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From Our Own Correspondent
A Cosy Dinner in Leipzig
00:28:00
What are they talking about? In Germany there's emotional debate about Pegida; Libyans...
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Presenter
Thank you for downloading the latest edition
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Narrator
of BBC Radio's from our own correspondent, the best in news and current affairs storytelling.
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Kate Ady
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Host
Hello. Today, a fun fair. A crowded seafront, a busy restaurant. Glimpses of normality in a Libya wracked by violence and uncertainty. What to believe about the fighting in eastern Ukraine? The fog of war, we hear, doesn't just happen, it's manufactured. Leftists from all over Europe are arriving in Greece. They hope Syriza's election victory means that a revolution is underway. And it's not Italian, it's not Spanish. Why Brazilians are proud. They speak Portuguese and want you to get it right. A group claiming to be an affiliate of the Islamic State movement claims it carried out Tuesday's attack on a hotel in the Libyan capital Tripoli, during a day long siege by gunmen. Nine people were killed, among them five foreigners. At least 15 Libyan security personnel were injured, three of whom died later. Libya has been the scene of near constant violence between rival militias and government factions since the civil war in 2011, which saw Colonel Gaddafi overthrown and killed. Ian Pannell's just back from there.
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Ian Pannell
Libya's open. Libya's safe. With a fixed grin revealing a tightly clenched set of teeth, Jamal Zubiya welcomed us to Tripoli. The head of the foreign media department beamed reassuringly. We urge investors to come back, he said. We believe in transparency, truth and professionalism. We're ready to answer all questions. We've been invited to watch the graduation of a new cohort of government spin doctors. Not the most scintillating of occasions, but one designed to send a message of business as usual. If the ruling coalition in the west of the country is to be believed, all is well in the new Libyan state. Over a lunch of chicken and rice, one of the graduates introduced herself. Sabah Abulez had been living in exile with her family in Manchester, but she moved back to help rebuild the country after the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. For more than two years, the country prospered, but the hopes and dreams of those who joined the revolution have gone awry. Saba has still to learn the alchemy of spin doctoring. She told me she's thinking of returning to Manchester with her child because of the state of the country. Her husband wants to stay. If he doesn't want to go back, I'll divorce him, she said. I think she was joking. The last time I was in Libya was towards the end of the war, which ended in Gaddafi's downfall. The picture seemed somehow clear then. What we used to call The Arab Spring was in full bloom and an uprising in the name of freedom and democracy was about to overthrow a brutal four decade long dictatorship. Three and a half years on and dreams of a brave new world in the Middle east are in tatters. Today, even getting into Libya is a challenge. The roads from the borders are unsafe for Westerners who used to be welcomed with open arms. Passenger ferries have stopped running, foreign airlines have cancelled flights to Libya, most embassies have shut and foreign workers fled. So we joined a small band of pensive passengers on a charter flight into the last airport to remain open in the west, now in the hands of an Islamist militia. What we saw was quite unexpected. On a warm Friday evening on the Tripoli seafront, we watch parents photographing their kids playing at a candy coloured fun fairy. Groups of young men in a nearby park performed tricks on motorbikes in front of a crowd of excited onlookers. Restaurants were busy, the streets jammed with traffic and shop shelves full. We drove for hours out of Tripoli to the east and the west. The only thing remarkable was how bad the roads were and how poor the people. For such an oil rich nation, there were no Kalashnikov wielding balaclava bandits or wild eyed jihadists waiting to nab us on the road. No smoke, few guns and frankly, it felt safe to travel unaccompanied. We even stopped for a while at the magnificent Roman ruins of Leptis Magna for some sightseeing, where families wandered between marble columns looking for a nice spot for a picnic. But as events in the capital this week show, this seeming normality is perilously thin and frequently punctuated by bouts of violence. I met a young engineering student at a packed cafe near the main mosque. Mohammed didn't want to give his full name and he didn't want to be filmed, but he told me that by nine at night, people head to their homes, afraid of the militias and criminals that control the streets. He told stories of death and displacement. Prices have gone up, he said, and some salaries aren't being paid. I asked him about the growing influence of some hardline Islamist elements. Everyone has guns now, he said. It's like a magnet for extremism, because whenever they have guns, they have power to control you in the same way Gaddafi did. Many are deeply offended by the idea that they're seen as religious hardliners. When we drove to Libya's economic and business heartland in Misrata, a young man from the local council greeted us. He introduced himself and immediately asked if I thought he was Al Qaeda. The chaos that's descended on the country has allowed some extremists to prosper. Mainstream Islamists, too. But crucially, what really divides people are tribal and regional differences. Too many here feel they're the rightful heirs of the revolution, and they're willing to fight to the death to claim its spoils. Libyans try to go about their daily lives desperate for some normality, but few expect it anytime soon.
