← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Was It Worth It?
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Reporters worldwide - today: Ruth Sherlock on how the Free Syrian Army's losing as to...
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Hello from the from our own correspondence
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studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've
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downloaded the latest edition of the programme
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broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady Today, men who didn't think war was worth it rise to the top of American politics. Why people in Aleppo are turning their backs on the Free Syrian army and looking to the Islamists for help. Murder on the streets of Corsica as the settling of old scores continues against a Mediterranean backdrop and Hannibal conquered the Moun mountains in just 16 days. The Italians, we learn, are taking considerably longer. So President Obama has set out his priorities for the next four years in his first State of the Union address since re election. It was a wide ranging speech focusing partly on building a stronger America. He told Congress that 34,000 troops were coming home from Afghanistan and that by the end of 2014, America's war there would be over. Now the President's made a number of key appointments as he heads into his new term. Mark Mardell has been considering just how much military experience has shaped them.
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The President appears to have been to the barbers before his State of the Union speech. A severe buzz cut underlined his militant mood, but it was his hands that mesmerized me, palms wide apart, repeatedly chopping the air in tandem as if measuring the enormous scope of his ambition. He name checked nearly everything on his party's wish list, but one item was what they don't want. We don't need to occupy other nations or send thousands of our sons and daughters overseas, he declared. Pretty important when military action against Iran or North Korea is repeatedly said to be an option. His choice of a new defence Secretary and new Secretary of State could be intended to lock him in to that promise. John Kerry's hooked profile and shock of steely grey hair cry out to be crowned by laurels. His he's been a senator for a mere 29 years, but one can easily imagine him 2,000 years ago, a patrician presence guiding imperial Rome through war and peace. But it's not appearance alone that demands that laurel wreath. Until now, he's been the nearly man. He ran for president in 2004, and he seems marked by a yearning to leave his stamp on history. He's smooth and nuanced, but not bloodless. It's worth remembering how he looked and sounded when he first appeared on the Washington stage. The jaw still juts out of a lean face, the abundant hair is even cut the same. But it was dark then and he was dressed in drab military fatigues, adorned only with one Colorful line of ribbons, three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze star. A 27 year old Vietnam veteran in a fury about the war that he believed had made his country lie, made his friends war criminals and made paranoid hypocrisy and a way of life. An angry young man asking senators a question which could, perhaps should, echo down the ages. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Then remember one of the reasons why President Obama said he chose Chuck Hagel to be America's next Secretary of State for Defence. That he'd have the respect of the troops he would lead. The first enlisted soldier to head that department. He left Southeast Asia with two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, and shrapnel lodged in his chest from a booby trap bomb. He doesn't often wear the medals these days, but the shrapnel is still there. Hagel, a former Republican senator, is loathed by some of his former party colleagues because of his opposition to the way the Iraq war was fought. He faced an intensely hostile Senate confirmation hearing. His one time allies pompously demanded one word answers to complex questions. Gotcha Questions, as they're called here. Designed only to catch him out. It was one of the most dispiriting displays I've witnessed in Congress. A petty, vicious display by men entirely uninterested in attempting to divine answers about what might drive the United States foreign policy over the next four years. Had they not been consumed by a craving to put the boot into a turncoat, they could have discovered something about Hegel's approach to war. And so to Obama's complex, foggy foreign policy. Throughout his political career, Hegel has adopted a stance that might make him a very unusual Defence Secretary. It's said to be one of the burdens of high office that politicians sometimes have to or feel they have to treat people as pieces on a chessboard. But Hegel stresses he takes a Pons eye view. He says he speaks for the ghosts of the past, the soldiers who've sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off. These two men are the diametric opposites to those chicken hawks who still flap around Washington, those ever eager for their nation to go to war, who ducked and dodged every opportunity to test their own metal under fire. Not even armchair generals, but politicians cowering behind the sofa yelling war cries. So Obama says a lot about himself by selecting men who had decorated heroes of a war that scarred and divided America. It might sound odd with all the books and films that have picked over Vietnam and parsed its every paragraph, but America is reluctant to draw conclusions about that war. These two men show no such doubts. They just don't think it was worth it. They both supported the Iraq war at first, but now don't think it was worth it. They wouldn't say that about Afghanistan, not about a war still being fought, a war where no politician can afford to ask Kerry's question. But I would love to know what Hagel and Kerry and Obama would answer in their hearts to the question, was it worth it?
