← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:27:51
Aleem Maqbool reports on Karachi, where inter-ethnic violence between Urdu speakers in...
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Presenter
This is from our own correspondent. We make an edition for the BBC World Service as well. But this is a download of the latest Radio 4 programme and here to
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Kate Adie
introduce it as ever, Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Reporter
Today, the young victims caught up in the violence in Karachi. Sonia Gandhi is in the US for medical treatment. How did she become India's most powerful woman despite not holding a position in government? We hear how a four legged dictator strains for the finishing line in the Sudan derby. And in spite of the country's economic triumph troubles, the Portuguese are busy celebrating. Karachi is one of the largest cities in the world. It was the capital of Pakistan after independence until Islamabad was built. Now it's the country's main seaport and financial hub. But in the last few months it's also been beset by escalating violence between the Urdu speaking majority and the growing minority of Pashtuns. Ali Mukt Boole says it's become a city in which people are terrified in their homes listening to gunfire and news of abductions and killings. And few of the 18 million inhabitants understand what's triggered this bloodshed.
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Kate Adie
Earlier this summer in the densely packed Casper colony in the west of Karachi, the violence came suddenly and it has persisted. We're here to see two families who live just a few hundred metres apart from but they're now on opposite sides of a brutal urban conflict. The family of one girl, Yumna, who's 13, lives at the bottom of the steep hill that dominates Kasbah. The family of another six year old, Leibe, lives at the very top. You can clearly see one home from the other, but really, these two families now live in different worlds. No longer can you walk directly from one house to the other. The deserted main road that runs between them has become a front line. Scores of bullet holes all over the buildings close by are a warning not to cross what is a very tangible ethnic divide. Jumna's family, like most of those living in the sprawling expanse at the bottom of the hill, is Urdu speaking, a term given to those Muslims who chose to come over to Pakistan from India at partition over 60 years ago. Yumna's own great grandparents migrated from Calcutta. For decades the Urdu speaking community has been the majority in Karachi and the most powerful politically. Little Layba's family, though like almost all of those who live at the top of the hill, are ethnic Pashtuns originally from northwest Pakistan. Twenty years ago her grandparents moved here from the Swat Valley to seek economic opportunities. Like so many others over the decades more recently, Pashtuns have been coming here in huge numbers to escape the fighting between Pakistani forces and the Taliban. Some estimates now put the Pashtun population in Karachi at 5 or 6 million, a demographic and ultimately political rival to the Urdu speakers. When latent ethnic tensions between these two groups erupted just weeks ago, the entire city was plunged into turmoil. Shopkeepers were shot dead, rickshaw drivers abducted, bus passengers sprayed with bullets purely because of their ethnicity. Casper Colony became just one of many battlegrounds. Speaking softly and with fear still clearly in her eyes, Yumna describes how she and her family were trapped in their home for days during one particularly heavy spell of fighting. She tells of hearing bullets graze the walls and hit the water tank as Pashtun gunmen on the hill traded fire with Urdu speakers in her part of Kaspa. Yumna says it finally got so bad she tried to take her younger brother and sister and make a dash to her uncle's house in a safer area. She describes how they crouched behind the walls of the house, waiting for a lull in the gunfire. Then how her brother and sister ran across the alleyway to hide behind the buildings on the other side. Yumna tried to do the same, but as she ran, she fell to the ground. She'd been shot in the legs by a Pashtun sniper. She recalls how neighbours tried to help, but they too came under gunfire, and how she was eventually carried through the back streets to the hospital. She's now back home, laying on her bed, her legs heavily strapped. But it was just as bad for the Pashtuns. At the top of the hill, Laiba's best friend tells us how because of all the shooting, they'd also been confined to their homes. She says the girls missed playing their favorite game in the street, Chindro, a bit like hopscotch. They made do with playing with their dolls inside but were scared by the noise. During a quiet time, six year old Laiba did go outside for a while. She was climbing the stairs to go back into her house when she was shot twice by a gunman from the Urdu speaking area below. One bullet all but tore off her tiny arm. The other pierced her chest. Leiber's father can barely bring himself to tell us how he rushed outside to find his only child covered in blood. How he ran down the hill in tears with her body in his arms. And how Leiber took her last breath in the rickshaw as they tried to get to hospital. Neither Leiber's father nor Yumna's says they understand why the fighting started now, but both the Pashtuns on the hill and the Urdu speakers below now talk about their rival community using almost exactly the same demonizing terms, claiming the other is more barbaric, more heavily armed, more immoral. They're talking about their former neighbors, often their old friends. But ultimately there's one thing they agree on. This has all been instigated by politicians who claim to represent them, they say. Yet it is they and their children who are paying the price.
