← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Iceland's Book Boom
00:27:58
Looking behind the news. In this programme: David Loyn examines the claim that NATO in...
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Narrator
Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting
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Kate Adie
House in London, you've downloaded the latest
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Steve Evans
edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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Kate Adie
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Reporter
Hello. In today's programme, is President Karzai right to say NATO forces have brought nothing but suffering to Afghanistan? The Egyptian army takes flak over its campaign against militants in Sinai. There's a gun battle in Acapulco as Mexicans try to clean up after two devastating storms. And we find out why there's a book boom in Iceland. More writers per head, more books published, more books read than anywhere else in the world. NATO has reacted angrily to the suggestion by the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, that the alliance has failed to bring stability to his country. A senior NATO official described his words as unfair to all the soldiers who'd lost their lives there. President Karzai told the BBC the campaign had caused suffering in Afghanistan, despite the loss of thousands of coalition soldiers and the billions spent on military operations. Mr. Karzai said that he was personally talking to the Taliban and urging them to contest forthcoming elections. The British presence in Helmand Province is being steadily reduced. David Loyne was there when the British arrived in January 2006. He's there again now, assessing what's been achieved since.
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Narrator
In the first British patrol onto the streets of Lashkagar, soldiers wore soft berets, proudly pointing out how they were going to do things differently. As a US patrol passed by in heavily armoured vehicles, they took over the base from a small US contingent. Journalists all slept in a tent next to a beach volleyball court. And we ate crayfish tails flown in at unimaginable cost. Standard US military food. The beach volleyball court is still there, but today it's in the middle of a substantial base which at its peak housed hundreds of mainly British soldiers and aid officials in a place some called Helmanshire. But nobody is patrolling in soft berries now. This week, when I went out to see an aid project, I travelled in the sort of heavily armoured military vehicle the British used to mock the optimism of the corporal who told me back in 2006, everyone has been really friendly, they're happy to see us. The British was clearly misplaced. Before Tony Blair sent troops down here to Helmand, five British soldiers had died. In the first four years of the Afghan intervention, 439 more have died since. The decision to send troops to Helmand was made by a defence secretary who said, we'll be happy to leave in three years and without firing a shot. He meant, of course, that they'd been sent to provide support for an aid programme, not to fight a war. Colonel Henry Worsley, the first commanding officer in those long ago days of soft berry patrols, told me they wanted to grab development by the scruff of the neck. Since then, I've been here pretty well every year and seen just how hard it is to make a difference. Once I went to see how a program to encourage women to plant vegetables and keep chickens was going. The plastic sheeting on the greenhouses had gone and no vegetables grew and the chickens had disappeared, presumably into the pot. And there was to be a business park close to the airport, designed to encourage food processing plants for export with lucrative deals for investors. The money disappeared and the business park was never built. If you mention it now, there's an embarrassed silence and shuffling of feet among aid officials. Then there's the continued failure to eradicate the opium poppy. I've been briefed frequently here by earnest agricultural economists on how they were going to provide alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. But three times as much opium was produced in Helmand last year as when British troops arrived. Most of the illegal heroin on sale in Britain comes from poppies grown in Helmond. And yet, despite the cost, the loss of life and the blunders, there has been some genuine progress. President Karzai is wrong to say, as he did in a BBC interview this week, that NATO forces have caused only suffering for Afghanistan. It's hard to knock the enthusiasm of a girl like Rehana, in her last year at school, speaking good English and now on her way to medical college. Not possible under the Taliban. And there was Ahmed, the construction worker I met building a road financed by Royal Engineers until six months previous. Previously, he'd been the local Taliban commander. He changed sides because he saw a more stable future. Being paid to build a road rather than being shot at trying to blow it up. There are district councils holding government to account across Helmand, developed by Britain, a scheme now being rolled out nationwide. There are functioning courts and a prison that's far superior to other Afghan facilities. When I went to see it last year, a woman who'd come to visit her son told me without being asked, that this was a really good jail. Far better, she added, than the one where her other son was being held in Kandahar. And thinking back to my visit in 2006, a viewer saw our TV piece in which a young boy speaking fair English asked Colonel Worsley if the British would give him a football. Money was raised and footballs duly arrived in Helmand. Although the colonel told me dryly he was more of a cricket fan himself. Eight years on, and Afghan teams recently achieved international success in both sports, winning the South Asia Football cup and qualifying for the Cricket World cup for the first time. They could not have done that under the Taliban.
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Reporter
David Loyne the security forces in Egypt, still trying to restore order after the ousting of the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July, face a growing crisis in the Sinai Peninsula. Yesterday, an empty military intelligence office in Sinai was blown up by suspected militants, while an Al Qaeda inspired group, Ansa Bayt Al Maqdis, said it was responsible for a bomb attack on a police station there earlier in the week. Three policemen were killed. The armies responded to the growing violence by pouring in troops and armoured vehicles. But Louisa Loveluck says some in Sinai accused them of being heavy handed.