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And that's Mark Mardell in Washington. And who, if anyone, will be saying the war was worth it when the dust finally settles in Syria. In some parts of the country, particularly the north, the rebel Free Syrian army now faces increasing criticism. Its fighters are accused of looting and incorporating incompetence as well as ruinous infighting. Ruth Sherlock, who's been in the city of Aleppo, says that amid the chaos, the jihadists of the Al Nusra Front are becoming more and more powerful.
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Abu Hussam was a commander in the Free Syrian Army. I met him in a safe house in Aleppo. He had just got out of jail. Slowly, painfully, he rolled up his trousers to show me the deep black bruising across both of his lower legs. Torture, he said. My cell was a toilet cubicle. When they tortured me, he added, two men held me down. Six others beat me with cables. It lasted for three hours. His jailers, he told me, were Islamists from a new Sharia court set up in rebel held Aleppo. He had been detained for 36 days before they finally deemed him not guilty. The charges against Mr. Hussam had included spending time with women, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and, even more improbably, in the middle of a war, starting a nightclub in his home. He suspected his arrest had also been revenge for his support of another, more moderate court. But the fact that his fighters had not been able to force his release is a sign of the Sharia court's power. Six months ago, when the rebels stormed the city, such a hard line Wahhabi Islamist system would not have existed in Aleppo. The aspiration to create an uncompromising society governed by Sharia law is at odds with the gentle Sufi culture of most of its Muslim residents. But the war has turned this mercantile city, once a trading hub for gold, jewelry and expensive silks, into a place of depravity and despair. Mounds of rubbish lie rotting on its streets. Families live in bombed out ruins and the wounded are left to beg for their next meal. Furious at what the main rebel group, the fsa, has done to their city and to their livelihoods, Aleppo's destitute people are now turning to the Islamists for help. Chief among them is Jabbat Al Nusra, a jihadist group that the United States has blacklisted as a terrorist organization in recent months. This group, which shares sympathies with Al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for a litany of car and suicide bombings against government targets, but which have also killed hundreds of civilians. Already known for being some of the bravest fighters. In the last few weeks, the group has turned its hand to helping civilians. I met Haji Rasool, an emir or leader in the Nusra Front. The common etiquette when conducting an interview is to sit facing your interviewee, listen carefully, and sometimes give an encouraging smile. This was not the right approach with Haji Rasool. Wearing a beige robe, his face framed by a prayer cap and long beard, he faced forwards in the front seat of the people carrier. His security detail of seven armed men in black uniforms surrounded the car. I sat three rows back, squashed up in a small seat in the boot that put as much distance as possible between us. Respectful of his strict interpretation of Islam, I had dressed in a demure black hijab and loose clothing, but Hajirasul still moved the rear view mirror so as to avoid accidentally glimpsing my reflection. The biggest help they are giving is with bread. When they seized the grain stores, the FSA were accused of looting the bread supply to Aleppo, a vital staple for many, all but ceased now. Jabot have monopolized the warehouses and are carefully managing them. We have four factories working, and each has the capacity to make 150 tons of flour per day. So, said Haji Rasool, we are able to feed all of the liberated territories in Syria. The operation is indeed impressive. In one Aleppo district, I watched as bakers tirelessly churned out Jabbat's piping hot flatbread and sold it at bargain price. In this area alone, they feed more than 26,500 families. The Nusra Front's other projects include subsidising farmers to replant wheat fields, bringing oil and gas to Aleppo, restarting medicine factories and collecting rubbish. I asked the bakery manager why he thought Jabbat had succeeded in these projects when other rebels are still barely able to sustain their own groups. And what did he think their motivation was? Smiling, he pointed to the sky and replied with one word, Allah. God. The aid is organized through the Sharia court that Jabhat al Nusra shares with three other of the most hardline groups. This has given it and its Islamist social template more and more power over Syria's most populous city. They provide us with heating and bread and they are good Muslims, said one father of nine. 80% of the FSA are rotten. The prowess of Islamists in Aleppo is a source of seething resentment for many FSA groups and secular Syrian citizens alike. During popular protests, calls for support of pro democracy rebels still outnumber the cries for the Islamic army. But whilst the Islamists are better funded and better organized, there is little that these others can do.
