← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Feb 19, 2011
00:28:06
The unrest sweeping north Africa and the Middle East reaches Bahrain and Bill Law some...
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website. To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well. But now with the addition Broadcast on Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
- [00:21]
B
The unrest goes on in North Africa and the Middle east today. The simmering anger which has brought death to the streets of Bahrain. The There's a sense of betrayal among people in Ireland as they get ready to vote in a momentous election. We hear that Silvio Berlusconi is a unifying influence in Italy despite serious criminal charges levelled against him. And as divorce on a grand scale approaches in Sudan, a question what's to be done about the cows this morning? The headlines are from Libya, where scores of people are reported to have been killed in clashes with the security forces. And from Bahrain. There, the main Shiite opposition group group has rejected a call from the country's ruling royal family for dialogue to resolve a deepening political crisis. Its spokesman said the army had to leave the streets before his group would accept the offer to talk. Yesterday there were many injuries in more fighting between police and army units and protesters. The violence developed as demonstrators demanded the fall of the Sunni dynasty which has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years. Bill Law, who was there recently, tells of a kingdom of sectarian tension and heavy handed security.
- [01:35]
C
They don't know their own people, zeina says. They don't trust their own people. And then she starts to cry. It's a few hours after Bahraini security forces attacked, thousands of pro democracy activists camped out at Pearl Roundabout in the capital city, Manamah in the early hours of Thursday morning. They charged without warning. They fired tear gas and rubber bullets. They used shotguns on people at close range. They were families, women and children, she said, sleeping. How can this have happened in my country? In Bahrain, just a day after the king had gone on television to express his condolences for two demonstrators killed earlier in the week and promising an investigation, Bahrainis and the world saw the other face of this tiny, prosperous island kingdom. The Al Khalifa ruling family is Sunni and the majority of Bahrain's indigenous people are Shia. The Shia have long complained of high levels of unemployment. They are denied jobs in key ministries like defense and security. They wait years for housing. Protests by Shia activists angered by discrimination have long been a fixture here. But the protests give the government the opportunity to lay blame for unrest and at the door of Shia Iran just across the Gulf, and to target human rights activists and members of the opposition. For years, the kingdom has been able to project an image in the west of a progressive country moving in thoughtful stages towards an inclusive democracy. But the reality on the ground tells another story. Increasingly, the ruling family has turned to repression to thwart challenges to its power. In August of last year, members of the national security apparatus Bahrain security police launched nighttime raids and arrested 23 prominent Shia professionals, religious figures, human rights activists. They've been charged with setting up and funding a terror organization. There are accusations that confessions were extracted under torture, a charge the government continues to deny. Hundreds of other Shia men and boys were rounded up and remain in jail. I spoke to two boys, both Shia, who said they'd been picked up on the outskirts of Manamah, taken to a hidden location, stripped, beaten, threatened with rape, and then dumped several hours later on a beach. Their tormentors accused them of being rioters. The boys told me their only crime was that they were Shia. That was in October. A human rights activist said their case was not isolated. He cited dozens of other victims whose families had come to his organization with similar stories. And in the months that followed, the intensity of surveillance by security forces continued to increase. I've seen it myself for four days in December, my BBC colleague and I were shadowed constantly by security. We were followed on foot and in cars, sometimes three or four cars at a time. Everywhere we went. Young thugs in designer T shirts, shades and baseball caps. They made no attempt to conceal what they were up to. They wanted to intimidate us, but more importantly, to intimidate the people we were interviewing. These men are Sunni. They come from Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Pakistan. They're hired by the government and fast track to citizenship. These are the kind of people who are now beating up Bahrainis. As one demonstrator told me, some of them don't even speak Arabic. They don't respect the flag. They don't respect the people. They answer only to their paymasters. The fact that these men are brought in makes it easier for them to do their job. There are no local connections, no tribal loyalties. They can carry out their work with impunity. The attack on the demonstrators at Pearl Roundabout, I was told, could only have happened with the full knowledge and approval of senior members of the royal family. Certainly the king's uncle, the prime minister, but probably the king himself. It's like the madness of King George, Zena says. How can he offer condolences? One day and the next? Let a massacre happen. Zaina is a professional woman, a Sunni with a young family. In the past, she's accepted some of the limits the ruling family has placed on its people. For example, no open criticism of the alifas who head all the important ministries. That seemed a trade off worth accepting. She believed that the country was moving toward democracy and that the king, when he spoke of reform, really meant what he said. Now all of that is blown away in the tear gas, the rubber bullets and the shotgun blasts of Pearl Roundabout. She tells me, look what they have done to my beautiful Bahrain. The Al Khalifas have played their hand, and in doing so, the family has revealed the face it has worked so assiduously to conceal from the West. But as the arrests and the crackdown continue, the question Zeina and many Bahrainis are asking is, what will America and Britain do now? Which Bahrain will the west choose to respond to?
