← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Courthouses and Codpieces
00:28:19
Kate Adie introduces correspondents' stories from around the world. This week, with to...
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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.
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Today, another trial in Egypt of journalists. This time, though, it's nest building in the ceiling that draws the attention. In Uruguay. Will legalising marijuana be the answer to the problem of hard drugs? We hear why India's wedding detectives are busier than ever. And in Italy, our correspondent feels the need to don some intimate armour. The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is coming to the end of his tenure in charge. He's become increasingly critical of the US led invasion of his country. He is refusing to sign a security agreement with Washington that would allow a residual US force to remain in the country. American and British combat troops are pulling out at the end of the year. Author and historian William Dalrymple gives his assessment now of where this latest intervention in Afghanistan fits into the country's troubled history.
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Last Ramadan, I drove through the badlands outside Kandahar to see see the house where President Karzai grew up. I was the guest of the President's brother, Mahmoud Karzai. It's changed beyond all recognition, he said as we drove into the village of Kaz. This mosque, I remember. I used to play with Hamid over there. But where's our house? The driver pulled up. This is it? Asked Mahmud. It can't be. We got out into a flat field of dried mud surrounded by mud brick houses. Mahmoud's bodyguards fanned out while he climbed onto a small eminence. The driver's right, he said. This is our home. He gestured at the empty space. What happened? I asked the Russians. He replied, why any clan prominent in the Mujahideen had their property demolished. These houses were where my cousins lived. The night the Soviet governor demolished our house, they were all lined up. Then they were shot. Every last one of them. It's now the 25th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it's perhaps a good moment to compare the Soviet and American interventions. On the surface, the two invasions are quite different. The Soviets came to extend the Soviet empire, while the west, we are told, intervened after 911 to root out terrorism and bring democracy. Yet there are many uncomfortable similarities. Both the Russians and the Americans thought they could walk in, set up a friendly government and be out within a year. Both nations got bogged down in a long and costly war of attrition that in the end, both chose to walk away from the Soviet war was more bloody. It left 1.5 million dead, compared to the estimated 100,000 casualties this time around. But this current war has been far more expensive. The Soviets spent only 2 billion billion a year in Afghanistan, while the US has already spent more than $700 billion. Moreover, this time, arguably less has been gained. 25 years ago, the Soviets withdrew, leaving a relatively stable pro Soviet regime in place. Najibullah's government collapsed only when the Soviets cut off supplies of weapons. A full four years later, but 13 years after the west went into Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and oust the Taliban, America and its allies find themselves about to withdraw with neither objective wholly achieved. What remains of Al Qaeda has moved to the Pakistani borderlands and elsewhere, while the Taliban now control maybe 70% of southern Afghanistan. That share can only increase later this year when the British and the Americans withdraw most of their troops. There is another precedent to this war. For the last five years, I've been writing a history of the First Anglo Afghan War, which took place between 1839 and 42. The book tells the tale of arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West. In the east, an entire army of what was then the most powerful nation in the world was utterly destroyed by poorly equipped tribesmen on the retreat from Kabul. Of the 18,500 who left the British Cantonment on on 6 January 1842, only one British citizen, the assistant surgeon Dr. Brydon, made it through to Jellalabad six days later. The parallels between the current war and that of the 1840s are striking. The same cities have been garrisoned by foreign troops speaking the same languages, and they are attacked from the same hills and passes. Not only was our then puppet Shashuja from the same Populzai sub tribe as President Karzai, but his principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the Taliban's foot soldiers. It's clearly not true, as is sometimes said, that it's impossible to conquer Afghanistan. Many empires have done so, from the ancient Persians through Alexander the Great to the Mongols, the Mughals and the Qajars. But the economics mean that it's impossible to get Afghanistan to pay for its own occupation. It is, as the then emir said when he surrendered to The British in 1839, a land of only stones and men. Any occupying army here will haemorrhage money and blood to little gain. And in the end, most throw in the towel, as the British did in 1842. As the Russians did in 1988, and as NATO will do later this year, in October 1963, when Harold Macmillan was handing over his Prime Ministership to Alec Douglas Hume, he's supposed to have passed on some advice. My dear boy, he said, as long as you don't invade Afghanistan, you'll be absolutely fine. Sadly, no one gave the same advice to Tony Blair. It just seems to prove Hegel's old adage that the only thing you learn from history is that, sadly, no one ever learns anything from history.