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That was Ruth Sherlock, and hundreds of Tunisians have been protesting outside the country's national assembly, demanding the resignation of the Islamist led government. Prominent among them was the widow of Shockri Belaid, a leftist opposition figure and critic of the government who was assassinated last week. There's talk of a new cabinet, partly consisting of non political technocrats emerging from talks which have been continuing, continuing all week. Our correspondent Wera Davis says it's clear Tunisia is deeply divided.
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He sat there like a mannequin in the shop window, almost still, but not quite. His eyes flashed from side to side nervously, but the rest of his body hardly moved and for more than an hour he remained there, guarding his important little part of the Tunisian revolution. He works at Al Kitab, probably the best known bookshop in Tunis, modest in size but rich in its literary offerings, novels, history books and textbooks in Arabic, French and a small section in English. Ever since 1967, Al Kitab has occupied a prominent space in Bourguiba Avenue, the main thoroughfare that runs through the modern heart of the Tunisian capital. At its far end is the imposing Bab al Bahar, the huge stone arch that separates modern Tunis from the old historic Medina. Bourguiba Avenue is also where the revolution of 2011 was largely played out, where Tunisians of all ages and faiths protested and battled until they overthrew the authoritarian regime of Zin All Abeddeen Ben Ali. It was the first of the Arab uprisings, paving the way for similar movements in Egypt, Libya and beyond. Two years later and there's a disturbingly familiar feel to the avenue. The choking taste of tear gas drifts across the tree lined streets. Plain clothes militias, their faces covered by black masks, hang around menacingly on street corners. At the Al Kitab bookshop, they're worried the rioters and looters may come back. The shop assistant's boss and owner of the bookshop is Selma Jabez she tells me there were lots of books they couldn't sell during the dictatorship. Books in particular about contemporary politics and the ruling family were banned. She says the previous regime didn't promote Tunisian culture at all. Quite the opposite. What preoccupies Mrs. Jabez now and many like her who supported the overthrow of the regime and is the direction being taken by Tunisia's new leaders. We're nearly all Muslims, but this is not an Islamic country, she says. People want a democratic future. She's typical of the many liberal, more secular Tunisians who say their revolution is being stolen, that the ideals and principles they fought for in January 2011 have somehow been twisted and redefined. For that, Selma Jabis blames the governing Islamist party and its allies. It portrays itself as a moderate branch of the Muslim Brotherhood trying to weave a difficult path towards democracy between Tunisia's various post revolutionary factions. On a good day, Bourguiba Avenue can be mistaken for a busy Parisian street. Small groups of men and fashion conscious women sitting together outside one of the street's many cafes, chatting effusively and openly, mainly in Arabic, but also sometimes in French. But lately, art exhibitions and musical events have been disrupted in the capital. Religious Sufi shrines, regarded as profane by ultra conservative Muslims, have been desecrated or destroyed. Many women say they're being pressured into covering their hair and to wearing more modest clothing. The selling of alcohol has been restricted in some establishments. And each time I come back to Tunis, it feels a little less like Paris. Shadowy pro government squads known as the Committees for the Protection of the Revolution, operate with semi official approval. Ostensibly they seek out remnants of the previous regime, but they're also accused of beating up and harassing Enacta's political opponents. Last week, events took a dramatic turn for the worse when the prominent and vocal opposition politician Shukri Belaid was assassinated on his way to work. Less than 24 hours before his death, Bellaid had warned in a television interview that political violence was getting out of hand because radicals on the fringes of the ruling party were being allowed to operate with impunity. Nakhta's leaders have emphatically denied being in any way responsible for the murder and have explicitly condemned it. But that didn't quell the anger of more than 1 million people who turned out for Shoukribaraid's funeral last Friday. It's quite clear Tunisia is now deeply divided. The day after Shukri Balayid's funeral, a big crowd of pro Nakhta supporters gathered in Burguiba Avenue Bearded men waving the white flags of Nakhta, mixed with the black banners of the party's conservative Salafist allies. Their leaders stood on the steps of the municipal theatre, just across the road from Selma Jabe's bookshop. We are Muslims and we will not be moved. They shouted, also denouncing the former colonial power here, France, whose interior minister referred to the dangers of Islamo fascism in the days after Shukri Belayed's murder. Behind the protest leaders on the whitewashed walls of the theatre were two prominent posters advertising, of all things, a comedy festival later this month. Few people here are in the mood for jokes or political satire, and when I later asked at the theatre if I could speak to someone about the event, I wasn't surprised to learn that Tunisia's inaugural comedy festival has been indefinitely delayed.