- [06:29]
B
That's Bill Law. Vast crowds of Egyptians gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square yesterday to mark the overthrow a week earlier of President Hosni Mubarak. There were calls for the country's military rulers to appoint a new government and release all political prisoners. Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials, meanwhile, have been talking with representatives from European countries, urging them to reconsider the travel warnings their governments have issued to people wanting to visit Egypt. Nearly three weeks of instability have proved costly for the country's important tourist industry. Paul Adams has spent this week travelling around Egypt and says that while the protests have subsided and a degree of calm has been restored, there's much uncertainty about the future.
- [07:14]
D
Just over a week ago, I watched as the waterfront in Alexandria erupted in wild euphoria. Nothing, perhaps, on the scale of Cairo's Tahrir Square, but just as exuberant fireworks shots in the air. It went on and on for mile after mile. The following morning, under leaden skies and with a chilly wind blowing off an uncharacteristically grey Mediterranean, I walked along the beach to clear a few cobwebs and canvas a pinyon. And gradually, inevitably, it all started to appear a lot more complex. As, of course, it should. Walid the fisherman couldn't have been happier. Thirty years of what he called a semi occupation had finally come to an end. Further along, a husband and wife were sitting, rather improbably, in deck chairs like a doughty British couple taking the air. At Margate in April, Mohammed said the old president had brought it all upon himself, appointing cronies who wrecked the economy. But his wife, Sabah, said Mubarak was Irreplaceable. I wandered on to a cafe where two young men made no bones about their concerns. The the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to take over, they told me, and if that happens, Egypt is finished. And so it went on as I made my way back up the Nile Delta towards Cairo, ambiguities and contradictions piling up all the way like the belongings perched precariously on the back of a battered pickup rattling its way towards the capital. At Kafr al Masalha, Sami Abdul Hafiz chugged towards me on his motorbike as we tried to locate the house where Hosni Mubarak was born. Sammy, who called himself the Poet without ever quite explaining why, and who batted away swarming children with alarming vigour, explained that Mr. Mubarak had turned his back on his hometown and thus deserved little sympathy. A teacher, Ahmed, spoke, as so many do here, of having his dignity restored. But others feel their country's dignity has somehow been sullied. Ashraf, a soft spoken English teacher, said this was no way to treat the father of the nation, even if he had made mistakes. What kind of image was this to present to the outside world? And a group of angry men demanded that we hand over our film and threaten to destroy the car before two of them escorted us from town. Before leaving us, they leaned in at the windows to explain that what had happened to the president was disrespectful, that the youth who led the revolt simply had no manners. They clearly felt that we were little better and suspected that we had come to gloat. Once they sensed we understood, they smiled almost apologetically and said we were welcome in their town. Back in Cairo, and the blackened hulk of the ruling party headquarters looming over the Nile and the tanks still parked nearby tell you that something powerful has happened. And the young activists, busily adding a lick of green paint to the ironwork on the bridges over the river or whitewashing the curb, are showing in whatever way they can, that they want a better, less shabby future. But little is clear in this post Mubarak era. The revolution, if that's what it turns out to be, has shaken the system but not brought it crashing down, let alone replaced it. In countless state run institutions up and down the land, textile and steel factories, transport and media companies, and even the stock exchange managers and employees are locked in a tussle over the spoils, if indeed there are any. What does it all mean and how will it change their lives? Will it make them freer or put a little more bread on their tables. Will the army really act as midwife to the new Egypt, or merely cement its own authority? It's tempting to look out at the decay and chaos of this great overcrowded city, its sclerotic bureaucracy and rampant corruption, to say nothing of the lack of convincing leaders waiting in the wings, and conclude that Egypt doesn't have a chance. Friday's demonstration in Tahrir Square was a reminder that Egypt's winter revolution is a work in progress. There's a constitution to rewrite, political parties and elections to organize, and mindsets to overcome. But for all his faults, Hosni Mubarak left behind him a large, sophisticated middle class yearning to do something with their education. The revolution has given them an opening. And if rather a lot of people are now rushing to take advantage, then perhaps it's no worse than four lanes of Cairo's honking, madcap traffic all aiming for the same exit.
