← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Coming Home Early?
00:28:10
Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says an early and substantial drawdown of British troops...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady today.
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Will the troops be brought home early from Afghanistan because of the growing number of green on blue attacks? The questions left unanswered after the most serious security breach at the Vatican in living memory. The Chinese finding business opportunities amid the recession in Spain. And should it be stewed, fried or grilled in local herbs? A range of cooking options at a cat eating festival in Peru? There's speculation this weekend that NATO troops might pull out of Afghanistan sooner than planned because of the number of so called green on blue or insider attacks on coalition soldiers there. At least 52 members of the NATO led International Security Assistance Force have been killed this year in attacks carried out by gunmen wearing Afghan police or army uniform. The current plan is for most foreign combat troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. NATO defence ministers will consider their options at a meeting in Brussels next week. Quentin Somerville in Kabul says it's clear they're now resigned to a very different future for Afghanistan.
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In a circle of trees at the heart of the international Missions HQ in Kabul, there are 50 flags, one for each of the coalition countries that make up the force that is fighting the Taliban. Under the branches in the early morning shade, a few hundred soldiers stand still, listening as the names of that week's dead are read aloud. The first was that of a Jordanian soldier, then a British sergeant and two British captains. Next, an American gunner's mate and two more sergeants. An Afghan officer stepped forward. He read, just a number, 31. The service is short. It barely lasts five minutes. There isn't enough time to read the names of all Afghan dead. Some names give more pause for thought than others. Sergeant Gareth Thursby and Private Thomas Roe were killed earlier in the month in Narasaraj and Helmond. They weren't killed by the Taliban, but by an Afghan policeman they were serving alongside. As the number of these green on blue or insider attacks has risen, British soldiers have taken extra precautions. One is armed at all times, even when men are sleeping. These men are called guardian angels. In the Narasaraj killing, the Afghan policeman looked like he was in pain. The British soldiers reacted with compassion. The one designated the guardian angel put down his weapon as he tried to help. And that's when the killer, the policeman, struck. Murder is a word you rarely hear. In war, killing is part of the business and is viewed by most as lawful, according to international protocols. But recently, the commander of international forces here, General John Allen, sat opposite his Afghan counterparts and said that while his troops were prepared to die for Afghanistan, they weren't prepared to be murdered. A quarter of all British soldiers who have been killed here this year were killed by Afghan police or army colleagues. Some were Taliban infiltrators, others men with a grievance who shot those they served with in the back or in the face or somewhere. Their body armor and helmets offered no protection. Trust is collapsing between these two forces, who should be united as in their fight against the Taliban. The international mission suspended many routine joint patrols with Afghans as it sought to stop the attacks, a huge step since NATO's strategy relies on training Afghans to fight the Taliban when most international forces leave. At the end of 2014, senior generals in the Ministry of Defence claimed that this was no big deal, but few believe them. One senior diplomat told me that the switch would go down in the history books. It could be a game changer, he said. Afghan generals were furious. They felt abandoned and claimed a propaganda victory had been handed to the insurgents. The Taliban may be cruel, but they're also adaptable. Crafty is the word one Marine used to describe them when speaking to me A week or so ago, he just lost two colleagues to Taliban grenades. When the insurgents realized that they couldn't beat the coalition in a head on battle, they. They introduced roadside bombs. And now they realize that this war, already deeply unpopular at home, can only become more so if Afghan troops keep killing British, American and other servicemen. What do you say to the wife of a soldier killed by an Afghan soldier? A coalition general said to me last week. There's nothing you can say. The fear among those leading this war is that the relentless green on blue killings will accelerate the exit of troops. The public is already sick of these killings and they could provide Western politicians a good excuse to quit. After all, why hang around for another two years if the Taliban can't be defeated militarily and your allies keep shooting you dead? A substantial and early drawdown of British troops is already being privately considered. President Karzai might not realise it, said another diplomat, but you cannot underestimate Western fatigue. With this war and with corruption here, there is a shift taking place in the coalition's vision of the future of Afghanistan. Speak to senior generals and diplomats and they have a view of what the country looks like after they've gone. Kabul and other cities remain in government hands, the east will remain as lawless as ever. And the south, well, there will have to be some accommodation in the South. What does that mean? It means that the Taliban in some areas will. Will be back for good. One of the most senior diplomats here sat in my garden recently and sighed. This is a war of diminished expectations and one where the west will never utter the word victory. He said, don't ask me if it was worth it, because it wasn't. So what I asked was the best possible outcome. He replied, all we want is a country that we can forget about, and that's Quentin Somerville.
