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From Our Own Correspondent
A Banquet of Unpalatable Choices
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Correspondents tell their stories: Mark Mardell in Washington on difficult decisions a...
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Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest
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edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, a banquet of unpalatable choices for Barack Obama. We're off to dinner with the unpopular and departing President of Pakistan. There's a long and difficult journey from the war in Syria to the offices of a women's magazine in Sydney. And we find out why. Buried somewhere in Hungary, the heart of Suleiman the Magnificent is beating a little faster. So what exactly will President Obama do about Syria? Last night, his Secretary of State said there was compelling evidence that Bashar Al Assad's army carried out a poison gas attack in Damascus, killing more than 1400 people. The American President said he was considering a limited military response that would not involve ground troops or a long term campaign. But Mark Mardell in Washington says for Mr. Obama there are no easy options.
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The President of the United States keeps himself busy. Perhaps he has to, to keep his mind off the curse of Iraq. It's a conflict that still casts a long shadow. So while pondering one of the biggest decisions of his term in office, President Obama continues to give the Medal of Honour to veterans, talk to city mayors about gun control and discuss the cost of higher education. He's spoken about the chemical weapons issue twice in recent days. Both times, the bulk of the interview was on a different subject. I presume at the insistence of the White House, this may simply be the political equivalent of juggling plates while riding a unicycle and whistling the Star Spangled Banner. It may simply be to keep his mind off the appalling set of choices which confronts him. I'm pretty sure the highlight of his week was when he did talk directly to a crowd. And it wasn't about Syria. It was a president filled with passion who stood on the spot where one of his heroes, Martin Luther King, an even greater orator than himself, delivered the famous I have a Dream speech. As the President spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial, facing thousands of people either side of the long reflecting pool, you could see that this man who sometimes seems absent from his own words, was brimfull of emotion. The sign is he bites his lower lips as if to stop himself crying at his own words. Recalling the March on Washington 50 years ago, he used the cadence of an old time preacher. That spirit was still alive, he said. The teacher who paid for poor kids books, she was marchin' the guy who gave a job to an ex convict he was marchin' the father who's raisin his boy, right? He's marchin'. He didn't say those soldiers in their barracks, they're not marchin anywhere. There was no mention of marchin off to war, no mention of force and fighting. This was, after all, a speech to honour a man who renounced violence. I'm convinced that one of the reasons Obama came into politics was to turn King's dream into a reality, something he decided long ago as a community organizer in Chicago. He didn't come into politics to unleash cruise missiles on a foreign country. Indeed, one of the reasons he was elected in 2008 was because of his promise to end America's decade of war and focus on, as he always puts it, narrative nation building at home. Obama was elected in part because he stood against the Iraq war from the first, but now he's haunted by the ghost of that conflict. While Iraq and Afghanistan forged Obama's approach to war, the challenge of Syria threatens to leave his own unwritten doctrine in tatters. It seems to consist of a series of negatives. America should not leave a heavy footprint in the world, not not impose its will on other countries, not be obsessed by the Middle east, not intervene with troops on the ground, not play world policeman, and not make a virtue of going it alone. It's perhaps apt that the White House briefing room, so much smaller than it looks on tv, used to be a presidential swimming pool. The spokesman's aim is to keep the President out of deep water, but it can leave them floundering in the shallows. Their answers remind me of that quiz show where you can say anything except a straight yes or no. It was left to a junior spokesman to hotly deny this was anything like Iraq. Then he said the American government was searching high and low for a reason to invade. He didn't quite go on to say it, but it seems obvious to many that President Obama has been searching high and low for a reason not to take action. In fact, perhaps the Obama doctrine is not all that new. When President Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, he hardly thought that US troops would be there a decade later. When LBJ sent them to Vietnam, he did not think he was escalating a war that would destroy his record. The United States hasn't often acted as the world's policeman. Perhaps the Balkans comes the closest to that. But from the two World wars onwards, through the Korean War to Iraq, any wider sense of acting for a greater good has always been mixed with a strong sense of the United States own interests and that's what Obama says is now at stake the USA's own core interests. But he was also led here by another youthful enthusiasm as well his strong belief in nuclear disarmament and the need to remove weapons of mass defence destruction from the world. If he acts over Syria, who knows how it will end? But if he doesn't, he'll have no credibility. Boxed in by his own red lines, he'd be sending signals to Iran and North Korea that America's threats are just hollow bluster. When we next see Obama in public, I doubt he will display the same intensity of emotion as he showed on that wet Wednesday at the Lincoln Memorial. Then he was able to glory in the righteousness of the memories and his own promises. When he announces what he'll do about Syria. His decision will not win him friends or admirers. He has to choose from a banquet of unpalatable options.