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Wirra Davis in Tunis it's 15 years since the official French representative on the island of Corsica was shot dead. The prefect Claude Erinac, assassinated in the street as he made his way to the theatre. His murder marked a turning point in the Paris government's attitude towards the French island. In the Mediterranean, a crackdown was launched on the nationalist uprising there. And yet the violence didn't stop. Instead, it was assimilated into a culture of murder built on clan rivalries and organized crime. Tom Esselmont has been to Corsica to see why the murder rate is still so high.
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Murder in Corsica is brazen and fast. The killers disappear, usually without trace, into the silence. At times, it seems you cannot go more than a few metres without passing another spot where someone was assassinated. In Ajaccio, a businessman was shot dead last year near the Place d', Amont, in full view of his wife and child. Nearby, a father of two was gunned down as he closed his shop. That killing came soon after a well known gang member met his end in a village butcher's shop bearing his name. The French call these reglements de contes, the settling of old scores between rival clans or families through vendetta. Most of the murders happen in daylight and almost without fail in a public place. No one minds pointing out the spot. But generally, getting an eyewitness to describe what they saw, or a relative to discuss their grief is nearly impossible. You want to get the families of the victims to talk, said local journalist Pierre it's going to be tough, huh? As I travel from murder scene to murder scene, talking to eyewitnesses, asking why is this happening? I get a shrug of the shoulders, a courteous but firm raising of a hand that says no. A sudden Outflow of breath and a glance upwards that says, I wish I knew. Or perhaps what they mean is, I wish I could tell you. Some say the silence is due to a mafia code of honour or omerta. Others say it's because people are simply too scared to talk. What is certain is that on an island of just over 300,000 people, many are worried that what they say might catch up with them. That's what I found in the small mountain town of Ponte Lecce. When I arrived, I could see the marks spray painted by police on the pavement, highlighting where the bullets or cartridges landed during an attempted murder just a few days earlier. The attackers, who only injured their victim, could not have chosen a more prominent location. Right outside a cafe. It now seems to be closed. In the bar next door, we're begged not to film inside. My family is too implicated, says the owner, with a look of regret that suggested she wished she hadn't spoken to us. The woman in the neighboring boulangerie says she was there that day. She was making pizzas out the back when she heard bangs. When I probe, her friendly smile dies away. She hides behind a metal tray of baguettes, looking busy. Nearby, in the town of Bastia, the priest knows all about the executions and shootings. Le Pere Olive, Father Olive. Warm, paternal. He says he's buried many of the victims. He says he's had to console the families of both the one who pulled the trigger and the one who got shot. Speaking slowly, he looks down with heavy, compassionate eyes. It hurts me a great deal, he says. The priest, the baker, the bar owner may not want to give details, but like all other Corsicans, they testify to an island steeped in problems. Every year, French mainlanders and other tourists arrive in their millions to stay in holiday homes along the coast. New houses are being built at a rate of 6,000 per year. The murders have done nothing to dampen the value of property. Quite the opposite, in some cases. The killings are born out of this property boom. Criminals, it's said, have their assets tied up in the business of construction, or all vying for a segment of cherished coastline, a window on the beguiling turquoise Mediterranean. At times, it feels everyone is in this together. Everyone walks with the same confident swagger, blaming each other, fighting their corner and finding a cover if they have anything to hide. Although most Corsicans are completely innocent, it is impossible to get at the truth. It's also hard to understand certain oddities. As I make my way down the Cours Napoleon, Ajaccio's Main Street. I pass some shops open for business, but curiously, doing very little trade in the middle of winter. Pierre raises an eyebrow and turns towards me. Money laundering, he says. The people with dirty money, they buy up shops and then weeks later, they let them go bankrupt. The sinister side of life, it appears, helps to explain strange events. We pass Ajaccio's railway station. It is dead. Trains sitting on rusty railway tracks haven't run for a week because of a strike. Though astonishingly, no one seems to mind. Beyond it, in the distance, expensive yachts bob in the deep blue water beneath the dazzling winter sun.
