← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Abbottabad, and Greeks in Germany
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Did you ever see bin Laden? Aleem Maqbool is in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where they've by...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on
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To keep up with our latest reports
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stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well. But now, with the edition Broadcast on Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Today, the British are coming. Overseas universities prepare for an avalanche of applications from UK students. Osama bin Laden's plumber on how property prices have plummeted in the place where the Al Qaeda leader was shot. We find out why. It's money rather than football or regional independence dominating conversation between Madrid and Barcelona. And as Parliament in Berlin approves more aid for the Eurozone's poorest member, we learn it isn't easy being a Greek in Germany. The Indian economy has become one of the most successful in the world in recent years. It's gone from strength to strength, thanks to a large labour force, huge foreign investment and a growing middle class with money to spend. So that's partly why there's increasing disquiet about Britain's continuing aid programme to India. The annual grant of 280 million pounds is nine times higher than that given by any other single donor country. The news that India has decided not to buy Britain's Typhoon jet, preferring a French alternative, has led to further negative headlines about the aid budget. The government, though, is unrepentant, believing that if Britain is serious about its contribution to cutting world poverty, then there has to be aid for India. Despite its booming economy, one third of the world's poor still live there, as do half of its malnourished children. David Loyne has been to the central eastern state of Bihar, which has a population of more than 80 million, to get a sense of how that aid is being deployed and whether it's ending up in the right places.
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When they set up recently as advisors in Bihar state offices, British aid officials faced a rather immediate problem. One of their targets was increasing the number of toilets and safe washing facilities out in the countryside. They hadn't expected to need to provide them for their own staff first. The government system had been so hollowed out during the previous corrupt administration that the most basic of facilities had gone. Now signs of change are everywhere. A courtyard has become a graveyard of manual typewriters, lying rusting and broken among discarded wooden cupboards, desks and filing cabinets. Every piece of furniture and old Remington has a number painted in white on it. Denoting it as state property, some dating back to the 1930s. In one ministry there were so few people actually working that the British advisors hired street sweepers to do basic administrative jobs. They needed to start from scratch, as if coming to a land recovery suffering from catastrophe. Although Bihar had not faced a natural disaster or conflict but corruption, its previous administration was infamous for theft, stealing votes, misdirecting government subsidies and not providing security in the state. Bihar's problems were similar to those faced by many frail post conflict countries lacking even the systems to spend money allocated to it from central government. It is this capacity that Britain hopes to improve so that Bihar can access money from Delhi that otherwise is going to waste. On a busy street corner in Patna, I watched as people queued up to apply for certificates of income, caste and land title. British aid money was behind this project too, helping citizens to access state services without having to pay middlemen as they did in the past. This British scheme is even funding an Indian call centre. There was brisk business when I went to listen as people phoned in to ask for the name of the government official concerned with their case. Failure to act within a certain period of time has led to civil servants being fined. Others have gone to jail for trying to continue the corrupt ways of the past. This is a long way from the traditional image of aid as a handout or payment for health, education or housing. And the case that Britain retains its large aid budget to build the capacity of the Indian state may be a hard one to make to someone in the British public sector lost their job in the cuts caused by austerity at home. But no one could doubt the scale of the need. If Bihar were a country, its per capita income would be the third lowest in the world. Only two countries in Africa would be below it in a slum of some 50 houses or so, wedged between a main road and a railway, backing onto a green fetid swamp full of mosquito larvae. Parbati Devi, who looked around 60 years old, told me that she'd lived here all her life. She'd lost all her fingers and toes to leprosy and what she had she earned from begging wires snaked through the makeshift roof of her hut with improvised attachments to overhead cables, lethal in the monsoon rain. She had no safe drinking water nor access to a toilet. Some Indian politicians and diplomats do not like Britain's large aid program because this is not the image of a land with global middle class aspirations. They want to project. They live as if in another country. From the lepers by the railway tracks Bahar has shaken off its past and is now the least corrupt state in India. From a low base, its economy is growing at more than 14%. Given that, should it now not take care of itself? The answer from the most senior civil servant in the state was simple. He told me that development would have come, but far more slowly, without the British technical expertise. That has changed the way they do things. He said that millions would be lifted out of poverty far sooner because of the British help. We met in his office in the secretariat building that had been the seat of British colonial power here until 1947. On his wall hung a painting of the huge conical brick structure that still stands at the west of the city, built by the British to store rice after a devastating famine in the 1770s. In another century, Britain has a relationship of quite a different kind here.