- [11:45]
B
Paul Adams the people of Ireland go to the polls later this month. After an election campaign that's been dominated by the country's financial crisis, the new government will have to work out a way to deal with the nation's vast debts. It seems certain many years of pain and austerity lie ahead. Fergal Keen's in Ireland talking to voters, finding out how a country can adapt from being one of Europe's most prosperous to one of its poorest.
- [12:14]
E
It was in the middle of the boom in 2006, and an acquaintance had stopped by my summer cottage on the County Waterford coast. We were drinking tea in the garden. You're mad not to be building here, he told me. You'd get two places on this land, knock down that thing and build again. I looked around the modest garden and then at my rickety tin and wood cottage, and briefly pictured two gleaming new buildings rising on the spot. No, thanks, I said. I'm happy with this. He repeated his view that I was mad. You're sitting on a great little gold mine here. You could have one for yourself and you could flog the other. Pure mad you are. And in the atmosphere of Ireland that summer, I can understand how he would have thought I was mad. The country was experiencing record economic growth. Land and house prices were soaring. In the space of a decade, property had increased in value by as much as 70%. It was the age of the taxi driver with a portfolio of apartments in Bulgaria, of the super developers who crisscrossed Ireland in their shiny new helicopters, an age of glad, confident mornings when the ghosts of emigration and unemployment had been sent packing down on the Bay, about five minutes from the cottage, squadrons of jet skis bounced across the waters. These noisy nuisances had become the must have accessory for the newly prosperous. Whenever they headed for the coast, the government was telling us the good times would go on and on. In the words of the Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, the boom just got boomier. Looking back now, it's easy to conclude that it was an age of madness. You could open the papers and read of how one property tycoon had taken 44 of his friends on a cruise on the yacht Christina O, formerly owned by Aristotle Onassis. This to celebrate his wedding. The tycoon had plans to build what he called Knightsbridge in Dublin, a vast apartment and shopping complex in a leafy suburb next to Ireland's international rugby stadium. He forked out 54 million euro an acre for the land. And this before he'd even secured planning permission. The entire cost of his wedding celebrations was estimated by one Dublin newspaper at 1 and a half million euro. A Michelin starred chef was on hand to cook dinner and crystal champagne flowed all day. The tycoon's new bride, a well known gossip columnist, was presented with a €300,000 diamond necklace. She was aware of the annoyance this display of largesse might have caused. I'm sure I'm getting up people's noses, but I don't care, she reportedly declared. Such was the temper of those giddy hours. In the middle of the wedding feast, there was a phone call of congratulation from the aforementioned prime minister, Bertie Ahern. Mr. Ahern cast himself as the leader whose vision and energy had dragged Ireland into the 21st century. When a few economists warned that the economy was heading for a hard landing, he asked aloud why such cribbers and moaners simply didn't go and commit suicide. The remarks caused outrage among the families of suicide victims and Ahern apologized. But he didn't change his tune about the economy. How distant. How immeasurably distant those years seem. Now Ireland is a nation in the grip of a moral hangover, wondering how such an age of recklessness had come about and why it had been allowed to last so long. House prices have collapsed. There are 600 so called ghost estates filled with empty houses nobody will buy. In a small country like Ireland, they are very visible, a monument to the epic folly of an economic boom based on property. Unemployment in my home city of Cork has doubled in the last decade and with it has come a rise in the rate of suicide. This week in Dublin, a government minister admitted to me we got it wrong. We allowed the economy to overheat. It was a frank statement. But such honesty won't save his party from electoral demolition. The Fianna Foil party, or Soldiers of Destiny in English, was the most powerful political machine in the state for decades. Its founder, Eamon de Valera, an old revolutionary who'd fought against the British, once said that when he wanted to know what the people of Ireland felt, he had only to look into his own heart. The other day, on the doorsteps of Dublin's south central constituency, I heard one voter after another denounce not just Fianna Foyle, but an entire political and financial elite in Ireland. Nothing is so pervasive now in the country as the feeling of betrayal. I think we're on the verge of momentous change here. It won't be reflected in a radical shift in people's politics from right to left, but it could deliver something that's been almost entirely missing in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922. A real and widespread tradition of dissent. A people who will hold their leaders to account on a continuing basis and never, ever again believe that good times last forever.