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Host
And that's Ian Pannell. The newly elected prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, has told his first cabinet meeting that the country will not default on its debts. The left wing leader said he wanted to reach a workable, fair and mutually beneficial solution with the eurozone over its 180 billion pound bailout. But Mr. Tsipra said his first priority was to protect those in need, and he promised to restore Greece's national sovereignty. He said his government would pursue balanced budgets but would not build up unrealistic surpluses to service the country's debt. Gabriel Gatehouse says there are formidable difficulties facing the new prime minister.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Their euphoria seemed tinged with apprehension. Old friends embraced and kissed as they recognized each other on the square. Perhaps they were comrades from the early days when Syriza was struggling to attract more than a few percent of the vote. I say the early days, but that was only five years ago. Things are changing fast. It's the beginning of a new era, said Poppy Kotsiandi, a little uncertainly, putting a protective arm around her teenage son. What do you do? I asked. Poppy didn't quite fit the image I had of a typical Syriza voter. I'm freelance, she said evasively. In advertising. Work is scarce. There will be tough times ahead, mused her friend Yiannis, a studious looking man in middle age who said he sold life insurance for a living. Where were the firebrands? Where the militant Marxists who were these polite middle class professionals waiting for Alexis Tsipras to sweep onto the stage and usher in the first ever radical leftist government in the European Union? Well, they were the same sort of people as the elderly lady I'd seen the previous day, dressed in a smart dark blue skirt below the knee and matching jacket, her hair immaculately blow dried, scavenging for leftover vegetables on the market as the stall holders cleared up for the day. They were what would in any prosperous nation constitute the political middle ground. Back in 2001, that arch centrist Tony Blair said, the kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. He was speaking a few weeks after 9 11. A different era today it's the European consensus that lies broken in shards upon the pavements of Athens. To give you an idea of how fractured and confused politics is in Greece right now, let me recount a conversation I had with a Greek journalist who was explaining to me why he wasn't planning to vote Syriza. The reforms imposed upon Greece by the IMF and the eu, while painful, were a necessary step, he said, to shake the country out of a state of moribund corruption. You probably think I'm really right wing, he added apologetically. I'm not, honestly. I'm very centrist. I love Marx. In that context, can it be surprising that Syriza has chosen as its coalition partner not the Communists who you think might be their natural bedfellows, but a group called Independent Greeks? They're a centre right anti immigration party whose only common ground with Syriza is their shared opposition to the policies of austerity. On pretty much everything else, they disagree. But Syriza needs to move fast and a fractious coalition is going to be the least of their worries. Greece is about to start negotiations with its creditors. Neither side knows what the rules are anymore, but in essence, here's the deal. A coalition of radical left groups that believes capitalism is a bad thing now runs a country that owes 280 billion euros to institutions that are wedded to the the economics of the free market and whose credo is austerity. For each side to come out of this confrontation intact, both will have to compromise. Failing that, one of the two will break and the EU could be the one to crack. In other European capitals, that thought fills many with dread. But not all. Athens has become a beacon for thousands of leftists who are flocking to Greece to be part of what they hope is the beginning of a revolution. On the square, as Polly Yiannis and their fellow Greek voters waited for the new prime minister, a group of 200 Italians unfurled a bright red banner. L' ultra Europa con Tsipras, it read. An alternative Europe with Tsipras mingling. Among them were dozens of young men and women in purple T shirts emblazoned with the Podemos logo. Podemos is Spain's answer to Syriza, and they believe their country could be next When? When they hold general elections later this year. British Marxists, French Socialists, they all joined in the celebrations as Patti Smith's anthem, the People have the Power blared over the loudspeakers. This is surely not what Tony Blair had in mind when he addressed the Labour Party conference. This is a moment to seize, he'd said back then to a political party he dragged, kicking and screaming, from the left into the centre ground. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again, he went on, and before they do, let us reorder this world around us. That was October 2001, and the world was reordered. It may be about to happen again.