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And that's David Loyne. The bulldozers have gone, and the international media with their cameras and their awkward questions, have also once again pulled out of the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad. This was the place where American special forces staged a spectacular raid last May, killing the Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. This week, the Pakistani authorities were tearing down the complex where the world's most wanted man had been living, Alim Maqbool. No reason was given for the unexpected demolition, but there's speculation they wanted to prevent the site becoming an Al Qaeda shrine.
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After hours of trying to evade the security forces walking different routes to the compound, we eventually got to a place where we could see what was going on. With the wall of a derelict house giving us some cover, we watched as three bulldozers clawed ferociously at what had been bin Laden's last home. We could see inside the very room the Al Qaeda leader was thought to have occupied, although the insides of the house had now, of course, been entirely stripped bare. As we set up our small satellite dish on the ground to try to broadcast live, a boy ran up. He wants you to get out, he said breathlessly. The policeman says you have to go. The officer ran up, looking angry. I turned to him and put my hands together in a brief silent plea that he leave us alone just for a few minutes. I could hear him muttering as I delivered my report, but he didn't interrupt or get in the way. Afterwards, though, the officer started shouting. He wanted us to leave, of course, but he also had complaints about what had been said on air. Did you see bin Laden? He yelled at one of the local children who'd come to watch. The child shook his head. Did you? He shouted at Another same response then. What are these people talking about? I stretched out my arm as we left. If Al Qaeda says he's dead, how can you have any doubts? I asked in my broken Urdu. You and your bin Laden, he said as he shook my hand and turned away. We trudged over the field we'd visited last May, just after the operation Then it had been filled with people who'd come to see their new tourist attraction. We saw picnicking families and ice cream sellers. But very soon, once the army here started to recover a bit from the initial shock and humiliation and of what the Americans had done, the place was closed off. We were going to see someone we first met at that time. Mohammed Niaz, in his late 20s, was one of bin Laden's neighbors here in the part of Abbottabad known as Bilal Town. As a plumber, he'd been one of the few outsiders to get into the compound when the Al Qaeda leader lived there. He'd been hired on three occasions to replace pipes in the yard, though he says he never saw bin Laden. This whole thing's been a disaster for us, he says. It's completely changed the neighborhood. Niaz describes how most people who could afford to had moved away, leaving their homes empty. Since the raid, there have been security people everywhere, he says. My children still get scared when they see all the police with their guns. He says land values in what had been a peaceful, developing residential area have plummeted. My wife was desperate for the building to be demolished, he added. She hates being reminded of what happened there. Now perhaps we can move on. Clearly, Pakistan would rather no one talks of the incident, too. That's why they sent in the bulldozers unannounced after nightfall on a weekend, why most of the demolition work went on through the night, and why they tried to keep the media away. It's not just the residents of Bilal town, of course, but the whole country that's felt the heat since bin Laden was killed. Surely some officials must have known bin Laden was living here. Pakistan was accused at best of incompetence and far worse, of collusion with Al Qaeda. Foreign diplomats became far more open about accusations the country had been supporting militants in Afghanistan. And there were threats that Western aid, on which Pakistan's so reliant, would be cut. Just like the people of Bilal Town hark back to better days before the U.S. navy SEALs came here. Pakistanis, too, reminisce about a time when they weren't under such pressures. When their country was safe and prosperous, they say. Before what they call America's war on their western border. But when pressed, many people in Abbottabad admit they feel there's actually much more to be revealed about the secrets of this garrison city and the army's links to militants. And Pakistanis as a whole will usually ultimately acknowledge that the problems don't all come from outside and were germinating long before the war. For the authorities, though, the strategy still appears to be very much like that adopted by the policeman, by the compound denial. For them, it seems the most convenient way to deal with the problem is to pretend it never happened.
