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From Our Own Correspondent
Catholic Olympics
00:28:10
From Mogadishu -- Gabriel Gatehouse on how the al-Shabab militants have managed to and...
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Correspondent
Hello, this is the from our own correspondent office at Bush House in London. You can check out what we're up to by signing up to our Twitter feed, but here's a download of our latest program on BBC Radio 4, introduced
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Kate Adie
as ever by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Presenter
Today, the biggest warlords in town. A description of the African peacekeepers apparently seeing off the militants in Somalia. There's serious discord in the church in Ireland just as Dublin prepares to host a huge Catholic conference. Chancellor Merkel gets the day off after using some words few British politicians would dare voice in public and a black dad, a white mum. Apartheid may be long gone, but color is still causing headaches in South Africa. The United States has announced its offering more than $30 million in reward for information leading to the location of seven key leaders of Al Shabaab. The Islamist group, which is based in Somalia but counts several hundred foreign fighters among its members, has publicly allied itself to Al Qaeda in recent months. An African Union force, consisting of soldiers from Uganda, Burundi and Kenya, as well as a contingent of Ethiopian troops, has notched up a number of crucial victories in its fight against Al Shabaab. Gabriel Gatehouse has been travelling with the AU force in Somalia and sends us this dispatch from the town of Afgooye, until recently a key Al Shabaab stronghold west of the capital, Mogadishu.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
We were standing in the shade of some trees, sheltering from the vicious midday sun, when the unmistakable strains of grieg began emanating from the pocket of a young man in camouflage fatigues. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. The young man reached for his mobile and squinted at the screen. I don't recognise the number, he said, letting it ring. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. As Peer Gynt continued, my curiosity was piqued. Perhaps it's one of your friends. The young man nodded. His name was Absher Ali Mohammed Nom de Ger Abu Khalid. He was a defector from Al Shabaab. The call was from Abu Khalid's former commander. The two spoke in Somali. I couldn't understand the conversation, but I could hear it. The discussion was lively, punctuated by bursts of laughter. What did he say? I asked. He accused me of being an apostate. Abu Khalid said Al Shabaab is being pushed out of towns and villages in southern and central Somalia by Ugandan and other African Union forces. The soldiers are by and large Christians. Abu Khalid brushed away the suggestion that he'd abandoned his Muslim faith. One day, he told his former commander, you too will join us. It was that last remark that had prompted the loudest laugh at the other end of the line. If they catch me, abu Khalid said, they'll slaughter me with their own hands. They'll cut off my hands and legs. Abu Khalid's commander in Al Shabaab was a man by the name of Shaykh Mustaf. The defector said he was one of between two and 300 men under his command. The sheikh had also acted as a local judge. His favoured punishment was amputation. Abu Khalid said that he had little time for the foreign fighters who provide the Islamist group with its ideological backbone. They hide their faces from us, he said. They live in safe houses and we are not allowed inside. When the African Union forces took the town of Afgoy at the end of last month, Abu Khalid and his fellow fighters were pushed out of the area. It was then that he decided to change sides. I realized that Al Shabaab didn't want to bring freedom to the people, he said. They were just harassing people. Abu Khalid and another defector by the name of Gashan both said they joined the Islamists out of a combination of religious and patriotic motives. When the African Union forces invaded, Said Gashan, whose name means shield, we were told they're Christians, so you must defend your country and your religion. But some months ago, he said, he noticed that Al Shabaab were demanding tax by force. They would confiscate animals from the nomads and carry out harsh punishments. I realized they were not about religion, he said. They were about killing people. So here they were, in the shadow of a tree, two defectors sharing a lunch of rice, chicken and goat meat with a contingent of Ugandan soldiers. Later, we drove into town, and there another possible motive for their defection presented itself. At a crossroads on the outskirts of Afgooy, an impromptu market had sprung up, a line of tables from which women in brightly coloured headscarves were selling small bunches of leaves. For many Somalis, chewing this stimulant, known as cat, is a national obsession close to a way of life. Al Shabaab declared it to be haram, forbidden and banned it. They wouldn't have approved of Abu Khalid's musical ringtone either. In that and many other ways, people here say Al Shabaab have alienated the local population. Once they enjoyed support for bringing relative stability where there had been chaos. That support now seems to be on the wane. In the town of Baidoa, near the Ethiopian border, local residents said Al Shabaab had been forcing young men and even boys to fight in a desperate attempt to bolster their numbers. The result, they say, has been a steady trickle of defections. And the defectors have helped the African Union and their Somali government allies to arrest yet more fighters. For many years now, the balance of power in Somalia has shifted amongst a patchwork of rival clan warlords. People understand this system, they respect it. And for a while, Al Shabaab became the dominant force in this power struggle. But now the group is in retreat, and many here sense its weakness. And that may turn out to be the most fatal blow of all. One man here observed. The African Union is now the biggest
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Narrator/Presenter
warlord in town, and that's Gabriel Gatehouse. Now it's been dubbed in some headlines, the Catholic Olympics. The 50th International Eucharistic Congress opens tomorrow in Dublin, and 25,000 people have been flying in from all over the world to hear speeches and discuss matters of doctrine. But some wonder if the event should be going ahead there at all. They say Irish Catholicism has little to celebrate. The prime minister, Ender Kenny, has been critical of the Vatican. The Pope has called off a planned visit to the Republic. Andy Martin says there will be a group of increasingly influential renegade priests among the congress delegates. They've been quietly agitating for change and the removal of some bishops from the church hierarchy.