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Thomselmont in Corsica, supporters of the plan to build a high speed rail line between London and Birmingham are watching closely to see what happens to a huge scheme aimed at improving rail links between France and Italy. At the centre of the plan is the construction of a 35 mile tunnel through the Alps. Its supporters say the new route will enable the Atlantic to reach out to the Urals. Freight trains will zoom to and fro, boosting the shambling economies of southern Europe. Protesters noisily disagree, but the tunnelling goes on amid tight security. Christian Fraser's been to check on its progress.
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He called my mobile phone, sounding a little panicky, shortly before our rendezvous at an anonymous motorway service station in north west Italy. We have to change the plan, he blurted. They found out you're coming. This sounded interesting. My run of the mill filming trip to a tunnelling project, albeit the world's most extravagant in ambition, budget and controversy, was turn turning into a scene from Spooks. Who's found out what? I asked the protesters, he exclaimed. We can't meet there after all. His alarm was understandable. For 20 years, a well marshalled army of local protesters has successfully resisted grandiose Franco Italian plans to drill a 35 mile tunnel through the Alps. And I couldn't help feeling that perhaps their British counterparts may already be studying these tactics for any guerrilla war they launch against the London to Birmingham high speed rail route. In Italy, they've lobbied tenaciously and at times violently in their fight against the rail link between Lyon and Turin. Some 400 people were injured in clashes with the police last year when the tunnel site was first fenced off. No wonder Francois Pelletier, the palpitating spin doctor, suspected a perfect storm was on its way. The protesters had discovered that we were coming to film the Italian bulldozers as they finally began to claw away at the soil of their beloved Sousa Valley. And this in the same week that the very future of the gigantic project was called into question by European Union budget cuts. Sensibly, Francois directed us instead to rendezvous at a quiet local train station. And only when he was confident that we were who he thought we were did he emerge. Our clandestine journey unfolded. We had to follow Francois to the construction site. There are no road signs. Entering a motorway tunnel in the darkness, we suddenly dived off down an unmarked ramp, past a few traffic cones and emerg into a surreal military zone. The Italian army has been deployed to keep the site secure. There's clearly embarrassment that while the French have already drilled and completed six miles of exploratory tunnels on the other side of the border, Italian Progress on a 5 mile tunnel amounts to a scrape in the mountainside. Approximately 11 yards deep, it's a parking space for a double decker bus. Only another 8,789 yards to go then. The military operation certainly made for great theatre. Camouflage trucks, towering fences, soldiers patrolling the woods. But the protesters were also enjoying the spectacle as they camped up in the trees, lobbing rocks at bulldozers and filming us filming them. The EU has backed the tunnel ever since its inception in the early 1990s. But its leaders agreed last week to cut the overall budget for the union for the next six years, and grand infrastructure projects could be vulnerable. Last year, the French Court of Auditors projected that the final bill for the tunnel would be double the 13 billion euros envisaged in the 1990s. It would end up costing more than the Channel Tunnel. Nor, concluded the court, was there any certainty that it would ever return a profit. Yes, it would create three and a half thousand jobs, but at an average cost of a staggering 3 million euros per job. The naysayers insist that the tunnel will be an ugly, expensive white elephant, pointing out that the existing transalpine road and railroads seem to very nicely. Thank you. They claim that projections of traffic were drawn up 20 years ago and are hopelessly out of date. And they are worried about potentially dangerous minerals buried underneath the mountains being released into the air and water. Hand on heart, even the keenest of protesters would struggle to claim the Susa Valley as an area of outstanding beauty. A narrow pass, it is already crammed with the clatter of human development. A motorway stalks across the valley floor on gigantic stilts elevated above railway lines, quarries and factories. People have tried to cross this valley in all kinds of ways. One of the first was Hannibal, the great warrior leader of Carthage, whose own transalpine adventure ended in Susa in 218 BC. Hannibal's journey across the mountains with 20,000 soldiers and 37 fighting elephants took him just 16 days. No one stood in his way. Now those were the days.
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Christian Fraser walking in the giant footprints of Hannibal's elephants and bringing today's edition to a close. I'll be back with more us far and wide in Saturday morning's program. Do join us. Goodbye.