- [17:18]
B
Fergal Keen and How To Blow A Fortune is the name of a film he's making in Ireland. You can see it in Panorama. That's on BBC one on Monday evening. Now, governments, presidents and prime ministers may come and go, but few in Italy would bet that Silvio Berlusconi is finished, despite the serious criminal charges which have been levelled against him. But even if he does remain in the presidential palace, many Italians wonder how much the nation he rules is being affected by the miasma of sleaze which now surrounds him. There's talk of serious damage to the rule of law in Italy, to governance and democracy. This week's announcement of the criminal charges came as the country prepared to mark the 150th anniversary of its unification. Robin Lustig's been travelling around Italy to discover if its people are in celebratory mood.
- [18:10]
F
If I ask you to name a top Italian politician, I'm pretty sure I know which name you'll come up with first. And if I ask you what you associate with that politician, well, I think I can make quite a good guess about that as well. The man you're already thinking of, I suspect, is Silvio Berlusconi. And the words that have popped into your head are sex, prostitutes and bunga, bunga parties. Mr. Berlusconi, yes, he is still Prime Minister, is to face trial in a few weeks time charged with paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of office when he allegedly tried to get her freed from police custody. He denies doing anything illegal. When I lived in Italy more than 30 years ago, the words that most people associated with the country were Mafia, spaghetti, Fiat, Michelangelo. Not necessarily in that order. Now I've been back and I found the country confused, depressed and uncertain. I've been traveling from the faded, crime ridden city of Naples in the south to the industrial and commercial hubs of Milan and Turin in the north. And at each stop I asked the people I met. If I say Italy to you, what do you think of cheats? Said a young jazz musician in the historic university city of Padua, where once Galileo was a student. Complicated, said a social worker as we looked out over the Bay of Naples towards Mount Vesuvius. Italy is marking the 150th anniversary of its unification. And I use the word marking deliberately because to say celebrating would be an exaggeration. In the south, they still lament the passing of an era when, under the rule of the Spanish Bourbons, they had a proud culture of their own. In the north, they wonder why, for all these years their taxes have been helping to support people in the south of the country who whom they regard as both lazy and corrupt. A few days ago I was in the pretty port city of Gaeta, just over halfway between Rome and Naples. It was where the last great pre unification battle was fought, where the Bourbon royal family took refuge. After Naples fell to the armies of the north, Gaeta suffered a terrible siege. Tens of thousands of people died. To mark the anniversary, the townspeople paraded through the streets, many of them dressed in period costume. It wasn't so much a celebration of unity as a demonstration that even after 150 years, a distinctly and defiantly southern identity still survives. Still, despite its history, Italy is now one nation. And I'm not sure it's really any less united than, say, Spain with its Basques and its Catalans, France with its Bretons and Corsicans, even the United Kingdom with its Scots, its Welsh and its Northern Irish. These days, Italians all watch the same television programs, most of them on networks that are either owned or controlled by Mr. Berlusconi. And at least in part because of the influence of television, they do now speak the same language. That wasn't the case even 50 or 60 years ago, when most Italians spoke regional dialects rather than the Italian of the literary giants like Dante or Mazzini. The young musician I met in Padua told me that he feels he's visiting a foreign country when he goes south to Naples, and this is a man who spent many years living in New York. Naples is crumbling, it's dirty. The people drive like maniacs. So to a northern Italian who would feel perfectly comfortable in Berlin or Vienna, going south is a bit like ending up in Cairo or Beirut. As for Mr. Berlusconi, he's as defiant as ever. He insists he won't be resigning ahead of his trial in April. And in a strange way, he is himself now a unifying influence. He's originally from Milan, which is where his business empire is based and where his bunga bunga parties were held. But he has as much political support in the south as in the north. And when hundreds of thousands of Italians took to the streets just a few days ago to demonstrate their opposition to him, they filled the piazzas in dozens of towns and cities the length and breadth of the country. The word on their placards was basta enough. The fate of their prime minister, perhaps even the fate of their country, now lies in the hands of the judges, Robin Lustig.