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ALIM Maqbool There Students across Spain took part in demonstrations and sit ins yesterday in protest at cuts in education spending. A string of tough economic measures is currently being implemented by a central government trying to limit the effects of an inevitable recession. This year. One of the big problems is the debt of the country's regional governments. Catalonia, in the east, is Spain's richest region, and the leaders there are convinced they are getting a bad deal from Madrid. They want a renegotiation of their financial relationship with central government. Tom Burridge says the ongoing discussions about Catalonian independence are, for the time being at least, being drowned out by talk about money.
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The other day I was in France, but I was technically in Spain, and according to the locals, I was in neither. And this is why. The small town of Zivia lies in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It's a small plot of Spanish territory that's completely surrounded by French land. When you drive out of the town, there are no signs telling you which country you're in, so you're left guessing. But ask someone from Zivia where you are and their answer is definitive. Catalonia. Travel this far north and the French influence is clear. People like to eat snails. Rugby is a popular topic of conversation, and our hotel owner looked a little bit like the French actor Gerard Depadieu. Catalan nationalism is strong here. If there was a referendum on independence from Spain, a majority in these parts would probably vote yes. But in the region's capital, Barcelona, the picture is a little more complicated. Take my girlfriend's parents. They live in Barcelona. Her mother, Mercedes, is proud to have been born in Catalonia and speaks fluent Catalan. But she feels Spanish too, and says she wouldn't vote yes. Nor would my girlfriend's father, Manuel. He's lived in the region for 50 years, but was born in Soria in Castilian Spain, and he doesn't speak Catalan. He moved here when the dictator Franco was in power, when the language was banned. Catalonia is Spain's richest region, and it's become a land of immigrants. It's not just people from other parts of Spain who've come here. In the last two decades, there's been an influx of people from abroad, in particular from South America, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. And while some governments in Western Europe may find immigration difficult to talk about, that's not the case here. On a visit to the Institut de Salvador Esprios secondary school in Barcelona, I was introduced to a group of 10 pupils. Not one was born here. They had all moved over with their parents from China, Colombia, Ukraine, Ecuador and Pakistan. 18 year old Iqra arrived from Pakistan one year ago and is already pretty much fluent in Catalan. She laughs at my admittedly stupid question when I ask her why she thinks it's so important to speak the local language. People here are impressed when I speak Catalan, she says. Next door, at Faragola del Cloc primary School, I'm introduced to Lucia, who's three. Her mum is Peruvian, her dad from Ecuador, and she was born in Catalonia. At home, she tells us she speaks Spanish, but in the classroom, the main language is Catalan. When I met probably the best known Catalan politician the next day, he explained what a successful model of social cohesion Catalonia was. Jordi Pujol was the founder of Convergencia Union, the Catalan nationalist party which runs the Generalitat, the regional government based in Barcelona. He was Catalan president for 23 years. He has a sharp mind for a man of 81. He spoke of the importance of Catalonia's language. Clearly, it's part of the region's distinct identity. And when immigrant children come here, they're quick to learn Catalan. Of course, some people elsewhere in Spain might tell you it's a useless language. But for many Catalans, it's a potent symbol. After all, if you speak English or Spanish, you could be from several different countries. If you speak Catalan, people know where you're from. A little earlier, I'd met Jordi Pujol's successor, the current Catalan president. Arturo mas is a 21st century politician with youthful looks. He's smartly dressed, speaks fluent English and has plenty of charisma. But he wanted to talk about economics rather than language. Catalonia has high unemployment and a sizeable public debt, just like the rest of Spain. But many believe the way forward for this rich region is to renegotiate the so called Pacto Fiscal between Barcelona and Madrid. Catalan nationalists argue they pay much more in tax to the central government than they get back in services and public spending. For now, the Catalan president supports the new Spanish government's program of public spending cuts and financial reforms. But many believe that support will only continue if Spain's conservative government is prepared to think again about the financial arrangements involving Catalonia. If a possible future referendum asked Catalans if they wanted their region to remain in Spain but to also have better control of its finances, then I think my girlfriend's parents might reconsider their no vote. Spain's government currently enjoys a healthy majority in the national parliament, so President Mas's support is not politically vital. However, expect some tricky talks over the coming months between the country's two big rivals.