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Paul (Anonymous Priest)
It's time for first communion here, and flashes of inflatable colour litter the Irish countryside as bouncy castles batter around in the breeze. Children in their Sunday best cry as they bump heads after pleading with their parents to allow them a go before they change out of expensive communion dresses. It's also the time when the elder children get confirmed, and after the ceremony, they sulk around with attitude. Despite the fact that all the youngsters are wealthier than they've ever been, relatives have showered them with euros to celebrate these important landmarks in their religious upbringing. Yet for many modern Irish families, it's a case of going through the cultural motions rather than feeling a deep attachment to the faith. A fashion parade for some. Gallons of fake tan glow in the aisles of some churches, heels higher than the candlesticks on the altar. Cradle Catholics, orthodox or otherwise, have such sacraments ingrained into them. Communion in Ireland does exactly what the name suggests. It brings all elements of society together in celebration. The well dressed and reserved, the devout and indifferent, all gather before their local parish priest and often their bishop, to see their children pass a cultural as well as a Catholic milestone. And the cultural aspect is so important, they continue to come to these flagship services despite the fact that many of the faithful believe the Irish Church is dying on its feet. That's a direct quote, not from a layperson, but from a young priest yearning for change. I met him at the gates of Trinity College in Dublin and walked past him twice before realizing that the stubbled man in a hoodie staring into a smartphone was the priest who'd agreed to meet me on condition of anonymity. 9 Priests in Ireland have recently been either censured or, more seriously, silenced by the Vatican. Like a religious super injunction, those who have been silenced are forbidden from exposing the fact. Those under censure have anything they may utter publicly combed over by an official in Rome before it is cleared for release. This priest isn't keen to be monitored, so we'll call him Paul and say nothing which could identify him. His reticence is entirely understandable, given what he has to say about the leader of the Irish Catholic Church. Cardinal Sean Brady is tainted by a distraction, according to Paul, and he really ought to step aside. He's referring to recent revelations that the primate, as a young priest in 1975, had interviewed a 14 year old victim of Ireland's most prolific paedophile, Father Brendan Smith, and along with two other priests, had sworn the child to secrecy. He'd also been told by the boy of other children who were being abused, but failed to inform their parents or the police. One of those children continued to be abused, as did a number of his family members, for years afterwards. The cardinal says he simply did what he was told to do by his superiors at the time. He is a gentleman, says Paul of the cardinal. Everyone will tell you that it's not even that he has to resign, but he must move to one side. As a result of the controversy, Cardinal Brady has already pulled out of the few First Communion services at which he was due to officiate. Could he face a protest at the Eucharistic Congress? Unlikely, says Paul. But every time victims of abuse see Sean Brady and hear him speak, they remember their own abuse. And that represents an inadequacy. There is a rift developing in the Irish Church. One fifth of priests have joined a kind of radical union, the association of Catholic Priests. It wants discussion on the ordination of women, an end to compulsory celibacy, debate on matters such as homosexuality, and a role for lay people in church decisions. Senior clerics sent by the Pope to investigate were clearly alarmed. Their report suggested that Ireland should instead return to traditional conservative doctrine. A recent survey shows that very few Irish people believe in transubstantiation, that in the Eucharist, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Three quarters said that key teachings on sexual matters were irrelevant. Fewer Irish children than ever before will attend Mass after they are confirmed. Keep the faith change the church is a slogan used by those disgruntled with the Vatican but fearful of the decline of the faith. The church will die some more before it grows again, Paul predicts. But it will grow. This week saw the first ordinations of married men in Ireland to what's known as the permanent diaconate. They can officiate at weddings, funerals, at baptisms and can preach. They can't, however, say Mass or hear confession. Women still can't be ordained, but it is a step, says Paul, in the right direction.