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And that's Marc Mardell. There's much speculation in China about which way the verdict will go in the trial of the ousted politician Bo Xilai, which ended on Monday. Observers believe he'll certainly be found guilty on some or all of the charges of corruption and embezzlement and abuse of power, but they are less certain about the sentence. He could face the death penalty or more likely, a long spell behind bars. The public's being told that the trial proved that no one, however powerful, is above the law. But John Sudworth, outside the court in the city of Jinan, has been getting a rather different perspective on Chinese justice.
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It was the crowd I noticed first, and then the object of their attention. An elderly man had climbed onto a tall concrete fence post and a group of uniformed police officers and plain clothed thugs were trying to both coax and threaten him down. But the man, grey haired and I'd guess at least 60 years old, was enjoying his moment in the spotlight. Having caught the attention of a few international camera crews who were now training their lenses on him, he continued his impressive monologue while the men immediately below leapt at his just out of reach ankles. His final defiant act was to pull down his trousers before being manhandled off his pillar and bundled away. The discussion later amongst the press pack was how best to describe his underwear. Billowing was perhaps the most appropriate offering I heard. It was an ostentatious attempt to court publicity, but by no means the only one I saw during my time in the city of Jenan. On almost every corner people would sidle up and push documents into my hands. Claims of abuse by the authorities, photographs of injured relatives or neighbours Evidence of wages unpaid, details of homes torn down, or land illegally seized by corrupt bureaucrats in collusion with the police. These approaches are familiar to every foreign reporter based in China. It's just that Jinan was hosting one of the most closely watched and scrutinized show trials China has ever staged. And Bo Xilai's moment in court had brought the petitioners, as they're known, out in force. Petitioning in China dates back to imperial times, when any subject was entitled to take his or her complaint to the emperor. It rarely got anywhere, of course, and it doesn't under the Communists either. As few as 2% of attempts are said to end in any form of success. But regardless of the low odds, the number of petitioners has grown rapidly over the past few decades. China's booming economy has produced plenty of winners, of course, but there are losers too. The forced sale of farmland for factory and real estate development has long been a key driver of Chinese economic growth, and many petitioners claim to have received no compensation for their lost land at all. Estimates suggest that some 10 million petitions, possibly more, are now lodged every year. The process starts with the local petitioning officers set up across the length and breadth of China. But complaints can be taken all the way to the top ministry level office in Beijing, and many persevere in in spite of the well documented stories of petitioners being stopped from reaching the capital, beaten or illegally held in so called black jails by local governments. Keen not to have their records blemished by too many complaints, I recently spoke to one 57 year old man who had been to Beijing to petition more than 30 times in an effort to seek justice in a medical negligence case. As a result of the nuisance he was causing, he had been locked up in a labour camp for the best part of two years. The thought that foreign journalists might be able to help with such complaints is an indication of the desperation of the petitioner's cause. In Jinan. Some paid the price for even this vain hope, being dragged away roughly by the police when they tried to speak to the media. There's a view from the Chinese government, certainly, but sometimes echoed by foreign executives headquartered here in Shanghai. High that calling for democracy misses the point. China has achieved so much in the past 30 years, raising living standards and dragging millions out of poverty. But while it's true that few people I meet tell me that they yearn for the vote, there is arguably a growing hunger for a genuine system of rights enforceable through the courts. Even some insiders are urging reform in that direction. The trial of Bo Xilai is being sold to the Chinese people as proof that no one is above the law. As it ended and the heavy security presence around the court evaporated, a new batch of petitioners emerged onto the streets. Where'd they been? They were asked. These were the truly unlucky ones. They had been illegally detained in advance, they said, swept off the streets and locked up for the full five days so they wouldn't spoil China's chance to demonstrate the strength and fairness of its legal system.
