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From Our Own Correspondent
A New Empire
00:28:02
Story-telling from the world of news and current affairs. 'For God, Tsar and Nation'.
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You've downloaded BBC Radios from our own correspondent. Colour, context and background from the world of news and current affairs. We make another edition of this programme for the BBC World Service, but this is the version broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, a love story from the Horn of Africa. It explains why Somalis call their boys Erdogan, their girls. Istanbul. A question. In Seoul, where plastic surgery is big business, can happiness really be found with the cut of a knife? Magic fingers. In Bangladesh, they are making saris so light it's as if they are woven from air. And feelings of regret. And some relief as a correspondent bids farewell to Morocco's cannabis capital. But first, a quote. Probably the most dangerous situation of all the international hotspots at the moment, and one which possibly threatens the UK the most. That view on the conflict between Ukraine and the Russia backed separatists came this week from Richard Ottaway, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, in a debate in the House of Commons. And yesterday, Ukraine's Defence Minister called for a doubling of his country's defence budget next year to help the army fight the rebels in the East. Tim Huell's been talking to some of those who've been fighting on the separatist side.
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When I was 20, at the beginning of the 1980s, I lived in a squalid, crumbling student hostel in a city in the midst of Russia's end southern plain. In summer we swam and in winter we fished through ice holes in the wide, sluggish river that curved through black earth and grassy steppe into the still wider Don and eventually the Black Sea. And at night, in summer and winter, I and my Russian classmates sat on the chipped staircase amid the stench of pickled cucumbers, broken toilets and stale cooking lard, took out a guitar and sang songs as wide, slow and melancholic as the landscape. They were songs of the Cossacks who roamed the steppes on their trusty steeds, of dashing imperial officers who laid down their lives for Russia, of maidens left to grieve, of honour upheld. Some were old from tsarist times, some new from politically risque singers who hankered after the romance and glamour the revolution destroyed. Who wouldn't in our slowly collapsing late Soviet world, with the embarrassingly senile Leonid Brezhnev running the Politburo and KGB snitches all around. I returned from my exchange programme. And back in Russia, time speeded up. The country hurtled through Gorbachev's perestroika. The end of the ussr, a dash to pseudo democracy, renewed authoritarianism. The song stayed with me, but only as a souvenir of a long gone moment, until a couple of weeks ago, to my astonishment, in the old imperial capital of St Petersburg, I discovered Russians, a whole subculture, in fact, who don't just sing haunting lyrics, they live them. I met a wounded Cossack just back from battle who showed me the tiny icon of the Virgin he carried that he believes prevented an enemy bullet from smashing his arm to smithereens. I met a man, ramrod straight, with bushy military moustache, who models himself on a legendary commander of the White Guard, the army that lost to the Reds in Russia's Civil War. I met an earnest, fresh faced young recruit who'd never held a gun in his hands before, who'd just been blessed by a priest before setting off for war. They're all fervent monarchists who want a restoration of the Tsarist empire, an Orthodox autocratic state, and they're fighting for it as volunteers on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Of course, it's an open secret that on those battlefields there are plenty of regular Russian troops, though the Kremlin fervently denies it. But alongside them are hundreds of Russians, like those I met in Petersburg as they were setting out or returning, who say, no one ordered them to go and no one's paying them. They've gone for God, Tsar and nation, words emblazoned across the wall in a training camp in St Petersburg run by one monarchist organisation, the Russian Imperial Movement. They don't really think they're about to put a descendant of Nicholas II back on the throne. But defending Russians, as they see it against a hostile Ukrainian government is a first step towards a recreation of empire and perhaps the first battle in a replay of the civil war that this time will see the Tsarists, the Whites, triumphant. Igor Ivanov, he of the straight back and military moustache, who fought in Ukraine in the summer, spent years obsessively researching the history of the White movement, a taboo subject in Soviet times. In 1991, he succeeded in getting the first monument to white heroes erected in St Petersburg. But now he's gone much further. He helped form in Ukraine an army, part local rebel, part Russian volunteer, modelled, he says, on the armies of the Tsar. It became, he boasts, a model of Christian Orthodox virtue. There was no drinking, no swearing even, and the face of Christ the Saviour was painted on every tank they captured from the enemy. Beneath that fantasy lies a darker reality. That army accused of kidnapping, torture and summary execution started the direct military confrontation in eastern Ukraine. The Russian volunteers are at least partly serving Vladimir Putin's purpose. Some are certainly secret service agents. But their fantasies are important, too, because fantasy is helping drive the conflict. And it's the same fantasy I enjoyed in those songs that lingered so lovingly, for example, on the long abolished names of ranks in the imperial army, An archaic term there for lieutenant that conjures up the whole image of a brave, swashbuckling cavalryman. We revived those names in our new army in Ukraine, ivanov tells me proudly. And suddenly I realize I was wrong to think the songs were just about landscape and history. For some, they were about an idea, an imperial idea, long buried that never died and played out. In Ukraine, that idea looks rather scary.