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Narrator/Presenter
Andy Martin in Dublin the violence in Afghanistan shows little sign of slowing as the date for the withdrawal of most foreign forces there draws closer. This week, a suicide attack killed more than 20 people outside a major NATO base in the southern city of Kandahar, and 18 civilians died in a NATO airstrike in Lohgar province. Earlier, a British soldier was killed during a successful attempt to rescue a kidnapped Afghan policeman. More than 170 members of the U. S led NATO coalition have died in Afghanistan this year. There are some 130,000 NATO troops currently serving there. Most of them are expected to leave the country by the end of 2014. Andrew north, our former correspondent in the Afghan capital Kabul, says that while some analysts conclude the coalition's been successful in denying a safe haven for Al Qaeda, others suggest that like many foreign interventions before it, the mission has achieved little and cost a very great deal.
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Correspondent
There's an odd kink in Martyrs Road in the Sherpur district of Kabul. It forces the traffic from cyclists to rattling yellow taxis to to slow down suddenly in what looks almost like a mark of respect. But no one looks up at the weathered metal sign on the wall on the bend which reads British Cemetery. It's a high wall. From outside you can't see in, and once inside, it muffles the sounds of Kabul. And when you pass through the wooden gates into the small tree lined graveyard, you have a feeling of entering another world and another era. The cemetery was created in the 19th century during Britain's past wars in Afghanistan. Some 160 soldiers from that period are thought to be buried here, although that's just a small fraction of the casualties from successive battles to keep Kabul in British hands. They first took the city in 1839 with little trouble. It was a straight land grab to stop Russia getting in first. But an Afghan uprising soon began and and two years later the British were forced out in a now well chronicled disaster. Nearly the entire Kabul garrison of 16,000 British and Indian troops, their families and servants were slaughtered by Afghan forces as they tried to retreat. British troops marched back in the same year, razing much of Kabul to the ground in revenge. But they tried to learn their lesson that while invading may be relatively simple, occupying Afghanistan was impossibly costly and initially they adopted a hands off approach from their bastions in British India. Yet three and a half decades later, they were invading again and the second British Afghan War was underway. Most of the soldiers buried here are from that time and the remains of their original headstones are now set into the southern wall. Shaded by nearby trees, glass covered displays record their stories. There was Lieutenant John Hersey of the 9th Queen's Royal Lances shot through the heart in December 1879. There's also a mass grave for dozens of unnamed infantrymen from the 67th Foot Regiment, Mown down by Afghan fire as they tried to storm a strategic hill. The British did retake Kabul, but the war lasted several more years. And they were back again in 1919, before London finally decided Afghanistan was just too much trouble. Britain signed a treaty accepting its empire would never stretch beyond the Khyber Pass and granting the Afghans their independence. At the other end of the cemetery's southern wall, there are 10 newer marble plaques. They bear the names of scores of servicemen and women who have given their lives in the fourth British war in Afghanistan. The current 1 and 10 plaques, it seems, are not enough. Many of those who died since the US led invasion in 2001 have yet to be recorded here. It is, though, perhaps more appropriate to use the Afghan name for this place, Cabraigora, or graveyard of foreigners. There are ad hoc memorials here for soldiers from the us, Germany, Italy and many other nations of the NATO alliance who have sent forces. But it's not just a military cemetery. I've come here with Noreen MacDonald, an enterprising Canadian researcher and lawyer, and who is helping the British Embassy look after the graveyard, prompted by the burial here of a friend, an American eye doctor, shot dead in 2001. On my last visit several years ago, the graveyard looked very neglected. Now the flower beds are well tended, new wooden benches have been brought in, and this peaceful garden of graves has become a symbol of Afghanistan's extraordinary history. Of conquest, superpower, intrigue and strategic value. From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to the empires of the Moguls, the British and the Soviets, and now the many nations of the US led coalition, few countries have been invaded so many times by so many others. And there are also aid workers, journalists and even hippies from the 1960s interred here. Noreen shows me the graveyard's best known residents. Sir Aurel Stein, a British Hungarian archaeologist, and Henning Christensen, a famous Danish explorer who both died here in the 1940s. We pass another grave with Russian script. Not someone linked with the Soviet invasion, though it turns out, but a Cossack who fled here in the aftermath of Russia's 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Eventually, I open the wooden gates and step back into 21st century Kabul. As I walk away, I pass a convoy of heavily armoured American vehicles wheezing their way through gridlock traffic. Afghanistan's latest invaders may be tiring now, but few Afghans believe they'll be the last to step on their soil.
