← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Fractured Syllogisms
00:27:48
Despatches from around the world: Kevin Connolly on how Western policy makers, trying...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, as the British prepare to join the American led attack on Islamic State, we learn the US Navy's flexing its muscles not just in the Middle east, but out in the Pacific too. The people of Yemen, taken by surprise as a band of militia fighters seizes control of the capital. In France, the opticians stand accused of corruption and of contributing to their country's economic stagnation. And after an unusually wet summer, a bumper crop of mushrooms in Hungary. But which ones are good for dinner? Which ones might prove deadly? So Britain is returning to a combat role in Iraq after a majority of MPs voted to back air strikes against jihadists from the group known as Islamic State. British aircraft could join the U. S led bombing campaign this weekend. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, told the House of Commons yesterday that Britain would need to demonstrate patience and persistence rather than shock and awe to tackle the threat posed by is. There's been no decision to extend military action to include targets inside Syria, but it's believed Mr. Cameron is prepared to support such a move. Britain is now part of an alliance of countries ready to attack the militants. The United States and France have already launched strikes. Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands are signing up. And earlier, President Obama announced the operation also had the backing of Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Their support, he said, showed this wasn't just America's fight. Kevin Connolly's been considering the complexities of the task they're taking on and how it might affect the wider Middle East.
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Almost exactly a hundred years ago, an old order in the Middle east was beginning to crumble. The news industry likes precision in its anniversaries, so you'll have to wait a couple of years before we bombard you with articles about the Sykes Picot Agreement or Britain's capture of Damascus. But even in 1914, it was obvious that the grip of the Turkish Empire on the region was slipping. And when it emerged on the losing side of the First World War, the victorious British and French carved up the region between themselves. There were no real spoils to be had in battered Europe, but the Middle east seemed like a place of opportunity. The victorious powers eventually created new nation states, as was the fashion of the time. Iraq and Transjordania, Lebanon and Syria. They were doing much the same thing on the rubble of the German, Austrian and Russian empires far to the north. The historical results of all that negotiating and map making have been mixed at best. Of course, the treaty that ended the First World War turned out to be nothing more than a 20 year truce before the outbreak of the second. The version of Poland created then is a distant memory now, crushed as it was between Hitler and Stalin. Czechoslovakia is gone too, although it was at least washed away by a later and more benign democratic tide. The outside world hardly dares to contemplate the same process of revision or disintegration happening belatedly now in the Middle east, with its oil and its instability and its deep sectarian tensions. The problem is that the machinery of diplomacy and military intervention is not an efficient one, where a single well judged heave on the levers in Washington or London smoothly produces a predictable outcome. At this end, today's policymakers are grappling with difficulties created by their own predecessors. Iraq and Syria were designed as ethnic patchwork quilts, each with populations of both Shia and Sunni Muslims, and that's to say nothing of the minorities of Druze Christians, Assyrians, Yazidis, Turkmen and Kurds who lived alongside them. The difficulties were were obvious from the start. The RAF was bombing targets in Iraq in the early 1920s in an attempt to restore order. Then, as now, the difficulties of holding the place together were judged to be as nothing compared to the dangers of letting it fall apart. And then, as now, the fractured syllogisms of Middle east politics made it hard to predict the consequences of each action as they were taken. To take the most obvious contemporary example, the terrorist group known as Islamic State is an enemy of both the Iraqi government, which the west wants to help, and of the Syrian regime, which it wants to overthrow? Can a strategy of aerial warfare be found which is of such exquisite precision that it crushes, is and helps Iraq without somewhat helping President Bashar Al Assad? At the same time? During the Cold War, the Middle east was a simple place, albeit a miserable and dangerous one. Some countries were allies of the west and some were enemies. These days, things are more flexible, more mutable, perhaps even more dangerous and straightforward. Talk of alliance feels a little naive. Think of Iran. It's on the wrong side in Syria, as far as the west is concerned, where it backs President Assad, but on the right side in Iraq, where it's also fighting Sunni extremists who threaten the Shia led government. How do you formulate a policy towards Iran that reflects both sides of that coin? And how does that influence the West's ability to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions, which might ultimately prove more important than anything that's happening now. In other words, how on earth do you chart a course in a region where a country which is an arsonist on one issue is a fireman on another? Today's generation of world leaders are luckier than their counterparts of this time in the last century in that all they have to do is navigate their way from one crisis to another. It's unlikely to fall to them to have to redraw the map of this region. In fact, they're doing what they can to make sure that this current map sticks. But if through some disaster, history should summon them to such a task, let's hope they make a better job of it than their predecessors.