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And that was Tim Whewell. Somalia has been in a state of conflict for a quarter of a century. It's also been affected by a string of droughts and famines. From time to time, foreign powers have tried to intervene to stop the fighting or feed the starving. These efforts have usually ended in spectacular disaster, perhaps Most notoriously in 1993, when clan militias shot down U.S. black Hawk helicopters and dragged the bodies of naked American soldiers through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu. But now there's a new kid on the block. Turkey has stepped in. Its involvement began during the height of a famine in 2011, when the then prime minister, now president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited Mogadishu with his family and 200 Turkish politicians, musicians and business people. He was the first non African head of state to do so in more than two decades. Mary Harper, a regular visitor to Somalia, has been keeping an eye on Turkey's progress in the Horn of Africa.
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The chaos and conflict that once consumed the seaport here in Mogadishu are now gone. Where once rival militias battled for control of these docks, giant container ships now line up to discharge their cargoes of cement vehicles, pasta and rice. Huge cranes swoop up and down, some operated by Turks, others by Somalis. As a container swings uncomfortably close above my head, the sprightly Turkish manager of the port tells me that since his company took over in September, it's been bringing in a monthly revenue of $4 million and rising 55% go straight to the Somali government. He won't let me take his photograph. I'm too ugly, he says. It's not just the port. Turks are everywhere in Mogadishu, and so is their flag. This visit, I think I saw more Turkish flags in the city than Somali ones. Turks run the airport and are busy building a new terminal. Turkish Airlines now flies to Mogadishu four times a week, the first international airline to do so in more than 20 years. At a gleaming new hospital built. Wait for it. By the Turks. Turkish doctors wear simple white polo shirts. On one sleeve is an image of the Turkish flag. The Somali flag is on the other. Outside, Turkish builders in cowboy hats and Somalis in tatty T shirts are putting the final touches to an Ottoman style mosque with room for 2,000 worshippers. Craftsmen were flown in from Turkey to hand paint the ceiling in rich blues, reds and gold. Even the garbage trucks trying to get rid of the 20 years worth of rubbish and rubble come from Turkey. It all started with the famine of 2011. The then Turkish Prime Minister, now President Erdogan, flew to Somalia, unlike other foreigners, who keep at a safe distance from the country, preferring to do Somali related business. From neighbouring Kenya, he walked through the streets of Mogadishu in a suit, not body armour. Somali still talked to me about how he picked up dirty starving children, how his wife kissed members of the despised minority clans. And hence the love affair began. Somalis called their boys Erdogan, their daughters Istanbul. This affection for a foreign country is highly unusual in Somalia. Somalis generally don't like outsiders and have all sorts of abusive nicknames for them. But I struggled to find a Somali who would criticise Turkey. Apart from the complaint that they hadn't provided adequate drainage for the new roads they're building in Mogadishu. Turkey, like many other countries, is keen to lay its hands on Africa's natural resources and to exploit new markets as the continent develops. But it's chosen an eccentric way in Somalia. Classed by many as one of the world's most dangerous countries, the Turks in Mogadishu seemed to have a different attitude to danger. On the day of a suicide bombing, I wasn't allowed into the highly fortified airport where I was due to meet the British ambassador. But just nearby was a Turkish school guarded by a couple of lightly armed Somalis. Turkish children scampered about playing hide and seek amongst the papaya trees. They share classes with Somali students, who the teachers say are especially good at computing and languages. The next day, I managed with some difficulty to get into the airport compound, this time to talk to a United nations representative. We met in a sterile grey complex of containers. Somewhat to my embarrassment, I didn't have a pen. A UN lady kindly lent me a pencil. I forgot to give it back and later on I gave it to A Somali friend wielding the pencil. He rushed off to his friends shouting, look, this is all the UN has to offer us. After more than 20 years and billions of dollars. In just three years, the Turks have helped transform our man made earthquake of Mogadishu into a semi functioning city. Of course, it's not as simple as that. The UN and others are paying for African Union soldiers who are helping make Somalia a safer place. The Turks have gone for highly visible projects. But as I sat eating the cube of Turkish Delight offered to me by the sleek stewardess on my homeward Turkish Airlines flight, I couldn't help wondering whether the rest of the world could learn something from what the Turks are doing in the broken city of Mogadishu.