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Narrator/Presenter
Andrew north in Kabul now. Chances are you won't be seeing the German Chancellor Angela Merkel on your screens today. She's having a day off. Yesterday she met the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The day before there were talks with David Cameron. Her office says there is nothing planned for the weekend, though the euro may intrude, one suspects. Stephen Evans in Berlin reckons that Chancellor Merkel probably deserves some time off. Some of the vocabulary she used this week caused a bit of a storm.
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Kate Adie
Is it OK to say shitstorm in public? Is it OK to say it in public in front of a group of fresh faced students? Is it OK to say it in public in front of a group of fresh faced students and the Prime Minister of Britain, who, by the way, didn't bat an eye. Chancellor Merkel thinks it is ok. I know because she said it. It is something of a favourite phrase with her. She said it before. I think her latest usage shows that she has a sense of humour. There she was with David Cameron in Berlin, holding what is apparently now called a town hall meeting. She was asked about the use of English as an international language. I should say that the incursion of English phrases into German life is controversial. Not as much as it is in France, but still controversial. She replied that she wouldn't comment on the use of English by Germans for fear of causing a shitstorm. Then she smiled wryly and the students and David Cameron laughed. But I guess if the woman holding the European purse strings makes a joke, you do laugh. You would, wouldn't you. But you learn a lot from the remark, both about her and and about attitudes in Germany to the English language. She does genuinely seem to like informality and not relish formality at all. To watch her in big state occasions is to watch her fidget and to see her eyes glaze over. But to watch her with students and even more so with the German football team earlier in the week is to see her beam and exhibit humor. German journalists complain that the people round her remove the humour from her. Sometimes when they interview her, the interviews get submitted to the Chancellery before publication and they come back with the jokes and the humour taken out. Everybody knows where she lives. It's not in the grand quarters to which she is entitled, but in a small flat opposite one of the museums. There are two policemen standing outside. But apart from that trapping of power, there are no signs of grandeur. Everybody in Berlin knows the place and usually walks past with a remark. No more. On the day the Berlin Wall fell, she related how she went for a sauna in her usual baths in East Berlin. It was Thursday, and Thursday was my sauna day is the way she put it. So that's where I went, in the same communist block of flats with where we always went. Those who know her say she cooks breakfast for her husband, but I guess that's an image some female politicians like to portray. There were plenty of pictures of Lady Thatcher in the kitchen. He never appears with her. Her public life and her private life are kept well apart, though it should be said she is spotted in supermarkets doing the shopping. The particular example of the direct speech she clearly likes is has now become part of the German language, usable even in polite society. It was chosen as the Anglicization of the year by a group of academics who ruled that it fills a gap in the German vocabulary that's become apparent through changes in the culture of public debate. In other words, no German word quite described. The storm of perpetual crisis now continually engulfing the Chancellor. English had the right word. American English, it has to be said, and the Germans have adopted it as their own. By the way, the second most important, Anglicism adopted into German, was deemed to be stress test again, a sign of our times. There are two schools of thought on this in Germany. One, which you might call the Merkel School, embraces strong phrases from the English language as an adornment of German. The other resents its intrusion, particularly for example, in train stations with phrases like service point, which don't even exist in English. These resisters to Anglicization say that German has a word for everything. I find that asking them the word for sexual normally wins the point. It is Geschlechs verker gender traffic. Literally a cumbersome phrase. Most Germans just say sex. So the Merkel view of how English enriches German triumphs.