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William Dalrymple. Egypt's deposed president Mohammed Morsi this week had his third trial adjourned after his lawyers requested new judges. He's facing charges of inciting the killing of opposition protesters. The Egyptian military does have widespread support in the country. Since taking over power last summer, the military authorities have arrested dozens of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and accused them of terrorism. The same goes for anyone deemed to be supporting the Brotherhood, including a group of journalists who work for Al Jazeera. Quentin Somerville was in court to watch that trial.
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Journalists are not terrorists, came the cry from the cage in the corner of the courtroom. It's not clear who shouted it. Inside were three Al Jazeera English journalists and three others, all being held on terrorism charges. It was the second hearing for the channel's foreign correspondent, Peter Gresta, its Cairo bureau chief, Mohammad Fahmy, and freelance producer Baher Mohammed. They are accused of spreading false news and and of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, which in effect governed Egypt for a year, was removed by the military following mass protests last summer, its leaders arrested. It's now classed by the new government as a terror group. Proceedings got off to a very slow start. First came what the prosecution described as the evidence against the journalists. The judge, Mohammed Nagi, removed his sunglasses. He then took possession of each piece, describing haphazardly what had been handed to him. One brown envelope, medium sized, he said. Inside were 96 photographs of what, though we never learned. Boxes of cameras, computers and lighting equipment were also listed aloud. When he struggled with the packaging, two or three assistants would help, one producing a cigarette lighter to burn through the string. A pair of birds inside the courtroom and appear to be trying to build a nest in a spot above the judge's bench. Occasionally a twig would fall from their beaks, narrowly missing the three stern, mustachioed justices. The caged journalists and those on the press benches looked on incredulously. The equipment being listed was the everyday gear essential to news gathering. It's the kit we lug from airport to hotel room. Around the globe. When the judge entered a bag of cables into the record, the Peter Gresta laughed. Peter is often described as a veteran correspondent, but that doesn't tell you much. He used to work for the BBC. He's really hit his stride in the past few years, producing his best work and winning awards. A cameraman I know who's had his own share of scrapes, says Peter is one of the most resilient people he's ever worked with. At times of both professional and personal strain, he holds it together. He's worked in some of the world's most dangerous places. When I lived in the BBC house in Kabul, his picture was on the wall, reserved for past correspondence. In it, he's sitting beside a bearded mujahideen who stares sternly and points an aged pistol at the lens. There's the trace of a smirk on Peter's face. It was behind this photograph that we hid the key to our illicit booze cabinet. Even though I've only met him twice, I'm fond of Peter Gresta. Back in the courtroom, Ahmed Hussain, the lead police investigator, took the stand. What evidence, he was asked by the defence, was there that these three journalists had falsified the reports? Secret sources, replied the policeman. He said that the men worked for a banned news channel, Al Jazeera's Mubashar Musra. It was blatantly pro Muslim Brotherhood. Except they don't. They are employed by Al Jazeera English, whose reporting is generally rare, regarded as credible and impartial. When the policeman admitted that he didn't know the difference between the two channels, the three caged journalists, who'd only earlier had their handcuffs removed, celebrated by giving each other high fives. A moment of relief. The implausibility of the charges against these men was exposed. Mr. Hussein plowed on, though anyone who broadcast news that helped, as he put it, the Muslim Brotherhood was a member of the terrorist group, he said with that logic, most journalists who've covered Egypt should be locked up, too. As the day's proceedings came to an end, I snuck over to as close to the cage as possible and spoke briefly to Peter. We are political prisoners, he said. He's right. The men are caught in a battle between Al Jazeera's owners, the state of Qatar, and the Egyptian government. Qatar is an ally of the Brotherhood. There's a vendetta between the new Egyptian government and the previous one. The former president, Mohamed Morsi, is only seen these days, also in a cage, in a courtroom, the overthrow of one government and the Establishment of the other was bloody and it was painful. Hundreds of Egyptians were killed on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere. Hundreds more were arrested. I was there doing my job as a reporter, and so too was Peter. He and his colleagues have been jailed for 69 days. Now it's time this bad joke came to an end. It seems ridiculous that I have to say these words, but here goes. Peter Gresta is not a terrorist.
