoon until 3 or 4 in the morning. Only then do we rest. In the middle of Awadai is a large five story building, the biggest I could see in the town. It's devoted entirely to cat and divided into small rooms where people prepare the leaves for transport. All over the world, the vehicles waiting on the road with their engines Running reminded me of racehorses straining at the bit before the starting bell. As soon as they're filled with cat, they race off into the night. This one's for Djibouti, this for Somaliland. Deeridawa, Addis Ababa, London, China the reason for the speed is that cat has to be fresh wherever possible. It must be on the market before noon the next day. Otherwise, as one devoted chewer told me, it loses its deadliness. I spent time with some chewers the day after I visited our Daisy. They were known by their Somali nicknames of black hair, big nose and round mouth. There's quite a ritual to chewing cat, which is usually done sprawled on the floor, preferably on a carpet or blanket with cushions to lean on. Soft drinks, water and tea are placed before each chewer together with a large bundle of cat, a bin for the stems and a cloth for wiping sweat from the brow. The session starts quite slowly. There's not much conversation, as packing the leaves and stems into the mouth and chewing them are the priorities. After an hour or so, spirits lift, tongues fly and arms wave about. There's a lot of talking, planning, analyzing, arguing and joking. Business deals are made, political problems are solved, all created. As the hours spin by and the chewing subsides, the mood shifts downwards. Eyes take on a glazed expression, irritability sets in and sleep refuses to come. It's here that I see shades of what psychiatrists and others describe as the destructive side of cat, which they say can lead to serious mental and other problems. The next time I visited Awadai, it was daytime in this upside down town where people work through the night. There was hardly anyone on the streets. All the doors were closed, everybody was asleep. There are a few goats trotting about and a few dried cat leaves in the dust, the only reminder of the frenzied nighttime activity. I couldn't help thinking that cat is being grown in an area affected by drought and shortages of food. It's being delivered fresh, with tremendous efficiency to parts of Somalia affected by famine. I suppose it's a matter of priorities, or should I say of money at the very least. Perhaps the local authorities and the international aid agencies could learn something from the people of our dai about how to deliver fresh supplies, perhaps of food and other essential items, to difficult and dangerous areas.
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Narrator/Presenter
Mary Harper in Ethiopia Sometimes it seems as if only two sorts of story ever make it out of France. One waxes excitably about how everything is so much better there. The health service, the shops, the food. The much reviewed book French Children don't throw food seems a case in point. Apparently their little ones sleep through the night, have immaculate table manners, and can quite likely recite long passages of Marcel Proust from the age of three. But then there are the other stories, the ones that grumble about how the country's gone to the dogs, the economy's failing, racism's rampant, banlieue torn apart by violence. Our man in Paris, Hugh Scofield, admits that this dispatch of his is firmly in the latter category.
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Hugh Schofield
Like a lot of men my age, I notice I made it my resolution this year to be less curmudgeonly, to be more positive, to see all the good that lies around. It lasted all of three weeks. What is it about France that does this? I've lived in a lot of countries, but France is the only one that brings out this raging dyspepsia. And I don't think it's just me. Any foreign resident here would agree with me, I'm sure when I say that in between the moments of rapture and there are some in France come those periods when all you want to do is just bang together their collective Gaelic nuts. Obviously it's partly timing. Mid winter France is drab and it's depressed. In fact, it's been depressed for 30 years, but now it's even more depressed, what with the economy and all. I see that Harold Evans, the former Times editor, just said he'd never known the United States in such a miserable state. Well, the same's true here. And like in the US we're about to enter an election campaign glory b, which in 21st century democracies means a contrived, cynical succession of on camera events in which sensible words like change and hope are sucked of all meaning, then tarted up to lure in the credulous. That's bad enough, but it's not just that. I've also recently had a couple of those Paris moments which remind you that the cliche of unutterable rudeness is based on objective, observable fact. The woman in the boulangerie where I've probably spent the best part of a thousand euros over the years looked at me dyspeptically. Yes, she was the dyspeptic one, because I had a handful of small change to buy my baguette. None arrange patrou. No, I'm afraid that's a bit problematic, she said. All those little coins. Ok, well, not going back there again. And then at the bank, my bank, in front of the teller as he watched me, the cash machine swallowed my card. Can I get it out?
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Gabriel Gatehouse
No.
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Hugh Schofield
When, then? Next week sometime. Monday? Non. It'll be when the technician comes. We don't know what day. Does this happen often? Oh, yes. It swallows card from time to time. Well, why don't you get it fixed? Blank smirk. Don't you realise? What? Oh, forget it. Unfortunately, I can't avoid going back there again. But no apology, Nothing. Incredible. It sets me thinking.
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BBC Announcer
Why?
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Hugh Schofield
Why are they like this? Why are the drivers in Paris so petulant? They sit there in their cars, angry, scowling, suspicious. The smallest delay caused by a delivery. Someone parking a bin, lorry, an ambulance, and they're klaxoning away on their horns like frustrated children. And there's the link that brings us to my profound thought for the day. Because according to the theory which I've just been stewing in my grumbling curmudgeonly brain, what the French are essentially as a people is adolescent. For so long they've been nursed by their state and told that everything will be alright. They fail to grow up and become fully responsible. Have you ever been in a French flat? They're all incredibly overheated, like a spotty teenager's bedroom. They're unnaturally prone to getting sick. That is hypochondriac, because they know they'll get all the love and care they need for free. They dream about how the world should be a better place and they get cross because it's not. They constantly complain and go into sulks, which sometimes makes them go out and stamp up and down on the street because their allowance hasn't gone up. But Mum and Dad have actually been pretty indulgent over the years. They tend to give in. There's a lovely word in French, bersee. It means to rock or cradle. Berceau means a cradle. The French have been bersee. But berse has another meaning by extension. To lull, to soothe, to feed with illusions. With Europe where it is today, we're surely at the fin des illusions, the end of illusions. This nice lifestyle you've been enjoying was only possible because Mum and Dad were borrowing lots of money from the nasty man. Do you remember the one with the briefcase and the pinstriped suit? Used to come knocking at the door from time to time. Well, now the nasty man wants his money back. What's that, darling? No, it's not the nasty man's fault. It's ours.
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Narrator/Presenter
Hugh Schofield. And perhaps this year he'll be spending his summer holidays back in Britain. That's it. More from our correspondence. Dyspeptic and otherwise on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.