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Narrator/Presenter
Stephen Evans in Berlin Much has changed in South Africa since the days of apartheid. This system of racial segregation came into being with a series of laws introduced in the years after the Afrikaner nationalists came to power in 1948. The Racial Discrimination affected where people lived, where they worked and how they were treated. But since it was consigned to history when Nelson Mandela swept to power in the 1994 elections, the quality of life for most of South Africa's non white population has improved steadily. But attitudes cemented over decades can take time to change. Tara Neal says the shadows of apartheid continue to some extent to loom over South African society.
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Tara Neal
We'd already spent two hours in the stuffy government office in downtown Johannesburg, and my partner and I were running out of patience. The home affairs official was looking increasingly panicky as she stared at her one month old baby, who was oblivious to all and was sleeping soundly. Is she a black? No, no, she is a white. She frowns again. A moment's silence and then a revelation. Ah, no, you. She is definitely a colored. My heart sank. Here we go again, I thought back on familiar territory. Sadly and inevitably, the issue of color always manages to wiggle its way into most situations here in South Africa. Not surprising given the country's history. But it still has a way of popping up when you least expect it. Suddenly, something as simple as trying to get our child's birth certificate becomes complicated. In this instance, we'd confuse the home affairs officials because I'm white and my partner is black. Can they be sure the child is really ours? Mixed race couples are still treated with a degree of surprise or suspicion here in South Africa. And the product of our union, our beautiful little girl Lasagne, seem to be bearing the brunt of this. But now, problem solved. Race categorized the official, a black South African, began to relax and apologize to us. I'm sorry, I know it's racist, but I believe she is your child because you are a white, she said, pointing to me. And whites don't lie. Four long years ago, when I started stepping out with her father, I had my first experience as one half of the novelty mixed race couple. We were waiting to be seated in a small cafe in Nowheresville in the middle of South Africa. All politeness, we asked for a menu. Sorry, we were told the cafe is about to shut. We looked around. The place was packed to the rafters. What about a takeaway? I asked hopefully. By this point my partner was tugging my arm. Let's just leave, he said. The kitchen is shut, replied the waitress firmly. It was only then the penny dropped and I was dragged, open mouthed, out through the door by my other half. As we walked up the street, cars slowed down and people, both black and white, stopped to stare at us. Nelson Mandela Street, I seem to remember not a moment the great man would be proud of. There's no doubt, as a black man, my partner gets a more hostile reception than I do. Suspicious whites address me and not him. Look me in the eye, but look into the far distance if he talks to them. Sometimes we treat it like a game of roulette. We arrive at B&Bs or restaurants and make bets on the reaction we might receive. Will he be ignored or engaged? Their enmities exhausting, their resentments all bottled up. When we're with black South Africans, the reaction to me is broadly welcoming. People are curious and sometimes even excitable. One man even thanked me for going out with a black man. On another occasion we are stopped by the police for speeding, but the officer forgets to issue us with a ticket. He's too busy asking my partner how he came to meet and go out with the white woman. Does he have any tips? Can he give him any advice? At large family occasions in the village, my presence is treated as a cause for celebration. It becomes impossible to take a solitary stroll. Doors are open to me. Strangers invite me in to take part in their festivities, to have a piece of slaughtered goat, a glass of local brew. To people there, I'm a novelty figure, maybe a sharp reminder that not so long ago, 20 years isn't that long. In post apartheid South Africa, blacks and whites couldn't mix, and my partner and I would have been locked up for being seen together. And now our child is here and times have changed, but not quickly enough. And so I'm stopped as I walk through the park by a white woman who wants to admire the baby. When did you get her? She asks, all innocence, assuming that my coffee Coloured daughter is adopted. Silence and embarrassment. When she works out the biological link between us, she digs herself a deeper hole. What lovely skin. She'll never need to worry in the sun. The questions aren't aggressive. The people are well meaning, just like that woman in Home Affairs. But the union of a white and black couple still surprises many here. One bright note to end on and a medical observation. And who's to argue with a doctor? The paediatrician who attended the birth of our child was delightful. Ah, the black and the white. She told us they make the most beautiful babies. And as her mother, I can tell you she's absolutely right. She is indeed a very beautiful baby.
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Narrator/Presenter
And you can always rely on a mother's unbiased opinion. Tara Neal in South Africa brings this edition to a close. We'll be back next week with more analysis, insight and colour. Do join us on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Until then, goodbye.