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Kevin Connolly Many of those airstrikes on targets in the Middle east have been launched from American warships. The US has again attracted criticism from countries, including Russia, who see it behaving as if it was the world's policeman. But many of its allies believe US power is a vital stabilizer in an uncertain world. Nowhere more so than in East Asia, where the rise of China is making several nations, the Philippines among them, distinctly nervous. As American ships prepared to fire cruise missiles at targets in Syria this week, out in the Pacific Ocean, two US carrier battle groups were carrying out the biggest live fire exercise in years. Off the coast of Guam, Rupert Wingfield Hayes was aboard one of the warships.
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I've heard it said that landing on an aircraft carrier is. Isn't really a landing at all, it's a controlled crash. That is a pretty good description. It would be terrifying, except there's not enough time. At one moment you're flying along at 160 knots. Then there's a violent jolt, a shuddering crash as the undercarriage slams into the deck. And before your brain can catch up, the plane is standing still. It all takes about two and a half seconds. I scramble from our little air taxi onto the flight deck of the USS George Washington, steaming somewhere near Guam. The George Washington is a huge ship, but with 60 fighter jets jockeying for space, it feels very crowded and very noisy. Dozens of men and women in brightly coloured vests are directing a carefully choreographed dance. It's in less than 10 minutes, 11 F18 fighter jets are fired from the deck. I know what you're thinking. I've seen it all before on YouTube, but believe me, it's very different when it's happening right in front of you. First comes a crescendo of noise that shakes every nerve in your body. Then a wave of heat as the plane's engines roar to full power in a cloud of steam, the 15 ton jet shoots forward and is hurled off the end of the ship like a toy. Seconds later, the deck crew are calmly lining up the next one. At moments like this, it's difficult not to be slightly awed by the US Navy. No other Navy in the world has quite the same toys or shows them off with quite the same easy charm. A few minutes later, I'm standing on the ship's bridge chatting with Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, commander of Carrier Strike Group five. I want to pin him down about China, but he's not taking the bait. Rupert, he says this exercise is not about targeting any specific country. Our aim is to enhance the capability of joint operations between our Navy, our Air Force and our Marine Corps. Perhaps, but it's no secret that what the U.S. navy is practicing out here is what they call countering anti access or area denial. That is military speak for what US forces would do if China tries to stop them from entering the south or the East China Seas. Why does that matter? Well, because there are growing signs that is exactly what China's communist leaders want to do. A few weeks before landing on the George Washington, I was on board a Filipino fishing boat bobbing across the South China Sea. It is a big sea and China claims all of it. After two days of sailing from the Philippines, we find what we are looking for. New islands where a few months ago there were none. China is using a huge dredger to pump millions of tons of rock and sand into reefs to create at least five new islands. And on one, Beijing may be preparing to build an air base. Outraged, the Philippine government has appealed to the United nations to intervene. But China says it is none of the UN's business. I asked a well known Chinese academic why his answer is revealing. Would we get the UN to rule on a traffic dispute between a foreign tourist and a Chinese driver on Tiananmen Square? No, of course not. He says. While the South China Sea is the same, it is our territory. So this is a domestic issue. And it's not just the South China Sea. For the last two years, China has been sailing ships around a group of tiny islands in the East China Sea long controlled by Japan. Whenever Japanese Coast Guard ships approach, they are told to leave Chinese sovereign waters immediately. And then there is Taiwan. Since 1949, the island has effectively been an independent country. But China has never renounced its claim. Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said reunification of Taiwan could not be delayed forever. There will be many who say this is China's business, that its neighbors must learn to adjust to the new reality of Chinese power and that the days of American domination in Asia are rightly over. But in Tokyo and Taipei, Manila and and even in Hanoi, governments are happy that those US Carriers are still close by. Their worry is how long America will continue to commit such vast resources to keep these huge ships and their crews posted on the other side of the world to protect somebody else's country.