- [22:29]
B
In Italy, the leaders of north and South Sudan have been exchanging accusations in the wake of last month's historic referendum, which saw the people of the oil rich south vote for secession. In the latest, the leader of Southern Sudan's ruling party said the Khartoum government had been arming rebels in the south and was bent on destabilizing the region. Martin Plout, who's just returned from there, says there are many hurdles to overcome if the transition to independence, which is due in July, is to be a peaceful one. And one of the most serious issues to be ironed out, it seems, concerns cattle.
- [23:05]
G
It was a sight to take your breath away. From one end of the horizon to the other, cattle were contentedly grazing on the dense mat of grasses pushing up through the swamp. The water oozed over my boots, but I was entranced. Soaring overhead were hawks and vultures. Standing amid this vast herd were storks, egrets and sacred ibis. An hour earlier, we'd taken the dusty road out of the state capital, Aweel. As we left its tree lined streets, the landscape opened up, revealing a plain flat as far as the eye could see. Across it were scattered a few modest villages, no more than a handful of mud, and thatched huts with or tuculs. Heading off the road, we bumped our way over a rough track past homesteads. Surrounding them were modest vegetable gardens growing okra, tomatoes and beans, protected by tall woven grass panels. It was early morning and the sun began hammering down from the palest of blue skies. Then they came. Just a trickle at first, but soon an apparently endless river of cattle walking quietly out of the villages. No one was herding them. They knew well enough where the best grass was to be found. All the young boys had to do was to release them from the stakes they had been tied to during the night and set them on their way. These cattle, or cows, as they are called here, are the wealth of the Dinka people. Their finest bulls are much loved and praised, tassels decorating their sweeping horns. They provide milk and, on special occasions, meat. The cattle market on the edge of a wheel is packed with animals of every size and color. Joseph Akot Dutt views them with an expert eye. He's getting married, and like all Dinka men, he's expected to provide his wife's family with cattle. His bride is educated with a diploma in agriculture, so the price is high. 20 cows in advance and at least 100 when the marriage takes place. But the cattle are also a source of terrible suffering, for they are not only valued by the Dinka of South Sudan, they are also vital for the Arab tribes, the Rizigat and Miserea, who live in the north. During the dry season which is now upon us, they have for generations brought the cattle, donkey and goats into the Dinka grasslands. Sharing such a valuable resource has always led to conflict, but the tribal elders normally sorted it out. It was when the war between Khartoum and the south started up again during the 1980s that it took on a new dimension. The Arabs arrived with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons. Joseph tells me they stole our cattle. In the ensuing fighting, many died. Joseph, like so many of his generation, did the one thing he could and fled the country. Today he's home again with a job as a manager with the United Nations. He's a sharp dresser with a taste for well tailored jackets. And he's enthusiastic about the future of South Sudan as it heads for independence in July. But Joseph's clear about one thing. If there's to be peace between north and south, the border will have to remain open to the cattle. Anything less would mean a renewal of war. The man on whose shoulders the problem of resolving the issue rests is the Governor, Paul Malong. He invited me to his residence, a high walled compound patrolled by armed guards, a contingent of alert looking ostriches and a rather dead looking tank. The Governor tells me that solving the issue of the cattle is one of his major priorities. He's held three conferences bringing the Dinka and the Arabs together. It's been a major success, he tells me. It's one of the most hopeful statements I've heard. There are so many ties between north and South Sudan. The two are like conjoined twins. Even after independence in July, they'll still be linked. Oil from the south can only reach international markets via Khartoum, while almost everything from soap to nails reaches a wheel from the North. The two countries will just have to get along, despite their bitter past and many differences. Back at the cattle market, Joseph A. Cott has found a young bullock that he plans to buy. It's pure white. It is, he says, the colour of peace. I will take it to my family and they will look after it from there. They will take it to the family of my bride. As I watched Joseph lead his bullock away, it seemed like a good omen. Perhaps at last, Sudan will be able to put the past behind it and find the peace its people long for.
- [27:56]
B
Martin Plaut, back now from the pastures of southern Sudan and bringing to a close another edition. I'll be here with more dispatchers from around the world next week on Thursday and Saturday. Do join us. Goodbye.