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Tom Burridge the British are coming. That could well be the cry at universities all round Europe and further afield as well, with the English ones now preparing to charge their students up to £9,000 a year. Foreign modern places of learning have never seemed so attractive, and suddenly sixth formers are seeking prospectuses from places like Finland and Switzerland, as well as the popular universities in the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and Maastricht, some of which offer English language courses at a third of the cost. There's also an upsurge of interest in places even further afield. American universities have started to receive many more applications. Sancha Berg, who herself won a scholarship in the us has been to Harvard to meet some English students there.
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The two English 18 year olds perched on the striped sofa in the large, dark wood panelled study, the common room of one of Harvard's freshmen dorms, Michael and Indiana, fizzed with enthusiasm for their US University and its courses. They seemed still slightly stunned by the fact that they were there at all. From English comprehensive schools in London and Bedford, they'd made it to what many regard as the world's top university. And even with flights home for the holidays, it was costing them and their families less than university in the UK. I recognize that feeling. More than 20 years ago, I'd spent a year in the US as a postgraduate on a Fulbright scholarship. At 21, I found myself in Southern California, living, travelling, working in a landscape I knew only from films and tv. I'd never been to America before. For the first few weeks I kept metaphorically pinching myself. Was I really living at Sunset and Vine, doing work experience in Hollywood, mugged twice, threatened at gunpoint? The dreamlike quality soon wore off for me. I decided to live off campus and guided by old rock and roll songs rather than up to date advice, I picked an apartment in gangland. Being an undergraduate at Harvard is a different matter. It's hugely competitive, with 17 applications for every place and Once students are accepted, the university looks after them. They have to live on campus in college accommodation, the tall red brick dorm studied around the gigantic quad known as Harvard Yard. As at Oxford and Cambridge colleges, meals are provided. Because of Harvard's generous financial aid, British students from families with average incomes can find they pay little, if anything, towards their costs. The British students I spoke to said they didn't feel unusual or different. Harvard takes students from all over the world from diverse backgrounds. Everyone was from somewhere else, they said. Josh McTaggart from Western Super Mare had applied for a place at Oxford University as well. At interview, he was one of only two state school candidates out of six. He'd worried that he wouldn't fit in if he was accepted. He'd been anxious about that at Harvard too. But it hadn't been the case. He said the US Ivy Leagues are not perfect engines of social change. They've been criticised, especially in recent years, for allegedly favouring children of graduates and those who give money to the university. But there is an American dream of social mobility which the British students I spoke to do exemplify. The rocket like trajectory of their own efforts and abilities has taken them out of ordinary homes and into the world's elite. Which is perhaps why they feel at home in the us. Take Ross Anderson from Nottingham. His mother is a hairdresser, his father a painter and decorator. His comprehensive school is only rated satisfactory by Ofsted. Yet he's got to Harvard. He's studying earth sciences. He's travelled all over the us, even to Hawaii. He plans to do postgraduate work, probably in America. He doesn't plan to go back to live in Nottingham anytime soon. More British teenagers are expected to study abroad in the coming years and the US is likely to be a popular destination. The broader syllabus will appeal to some. American undergraduates don't choose their major, their main subject, until their second year. They take a wide variety of courses through their four years of study. That approach won't suit everyone. When I was studying in the us, I worked as a teaching assistant in undergraduate journalism classes. There were many students. The curriculum was pretty straightforward. I had to mark some of the students written work. It was always confident, enthusiastic, yet often badly structured, ill thought through with quite a few mistakes. This was more than 20 years ago and it was not Harvard, but it was a leading US institution, the University of Southern California, which is currently the most popular destination for British sixth formers. At Harvard, the students I spoke to didn't seem homesick. They talked of short flights home and they were all very busy with their courses, their extracurricular activity, their paid work. I had that too many years ago, but I still missed my friends, my family and the British sense of humour and irony. I never owned up to it though.