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Mary Harper, back now from Somalia. If there's a world capital of plastic surgery, it may well be Latest available figures suggest there were 649,938 cosmetic operations there in just 12 months. That adds up to 13 procedures per every thousand people, the highest ratio of any country in the world. But in Korea in recent times, as Steve Evans tells us, the surgeons have been getting a bad press. There's been a series of horror stories about operations which have gone badly wrong.
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You can't avoid the adverts everywhere you go. In Seoul, you're urged to change your shape through plastic surgery. In affluent Gangnam, every wall seems to have a sign pointing to a surgery. On the train and in the streets, you're told you can bring your face to life. Facial contourings on offer, breast surgery, anti aging, eye plasty, body contouring. There is square jaw reduction mainly, the adverts imply, for men, or transforming your face from saggy and loose to elastic and dimensional, targeted mostly at women. One acquaintance of mine complains that her chin becomes painful when it rains, and then it emerges that she went into the surgery for a nose job but got persuaded, or persuaded herself, that it was her chin that really needed its contours changing. The result? A more shapely chin that is also a more painful chin. Despite that, she's now intent on breast enlargement. In this country, parents tell me that they give their teenage daughters a present of what's called double eyelid surgery, which makes eyes more pronounced, less Asian, is the truth of it. Why, I wonder, when Korean eyes seem so beautiful the way they are? The retort that blares from the adverts on the train is that confidence in appearance brings positive energy, which can be the foundation of happiness. Happiness so easily found at the cut of a knife. Except that, of course, it's not. There is now a backlash. A slew of court cases where patients, or victims, as they might be known, are suing doctors who rearrange their faces. But not in a good way. One victim said when the bandages came off, this is not a human face. It is more revolting than monsters or aliens. Part of the problem is that plastic surgery is so lucrative that unqualified doctors have been drawn in, or rather, doctors qualified in other areas of quite different medicine. It's alleged that procedures have been done by what are called ghost doctors. In one court case, it's claimed that the advertised doctor slipped out of the operating room once the patient was under the anaesthetic and the job was then botched by the replacement surgeon. On top of that, it's emerged that some before and after photos have had a bit of surgery themselves, surgery of the Photoshop variety. The upshot is that the Korean association of Plastic Surgeons has called for tighter rules on qualifications for doctors and for advertisers. They fear that this raft of bad publicity is damaging the reputation of an industry which is by and large, well run. But they are fighting against the tide. Plastic surgery is very profitable. Even with prices that undercut the United States and Europe, there's a big market with a similar sense of vanity right on Korea's doorstep. China. According to the reputable Jongang Daily here, two thirds of the foreigners who came to South Korea for plastic surgery last year was. Were from China. More than 16,000 people, more than 16,000 customers. The press here says that some of the procedures have been so radical, so successful, that Chinese passport officials have not believed it's the same person holding the passport. But maybe Chinese people who aspire to film star beauty, or for that matter, South Korean parents who. Who think they can improve their daughters through the surgeon's knife, should reflect on one horror story in the courts. A former beauty queen here had breast enhancement, which went horribly wrong. After a series of infections, she ended up with one breast much bigger than the other. She blames the doctors for the medical failure, but also for never saying to her, look, you don't need this. Plastic surgery is like an addiction, she said, if you do the eyes, you want the nose. And she said, doctors don't say you're beautiful enough as you are.