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Narrator/Reporter
Alim macbool it was just a brief statement last week from India's Congress Party which announced that Sonia Gandhi had gone to the United States for some unspecified medical treatment. Italian born Mrs. Gandhi holds no position in government, though she's president of the Congress Party, which leads the governing coalition. She's also head of the Nehru Gandhi dynasty. Mark Tully says her hospital operation has highlighted the extraordinary power she enjoys in India and has brought to the fore the question of her successor.
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Mark Tully
Hardened members of Parliament in Delhi wept when after leading the Congress Party to a surprise victory in the 2004 general election, Sonia Gandhi announced that she would not become prime minister. Those tearful MPs needn't have worried. Sonia wasn't about to go away to leave them leaderless. And now every member of the ruling party from the top down is worried about whether Sonia will recover to continue leading them and if not, how she'll manage the succession. When Sonia gave up the chance to become prime minister, she made it clear that she would still be the Boss by choosing Dr. Manmohan Singh to do the job. He's renowned for his honesty and his knowledge of economics, but has spent most of his life as a bureaucrat. And politically, he's entirely dependent on Sonia. Sonia remained president of the Congress Party. It's a position without any constitutional authority, but she has ensured it makes her more powerful than the prime minister. Sonia Gandhi's power derives from being the head of the Nehru Gandhi dynasty, which has dominated Indian politics since the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister after India gained its independence. Italian by birth, she became a member of the family by marrying the imperious Indira Gandhi's eldest son, Rajiv. Sonia never showed any interest in politics, didn't want her husband to go into the family business and so long as he was prime minister, remained in the background. For six years after Rajiv's assassination, there was no member of the dynasty in the government or the party, but Sonia refused to fill the vacuum. It wasn't until 1997, after the Congress had lost a general election and was falling Apart that Sonia stepped in to hold the party together. The Congress Party has unshakable faith in the Nerugandi dynasty. But Sonia also owes her immunity from criticism to doing the opposite of what a politician usually does. She avoids the limelight and shuns publicity by refusing to become the Prime Minister. She's left Manmohan Singh to face all the flak that office attracts. She very rarely gives interviews. She says very little in Parliament and she doesn't intervene publicly when the government faces crises. But Sonia does appeal to the public over the heads of Parliament and the press by addressing rallies. At her rallies, Sonia always puts across the message she learned from her mother in law. The message which says I'm on the side of the poor. In order to demonstrate whose side she was on, Indra passed a number of radical socialist measures with unfortunate consequences for the economy. Sonia has demonstrated her option for the poor by forcing Dr. Manmohan Singh to establish schemes to guarantee work for unemployed villagers and subsidized food for a sizable proportion of the population. But he's a cautious economist and someone who has worked closely with him told me one of his favourite maxims is money does not grow on trees. Yet he still has to find the funds for the Pro Paul schemes because Sonia has told him to. Typically, there was no government announcement about Sonia's departure for America. The Congress Party issued a bold statement. Bereft of any information about her illness or or the hospital where she was being treated. This was justified on the grounds that her health was a personal matter and the people of India were asked to respect her family's request for privacy. But India's two leading business papers did not agree to that request. One of them, the Economic Times, said the secrecy was reminiscent of the days of the Iron Curtain when stoddering old leaders of ruling communist parties ailed, were hospitalized and died and their countrymen were kept in the dark. Once again, Sonia Gandhi has shown that unlike most politicians in democracies, she does not feel obliged to explain herself. What's more, she's demonstrated that she alone will nominate her successor and when the time comes, he'll be her 41 year old son Rahul. The Congress Party has issued a statement saying that while Sonia is in America its affairs will be run by a quartet consisting of Rahul and three others whose only obvious qualities are their utter loyalty to his mother. But there is one question which remains to be answered. When the time for Rahul to succeed comes, will Sonia hand the party to him so that he can continue to exercise his authority in the way she has done, or will she feel that he should become prime minister, in which case he will have to explain himself and take responsibility for his decisions.