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Quentin Somerville, the United Nations Drugs Agency. The International Narcotics Control Board has given Uruguay a serious telling off. The UN has warned that the Latin American country's decision to legalize the sale of marijuana hasn't just violated the International Convention on Narcotics, it also poses a serious threat to public health. Squeezed between Argentina and Brazil, Uruguay isn't used to much international attention. Linda Presley has just visited the capital, Montevideo, for the first time to look at the potential impact of the country's radical drugs policy. While there, she just couldn't get some of those old tunes out of her head.
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Montevideo is a seductive city with its fabulous beachside location and easy going atmosphere. It's such a contrast to other Latin American cities I've seen spent time in. And almost from the get go, I find it deeply nostalgic. At the airport, we disembark from the plane to the strains of Every Breath youh Take, the familiar bass line of that 1980s police song accompanying us onto the tarmac. On the road to the hotel, I spot old VW Beetles. There's a Mini Traveller, even a Ford Cortina. Downtown, crumbling Art deco and neoclassical buildings jostle with tired looking tower blocks. In Ciudad Bieja, the old Town, the pedestrianised streets are full of ambling tourists and locals busy at the small shops. And then I noticed something. A body collapsed and sleeping in a doorway. An old airline bag serving as a pillow. Small knots of young men sitting on the curb, not really talking to each other. Their scruffy clothes large on skinny bodies. A teenager slowly picking through rubbish. Drug addicts. I'm thousands of miles from Europe, but these wretched figures transport me back to the Spain of the 1980s. Until I went to live in Madrid, I'd never seen anyone shooting up heroin. The first time I encountered a man in the street with a tourniquet pulled tight and a needle in his arm, I was deeply shocked and upset. Then, as the weeks went by, I got used to stepping over syringes and the junkies sitting quietly in the streets or striding purposefully in the direction of their next fix became a familiar part of the landscape. And that says Christina Chevalier with a heavy sigh, is exactly what's happened with addicts in Montevideo. They're just normal now, part of the scenery. Except in Uruguay, they're not hooked on heroin. They're addicted to coca paste, or pasta basse, as it's known locally, a cheap, highly addictive cocaine derivative that arrived in Uruguay during the economic crisis of 2002 and never went away. Cristina works with an NGO, Madres de la Plaza, set up to challenge the widespread availability of pasta basse. Peeping out from under a red fringe, her glasses on her head, she says there can be 10 BOCAs, literally mouths the Uruguayan term for places that sell drugs in just one city block. She shows me the organisation's website, where they collect anonymous complaints of drug dealing. They log over 200 reports a month. Studies suggest that pasta basa users make up less than 1% of the population, but Cristina scoffs at that. There's an epidemic out there, she says, believe me. The latest email to come in describes the activities of someone referred to as Witchy, a woman who apparently sits outside all day in the local plaza with her children and friends and keeps her stash of drugs hidden, hidden close by in trees and under stones. We joke about the name Witchie, but the head of the anti narcotics police, Manuel Sosa, a burly man with an easy laugh, says this is still the modus operandi of drug selling in small family businesses, not the terrifying bloody cartels that now dominate Latin American countries. Further north, in a taxi along the Rambla, the road that hugs Montevideo's sweep of coastline, I'm deafened by a distorted Michael Jackson singing Billie Jean on a cassette player. Yes, really, a cassette player. It's not that Uruguay is behind the times or conservative. Same sex marriage and abortion have both made it onto the statute book and now it's really broken the mould by legalising marijuana. Part of the thinking behind the decision to state regulate the production and sale of marijuana is to separate this, the largest narcotics market in Uruguay, from more problematic drug use. Like Pasta Bassett. Juan Vance, an IT wiz who spent a year in prison for growing marijuana, thinks it will work. His office isn't the kind of place I expect to find a self styled cannabis activist, all chrome and glass and leatherette sofas. It's the most 21st century location I visit in Montevideo. He bats off my questions about whether allowing people to buy and to grow cannabis will actually lead to greater drug use. Legalisation is the way the world is heading, he argues, and Uruguay is in the vanguard in years to Come, we'll hear this interview and we'll laugh about it. It will be prehistoric, he says. Prehistoric. Mmm, I think on the way back to the airport as I sway along to Freddie Mercury belting out We Are the Champions. Almost like Montevideo's taxi driver's taste in
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music, Linda Presley still humming her favourite 80s tunes. A wedding is supposed to be a happy time when a couple promise themselves to each other, a time of commitment and trust. So how would you feel if you discovered that your intended one and their family had spied on you and checked you out beforehand, just to make sure? You see, Ed Butler has been spending time in India with the marriage detectives.