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And that's Saint Scheberg so the German Parliament has now approved the financial rescue package for Greece. The measure passed comfortably this week despite growing public unease there about the bailout and the possibility that there will have to be more to follow. The deal requires private investors to accept the loss of more than half of their loans to Greece. It also demands tough new austerity measures from the Greeks. We've heard in the past on this program and elsewhere about the sometimes extreme levels of anti German feeling in Greece. But what about the reverse? Steve Evans has been finding out that Greeks living in Germany have been feeling the pressure too.
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Aliki Gaculioti definitely will go back to Greece. So she says with much firmness of intent. Just give her time to finish a PhD in Employment Law in Berlin and then she will be back in her own country. She tells me she knows it will be tough finding work there, though I think to myself that employment law might be quite a good expertise to have in Greece in the coming years. Particularly if she specializes in the public sector. It strikes me that its employees might need a good employment lawyer. Aliki is 25 and has lived here for a year. But she says it's her duty to return. I believe, she says, we all have to contribute. I met her at a rally of Greeks in Berlin at the Kulturbraueri, a great 19th century red brick brewery converted into an arts centre. She was there listening to the speeches and partaking of food. The Greeks, being civilized, combine a rally with a party. Speeches first and then the band. The prevailing mood pre party was of dismay and sadness. Aliki said she'd not experienced direct racism in Germany, but she did think that German newspapers and politicians were racist in the disrespectful way they talked about her country. One of the magazines in Germany had a cover picture of the famous statue of Venus or Aphrodite in Greek with her middle finger raised in a rude gesture. Aliki found this very offensive, not to mention the suggestion that Athens could sell off a few islands to pay the bills. This she also found offensive. The Greeks I talked to found the lack of respect constantly hurtful. The jokes at the checkout in supermarkets when the cashier spotted a Greek name. Are you sure you can pay? One man said he gets asked. Many Germans in turn are baffled by the Animosity coming back in their direction. They see themselves as generous, but their generosity is then repaid by the burning of the German flag and constant references to the Nazis. There has been much coverage in Germany of the €25,000 fine on a Greek radio presenter who called Chancellor Merkel something on air which ought to be pretty un broadcastable and which, if your mother were called it, you might square up for a fight. Though I have to admit that when a German friend told me about it, I was rather relieved that it was just a run of the mill sexual slurpee and not a true no, no. Referring to the Nazis. The Greek radio presenter had used the insult as he talked about his resentment at his compatriots being called lazy and crooks and been fined, it should be said, by the Greek authorities, but this truly is a dialogue of the deaf. In Germany, the opinion polls show a hardening of attitudes against bailouts of the Greek public finances. There's no airing of complex arguments over whether Germany might have any responsibility for the crisis because, so it's alleged, outside the European Central bank had a policy suited to German needs rather than those of Greece. And if I tell my German friends that the official figures collated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show Greeks working longer each week than Germans, they scoff and look at me like I've just suggested that the moon is made of feta cheese so that, you know, the figures are average weekly hours worked per worker in Greece, 42 in Germany. It's a 35 hour week for the average worker. Not much lower than Britain, by the way, at a 36 hour week. In moments of mischief, I point out that the German president, the symbol of the nation, has just resigned over allegations of corruption. And this might temper the prevailing view that Greece has a monopoly on this kind of thing. But it cuts little ice. Everybody's grabbing for the stereotype and stereotypes you might think are about as useful as a one armed bouzouki player in a Bavarian beer hall. It's hard to see how this antagonism will abate. Aliki says that if Germany doesn't stop dictating her word, Greek anti German feeling will increase. At the meeting in Berlin, copies of a photograph of a German carrying a placard saying hey, Greeks, sorry for our government were prominent. This the Greeks there liked. But it's not the usual German sentiment. I went to the meeting with two German friends. As we came out, they both said, those Greeks, all they do is talk.
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A bit like us here at Radio 4. Steve Evans with a word or two from Berlin, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again on Saturday with more talk from correspondents far and wide. Join us, why don't you? Goodbye.