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Host
Gabriel Gatehouse in Athens, A senior official at the Kremlin has said the war in Ukraine will only end when Ukrainian troops stop shelling their own people in the east of the country. Mr. Sergei Ivanov said the administration in Kiev needed to sit down and talk to representatives of the self proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics. The solution to the Ukrainian problem, he added, lay in the hands of the Ukrainians. The news agency Tass, Meanwhile, reports that 16 people have been killed and a further 114 wounded in shelling this week. But Lucy Asch points out that Western observers can be sceptical about Russia's side of the story.
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Narrator
Almost exactly 12 months ago, I was on Kiev's Maidan, or Independence Square, listening to a swell of voices, male and female, old and young, singing Ukraine's national anthem. There was tension in the air as well as snowflakes. Outside the nearby Dinamo football stadium, volunteers were making Molotov cocktails. Several wore bicycle helmets and ski masks as protection against the riot police's batons and tear gas. Few imagined those January clashes would lead to the worst bloodshed on European soil since the breakup of Yugoslavia. The fact that events escalated at such a dizzying speed owes much to the Russian art of maskirovka, which translates as something masked. If the crisis in Ukraine is an unfolding tragedy, it's also a masquerade. The performance started soon after the Kremlin backed former president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country. Then the action moved to Crimea, Ukraine's peninsula on the Black Sea. Earlier that cold February day, there'd been scuffles between local Tatars and ethnic Russians in the Crimean capital, Simferopol. The crowds later dispersed, and a photojournalist, Piotr Chelamovsky, took pictures of a hard core of pro Russian activists who'd set up a little barricade in front of the regional parliament. He snapped away as they lit a fire in a barrel and brewed tea. Then he left, thinking that was it for the night. But in the small hours, unmarked military trucks drove up filled with heavily armed men. They ordered those demonstrators to lie face down on the ground Pyotrt told me later, until they realised they were on the same side. So they made them carry ammunition inside the building. He'd been told the story by the confused activists the next morning. The troops who had arrived in the dark as if by magic, with no insignia on their olive coloured uniforms, were soon nicknamed the little Greek men we know now. These guys were Russian special forces, said Pyot. But no one admitted that at the time. Surprise and denial are key to Mascarovka. At a press conference a few days later, a poker faced President Putin said the green men were local self defense units. None of this dented Putin's popularity. On the contrary, by the time I reached the Annex peninsula last summer, the top selling souvenir was a T shirt featuring the masked men armed to the teeth bending down to stroke a pussycat. The caption was Polite People Act 2. August Eastern Ukraine. Just as it looked like the Ukrainian army was prevailing against the Donbas rebels, Moscow decided to help civilians in the conflict zone. Russian TV showed footage of water and baby food being loaded onto lorries heading east. The the Russian government called this humanitarian aid. But many were more than a little suspicious. International TV crews doggedly followed the convoy trying to find out what was really inside the Green army trucks which had been hastily repainted white. Was it a classic Trojan horse operation to smuggle weapons to rebel militias? One NATO general insisted the convoy was a distraction to keep opponents eyes off the ball. Or all the while, he said, at other border crossing points controlled by the Russians, not by the Ukrainians. Equipment, personnel and troops were flowing into eastern Ukraine. A wonderful example of Maskirovka. Lots of books have been written about Maskarovka. I met a former Russian general who proudly showed me two huge volumes he'd written about its 600-year-old history stretching back to a battle in 1380 when the Slavs beat the Golden Horde. The by hiding a regiment in the forest. In World War II, Russia used dummy tanks, decoys and many other tricks to outfox the Germans. So this is a case of masks on top of masks. Or what military textbooks call demonstrativni maneuveri maneuvers intended to deceive. Now the action has moved to eastern Ukraine. The emphasis has shifted from surprise and subterfuge to to disinformation. The fog of war doesn't just happen, it's manufactured. I've been following the Russian reporting of the conflict. Some stories are lurid and outlandish, such as a notorious TV interview with a refugee who claims she saw a three year Old boy crucified for speaking Russian by what she called Ukrainian fascists. Such crude propaganda isn't meant to convince people. The aim is to create doubt, and when fake facts are mixed with real information, the blend is especially toxic. People are confused, so they sink into apathy and a seductive nihilism which says there's no such thing as truth, only competing stories.