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Tomorrow sees the final match of the international cricket tournament which has been going on in Sri Lanka. And to the delight of local fans, the home team will be contesting the last game in front of a sellout crowd. The government there believes this highly successful competition has helped prepare the country's image after a long civil war which claimed some 100,000 lives. It's hoping visitors will once again be able to look at the island as a place of sun kissed beaches and fabulous historic sites, rather than one of blood soaked ethnic conflict. The war ended in 2010 when government forces finally crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels. The closing battles were especially brutal, leading to allegations of war crimes on both sides. And Frances Harrison, who's been talking to survivors, says they won't easily forget what happened to them.
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It wasn't hard to spot her. The house on the outskirts of Dublin was full of plump Sri Lankan Tamils joking loudly and overloading the table with dishes of steaming biryani for Sunday lunch. In the corner, reluctant to come forward, stood a skeletal, gaunt faced woman with dark circles under her eyes, a tell tale sign of sleepless nights. When her brother stood next to her, it was impossible to see any family resemblance because she was so physically different. After months of starvation and trauma, she looked like the figure in Edvard Munch's famous Scream picture come to life. I call her Sharmila, but that's not her real name. Nobody who escapes Sri Lanka wants to be identified when they tell their stories for fear of what might happen to their extended families back home. Sharmila more so than others because she left behind a husband and two children, a farmer's wife inside rebel held areas of northern Sri Lanka. Sharmila was one of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians caught up in the final phase of the war as the government crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels once and for all. A UN investigation said it was possible. Up to 40,000 people were killed in those five months alone. Others suggest the number of deaths could be even higher as European tourists sunned themselves on Sri Lanka's Southern beaches in 2009. At the other end of the island, Sharmila was cowering on a squalid, overcrowded beach as scores of rockets from multi barreled launchers pummeled the area. Doctors were forced to amputate children's legs without anaesthetic, using using butcher's knives in a series of makeshift hospitals that repeatedly came under direct fire. Human rights groups counted 35 attacks on hospitals in those months, too many to be purely accidental. It's a story of atrocities that wasn't fully told at the time. Journalists and aid workers were barred from the war zone. Three years on, most of the Sinhalese, the majority of Sri Lankans simply choose not to ask what their troops did in the name of victory. The government still denies accusations that it committed war crimes. Sharmila, though, cannot forget how she used a shovel to collect up the body parts of her neighbors blown to pieces by shells. She's haunted by all the people she saw die. A man as he took his son to the toilet. Two small children nearby, hundreds queuing under a tree for food. Her own daughter narrowly missed being hit by a shell and a bullet whizzed past her cheek when she went to a Hindu temple to pray that if they were going to die, it would at least be all together, rather than one by one. If the indiscriminate shelling by the government wasn't enough, there was the added threat of the rebels who needed cannon fodder. Djmla's daughter was 14 years old and at risk of being snatched. It had long been compulsory for every family to give one child to the rebels to fight. As the war drew to a close, they returned. For the others, it happened to Sharmila's sister as they camped on the beach. Her first son died fighting, so the rebels came for the second, then the third. Only 16 years old. Kill us first. We have already given you two children, Screamed Sharmala's sister. But the Tigers just pushed her aside and snatched the boy. That was the last they ever saw of him. Years later, Sharmila is still a shattered woman. As she told her story in Dublin, she twisted her sweating palms in anguish and her chair started wobbling. Then I noticed the curtain behind her was quivering too. Her whole body physically trembling so much with the effort of remembering that it made everything around her vibrate. I have never seen a person so literally shaken by what they experienced. Many months after the event, Sharmila is typical of the survivors I've interviewed, many of whom are now suicidal, broken people coming forward to tell their stories for the first time. A brave doctor who served in the makeshift clinics saving thousands of lives can no longer stand the sight of blood. A photographer can't look through a camera lens without seeing dead children. And a Catholic nun struggled to keep her faith in a loving God after everything she'd seen.
