← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Here for Eternity?
00:27:44
Correspondents with tales to tell. In this edition: Gabriel Gatehouse watching the in...
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This is a download from the BBC. It's the latest edition of From Our Own Correspondent, broadcast on Radio 4, and it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the United States calls for the extradition of the drugs baron loved and revered in Mexico as much as he's hated and reviled people in Beirut wonder if it's time to move out as the war in Syria creeps ever closer. Heated argument in Spain as the prime minister declares a referendum on independence for Catalonia would be illegal. And Europe might have been busy tearing down the borders these past two decades, but Central Asia, we find, has been busy putting them up. The American secretary of State, John Kerry says the US Wants to work with Russia and other countries for a peaceful process in Ukraine. What's happening there, he said, should not be seen as a battleground between the west and east, but about Ukrainians making choices about their future. Armed men, meanwhile, have seized the regional parliament and government buildings in Crimea. Russian flags are said to be flying over both buildings this morning. Earlier, Russia put 150,000 troops on high alert near its border with Ukraine. Gabriel Gatehouse, who's in the capital, Kiev, says parliament there will vote on a new government later today, but few in Ukraine expect it would bring a swift return to stability.
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Vasily points up at a yellow building on the hill overlooking Independence Square. His gold teeth glint in the morning sun. My grandfather was shot there, he says. Im confused. What last week? Because it was at that spot exactly a week ago, that government snipers had opened fire on protesters. I was there. I watched as demonstrators dragged the lifeless bodies of two of their comrades back down the hill. A little later, I sat crouched behind a colonnade outside that same yellow building, a concert hall, as bullets cracked overhead. Maidan, as Independence Square is known, has attracted people from all walks of life and all ages. But I hadn't seen any octogenarians actually fighting on the barricades. So I was surprised that Vasily's grandfather had got caught in Thursday's crossfire. But Vasily wasn't talking about last Thursday. They shot him in the basement. He said there was a concert going on upstairs. It was 1937. Hryhori Vasilenko was a farmer from central Ukraine. He had nine children, one of whom was Vasily's mother. Why was he shot? I asked. Vasily holds up his hands as if the answer's obvious. Russian repression, he says. He was accused of being an enemy of the people. The Russians were meddling in our country back then, and they're still doing it now, he explains. That's why we need to stay on Maidan, to make sure they stop and to keep our own politicians on the straight and narrow. Viktor Yanukovych may have fallen, but Maidan is indeed still here. The square is dotted with shrines to the dead. Candles and piles of flowers run like rivers of light and color along streets which only days ago ran with blood. The barricades, too, are still there, even though the hated riot police, the Berkut against whom they were erected, has been disbanded. But now the government has fallen. Maidan is slowly morphing from a medieval fortress into. Well, into what, exactly? Partly it's becoming a museum. There are now T shirts on display bearing some of the slogans of the revolution. Some children have painted a mural featuring big red hearts, doves of peace and we love our heroes daubed in coloured letters. But Maidan is also becoming an administrative centre of sorts. Sure, the Parliament is up and running again. Very much so, in fact. MPs are working hard. They even sat last Sunday. But the poor politicians, all their swagger and confidence is gone. Every so often you'll see them popping out of the chamber to consult the crowd outside. And they don't get an easy ride. I watched the giant boxer Vitaly Klitschko metaphorically ducking and diving, parrying questions from a group of a hundred or so angry citizens. The people sense they finally have their leaders on the ropes. Much of the real work of keeping the city running is coordinated, not in the Parliament, but down on Maidan. When the security forces fled in the early hours of Saturday morning, self defence groups moved seamlessly into place, guarding government buildings and directing traffic. They call themselves sotniki. It's an old Cossack military term. They're highly organized, very efficient. They're also completely unaccountable. At night, activists patrol the city, sometimes in the company of actual police officers who are tentatively making a return to the streets. In a police station in a western suburb, I met Maxime, a telecoms engineer. He just returned from his rounds with a group of policemen. We're partly here for their protection, he said. Antipathy to the security forces is so strong that that few dare to show themselves in public. It was quite clear who was in charge there, and it wasn't the boys in uniform. Most of these armed groups are tooled up with baseball bats and knives. Some are more heavily armed. The other night, several dozen men marched into our hotel. They were carrying Kalashnikov rifles, their faces hidden behind balaclavas. They sealed off the lifts and began to search one of the upper floors. It wasn't the first time they'd done this. A few evenings earlier, I'd watched them roaming the corridors, knocking on doors, looking for a suspected sniper. These were members of an outfit known as the Right Sector, an umbrella group of far right organizations, some of whose members espouse Nazi ideology. The vast majority of the Maidan protesters were and still are ordinary citizens, students and workers, scientists and accountants, people who simply had enough of their corrupt leaders. But it was the radicals of the Right Sector who did much of the heavy fighting on the barricades. And so they feel this is their victory, theirs to do with as they please. What will they do with it? Probably they themselves don't know yet, but they're deeply hostile towards Russia and those Ukrainians whom they see as supporting Russia. Around town, far right and Nazi symbols are appearing daubed on walls. For some, especially in the Russian speaking south and east, that is very scary indeed.