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And that's Steve Evans, our man. In the South Korean capital, Seoul, the garment industry of Bangladesh, which supplies brands in the west like Tesco and H and M, is celebrating a big year of exports and profits. The success comes despite international pressure for improvements in safety standards after a string of fatal factory accidents, including the collapse of one last year which resulted in the deaths of more than 1100 people. Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of ready made garments in the world after China. But it also makes clothes which are not destined for the mass market, as Caroline Eden's been finding out.
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On the banks of the Lakshya river just outside Dhaka, the sun is heating the tiny corrugated iron factory I'm standing in to oven like temperatures. Inside, under a string of bare light bulbs, six master weavers sit in pairs, barely breaking a sweat at their bamboo looms. The men are shirtless, the women wear neon coloured saoir kame. All rest their arms on cheap white cotton protecting the delicate muslin they are working on. This dirt floor workshop might not hint at luxury, but the special jamdani fabric made here is highly coveted and incredibly expensive. The factory owner, Mr. Anwar Hussain walks me past the looms. Whiplash thin and just over 5ft tall, he doesn't disturb the workers as he pauses to let me admire the efforts of one young woman who sits below us. Her hands spinning like furious atoms, interlace silky gold thread into a sheer muslin cloth the colour of oxblood. Jamdani is expensive since it requires dedicated work and special skills. My weavers don't use patterns, they create only from memory, Mr. Hussain says, flicking a bejeweled hand over the peacock feather motif that the young woman works on. I first heard the word jamdani across the border in India on a sticky pre monsoon night in Kerala on the Malabar coastal. A retired Keraland banker called Harry told me how he missed his old job in Calcutta, almost 1500 miles away. How he longed for the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and tangy Bengali street food. But most of all how he missed the dhakka made saras that he would buy his wife from Calcuttles markets. She loves jamdani saras, Harry said, and I do too. They're so light it's like they've been woven in air. I would save up to buy them for her, he said. It is the detail of the motifs, the intricate jasmine flowers, marigolds and geometric patterns that are neither embroidered or printed but which are painstakingly sewn in by hand when the fabric is still on the loom that really ups the price. The very finest sell for hundreds of pounds in Bangladesh and India, often to brides around us. Turquoise, yellow and white expanses of the finest gauzy muslin billow in the breeze that like a cool Blessing comes off the river through the latticed bamboo walls. A bead of sweat rolls down my face and I am struck by the silence. There are no factory sounds, no shuttles zooming back and forth, no machinery of any kind. The air inside the factory, which is no bigger than a large garden shed, is hushed and filled with concentration. It is a stark contrast to the chaos and din of Dhaka, a raging bull of a city that forces visitors to Adapt or perish. Mr. Hussain tells me that his workers are the most celebrated craftspeople in the riverside settlement of Denmark. Below them are the dyers, the spinners and the makers of the looms. They all live together in this community, much as they have done for hundreds of years. It is no accident that the Jamdani weavers live in the settlements of Rupture and Denmark. Right on the riverbank, the saturated soil is particularly fertile and during the British rule in the 19th century, the villages here produced the finest of cottons. Today, huge jute mills dominate the area, but a few factories, like Mr. Hussain, still remain. Luxurious it is not. But this gentle environment is worlds away from Dhaka's dire mass market sweatshops that churn out fast fashion for high street shops all around the world. In Mr. Hussain's labour intensive workshop, where each sari takes three to four months to make, female weavers are offered flexi hours to collect school children. And there is no exploitative child labour. His weavers, he tells me, benefit from the pride and identity their work gives them. Unlike the workers toiling over cheap, ready to wear clothes in Dakar's still often dangerous garment factories. My weavers are in charge, not me. Mr. Hussain chuckles Jamdani expertise is a dying skill, and factory owners like Mr. Hussain know that to keep these workers on, they have to offer benefits. Emerging from the workshop, I asked Mr. Hussain what makes a master Jamdani weaver. Firstly, he begins, they must be children of the loom, taught by their fathers. Secondly, they must have strong backs and dedication. Lastly, and most importantly of all, they should possess magic fingers. And they are very, very hard to find.