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Frances Harrison. A Vatican City court is due to deliver its verdict today at the end of the trial of Pope Benedict's former butler. Paolo Gabrielli is charged with stealing hundreds of confidential documents from the Pope's desk and faces a possible four year prison sentence. SENTENCE he's admitted the theft, but claims he did it for the good of the Church. David Willie says the theft of the letters to the Pope complaining of corruption, cronyism and nepotism at the highest levels of the Church was the most serious security breach of the Vatican in living memory.
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Reporting on the Vatican demands the skills of a Kremlinologist or a China watcher and a considerable knowledge of the arcane world and professional jargon. The of the men who run the more than 1 billion strong Catholic Church, the world's oldest international organization, there are very few chinks in the curtain of secrecy and professional clerical discretion surrounding the workings of the Holy See. But I've had two recent exclusive glimpses of Vatican City at work. First in the city's criminal court and second, at an annual private party or organized by the papal police. The tiny Vatican City, the world's smallest sovereign state, a high walled enclave situated in the heart of the Italian capital, is policed by two entirely separate security forces. First, the Pope's Swiss Guard. Recruited solely from among Swiss nationals who've completed their military service, Swiss mercenary soldiers had a deserved reputation for toughness and and loyalty among European courts. For centuries, they fought and died for their monarch, the Pope. When Rome was sacked by the troops of the Emperor Charles V In 1527, the French court also had its Gare de Suisse, who died protecting their king, Louis XVI when revolution broke out in Paris in 1789. But the few remaining courts of Europe no longer employ foreign mercenaries. Only the Pope still has his Swiss Guards. Then there's the Vatican Gendarmerie. This is a military unit of about 130 men, staffed almost entirely by former Italian state police officers. It's responsible for security, internal traffic control, border control and criminal investigations. It also has a firefighting section in case there's a blaze inside Vatican territory. And a tiny anti terrorist section whose members wear balaclava masks and are armed with Kalashnikovs. I saw them on parade for the first time last year. Normally there's little crime to report inside Vatican City, apart from the prosecution of pickpockets who infiltrate the hordes of tourists and pilgrims attending masses or visiting the Vatican Museums. I was told by one of the cleaners inside St. Peter's Basilica that after the congregation attending midnight mass at Christmas or Easter has gone home, the marble floor is strewn with pilgrims, wallets emptied and then jettisoned by thieves. The Vatican gendarmes discarded their colorful and elaborate ceremonial uniforms three decades ago. They now wear pillbox peaked hats and smart blue police uniforms with epaulettes. And once a year on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, they march up and down with their band in front of their clerical paymasters at a private ceremony at the back of St. Peter's Basilica, just around the corner from the 19th century courthouse where the Pope's butler has been on trial. The governor of Vatican City state pays tribute to their efforts for protecting the person of the Pope, whether inside his pocket handkerchief domain or with when he crosses into Italian territory or travels overseas. Then there's a buffet reception and fireworks inside the Vatican Gardens where the police band plays Arrivederci Roma or old Glenn Miller favourites, while guests enjoy risotto offered by the German car manufacturer who builds the Popemobile. This year's police party, however, took place in a more muted atmosphere than usual. The remote calm usually surrounding the Pope and his aides has been shattered by the embarrassing revelations in the Vatican City courtroom of the butler who rose above his modest station in life. As a result of what the butler heard and saw at the Pope's dinner table. He dared to violate not only the laws of the Vatican City state, but also the secrets of the inner sanctum of the Church's administrative headquarters, the Holy See. He publicly suggested that the Catholic Church is going off the rails, as he put it, and that Pope Benedict may not be fully informed about what's going on around him. 200 Catholic bishops from around the world arrive in Rome this weekend to take part in a three week Vatican Synod to discuss how the church should combat creeping secularism in formerly Catholic Europe. Many are asking themselves the same questions that the Pope's butler asked himself as he listened in to the conversation around the Pope's table while pouring the wine and serving food. The question that his trial failed to address is did the lone butler have accomplices in breaching Vatican security? Are there many more senior people who work inside Vatican headquarters and in the Catholic Church worldwide, who may be equally dissatisfied with the way the church is being run.