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Louisa Loveluck
GLASS crunches underfoot as I tiptoe through the abandoned house. This was once the home of a Bedouin businessman, but it has stood empty since it was shelled by an army tank. My journey to Alhamdiyya, a small village in north Sinai, was not an easy one. Egypt's government has declared the area a closed military zone and journalists are discouraged from making the trip. The government says it is fighting a war on terror here. Since the collapse of dictator Hosni Mubarak's security apparatus in 2011, Sinai has slipped out of central government control. Its barren terrain now provides fertile land for jihadist groups. Their insurgency has been gathering pace since a military led takeover pushed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi from power three months ago. Today, Sinai's police and soldiers face near daily attacks. Its jihadists say they've also been operating in the capital, Cairo. Now the state says it is fighting back. But in the patchwork of North Sinai villages where it focuses its efforts, residents say that no distinction is being drawn between militants and civilians. In neighbouring Elmadiyya and El Mokatta, houses stand shattered and charred. Local residents are angry and confused. I saw the helicopter hovering above my home, says Ibrahim, a local farmer. The next moment I watched the building collapse. My nine year old daughter was inside at the time. He shakes his head wearily. They call this a war on terror, but are my children terrorists? During daylight hours, most people now leave their houses fearful of attacks from land or air. I find one group of locals sitting by a sheep pen. Black smoke billows in the distance. Today's operation has targeted tanks storing fuel that would have been smuggled through underground tunnels into neighbouring Gaza. Before the operation, these tunnels were big business. Decades of neglect from the central state pushed formal employment out of reach for most people here, so the illicit economy has flourished instead. Said is the brother of a prominent sheikh whose house has also been destroyed. We are being punished for living alongside them, he says angrily, referring to the area's jihadists. When I first heard that soldiers were being attacked, I was sorry, but no more. HE LAUGHS BITTERLY they don't want to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. They just hit all. There are militants here. The remains of another group of houses are plainly visible from the main road. Residents say they belong to a member of Ansar Beytz Al Maqdis, a jihadist group which claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt attempt on Egypt's interior minister last month. But around the corner, I meet an old man who's sitting on a battered mattress in the sand. He lived in one of the neighbouring properties until it was targeted on the same day as the houses allegedly owned by the jihadist. My wife and daughters were in the house when the army came, he says. They ordered them outside, rigged the four corners with explosives and then blew it up. There's nothing left. As he speaks, the old man tugs nervously at his battered jacket. Everything he owned was destroyed in the attack. The clothes in which he sits are the only ones he has left. I ask why the military targeted his house. I wish I could understand. HE SIGHS My son has been arrested. Perhaps they thought he was a militant, but he works with me every day. We are innocent men, but it feels like they are trying to make us terrorists. Jihadist groups are capitalizing on this sense of isolation and injustice, making appeals for local people to stand together against the state. One recently released an Internet statement with a message to residents who help the Egyptian army. The treacherous agent will only get the sword, it read. But while support for the army is at an all time low in Ahmadiyya, some remain willing to forgive its successors. Holding court in his home after dark, a local leader, Sheikh Abdul Hadi, says collateral damage is understandable in a military campaign. They don't know the territory, so of course they are going to make mistakes, he tells me. But the sons of Sinai don't work against the army. In fact, I am giving them my boy for active service. I want him to join the fight against terrorism. The Egyptian army argues that it is trying to restore order in a country that is hugely polarised. But as I drive past more charred houses in Ahmedia, I wonder how much more the villagers can take and whether the army's campaign is actually driving local people straight into the arms of the militants.