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Gabriel Gatehouse in Kiev, the militant group Hezbollah has vowed to strike back at Israel after one of its positions inside Lebanon was apparently attacked by Israeli warplanes on Monday night. Neither the Israeli nor the Lebanese authorities have confirmed the airstrike took place, but the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly warned action would be taken to prevent Hezboll Hezbollah obtaining weapons from its allies. Syria there's growing concern among people in Lebanon about how the war in neighbouring Syria is creeping into their territory. Abigail Fielding Smith in the capital Beirut, says some are making plans to leave the country. Others, though, are determined to remain, come what may.
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I need a new wife, a Lebanese friend joked the other day as he weighed up his chances of getting a visa to Europe. All over Beirut, you hear people talking about leaving the country. The civil war in Syria is creeping across the border and car bombs now explode on a regular basis Here. The trilingual Lebanese are used to having one foot abroad. Many emigrated during Lebanon's own civil war in the 70s and 80s. And with each bout of violence that's plagued the country since, Beirutis ask themselves if they should stay. All these upheavals can give the city a manic, transient feel. In Hamra, my own neighbourhood in West Beirut, cafes seem to change hands every few months. But in one street, behind a labyrinth of shelves, you'll find a man who's been plying his trade in the area for more than 30 years. He'll probably be reading a copy of the London Review of Books, and he won't look up as he corrects your pronunciation of The Tarkovsky film you've come to hire. Diran Mardirian is a Beirut institution. He's worked in the little business, which specialises in world cinema since he was a schoolboy. It was founded in 1964 by his late father, Hashik, or Chico, after whom it's informally named. Chico sold vinyl at first, but then moved into video in the 80s, when the anarchy of the streets created huge demand for home entertainment. Most of the city's film rental shops have closed since then due to a surge in piracy. Yet Chico's has survived both the bullets and the knockoff blockbusters. French auteurs jostle with obscure Ealing comedies on its groaning shelves. The scruffy cinephiles browsing there may be a far cry from the glamour Beirut is famous for, but they are loyal. One has been coming in since the 70s. After flicking through the documentaries section one day, I asked Diran how he managed to keep going in such a fickle business. I know my library and I know my customers. There is an almost biological symbiosis between me and Chico's, he said. If you're passionate about what you're doing, you're going to have a customer base. Diran's languid humor and encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema are a large part of why people keep coming back to the shop. His fashionably lightweight glasses and close cropped beard make him look more like a European academic than a Beirut shopkeeper. I wondered why someone with a university education and five languages under their belt would choose to slog away for such modest profits in a country which seems to be going nowhere but downhill. Diran answered by telling me a story about his family. Citizenship was not something that was given to us. We had to earn it, he said, rolling a cigarette. Chico was the son of Armenian Christians. They had fled to Lebanon at the beginning of the 20th century to escape the persecution taking place in Turkey, and he was always conscious of the need to show loyalty to the family's new home. When the civil war was at its height in 1982, the Israelis invaded Lebanon. It was a terrifying time. Chico's wife, who worked in the German embassy, got an advance warning they were going to put West Beirut under siege. The family were urged to leave before the checkpoints went up, and Chico called Diran and his brother out to the balcony to explain the situation. I could see the Israeli gunboats patrolling the sea, diran recalled. He said, listen, boys, we can leave and be safe, but when we come back, our heads won't be held high. The family stayed, and apart from a brief spell during the siege, Chico's remained open throughout the rest of the war. Thirty years later, Diran mused on his father's words inadvertently. We were fighting for our place in this society, the dividends of which are still being paid out now, he said. My daughter can walk from here to our home, and anyone can know that she is the daughter of Diran, who is the son of Chico. A melancholy flute melody wandered over a bass line as we talked, a record produced by diran's father in 1978 with the Lebanese musician Ziyad Rahbani, arguably the greatest Oriental funk fusion track ever conceived, Diran declared immodestly. For all his commitment to his father's legacy, I was curious to know whether Diran ever felt tempted to leave when he heard about the latest car bomb. It can't be easy to contemplate what's coming next in Lebanon. As the father of a young child, he scoffed at the idea. The trouble has to get a lot worse to be anywhere near what my parents went through, he said. Beirut is not a hotel, and that's