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It had taken a couple of days to fix up, but when he finally welcomed me into his house and Amitabh Sihag couldn't have been nicer, tea and snacks were provided delivered by shy looking children as he settled me down on the living room sofa to explain how he'd come to hire a private detective to spy on his would be brother in law. We'd found the groom through a distant family acquaintance, he said. We didn't know anything about the boy for sure, his income, his personal habits, even his real age, so it was our duty to make sure that he was telling the truth. The detective did an excellent job. He was very discreet. It all turned out well. Amitabh says that he has no shame about having resorted to what some might consider underhand measures. Unlike a love marriage, a match arranged through distant mutual acquaintances or via a classified ad or matrimonial website, he says, requires a degree of sensible precaution. After all, we're not buying a cooking implement, you know. All the same, he does admit he still hasn't quite had the courage to tell the man, now his brother in law, that he'd rifled through his payslips. For the thousands of Indians who are now apparently resorting to such investigations, age and income are often only the half of it. Ajit Singh, a smartly dressed and urbane detective of some 20 years experience, runs the Hatfield Detective Agency. He sits me down in his surprisingly cramped Delhi office to describe a long list of concerns that clients often have. There's the question of home ownership or the car. Does the young man or woman drink? Do they smoke? Sometimes, he says he's asked to research whether the future mother in law will be bearable to live with. And how on earth can you investigate that? I ask. Ajit strokes his immaculately groomed gumshoe moustache and tells me solemnly. We ask the servants if the Mother is nice to them and the neighbors, and she goes to temple regularly. That means she is definitely good. Mostly checks like these just take a few days, and usually they are never discovered by the suspect themselves. Satisfaction always guaranteed, Ajit insists. But some other detectives I discover do go a bit further. Atin Dasgupta is a former television producer who now runs his own detection business, Alliance One in in Mumbai. And he seems to specialize in some more offbeat inquiries. Honey traps, for example, where the client requests that a good looking and flirtatious model be placed in front of the future bride or groom just to see if they can be tempted. It's a terrible way to start a marriage, Atteen tells me candidly. See, if you put a gorgeous girl in front of a young guy, of course he's likely to want to have a one night stand even if he's getting married. So 90% of the time he falls for the trap and the wedding gets called off. But money talks. If the client is willing to pay, that's what we'll do. Attin gets other far fetched requests as well, he says. Is the guy healthy? Will he be fertile? Anything can be set up, apparently. Atten says that his work often reminds him of his old days in reality tv. Sometimes he has to organise a fake free health check, calling at the young man's office to extract a blood or a semen sample. It's all part of the arranged marriage business. Clients will go to great lengths to ensure that they're getting the groom they want, he says. Back at the Hatfield Detective Agency, Ajit Singh frowns at such practices. But he sees his job more as a kind of pre marriage guidance counselling. He's offering reassurance, he says, and instilling trust in families as they prepare for the solemn union. Trust. But I ask, doesn't it show a lack of trust to be delving into a future family member's background in the first place? Ah, not a lack of trust, he says. It is a need of today anyway. Better to unearth problems before than after a marriage when it's too late. Once it was the village barber who would make pre marriage inquiries. Now it's us, he explains. And Hindus depend heavily on the horoscope already. So we're just extending that, you know. He leans towards me. Even the gods Lord Ram and Sita were compatible according to the horoscope. And yet they ended up separating. So you mean Lord Ram didn't have the Hatfield Detective Agency? I ask. Ah, very true. Ajit nods. Very true. This time he does afford me a smile.