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David Willie in Rome so will the government in Madrid seek a full blown cash bailout or won't it? This week the bank of Spain, diverging rather from the official government line, talked of the prospect of a deeper than expected recession next year. The Spanish public sees various scapegoats as it tries to understand why the country's got itself into so much trouble. Pascal Harta in Barcelona Barcelona says some have been pointing the finger at Spain's growing Chinese community.
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Baramon is a spit and sawdust kind of joint. There's a games machine flashing and beeping by the door. At the bar, a man in overalls sits drinking cheap brandy, not his first or his last of the day. Above, there are illuminated pictures of greasy patatas and croquetas. Baramon is a typical Spanish bar, but from behind the counter emerges an exhausted looking Chinese woman. So where is Ramon? Like countless small business owners in this country, he must have decided the dwindling custom in the recession wasn't worth it anymore. He's probably unemployed now and has moved with his wife and kids back to his parents house. Their pension comes in handy because quite likely he sold the bar for less than he paid for it and he still owes on the mortgage. It is a common enough story. Meanwhile, the Chinese are cashing in. At least that's the complaint from many Spanish business owners and customers who believe places like the bar near here called Como Encasa can't be just like at home. If it's run by people from the other side of the planet, no one knows how hard we work, says Selena Wang. She's the first Chinese person I was able to interview. After approaching 20 in eight different Chinese businesses, the others clammed up once they realized I wanted an interview for the most basic communication in the beauty salons, bars, restaurants and cheap clothes shops I visited, the staff invariably whipped out a smartphone and mimed for me to write into an app that would translate into Chinese. The inability to speak Spanish adds to the suspicion with which the Chinese are viewed here. But it also raises another how on earth do they start a business in a country burdened with bureaucracy in a language they don't understand? We pay a relative who has already done it to help us through the process, says Selena, whose family runs Bar Wang in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Poblano. But her mother says it's not true that Chinese people aren't also suffering in Spain's recession. The first thing, she tells me, is that it has forced many of her compatriots to go back home. The difference, she says, is that we have a united family structure, so we can manage just about. While Spanish people are more on their own, Spain was less of a choice destination, explained Selena. It had more to do with the fact that a neighbor from back home had already blazed the trail. 80% of us here in Barcelona, nearby Hospitalet and Barcelona, we, we all come from the same province of Zhejiang. We speak the same dialect. Selena's family moved here when she was 13. Now 26, her Spanish is fluent, but she still has to translate for her parents. The Chinese who come here prefer to open businesses that don't depend on speaking the language, she tells me. Those with bigger financial backing go for something more ambitious, like those Chinese shops which sell everything from hair dryers to suitcases, fake flowers to gold plastic cats that wave. But that brings its own problems. We don't go to banks, Salina confirms. The Chinese lend among themselves, but when you have people back in China investing and your business isn't working out, it's very bad. Last year, Chinese business people in Barcelona accused their neighbors and the regional government of racism when a Chinese businessman killed himself after the Wok restaurant he started racing ran into trouble. One Chinese businessman told the press at the time, they slap us with one new regulation after another and close us down while our paperwork is being looked at. Restaurant Wok had only been able to open for two months of its first year in business. Neighbors had complained about the smell of Chinese food wafting into the lifts and hallways of their building. So why does it seem as though the Chinese in Spain are doing well in the recession? While while many Spaniards are going under, certainly some Chinese business people are involved in huge projects here. They're being courted by regional governments for major developments. One Chinese investment group is spending 660 million euros transforming the port of Barcelona into the principal gateway for Chinese goods into Southern Europe. But for the majority of Chinese families, life is just as bad and as good as it is for other Spaniards living through the recession. Selena is currently unemployed, but like other Chinese who came here young, she feels at home because she went to school here. Her six month old baby is growing up in Spain. While money might be tight, not all Chinese families are chained to their businesses from dawn till dusk anymore. On Sundays you can see them out like the Spanish parents with their rollerblading kids. And everyone's rollerblades are of course made in China.