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Rupert Wingfield Hayes While the focus of Middle east instability has been on Iraq and Syria in recent weeks, in a forgotten corner of the region, a ragtag militia force has seized power. It took fighters from the previously marginalized Shia Houthi movement just four days to seize control of Sana', A, the capital city of Yemen. The Houthis are regarded as allies of Iran, the main Shiite power in the region, and opposed to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni monarchies in the Gulf. Iona Craig is based in Sana' a and tells us the week's events took a nation by surprise.
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Squeezed into the back of a pickup truck around an anti aircraft gun parked outside Yemen's parliament, three young men stuff green gat leaves into their mouths. Chewing the mild narcotic plant is a daily routine for most Yemenis. The men have curved jambir daggers at their waists and AK 47 rifles resting in the laps of their traditional long loose thobes. The plate on the back of the sand coloured truck says Al Jaish, the army. But these men are not soldiers. Where are you from? I ask. Saada, comes the reply. Saada. The northern Yemeni province sharing its border with Saudi Arabia is the stronghold of the Shia Houthi movement, whose militiamen have fought six wars with the government in the province since 2004. What are you doing here? I ask one of the men who has a rocket propelled grenade propped up next to him. We are here to protect the building. He gestures towards the parliament with his hand clutching green twigs. The usual contingent of soldiers tasked with guarding the parliament and nearby cabinet office is nowhere to be seen. Where is the army? The soldiers? I press. A passing pedestrian who had stopped to listen butts in. They surrendered. This is the army now. He grins and walks on. After four days of heavy fighting centered around a major military base in the north west of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, Houthi gunmen walked up to government institutions across the city and asserted their control without a shot being fired. The minister of interior ordered troops under his control to stand down. Within a couple of hours, the fighters had control of the city, its residents were in shock. Confused and curious. Men spilled out onto the street from their homes, where they had been sheltering from the artillery fire and mortar rounds that had earlier rocked the city. While the militiamen set up checkpoints throughout Sana', a, their political leaders sat down in the presidential palace to sign an agreement to calm the crisis which had been threatening the capital for the last month. But before the ink was even dry on the deal, the Houthis victory was complete. Few had foreseen that the group's push south for territory over the past six months would end in the takeover of the capital, Sanaa. And no one could have imagined the speed with which the ragtag force of tribesmen would cede the city. Many suspect Yemen's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to hand over power following the country's 2011 political uprising, had a hand in it. They believe he facilitated the Houthis advance as they fought tribal militias aligned to the Isla Party, Yemen's equipment to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Salehs, the on arch enemy. In just a few months, the Houthis have managed to do what Saleh could not in 2011 destroy the tribal power base of Isla and bring down his powerful foe, Major General Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar, who also led the wars against the Houthis in Saada. The general, a senior military advisor to President Hadi, is now being hunted down by the Houthis. We will kill him if we find him, warns one Houthi loyalist, brandishing a vintage bolt action rifle. All passengers leaving Sana' a airport are now being rigorously checked by the militiamen in search of the general and other opponents who may be attempting to flee the city. Other political rivals have had their homes raided in apparent attempts to intimidate the Houthis adversaries. While the Houthis celebrated a victorious revolution in the city's Tahrir Square, the president warned of civil war. What will happen next is uncertain. According to the terms of the deal, a new prime minister will be appointed and a new, more inclusive government will be formed within a month. Despite Hadi's precarious position, the Houthis have indicated they want a strong hand in a future government without ruling directly. But there is no sign the gunman will be leaving the city anytime soon. In a televised speech by the group's leader, Abdul Malik Al Houthi, to a mass gathering of his cheering, mostly armed supporters, he pledged his men would join with the army to defeat the country's notorious Al Qaeda insurgency and stay until the military is strong enough to maintain security. Meanwhile, the city's residents are trying to go about their lives as normal. In Yemen, the people don't get to decide who has the power, a baker remarks as he places round balls of dough into the stone oven in downtown Sana'.