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Abigail fielding SMITH the U.S. authorities are to request the extradition from Mexico of Joaquin Shorty Guzman, the notorious drug trafficker who was arrested in the coastal resort of Mazatlan on Saturday. His detention brought an end to a 13 year long search for the gang leader who escaped from a maximum security prison in 2001, allegedly by hiding in a laundry basket. Since then, he's evaded the efforts of successive governments in Mexico and in Washington to bring him to justice, leaving him free to run his vast criminal enterprise, the Sinaloa cartel. Those years have seen Guzman gain a near mythical status. To his supporters, he's the super rich Robin Hood drug baron, to others, a symbol of the corruption and violence that has plagued Mexico for decades. Will Grant has been following the Shorty Guzman story.
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When the phone call I'd been half expecting and half dreading for two years finally arrived, it was a moment of glorious understatement. The Associated Press are saying they caught a big one, my colleague in London said they don't get much bigger than Joaquin Guzman. Noera, his name, may not trip off the tongue outside Latin America. He never obtained the same notoriety as Osama bin Laden, for example. But El Chapo, or Shorty Guzman, is one of the biggest names in the criminal underworld, and at the time of that phone call, he was probably the most wanted man in the world for Joaquin Guzman. Think Pablo Escobar, Al Capone or John Dillinger Such was his mythology. You could even think of Vito Corleone, Tony Soprano, or Lex Luthor. In Mexico, the story's about El Chapo, a legion in the loyal villages of his native Sinaloa, a place where drug cartels are just part of the way of life. He was a modern day Robin Hood. In one infamous story, his men walked into a restaurant in Culiacan, locked the doors, and ordered the customers to hand over their mobile phones. Guzman then walked in, had a meal, and left. Once he'd gone, people were given back their telephones and told that El Chapo had picked up their tab. Doubtless as much invention as truth, such tales fuelled the myth. Dozens of songs known as narco corridos were written about him and sung at raucous parties from Acapulco to Los Angeles. The lyrics mocked the authorities for being unable to track down El Chapo as he crossed the mountains of Sinaloa on horseback, his AK47 or his goat's horn by his side. He escaped from prison in 2001, allegedly by hiding in a laundry basket. He was featured on Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 richest people with a personal fortune in excess of a billion dollars. It all just added to his allure. So the idea of him being arrested or killed had almost become folklore. There had been half a dozen false alarms in recent years, including one report, his son had been detained. The man later turned out to be not the son of a billionaire drug lord at all, but a used car salesman from Guadalajara. Yet within an hour, it was confirmed. Our producer in Mexico City, Alberto Naja, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Joaquin Guzman himself, made a couple of calls. Although it wasn't confirmed by DNA test yet, he said this time the authorities were sure they had their man. Soon, Twitter took over. The former president Felipe Calderon congratulated his successor, calling it a big blow to organize crime that rather stole the thunder from the government. And minutes later, President Enrique Pena Nieto confirmed the news via Twitter, too. Guzman was detained. He wrote 140 characters. He never thought he'd be typing so early in his presidency. By then, we were out on the streets, where suddenly this monumental news was made to feel very ordinary. By indifference and cynicism, we encountered what's behind all this. The government, said one man conspiratorially, as his shoes were being shined. Guzman's not the only boss, said another, with the kind of weary resignation of someone who's seen this movie before. Someone else will take his place. Suddenly, all attention turned to the tarmac at Mexico City's airport. A handful of top brass delivered a short speech about the impeccable operation by the Marines, then shuffled off stage to allow the real show to begin. From a hangar behind them, some confusion, and suddenly there he was, slightly bruised and looking dazed. El Chapo Guzman, the most powerful drug lord of our times, emerged, his head being forced down by two masked marines at his side. They frog marched him towards a waiting helicopter, pausing only slightly to allow the cameramen and photographers to get the shot they'd come for short. In stature, Joaquin Guzman Loera was the biggest, most feared man in the drug world, his 13 year flight from the authorities over in a matter of moments, all from the imprudent use of a mobile phone. In the end, capturing the big fish was something of a damp squib. Since then, I've been trying to understand how, in a country where the drug war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, one man became so significant, loved and revered as much as he was hated and reviled. Guzman was all things to all people, monster and mastermind, murderer and misunderstood. Few expect the story of a man called Shorty to end just yet, will
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Grant in Mexico City. If the Scots can do it, then so can we. That seemed to be the call from the lawmakers in Catalonia who want a referendum on independence to be held in their autonomous community in November. This week, though, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, said the vote could not take place, it would be illegal. The referendum is also opposed by Spain's two largest political parties. But in Catalonia, the independence campaign continues. Rachel McCormack, who lived in the capital, Barcelona, for seven years, says while a majority of people there back it, the prospect of going it alone is the subject of much heated debate.