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John Sudworth in the city of Djinan Australians go to the polls in a week's time to vote in their general election. It's a race between Kevin Rudd's governing Labor Party and Tony Abbott's Conservative coalition. The issue of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia's shores has been prominent in the campaign, with both party leaders promising tough action. Mr. Rudd recently announced any new arrivals would be resettled in Papua New guinea even if their claims for asylum were successful. Mr. Abbott has suggested people who've already been given permanent refugee visas could have them revoked. John Donnison has been talking to one woman who, having made it to Australia, now faces an uncertain future.
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Where do you see yourself in five years time? That classic cold, sweat inducing question asked by mothers and prospective employers. I'd be intrigued to hear how Cobra, a cheerful woman I recently met in Sydney, might have answered it. A few years back. Not long ago, she was living in Syria amid the increasingly bloody civil war. Today she works at Australian Woman's Weekly, helping test cooking recipes. Sitting cross legged amid Middle Eastern style cushions in her small flat, she tells me her story. Originally from Afghanistan, Cobra's family fled in the 1970s, blaming a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. No longer a place to raise a young girl, her parents had told her. She went to Iran, another repressive regime, she says, before ending up in Syria, where she lived for more than 20 years. But as the ongoing war claimed more lives, Cobra decided to find a new home where her family could be safe. Leaving behind her husband and children in Damascus, hoping they might one day be able to follow, she set off for Australia, a world away. Cobra travelled more than 10,000 miles, taking in Iran, Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia. She borrowed money to pay people smugglers $5,000 for the final leg of the journey to Australia's Christmas Island, a terrifying 11 day voyage across the Indian Ocean. Packed onto a tiny boat with little to eat and no life jackets, Cobra remembers the moment when the Australian Navy picked up the battered vessel. So, so happy, she beams, switching from Arabic into broken English. They gave me new clothes and a headscarf, food and a shower. Australians are good people, she remembers. Cobra was taken to a detention camp on Christmas island before travelling to Sydney. Having been given refugee status, she was accepted into a homestay programme where Australians volunteer to take in refugees while they get set up. Cobra went to live with Xanthi Roberts, a food writer at Women's Weekly. They make a perhaps unusual pair. Xanthi, tall and blonde, you might say classically Australian. Cobra, more pocket sized in traditional Islamic dress. But they've become firm friends. Cobra now works in the magazine's kitchens, where recipes are tasted and tested. When we visit, she's frying up some spicy lamb. Xanthi. Very, very good. Cobra smiles. But not all Australians are so welcoming. For this election, Stop the boats has been the mantra of both the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott. They've seemingly been trying to out tough each other, clearly thinking a hard line is a vote winner. Both men deny accusations their policies are inhumane. Instead, they say it's about tackling people smugglers and stopping refugees from drowning on the treacherous journey. But there's also a nasty edge to the debate. You don't have to look too far to find overtly racist views from some supporters of both Mr. Rudd and Mr. Abbott. I'd put a rope around them and drag them back out to sea, one man told me outside a pub in Sydney. They pump out children, live off a bag of rice and scrounge off the dole. Such extreme views are, of course, a minority and could be heard in Britain or indeed many countries. Both Mr. Rudd and Mr. Abbott would condemn such opinions. But their policies suggest there's a broader anti asylum seeker vote. They feel they need to talk to people like Xanthi. Roberts accused the party leaders of playing politics with desperate people. She points out that apart from Australia's Aborigine population, everyone here has immigrant roots. Xanthi says she's worried about the country's international reputation. As for Cobra, the policies of both leaders in this election mean she has little chance of seeing her family here soon. Before we say goodbye, I ask her if she's happy. Yes and no, she says. I love, love Australia, but at night I come home and cry. Cobra's worried she'll get the news her children have been killed in Syria. She says someday she takes 10 or more paracetamol to try to get rid of the stress and the headaches. Her 13 year old daughter, Batool, wants to be a lawyer. Cobra says if she could one day join her here, Batool would be able to work hard and repay Australia for the generosity and kindness the country has shown her mother.