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And that's Pascal Harta in Barcelona. Now, if you could name two things that many Peruvians see as sacrosanct and immune from criticism, they might well be the Catholic Church and Peruvian cuisine. For most people in Peru are as enthusiastic about going to church to pray as they are about their food. But as Mattia Kubica has been finding out in the capital Lima, animal rights activists recently crossed an invisible line and protest outside both a local church and at a food festival. And it was all because of cats.
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God created cats, read Juan Placard. Murderers. Shouted a chorus of animal rights activists. Even a stray yellow dog seemed to be barking in support of cats. He was wagging his tail with great excitement. It was a Sunday evening in Miraflores, the suburb of Lima, where I live. A large group of mostly young protesters were yelling animal rights slogans at pious residents who were tiptoeing quietly into church to attend Mass. The demonstrators held up portraits of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. In front of them, a cordon of riot police stood guard, and behind churchgoers formed a line as if to protect their place of worship from the abuse. The protesters had spotted a stray cat on the roof of the church days earlier and claimed that the priest had denied them access to rescue the animal. What's more, they alleged that the man of God not only hated cats, but that he had been poisoning them because they sneaked into his church, something that he categorically denied. This demonstration summed up for me Peru's rather confused attitude to its feline population. For years, the Central park in Miraflores has been the home to dozens and dozens of stray cats. A few were first introduced in the 1990s to control a rat infestation, but they soon multiplied after people began to abandon their own unwanted pets. Today, the cats stretch out on the green grass and flower beds, sleepily posing for tourists taking pictures. They are fed and protected by caring volunteers, but they are not loved by everyone. Some residents think they spread diseases, and on warm days, the smell of urine can be overwhelming. For the local priest, they're more of a nuisance than a local tourist attraction. The Sunday demonstration was finally broken up by the police after some mild scuffles, and days later, the trapped cat was eventually rescued and given a proper home. But not all felines are so lucky. Every September, a statue of Santa Iphigenia is paraded to lively music and dancing on the streets of La Quebrada, a farming community south of Lima. As part of the celebrations, residents set up food stalls and tables for the gastronomic festival of the cat. It's a cat eating feast that commemorates a time when the early slave settlers survived only supposedly by eating cat meat. Dozens of the creatures are bred especially for the occasion and then cooked in an array of Peruvian recipes. Spicy cat stew, anyone? Or perhaps you'd prefer grilled cat with native wakatai herbs. Crowds of curious festival goers get a kick out of eating a meat that is said to taste very much like rabbit and forget about oysters and rhino horn. In Peru, it's cat meat that's believed to be an aphrodisiac. Most Peruvians, however, see cats only as pets and believe that cows, chickens and pigs are what should be served for dinner. So if a furry houseguest is what you're after, then head for Girona Yakucho in central Lima. Pet shops on this street not only sell cats, but also exotic birds, monkeys and reptiles of dubious origin. They all breathe through small holes in cardboard boxes or are crammed inside tiny rusty cages. Animal rights activists condemn the conditions in which these animals are kept, and they also wear fake horns and hold theatrical protest outside bullfighting rings. With so many pressing issues in Peru, such as poverty, inequality, crime and corruption, improving the rights of animals is not a priority for government officials. But animal rights activists point out that Peru's social problems should not blind people to the need to protect animals as other countries do. Here too, they fight against animal maltreatment, neglect, abuse and cruelty, even if it means standing up against much revered institutions like the Catholic Church or attempting to turn millions of meat loving Peruvians into vegetarians. And until that happens, I'll be expecting further protest outside my local church, Mattia
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Kibica, on the struggles facing the cat lovers of Peru. And bringing this edition to a close, I'll be here with more from Irene Correspond on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.