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Will you support us in the UK in our bid for independence? We'll give you 18 points every Eurovision if you do. We really will. I am in an old fashioned bar in the Sanz district of Barcelona, with holes in the wall and wooden doors for fridges, soda siphons to accompany vermouth and where traditional glass jugs known as pourons are used to serve wine that comes from barrels. The few places left like this in the Catalan capital are disappearing as their owners retire and the bars get turned into franchises. But a neighborhood geologist, lawyer and psychologist joined forces and used the redundancy money to take it over, and it's a popular place. I've only recently changed my mind, says Giuseppe between mouthfuls. I've always been happy being Spanish and Catalan, but now I've had enough. We've had centuries of this fight. You speak English because it's your language, Rachel. Too many Spaniards say I speak Catalan to annoy them. For me, it's not even that we pay far more into the central government than we get back. It's that they constantly denigrate our culture, our language. And we've had enough. Mind you, my grandfather, who lived through the civil war, says we've had too much peace to know what some of these people are capable of, and that it's best to treat them with a softly, softly approach. Some generals in the army have already made comments about rolling tanks down the Ramblas in Barcelona. They'll never do that, though, his girlfriend jokes. They never built decent roads here, so we've only got private motorways. They'll turn round in fright at the price of the first toll charge as soon as they've crossed the border on the train from Barcelona north. Every building I see at every station has at least one independence flag draped from a window. I've come to Girona to meet Anna, a friend I've not seen in about seven years. Once we've gone through the many deaths and far too few births in both our families and mutual acquaintances, she tells me that to make ends meet, she's not only an architect but a math supply teacher and a tourist guide. If I could find a fourth thing, I'd do that too, she says. Inevitably, our conversation turns to the independent flags. They've been around here for about three years now, she tells me. Everyone has had enough of the government in Madrid, even me. You know I've always been proud to be both Catalan and Spanish. But not anymore. We spend the day walking around the old part of Girona, through the old Jewish quarter with the plaque marking the birthplace of Mosse Ben Naaman, one of the early philosophers of Jewish Kabbalah. Past the Roman baths and into the cathedral, where I have to activate a timer when I want to switch the lights on to see an altar. For the first time ever, I feel like a second class Spanish citizen, says Anna as we stared at yet another bloodied saint. I'll vote yet for independence if I get the chance. Almost everyone I speak to here is in favour of breaking away from Spain. I begin to wonder if it's just my friends and talk to complete strangers in bars and in the market. All of them say something similar. The rest of Spain hates us. Why would we stay part of it? Then I meet up with Pau. I've known him and his wife Teresa for nearly 20 years and can tell you that POW is the man with the biggest heart and the most stubborn head in existence. I arrive at their door unannounced with a bottle of wine, and two bottles later I mention what I've been hearing. This is all cynical political manipulation. He shouts. Both the governments in Madrid and here are just stirring up anger. There's no reasoned argument. We're not asking politicians for explanations or solutions to the economic crisis. We're just shouting that we want to leave while the rest of Spain is shouting that we need to stay. While he stops for air, I ask Teresa what she thinks. She thinks the same as the rest of them, Pau says. She wants independence. She says we're second class citizens. It's just nonsense. Teresa manages to get a few words in, and then for the next 10 minutes it seems like war has broken out, while they both shout opposing views at exactly the same time. When I manage to interrupt, to apologise for causing them to have such a huge argument, they both stop and stare at me in disbelief. You've been away from here a long time, Rachel, says Teresa. You used to be like this too.