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Narrator/Reporter
Mark Talley it's now been five months since NATO began bombing in Libya, but Colonel Gaddafi has still not been dislodged. More and more questions are being asked about NATO tactics and the West's support for Qaddafi's opponents, who are mainly based in the eastern city of Benghazi. Their military leader was killed two weeks ago under murky circumstances, and politically they're in disarray. Further west lies the port of Misrata, where Olagarin says life is still hazardous.
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Olagarin
Over a cup of mint tea, Mahmoud El Galay was sharing his worries about his young daughters. This successful engineer and former roller skater also works with us as a translator. My girls want to go outside, he said. They keep asking me why not. I say it's not safe because of the rockets. It makes me feel very bad. The words were barely out of his mouth when we heard the first explosion. It was followed almost immediately by two more, the sickening sound of rockets landing downtown, about a mile and a half from from our hotel. Colonel Gaddafi's forces still menace Misrata from a distance. This was the first time their long range weapons had reached so far into the city center. It was close to midnight, a busy time during the holy month of Ramadan. Many here come out to work, shop and socialize at night. After breaking their fast, we rushed to the local hospital to check for casualties. No one was killed this time. I recognized the doctor tending to one of the injured. Hakim Zagut, a compassionate and dedicated young surgeon, was leaning over a man with a ball bearing embedded in his cheek. I last saw Dr. Sigut in April, when Misrata was being shelled almost daily. Four months on, he looked drained, like he had hardly rested since. We've been saying for months that things will get better, he told me. We tell the nurses this when they get scared after an attack. Tomorrow will be better. We've been saying it for so long, but it seems we have been lying. But Dr. Zagat had reason to be thankful that night. He too, has young daughters who had been pleading to be brought out in the cool night air. I had to say no, he said, because I had an appointment with a patient. Had he said yes, they would have been in a playground in the city center when the rockets came slamming down. As we filmed, Mahmoud stood by in silence. We collected my brother's body from this hospital, he said finally. When we got Outside we had to run with the body because there were snipers all around. His brother Noureddin, a lawyer, died in the fight to free Misrata. The city has been liberated up to a point. The regime's men have been driven out, but they're just over half an hour's drive away. Misrata is still cut off, accessible only by sea. Local medical officials say around a thousand have been killed and 8,000 injured. There are amputees and then there are the missing, another 900 or so. One family has more than 10 missing members. A 13 year old boy is waiting for them here, wondering if they will ever come home. Across the city, 16 year old Ali Abdullah mourns for his brother in law, Yusuf, a doctor. He died with two of his neighbors. Ali showed me the bench where they were sitting when a rocket landed on their street. He was always giving me advice, telling me to study hard and he would take me with him when he went to the market. He last saw the doctor a week before he died. He came to my house, he said, to return money I lent him when we were shopping. It was just a small amount. I said, we're family, I don't want the money back. But he said, I must repay you. Because nobody knows the moment when they will die. People here insist that sooner or later Colonel Gaddafi will be beaten. Game over, proclaims graffiti on the walls. But some wonder if the international community will stay the course. They worry that NATO won't keep up its bombing campaign indefinitely. And then there are the problems. Many in Misrata don't like to talk about disorganization and disunity in the anti Gaddafi camp, tribal divides and chaos in the rebel capital, Benghazi. Two weeks after the rebel's own chief of staff was killed close to Benghazi, the circumstances have still not been fully explained. Rebel commanders here know the west is watching. They are trying to get their house in order. Before they were united, but not organized, says a foreign doctor working here. Now they're getting organized, but into different groups.