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Ed Butler. Now, to be a successful correspondent, you need to have certain skills. The ability to discern fact from fiction, to get to the nub of a story and to tell that story well. That's not all, though. You have to pack properly. Waders for floods, flak jackets and helmets for the trouble spots. Or make sure you're suited and booted for the more formal occasions. There's one adornment I bet you wouldn't think you'd need. Well, Stephen Smith should explain, in the
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world of fashion, no classic piece ever quite disappears. And I'm looking forward to the imminent return of the plus four and the spat. But I might be in for a long wait to see a new lease of life for another old favourite, the codpiece. This honest pouch or flap, richly embroidered and plushly upholstered, doesn't really fit the lifestyle choices of today's man with his skinny jeans and his clinging gym togs in unforgiving Lycra. The decline of the box or cup would confound and dismay the towering figures of 16th century Italy who helped to build our modern world. If the Renaissance was about anything, it was about a fellow having the confidence to stand up and sport a pair of well filled hoes. Yes, there was some magnificent art too, of which more later. But this was also the moment of man's first inklings about science, when the tailor's shears of reason met the smothering bolts of superstition and blind faith. What better way to greet this glorious but uncertain dawn than by wearing the piece of cod which passeth all understanding. And if you didn't like that, moneybox will be along shortly with a natural, unenhanced Paul Lewis. For myself, I only know that everything they tell you is true. You never forget the first time you wear a codpiece. I was in the Palazzo Vecchio in the heart of old Florence, the former court of Cosimo de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, banker and absolute ruler, patron of the arts. He commissioned the sculptor Cellini and the painter Bronzino. He tried to woo Michelangelo himself from Rome back to his native Florence. The great man refused in life, but after he was dead, Cosimo sent body snatchers to finish the job. When Cosimo was In power, from 1537, fashion was governed by strict sumptuary laws which rationed expensive fabrics and dyes and enforced on society a strict pecking order, if you'll overlook the expression. There was greater mobility between city and countryside, and this was reflected in Breezier, tailoring out went cumbersome long tunics. In came shorter doublets, or so fashion historian Roberta Orsi Landini told me. Roberta was helping me to throw together an understated Florentine ensemble, a white chemise with proud ruff tights, a jerkin in the blues and greys of office life. This was the corporate lounge suit of its day. Men's clothes also followed military uniforms, said Roberta. They wore intimate armour. Wordlessly, she withdrew from my side and I understood that I must complete my robing alone, securing the piece de resistance with a last few ticklish threadings of laces through eye holes. After it was done, Roberta said, it gives the impression of a man of strength, a winner. So it was a shape that suggested virility? I asked, back in the Renaissance, was the codpiece anatomically correct? Of course not. It was a fake, she said. They wanted to appear bigger than they were, of course, but it wasn't made for women, but to show to other men. Ah, the folly of my brothers down the ages. I asked Roberta, as a lady, do you regret the passing of the codpiece? She laughed. Oh, no, no, of course not. But don't you think there's a certain comedy to it, perhaps? I don't think so, she said. I think normal pockets are better. Yes, pockets. This garment was practical in its way, a forerunner of the bum bag. For better or worse, it was a place to keep your keys or perhaps a handful of florinos. That's loose change to you and me. Grand Duke Cosimo was seen in one at all civic functions, as were his guard of German mercenaries, the Lanzi Cinecci. As the sun beat down on the Piazza della Signora in Florence outside the Uffizi, the bodyguards would vie with one another to see who could cast the most shark like shadow. Until one day when a sentry upset the womenfolk with what a chronicler of the time called a very long and lewd codpiece of a barbarous and very impolite shape. In what's thought to be one of the earliest documented friskings, it emerged that what was behind this outrageous fashion statement was nothing more than a rolled up hanky. Somehow it seems fitting to me to end a dispatch on the codpiece with an anti climax. I guess I'm just a cup half full kind of guy.
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Stephen Smith. And he'll be explaining how to get ahead at court on BBC4 next Wednesday evening. Do join me again on Thursday and Saturday of next week for more from our own correspondence. Whatever they may be wearing.