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And that was Rachel McCormack. The disintegration of the Soviet Union into 15 independent republics following the collapse of communism sent shock waves across Russia and Central Asia. The extraordinary events in Ukraine these last few days clearly indicate that those ripples will continue for quite some time yet. But as Jonathan Fryer has been discovering on a train journey from the battlefields of Stalingrad to the gleaming white capital of Turkmenistan, myths like statues can be remarkably resilient.
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Fifty meters tall, she stood defiant on the hillside above the city of Volgograd, the statue of Mother Russia, a giant concrete sword held aloft in her right hand from the train that would carry me out of Russia into Central Asia across the Karakum Desert, I could still see her and feel her reproach. Water subsidence is apparently making her tilt, but it could as easily have been the blood of the million or more Russians and Germans who died there during the Battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961, when the late Joseph Stalin fell from grace, but before him the city was known as Tsaritsin. Tsars, commissars, they come and go. Only the Volga river is eternal, the carriage stewardess mused, placing a complimentary bottle of vodka on my table in the compartment. In the bad old Soviet days, these train ladies were often dragons. This one was a pussycat. I was asleep when we crossed into Kazakhstan but woke the following morning to find the green hills of southern Russia had given way to the dirty beige of the Karakum. The Sahara and the rub al Khali of Arabia are majestic in their dazzling palette of colors and the shifting sands of their dun. But the Karakum resembles a giant gravel pit. Tiny tufts of yellowed grass struggle to survive while camels plod across the landscape looking for anything edible. A whole day drifted by, but already I was losing any sense of time. The following morning, the train shudders to a halt again. This time it's the Uzbek border and there's a lot of stomping up and down the train corridor by officials while I sit in my cabin daydreaming about the Silk Road. We are indeed on the Silk Road now, though the merchants of old relied on camels, not this rather plush Russian Golden Eagle train. Of all the Central Asian republics that seized their independence as the Soviet Union fell apart, Uzbekistan has disinterred its past most passionately. Around oases, the cotton fields are still full of people of all ages picking the fluffy white heads. But in the towns, every vestige of the golden age before shipping killed, the overland trade seems to be under restoration. The final frontier is with Turkmenistan. In Soviet times, these borders in Central Asia didn't exist, but now they're enforced rigidly as each state fashions its distinct identity. A Turkmen guide joined the train at the frontier to make sure the foreigners on board understood what Turkmenistan's status of permanent positive neutrality is all about. Isolationism is what we probably call it back home. But I didn't press the point or comment aloud that it's odd that while Europe has been tearing borders down over the past two decades, Central Asia was busy erecting them. Besides, the guide was explaining proudly how the Trans Karakum Railway, crossing 350 miles of desert from the frontier to the capital Ashgabad, was built entirely by his countrymen. Not a single foreign contractor or labourer was involved. It takes 12 hours to chug along this track, which was opened in 2006. More gravel, more camels. Only now some are shaggy haired Bactrians as well as dromedaries. Then suddenly, like a mirage tricking the imagination of Silk Road travellers, Ashgabat appears gleaming white. Turkmenistan, with its huge revenues from natural gas, has poured billions into building a showcase capital. Wide avenues, almost devoid of traffic and pedestrians, are flanked by great white palaces. The Ministry of this and the Ministry of that, a colossal mosque, and next door, the mausoleum of the country's late leader, Sapamura Nyazov, or Turkmembashi, leader of the Turkmen, as he preferred to be known. In the city's spotless museum, glass cases of artifacts, aesthetically arranged in vast marble halls champion the country's past, especially the abandoned city of Merv, which is now being reclaimed from the desert. In the 12th century, Merv was the biggest city in the world, the young curator of the museum whispers, nervous at giving his first ever English language tour to a foreigner. But I pressed the guide to show me the celebrated golden statue of Turkmembashi, which I'd heard revolved to always face the sun. When we got there, I was told it had had to be removed from its original location, and it doesn't go round anymore. Instead, the leader gazes out at the city he created with the thick stare of someone who believes he's there for eternity.
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And with that, from Jonathan Fryer among the great white palaces of Ashgabat, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again on Saturday morning with more stories from foreign correspondence, some in exotic locations, others anything but goodbye.