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Narrator/Reporter
Olagarin Last month, Sudan was officially split in two as the south seceded from the north. It's a difficult time for all Sudanese. There are still ongoing conflicts and national pride in the north has taken a battering. So finding something to cheer about has become more important than ever. And that certainly seemed to be the case at the country's biggest horse race, the Sudanese Derby, which James Copnel went to see.
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James Copnall
How do you overcome a dictator? I certainly hadn't expected that question at the Sudanese Derby or the Derby Sudani as it has been translated, or rather transliterated into Arabic. Certainly most of the Sudanese opposition and the rebels who've just won independence for South Sudan call President Omar Al Bashir a dictator and sometimes worse. Others agree the International Criminal Court wants to try him for genocide allegedly committed in Darfur. But such views would probably not gain much purchase among the moneyed families taking their places in the main stand at the Khartoum racecourse, under a canopy of black, white, red and green Sudanese flags. A dictator got an impassioned round of applause at this year's Derby, or rather, the horse called Dictator did. President Bashir's own horse, Hababil, apparently named after a fighter plane, was listed as a contender in the Shiny programme, but didn't run. In the end, Diktator was clearly one of the favourites. Like most of Sudan's prize horses, he comes from Darfur in the west, where horsemanship is anything but a dying art. Horses are kept in the courtyards of houses, and in some parts of society, a man is not considered a man unless he owns at least one. Some racehorses from Darfur can fetch as much as 30,000 Sudanese pounds, around 6,000 British pounds. Other, less favoured nags walk the 800 or so miles from Darfur to Khartoum, accompanying herds of cattle. But what makes Diktator unique is that he has only one eye. This, and a string of wins in earlier races made him a popular choice to win the Derby. Officially, nobody was betting on it, though gambling at the races used to be big business, particularly under the late President Jafar Numeri, a keen race goer in the 1970s. Even before that, distinguished visitors, including Queen Elizabeth, were taken to the races as a matter of course. There's no record of whether the Queen had a little flutter. In any case, in 1983, President Numeri introduced Sharia, or Islamic law, and gambling was outlawed. But if you know the right people, I was told, you can still put some money on the horse of your choice. It all happens under the table, one owner told me, and the stake can be up to a hundred dollars. But if someone wants to bet against one of my horses, I will put down whatever amount he wants. In theory, the crowd was here just for the sport. This year in particular, that came accompanied by a healthy dose of nationalism. A small Sudan flag was draped over each seat and a larger one was placed on the back of a horse, which was paraded in front of the grandstand. A famous singer, Mahmoud Abdulaziz, entertained the crowd between races. The dignitaries in the VIP enclosure walked down to dance with him in the Sudanese style, clicking the fingers of their right hands in the air with their upper bodies swaying only slightly, the speaker's system crackled out praise for the nation. This public patriotism was not entirely spontaneous. A few weeks ago, South Sudan declared its independence following a referendum in which 99% of the Southerners who voted chose separation. One of the Derby days. Early races hammered that humbling point home to the spectators. The rallying cry of the north had been waheda, which means unity. But the horse, optimistically named Wahda, failed as miserably as the unity campaign before the referendum. Trailing in last in its race, the South Secession has deprived Sudan of 75% of the oil its economy depends on, so there will be tough times ahead. The impact is psychological, too. Like a husband whose wife has filed for divorce and won it, the Sudanese here have a dented ego. Ahmed Omar Abdelati is the man who organized the celebrations at the race track. We have a big problem in Sudan. We are not as loyal as other people, he says. We don't know how to express our feelings. Even when a man gets married, he never says anything nice to his wife. And because of the separation, the people are down and we need to know it's not the end of the world. Finally, Diktator and his competitors were ready for the Derby. Some of the horses had their hair braided into little plaits. Others flexed their haunches under the fierce sun as they walked round the parade ground. The race itself was a hotly contested and passionate business. The announcer struggled to identify the contenders as they rounded the far bend, not helped by the dust they kicked up. The roar of the crowd grew as the jockeys, most of them from Darfur and some of them getting on in years, pushed their rides into the final straight. At stake was glory, Pride and a new car. Dictator came second.