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This is a game we can never understand.
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Iona Craig in the Yemeni capital Sana'.
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Now France is a country where the economic news just seems to get gloomier and gloomier. Growth is at a complete standstill. More than 10% of the workforce are now without jobs. The government says it's doing all it can to unlock the country's potential. The main employer group medef says it should scrap some public holidays and do away with the 35 hour week proposals, which have not gone down well with the unions. But Hugh Schofield in Paris says one area that everyone agrees should be tackled is the so called regulated professions, sectors of workers that have carved out comfy little niche for themselves. One example, opticians. Let Hugh take up the story.
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My optician is a crook. Ok, I know that sounds harsh and of course, in fact she's a charming, competent woman, no badness about her, but she's a crook, a fraudster, an arnaqueuse, as the French would say. I don't mind accusing her because when I think about it, I'm a crook too. In fact, quite likely half the people in France with myopia or hyperopia or presbyopia should be fumbling our way down high streets with placards hung around our necks saying tous coupable, all guilty. If you do an online search for Arnach Opticien, you see how it works. Basically, the majority of French people who've got secure jobs pay into a complimentary insurance scheme called a mutuelle. One of the areas for which these mutuelles provide cover is eye treatment. If you get prescription glasses, the state health system will reimburse a small part of the cost, the mutuelle, typically 70 or 80%. And if you have a good mutuelle, they'll cover all your family to the tune of one new pair of specs each per year. I first learned of the Aarnak like I got myself a pair of glasses, but they broke. It was in the same calendar year, so I didn't qualify for a new one. My optician said, oh dear, what a shame. But maybe there were ways this could be sorted out. Did perchance, any of my children have eye problems? No. Well, she said, you know, these days children spend so long At a computer, they're bound to get eye strain. I'm sure if you took one of your children to this ophthalmologist that I can strongly recommend, then you could get a prescription for him or for her. But what good would that do me? I asked. Oh, then we'd get you your new glasses instead, but pretend to the mutuelle that they're for your child. Actually, I didn't on that occasion succumb to the temptation. But I do have to confess to a lesser sin. One of the techniques is for opticians to rearrange the pricing of your glasses. Essentially, you get reimbursed more for the lenses and less for the frames. What they do with your connivance is offer you an expensive pair of designer frames and then shift a large part of the cost onto the lenses so you get more of the money back. That I have done, and I'm sorry, but others have done worse. If you look online, you'll see loads of confessions. In some companies, they know a tame ophthalmo and a tame opticien who will happily pretend people have minor eye ailments. So they get a nice new pair of designer sunglasses and more or less for free. If you've ever wondered why there are so many optician shops in France, there you have it. On my street, there are four or five, as many as there are hairdressers. It's because they're a regulated profession. Because of their relationship with the insurance system, they get an inflated turnover of clients, which in turn inflates the price of glasses. The French spend more on their eyes than anyone else in Europe. And though the single European market should be driving the price of glasses down, with the possibility of importing cheap lenses from Poland and elsewhere, so far that's not happening. If opticians were unique, the problem would be straightforward. But France has many of these mini economies that have built up since the war and in which so many individuals now have a stake that dismantling them can only spell trouble. Recently I've been looking at France's appalling driving school system, another example. I went to one school on the rue de Rennes. Two fat blokes in their 60s instructors were sharing a cigarette on the street. A nervous young guy sat in a car, waiting for his lesson to start. I asked what he thought of the system. It feels like a mafia, he said, unhappily checking that no one could hear. He's right. It is a mafia in the sense that it's a protected world, hedged around with regulations that make practitioners feel invulnerable and so drives down the quality of service. The French are very hot on society and solidarity and wax lyrical about sharing and mutual help. In practice, it's a sham. Groups build up walls of protection and refuse to take them down, even when the collective good cries out for change. It's a recipe for rigidity, complacency and corruption. I know, I've been there.