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That's John Donison. Now, what does an unpopular president do when he's booted out of office at election time? Why invite all those journalists who've made his life a misery these last few years round for a banquet? President Azif Ali Zadari of Pakistan steps down on September 8th. He's the widower of Benazir Bhutto. His party was swept to power five years ago on a wave of sympathy after she was assassinated. But after negative headlines, corruption scandals, even allegations of murder, the popularity of his People's Party fell through the floor. It's now been consigned to the opposition benches. Charles Haviland was at the dinner in Islamabad. And after tucking in regally, he found himself wondering if this really was goodbye to the Bhutto Zadari family rule in Pakistan.
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Although Islamabad is one of the world's newer capitals, none of its buildings is more than 50 years old. You feel the weight of Pakistan's turbulent story when you step into the vast halls of the President's house. From the walls, paintings of Pervez Musharraf, Zia ul Haqq and all the other men, military and civilian, who've served as president gaze down on you. There are huge Koranic inscriptions and bronze friezes depicting the country's ancient history, while in the main reception room are two massive extra pictures. Benazir and Zulfika Ali Bhutto, daughter and father, both former prime ministers and the immediate family of Asif Ali Zadari. Benazir was assassinated in a still unsolved case and Zulfikar Ali was hanged by General Zia, who overthrew him. It was under these pictures that hundreds of journalists lined up around a carpet to be received by President Zardari, Benazir's widower, and to bid farewell to him before a lavish banquet. Kebabs of every description and sumptuous ice creams and milk puddings. As the meal drew to a close, Mr. Zardari told the room that after five years he was leaving this house in peace and and was grateful to Allah for that. He had shifted the balance of power back from the presidency to Parliament. Therefore, he said, Pakistan was the winner. Although his party had issues with the elections that swept it from power in May, it accepted the process and he would support the positive steps of the new Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. In Pakistan's 66 year life. This is the first time a civilian government has served a full term and handed over to another. Presiding over that may come to be seen as one of President Zardari's biggest achievements. Almost everything else is much less positive. During his party's term, security has not improved and economic difficulties and power cuts have burgeoned. And Mr. Zardari's own reputation among many Pakistanis is dismal. When he succeeded his murdered wife in accordance with her political will, he had already spent more than 10 years in prison on corruption and murder charges. Those allegations still haunt him and his reputation. Despite all that, Asif Alizardari was never found guilty of anything. Indeed, he shows marks on his body that he says were the result of torture in prison as he bids farewell. The question on many minds is whether that is the end of the Bhutto Zadari political dynasty. Perhaps not. The memory of Benazir remains a potent one. While she had many detractors, her fans adored her. The Pakistan People's Party, founded by her father, has always been led by someone from the family, and Mr. Zardari's young son, Bilawal, is now its chairman. At the farewell reception, I asked one of Mr. Zardari's most colorful colleagues, the former Interior Minister, Rayman Malik, whether the dynasty would continue. I think so, he said. Pakistani people are sentimental and that matters. What about Mr. Zardari himself? Might he flee the country fearing more corruption charges? Perhaps only one person could answer that, and that was his peer or spiritual advisor, Mohammed Ajaz, a man clad in white homespun clothing who stood around smoking and talking to journalists as the evening drew to a close. Mr. Zardari would not flee abroad, said Mr. Ejaz, but nor did he want to stay on as president. I offered to use my mystical powers to help him stay in the president's house another term, he added. But he refused the offer. Mr. Zardari had lived in that place as a lion and had the heart of a king, the devoted spiritual adviser said. As we left, my BBC colleague and I met three women party workers from the People's Party, the party created by the Bhutto dynasty, but now seemingly dispatched to the political wilderness for five years. Politely, we suggested they wouldn't be visiting the president's house so often now. What do you mean, not so often? They cried. We won't be coming here at all. Pakistan is beset by problems, including crippling militant violence and the little understood machinations of the intelligence agencies and the military. Yet at least a smooth political transition is almost complete. That was something for all of us to ponder over our chicken Shah Jahani, Korma, mutton Nihari and green tea.
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Charles Haviland, the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu described it as the battle that saved civilization. He was talking about the siege of the small Hungarian castle of Szeget 477 years ago, almost to the day. The Muslim Turks finally took the town in September 1566. But they sustained such heavy losses, including their revered leader, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, that they didn't threaten Western Europe again for 120 years. But why today? Are researchers and historians sifting the soil and searching the archives for the good sultan's heart? Nick Thorpe has been to see them trying to unravel a centuries old mystery.