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Narrator/Reporter
James Kopnell the world's financial markets don't seem to know what to do about the Eurozone crisis. Throughout the week, there have been wild fluctuations in share values. And the news that various European governments have banned temporarily the controversial practice of short selling, where traders can profit by gambling that share prices will fall, was not wholly welcomed. Portugal is one of those countries which has received a bailout loan from the EU and the imf. But despite its economic woes, Jake Wallace Simons says the Portuguese didn't let that get in the way of a celebration.
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Presenter
A festival of bounty might not be what you would expect from Portugal at the moment, but the Festa dos Tablaires or festival of Trays, one of Portugal's oldest and most colourful traditions is exactly that. It's been held every four years since pre Christian times, and the authorities decided it would not be cancelled for something as temporal as a national economic crisis, which, let's face it, tends to happen once or twice each century. Indeed, this year, in the face of financial ruin, the festival was celebrated with extra vigour. It all happened in the ancient town of Tumar, which can be found nestling in a fertile valley in the centre of Portugal. The locals had been preparing their town for months. Every street and alleyway had been decorated with millions of paper carnations handmade by pensioners in a riotous variety of colours. They'd been slung in sagging canopies overhead, wound in spirals around lamp posts and hung in densely packed tapestries against walls and doors. The town smelled extraordinary too. Fragrant eucalyptus leaves had been scattered over the cobbles. By lunchtime it was heaving. I shoved my way into the municipal gardens where 2,000 people, all dressed in red and white, were getting ready for the highlight of the day, the procession. Long lines of women were preparing to march through the streets with decorated trays of bread on their heads, each equal in height to its bearer. The trays weighed up to 40 pounds each and were to be carried for up to four hours in the sweltering heat. The men folk were preparing too. Their job was to walk beside the women, offering words of encouragement. Portuguese people are very resilient and resourceful, said Nuno Garcia Lorpu, a rather skeletal 40 something civil servant I met in the crowd. We are completely different to the Greeks. We'll solve our economic problems ourselves. His father, he told me, lost his job some years ago when the EU opened Portugal to competition from abroad and all tumours, factories went out of business. But we survived it, he said, and we'll survive again. In Portugal, we're always surviving. The gates were opened, fireworks banged, and to a great roar from the crowd, the procession began. It was a spectacular sight. Hundreds upon hundreds of women, all, all straining under the weight of loaves of bread, walking in single file into the town as a demonstration of fertility and bounty, and indeed of defiance. It could not have been more vivid. I fell into conversation with a 31 year old volunteer by the name of Sergio Bento, a likely lad sporting a wet look haircut. People are poorer now than at the last festival, he told me. I have four jobs as a roadie, a barman, an administrator and a bouncer at a strip club. The price of living has gone up massively. We're working like crazy dogs. When we talked about the procession, however, his mood brightened. This festival shows we are confident, he said. Together we have transformed our town. In time, we can transform our economy. The procession ended in the main square, the Prasa dei Repubblica, outside the Church of St. John the Baptist. The women assembled in a vast phalanx and downed their trays for an open air mass. Looking on was the new prime minister of Portugal, Pedro Pazos Coelho, standing quaffed and sphinx like amidst a mass of dignitaries. He enjoys widespread support in Tumar, a traditionally conservative town, particularly given his message that Portugal should roll up her sleeves and work her way out of the economic quagmire. Mass drew to a close. The church bell chimed once, then twice. On the third toll, the women upped their trays and, to the sound of applause and cheers, processed out of the square. I spotted Nunu Engush, a presenter for Tomar City Radio, who had just come off the air. Businesses are closing in Tomar, he told me, and people are losing their jobs. But the parade gives us happiness. All the young people want to take part. There's a waiting list for the trays because there aren't enough to go round. We have no problem with that. It means our future is guaranteed.
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Narrator/Reporter
Jake Wallace Simons in Breadhaven, bringing us to the end of this edition. There'll be more from our own correspondence next Saturday morning. Please join us then. Goodbye.