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Hugh Schofield in Paris. Farmers in some parts of Europe have suffered an unusually wet summer. For them, it meant a poor wheat harvest. The vineyards in those areas suffered as well. Grapes are not keen on violent rainstorms. But the weather did suit another staple crop, mushrooms. A multitude of them has emerged from the sodden soil. They've awoken in an autumn rainbow of colours red, orange, green and brown. Some, of course, can lift a meal to gastronomic heights. Others are pure poison. Nick Thorpe, our man in Budapest, has taken to the woods with his basket.
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It was Bartek's fault, I suppose. A Polish friend visiting us for the last few days of summer in the countryside before our return to the capital. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the night's rain had finished running off the thatch, before the sun had decided whether or not to bother one more time, he had us out of bed and traipsing up the soggy track in the forgotten wood at the foot of Lookout Hill. Look, here they are. He shouted triumphantly. The porcini bolitus edulis, known to the Italians as little piglets, to the English as penny buns, to the Germans as Steinpilts, and to the Poles. These are simply the kings of them all, the most delicious mushrooms of the forest. And there they all were, their fat, softly curved stems and smooth fairy tale heads just waiting to be picked beneath the spindly oaks. We filled three baskets with them to the squeals of delight of the children, but couldn't resist adding a few other varieties. At one point, a large beast crashed way through the undergrowth and we looked up from the forest floor, but too late. Some thought it was a wild boar, others a deer. I hoped our identification of the mushrooms would be more exact. The whole wood was caught in the spell of the space between two seasons, summer and autumn. Brambles scratched our ankles, cobwebs wound around our faces. Foresters tracks petered out. The more cautious members of the party suggested that we get all the mushrooms checked before we ate them. Bartek dutifully took them to the market in the nearest town, Balaton fured. On Saturday, every Hungarian market is equipped with mushroom experts, a free and fantastic service. But this one was sadly absent, with no note at his or her little window to explain why. A call to a mobile number received the unapologetic reply that the expert was 450 miles away and couldn't help. But modern technology came to the rescue, and 60 megabytes of photographs of at least five kilos of mushrooms were swiftly sent to Bartek's parents in Jesus, southeastern Poland. Lick the heads of one of those yellow ones, bartek instructed some hours later. I tried reluctantly. It was bitter. Aha, he said. Those are the ones you can't eat. Well, thanks, Bartek, but the rest were fine, a mixture of porcini and the less tasty but edible birch bolete, and he soon cooked up a great steaming stew, which we ate for two days with sour cream and mashed potatoes and lived to tell the tale. I took Sunday morning's crop to the big covered market in Budapest at 8 o' clock on Monday morning. The mushroom examiner's booth is right at the back of the market, beyond four large display cases of spring and summer specimens. The edible ones have a little drawing of a busy cook. The poisonous ones have a skull and crossbones. The booth has a green bell you can push, but only once, mind you, to summon the examiner. After about 15 minutes and just two rather tentative rings, she arrived, a no nonsense lady in a white coat with all the charm of a fly agaric, that red topped beauty once used by witches to fuel their broomsticks. I tipped my basket out onto a kitchen cloth and waited. She nodded approvingly over my porcini, but then she saw it. A single hunchbacked sharga galuzza amanita philoides, the death cap commonly believed to have caused the demise of the Roman Emperor Claudius and Pope Clement vii, to mention just two of its more prominent victims. I distinctly remember popping it casually in with the others because I like the look of it. Our regulations require that we throw all your mushrooms away. They may have all been poisoned by this one, Mrs. Mushroom explained. To tell you the truth, I was quite relieved. I'm not sure the family could have taken another fungal delicacy. As I left the market, another downpour promised forest riches to turn even kings green with envy. The birch bolete I read when I got home is especially enjoyable, pickled in brine or vinegar, but I'll keep away from the little hooded fellows next time.
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A good call, I think, from Nick Thorpe, our man with a basket in the woods of Hungary. Two programmes again next week on Thursday morning and as usual on Saturday. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.