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When Hungarians walk through the grounds of the castle in Sighetvar, says Norbert Popp, professor of geography at the University of Page, as we stroll along the beautifully restored brick ramparts, they imagine they are walking through a Hungarian castle. But of course that is not true. He smiles to hide his own excitement. This is in fact the Turkish castle, the Hungarian one was destroyed in the siege of 1566. Like the rolling hills of the Zelitz region of Hungary around us, each fold of history concerning that siege and what followed seems to conceal another, and each substitutes another version of events. On the surface, the legend is easy to follow. Suleyman the Magnificent arrived here with up to 100,000 crack troops in early August 1566. The castle was on his route to Vienna, which he confidently expected to capture and thus pave the way for the addition of great chunks of Western Europe to his dominions. The air trembled to the beat of the big Ottoman war drums, made as they still are to day in the handsome city of Edienne. I once bought one there for my son. But Miklos Ryny, the commander of the castle and his garrison of only 2,300 men put up such a brave fight that the Turks were stopped in their tracks. Zrinyi died in the final sortie from the burning castle. Suleiman died in his tent, some sources say from surprise at his Pyrrhic victory. He was 72, after all, and had been fighting the Hungarians for 40 years. His body was taken back to Constantinople, but his heart was buried here in a tomb which subsequently became a Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, or so reads the inscription on the Turbeki church, just east of the town. Just a fairy story, norbert Popp explains. The plaque was put there in 1916 by the local priest for political reasons. Hungary was an ally of Ottoman Turkey. Two ancient empires stumbling to their ruin in the mud and blood of the First World War. And they needed symbols of undying friendship. Now Norbert Pop has been tasked with finding the true burial place of Suleiman's heart. Also, for political reasons, Hungarian Turkish relations are enjoying a big revival. The two prime ministers get on well. The number of Turkish tourists visiting Hungary has leapt by 45% in just one year. But there are only 500 beds in this sleepy town, where tens of thousands once slept in tents, listening to the nightingales, preparing for battle. At stake are a five star hotel or two, and the further restoration of the castle and a host of Ottoman era monuments. But everything hinges on finding the resting place of Suleiman's magnificent heart. There are several maps. One from 1689, even marks the supposed burial place. Others in the war archive in Vienna, were prepared for the Habsburg troops who retook the town in the 1680s. There is more information in the archives of the Vatican in Venice, in Budapest and in Istanbul. Norbert Popp and his team of researchers have been combing through each. Their results will be made public on 20th September. Permission has now been granted for a new dig at the one site Norbert does not take me to. This is not just about Suleiman's heart, he explains, but about reconstructing each layer of the history and geography of the past 400 years. We have already discovered a lot, he teases. The maps are misleading. When the Habsburgs conquered the castle in 1689, Serbian irregulars drove out the remaining Muslims. German Catholics were resettled here in the 18th century. Even the landscape has changed. A mini Ice Age coincided with the Ottoman occupation, Norbert explains. What's now the little Almashy brook was then a raging torrent. Sziget, in the town name, means island in Hungarian, rising out of the marshland of the river's inundations. Nearby, in the Hungarian Turkish Friendship park, is the place where Suleiman's army encamped. There's a tomb for Suleiman here, too, with fresh flowers, purely symbolic, nods Norbert. And a Bronze Age burial mound, which generations of locals mistakenly called the Turkish graveyard. The mayor, Janosz Kolovi, proudly traces his family roots to Bosnia in Turkish times. He opens his laptop to show an artist's impression of a new concrete visitors center to be built beside the mosque. It's a Hungarian design and the Turks don't like it at all, he says wistfully, with Norbert Pop, I kneel in the mosque to examine dervish graffiti in the plaster. Calligraphic images of the face of God frowned on by mainstream Islam. Somewhere beneath us, in the dry Hungarian earth, Suleiman's heart beats faster.
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And that's it. The story of Suleiman the Magnificent still unfolding after five centuries. Nick Thorpe, bringing us to the end of this edition. I'll be back with more from our own correspondence next Saturday morning. Until then, goodbye.