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Caroline Eden. In the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, a Romanian man was detained in the Moroccan port of Tangiers this week after the authorities found 1.7 tonnes of cannabis in the lorry he was driving. News agency reports say the drug was concealed in boxes of vegetables bound for southern Spain. Where exactly the substance came from is not revealed, but Morocco has always been a prolific producer of cannabis. In all, much of it is produced in the Rif Mountains. Justin Marozi used to live there and While those slopes, he says, have a range of attractions to offer the visitor. Cannabis has long been big business there.
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I've been coming to Morocco for more than 25 years, but even I was surprised by the taxi driver's behaviour. A friend and I had flown into Fes to sell our house in the mountains. It had all become a bit too much. And while we chose a taxi to take us into town, there was some dispute between the drivers over who would get our fare. So far, so normal. We rattled away in one of those classic North African taxis, a heavily engineered 1980s Mercedes, only for the driver to face a barrage of phone calls from a very angry colleague, the driver who'd missed out on the fare. Several increasingly heated calls followed. Then a young man in a car pulled across the road, triggering a volley of abuse from our driver. The other vehicle shot ahead of us and then stopped abruptly in the middle of a busy Fez main road, deliberately blocking our way. Our now furious driver rushed out, opened the other car's door and kicked him in the face. The fight quickly escalated. In a flash, our driver was back to his car, rummaging in the boot. Out came a baseball bat, and off he strode, wielding it with a very focused glint in his eye. Just as the confrontation was starting to get uglier, a plainclothes policeman brandishing handcuffs materialized from nowhere, separated the two men and put an end to it. A few bruises, wounded pride, more than handbags, but no serious damage done. Welcome to Morocco. Dexterously, fending off guides and touts in this fabulous country can be as much of an art as the carefully honed skill they use to target their quarry. Years ago, As a hapless 18 year old, I was trying unsuccessfully to lose a particularly adhesive guide as I threaded my way through the labyrinth of the ancient medina, or old City in Marrakech. The showdown only ended when, by complete chance, I bumped into one of the king's bodyguards. He saw what was happening, slammed the tout's head into a wall and the matter was over, albeit with minor bloodshed. Several hours north of Fes in the rift Mountains of northern Morocco, the pace of life is rather more relaxed in the spectacularly beautiful 15th century town of Chefchaouen. This is probably not unconnected with the fact that the local economy in recent years has centred on hashish and backpackers. There is a certain degree of interdependence between the two. When I first visited Sharouen in the late 80s, I was the only foreigner in the pension Mauritania. Three pounds a night, delicious, breakfast included. Not smuggling drugs. Some hid them in the back of old cars and chanced their luck north on the ferry to Spain. Some talked showily of nighttime missions on fishing boats. Others used to mould their stashes into wax covered pellets before swallowing them and flying off to the Canaries. Unsurprisingly, some never got further than Tangiers. The son of a Spanish politician spent most of his time on the top floor of the pension drinking opium tea. He didn't get out much. The touts and guides in Chaouan, unlike their steelier counterparts in Tangiers, in Fez and Marrakech, are pretty relaxed. But they've got a living to make too. And the days are long gone when the town, once a Muslim redoubt, was off limits to foreigners. Shawnese take pride in the fact that theirs was the last town in Morocco to submit to the Spanish in 1920. And these days visitors are there to be gently fleeced rather than killed. Walk up and down through the higgledy piggledy Medina, a dazzling blend of whitewashed walls and blue paint unlike any other in Morocco. And within seconds you're brushing past touts advertising their wares sotto voce. You want. Good piece to smoke, top quality. Not for tourists. Nice carpets, special price. Not for tourists. It's funny how everything sold to tourists is always described as not for tourists. On our last day in Shaouan, we sat in a cafe in Uttar Al Hammam. This is one of the prettiest town squares in the world, with its handsome mosque, a 17th century Kasbah and a solitary pine tree needling towards the heavens. Over a glass of mint tea, we contemplated the sale of our old house with mixed feelings of relief and regret. A group of young men sidled up to take positions at the table behind us. For a moment, silence. Then the proposition, the tout's equivalent of the chat up line.
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Today is not the day to smoke
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a cigarette, it's the day to smoke hashish.
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Justin Marozi bidding farewell to that largely relaxed town in the Rift mountains of Morocco. Time for us to go too. Back next Saturday with more despatches from all points of the compass. Until then, good bye.