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Host
That's Lucy Ash. Tens of thousands of Germans have been demonstrating against Pegida, the movement which argues the country's being overrun by Muslims. This week, there have been anti Pegida demonstrations in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. And in Dresden, more than 20,000 people attended what was built as a rock concert for tolerance. One of the stars of the show, the musician and actor Herbert Groenemeyer, told the crowd, there are 4 million Muslims in Germany and they're just as much a part of our economic miracle as all the other religions in Germany. On Monday, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germans had an everlasting responsibility to fight all forms of racism and anti Semitism. Johanna Dawood has been listening to some of the debates surrounding the rise of
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Kate Ady
a cosy German gathering of friends in Leipzig. It's a cold January night and there's a roaring fire. Alcoholic drinks, potato salad and goulash have been consumed. And now, as the friends warm themselves in front of the flames, the conversation turns momentarily to something they would prefer to ignore, but have realised, reluctantly, that they cannot. Pegida computer engineer Andreas starts off the discussion. He angrily states that he has no time or sympathy for the marches that have filled East German cities in large, regular protests. They are Nazis, he says. Of course they are Nazis, because Nazis hate and they hate Islam and foreigners. He suggests that if these people feel they have a genuine grievance, then they should hold rallies in Berlin in front of the Reichstag, the German parliament. For if they have problems with government policy, then that is the right place to rally, he explains. Or they should write to their MPs, golden German logic, something that isn't necessarily helping the nation come to terms with the considerable support for Pegida. Many political leaders have tried to point out what they see as Pegida's errors in logic. But that doesn't seem to stem the support for the group. Dieter, an architect, is married to a journalist. He's from Dresden and isn't willing to dismiss Pegida out of hand. Like Andreas, he says logic can't work with Pegida. They are not all Nazis, he adds. Many are just ordinary Volk who feel disenchanted. He laughs at Andreas suggestion that they write to their MPs saying Andreas is missing the point entirely, as these are people who feel MPs will not listen to them unless they gather in large numbers. He abhors the nasty banners at Pegida marches and would never go to a rally himself. But he says he feels compassion for a mother who spoke at a recent rally saying she did not want her blonde daughter to feel like a stranger in her own neighbourhood. He says that although the woman may have no concrete facts on which to base her complaint, he feels sympathy for her. He has friends in London who feel their English speaking children are in a minority at school. They say their children's education suffers because the classroom has many new immigrants and asylum seekers. He doesn't want Germany to have those problems and at some level, yes, he does fear an Islamicisation of the West. But Dieter thinks the German government is right to take in large numbers of asylum seekers, especially those displaced by conflicts in the Middle East. He's proud that his country is doing the right thing by these people as Europe's largest economy. He says many other European nations are happy to interfere in countries like Syria and Iraq, but unwilling to deal with the consequences. Diete's sister Maika also believes Germany should welcome newcomers. She told me how she stepped in to break up a racist incident in her local bakery with when a simple queue dispute ended up with an African man being racially harassed. She posted about the incident on Facebook. She thought there'd be a wave of messages from people appalled by this type of racism, but in fact, her words were met with total silence. Mica City has become much more cosmopolitan over the last few years. New Turkish businesses have opened and are generally welcomed by Leipziggers. The neighbourhood of Lindenau, close to the city centre, has a small concentration of halal food shops that sit comfortably alongside pubs, bakeries, Asian restaurants and a large discount alcohol merchant. The neighbourhood is gentrifying, with artists and architects doing up local properties. The local halal butcher's reputation for excellent produce has Micah's elderly mother, Gisela, going out of her way to shop there. Artist and academic Ricarda describes herself as apolitical and says she's not overly concerned about Pegida's rise. She is originally from Dresden and is saddened by how the image of her beautiful, grand city has been tarnished by the recent marches. She teaches in Stuttgart and chuckles as she tells me how students and colleagues there ask her if it's still safe to visit Dresden. Everyone has seen the pictures of the large weekly rallies, she explains. And now many believe Dresden is swarming with dangerous, hateful right wingers. I tell them, she says with a smile, it's not like that.
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Host
Farhana Dawood Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and the only country in the region where Portuguese is spoken. The language is, of course, the legacy of colonization which began in the 16th century. Today it's spoken right across this vast nation of some 200 million people. But because over the centuries Brazilian Portuguese has borrowed from many other tongues in the region, it now sounds a little different to the Portuguese spoken in Portugal. Brazilians, surrounded as they are by Spanish speaking neighbours, are proud of their language. But as Katie Watson's been telling us, it can also be a source of some frustration.
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Presenter
A few weeks after I moved to Brazil, I was on the phone to my father. When he asked me how I was enjoying the tacos, I couldn't help getting annoyed and shot back tacos. A Mexican dad and I live in Brazil. Pau de Quejo, delicious bread balls stuffed with gooey cheese that you have for breakfast with a strong coffee is the quintessential Brazilian food. But there seemed little point in going over the detail with my father. It made me realise, though, that this sort of conversation wasn't alien to Brazilians. People here get it all the time. The song that was written to open the World cup this year was a case in point. We Are One was a catchy tune meant to unite the world ahead of the Beautiful Game. Only it didn't, because the principal singers were Pitbull, a Cuban American rapper, and Jennifer Lopez, whose family is Puerto Rican. They start off in English and then sing a verse in Spanish. Only near the end is there a verse in Portuguese sung by Claudia Lecce, one of Brazil's biggest pop stars. I have to admit that I too had some mistaken assumptions about Brazil. I studied Latin American politics at university. I lived in Chile and Mexico and spoke fluent Spanish. I thought I knew the region pretty well and then I moved here. Yes, Brazil shares a colonial past, but the Portuguese influence sets Brazil apart from its Spanish speaking neighbours. It often struck me that Spain had a superiority complex when it came to Latin America. A paternalistic attitude perhaps. And many I spoke to, especially in Mexico, felt angry about the past. But here in Brazil it's different. As one Brazilian told me, people here like to go on holiday to Portugal, but they see the former master as a quaint little village. Portugal stumbled into a debt crisis and recession at the same time. As Brazil started being seen as an economic Powerhouse of the future. It's not that different to Brazil's relationship with the us, I suppose the power dynamics between coloniser and colony have changed. But it was the language that perhaps threw me the most when I arrived. Spanish and Portuguese are of course, very similar. Without fail. Everybody told me my Spanish would make things easier, and it's true, most of the time. But early on, one Latin American academic gave me some valuable advice. Forget your Spanish, he said, otherwise you'll never speak good Portuguese. Armed with this advice, I threw myself into learning. For months, I would find myself talking to people in what I thought was quite adequate Portuguese. And then, mysteriously, the conversation would gravitate towards the topic of Spain. People would tell me anecdotes about their experiences there. Some would say gracias instead of obrigado when thanking me. Confusing at first, but then it dawned on me. When a workman came round to fix something in my flat, he started explaining to his colleague that I was Spanish. So he had to speak slowly. And then I realised that, no, it wasn't Portuguese I'd been speaking. It was in fact Portugnole. Think Franglais or Spanglish, and you get the picture. Some people don't mind you speaking Portugnole close to the borders with countries like Uruguay, it's almost a dialect, and I've met some kind souls who've spoken it. To help me, my Brazilian cameraman used to deliberately mix up Spanish and Portuguese until I suggested that, although he thought it would make life easier for me, it really didn't. It just meant that I would always speak Portuguese badly. So he soon put a stop to that. But Brazilians are proud people, so not everybody approves of Portugnole. Some find it a lazy tactic to avoid learning proper Portuguese. They want you to commit to their country and understand them. Which brings me to another bugbear. The city that I live in is called so Paulo and it's spelt P A, U, L O. That's a U in the middle, not an O. Get it wrong and Brazilians will chastise you. It's not Italian you, it's not Spanish. This is Portuguese, so get it right. Despite the initial language barriers, Brazil has enabled me to understand a much bigger part of a region that I love. But now I'm moving on back to Mexico, in fact, a country I'm familiar with and where I can speak the language. Ironic, really. My dad will be pleased to know that I can now enjoy those tacos. But I won't be forgetting the Pan de kejo anytime soon.
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Host
Another year, another country, another cuisine. Katie Watson there, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again on Saturday MORNING with more from correspondents around the world. Do join us. Goodbye.