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Reporter
And that was Louisa Lovelock now. Christmas present. Giving in Iceland's no problem at all. You give books, everybody gets one, and it's always a hardback. Iceland may be a small, remote island, but literature there is big. There are more writers per head of population, more books published, and more books read there than anywhere else. This is one of the few places on earth where writers, publishing and libraries are all thriving. Rosie Goldsmith's been meeting some of those behind Iceland's book boom it's hard to
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Rosie Goldsmith
avoid writers in Reykjavik. There's a phrase in Icelandic, adganga medbok imag. Everyone gives birth to a book, literally has a book in their stomach, and one in ten Icelanders will publish one. Does it get rather competitive? I ask the young novelist Kristin Ericksdottir. Yes. I live with my mother and partner, who are also full time writers, but we try to publish in alternate years, she says, so we don't compete too much. Special saga tours, that's story saga not over 50s bus tours show us story plaques on public buildings, sagas written on napkins and coffee cups. Each geyser and waterfall we visit has a tale of ancient heroes and heroines attached. Our guide stands up mid tour to recite his own poetry. Our taxi driver's father and grandfather write biographies. Public benches have barcodes, so you can listen to a story on your smartphone as you sit. Reykjavik is rocking with writers. It's book festival time. Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai and Generation X author Douglas Copeland rub shoulders with Icelandic literary stars Gerda, Krisni and Sion. Sion also pens lyrics for Bjork, Iceland's singing superstar. Writers are respected and nurtured, alla Magnusdottier tells me. They live well. Some even get a salary. Ayla's head of the New Icelandic Literature center, which offers state support for literature and its translation, modern sagas, poetry, children's books, literary and erotic fiction. Writers write everything, she says. But the biggest boom is in crime writing. That is perhaps no surprise in this Nordic nation, But crime novel sales are staggering, double that of any of its Nordic neighbours. So what's led to this phenomenal book boom? I'd say it's due to a crop of darn good writers telling riveting tales with elegant economy and fantastic characters. Iceland's black lava riverbeds, its steaming, bubbling earth with its towering volcanoes and fairytale streams, also make it the perfect setting for stories. Solvi Bjorn Sigurdsson, a tall, twinkly Icelandic sweater clad novelist, says they owe a lot to the past. We are a nation of storytellers, when it was dark and cold, we had nothing else to do. Thanks to the poetic eddas and medieval sagas. We've always been surrounded by stories, he adds. After independence in 1944, literature helped define our identity. Solvi pays homage to Iceland's Nobel literature laureate, Halldor Laxness, whose books sell in petrol stations and tourist centers across the island. Locals name their cats after Laxness and make pilgrimages to his home. When Laxness won the Nobel Prize in 1955, he put modern Icelandic literature on the map, Solvi tells me. He gave us confidence to write. A combination of ash and crash also put Iceland on the map. The crepa, as it's called, or crisis of 2008, which helped trigger the world economic crash, came first, followed by the disastrous ash cloud from one of Iceland's many active volcanoes two years later. Halgrimur, comedian, painter, writer and outstanding. As each tells me, the Krepper brought Icelanders down to earth. It made us less complacent and gave artists a creative shot in the arm, as Thatcher did for Britain. He grins. We address politics too. It's not all about sagas, but some fear a book Krepper. Iceland has so many writers that there's huge pressure on publishers. In a uniquely Icelandic phenomenon, the Jolla Booker Flod, or Christmas book flood, most books are published in the months leading up to Christmas. About now, every household gets a book catalogue through the door. They pore over it like a furniture catalogue, and everyone receives books as Christmas presents, hardback and shrink wrapped. Even now, when I go to the hairdressers, Kristin Wiedersdottier, manager of the UNESCO City of Literature project, says they don't want celebrity gossip from me, but recommendations for Christmas books. But it's a lock of blue hair on the head of Iceland's most famous celebrity, which alerts me to the presence of the singer Bjork. She attends several of the festival events. It's great to see you supporting writers, I say to her. It's a small place. We've grown up together, she replies. We support each other. If Bjork was once upon a time Iceland's best cultural brand, she is today joined by a whole bokoflot of authors.
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Reporter
And that's Rosie Goldsmith. The Mexican government's been taking heavy criticism after the country was battered by two simultaneous tropical storms for the first time since the late 1950s. More than 150 people were killed and thousands displaced as hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel battered different parts of the country. The authorities stand accused of failing to prevent prevent home building in flood plains and failing to enforce construction standards on both highways and bridges. Much of the damage was in the western state of Guerrero. One village in particular, La Pintada, was almost completely wiped away by a vast mudslide, with the region still struggling to cope after serious flooding. Will Grant's been reminded that much of this territory is dominated by drug cartels.
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Kate Adie
Normally, the high pitched sound of children playing inside a sports hall would be a happy one. But as we bustled past the armed guards on the door, muttering our introductions to the officials, it was clear this was no fun kids day out. Rather, these children and their parents and grandparents watching on were homeless, displaced by the days of non stop rain and mudslides caused by two hurricanes hitting Mexico at once. In emergency shelters across the country, from the western jungles of Oaxaca to the Gulf of Mexico, survivors are telling stories of having lost everything in the floods. But few have suffered as much as the people inside this particular building. One woman had lost her four daughters, aged from 2 to 10 years old, dragged away by the swollen river. Only the youngest's body had washed up in the patio of the sports hall. Huddled underneath an awning were the villages of La Pintada, once a thriving coffee growing village in the mountains of Guerrero, now a byword for the loss and destruction of Hurricane Manuel. The local people had been eating an Independence Day lunch when tragedy struck. Their quiet, anonymous lives uprooted in an instant as a huge mudslide engulfed the streets and plazas, flattening their rickety homes and leaving at least 68 villagers dead. It was the worst single event of the storms and the victims gathered in this tent on the outskirts of Acapulco were staring into the middle distance, some of them barefoot, clutching their naked children in their arms. There was nothing we could do, Margherito Hernandez said as we took a seat on a bright yellow bench. The young carpenter lost his father, his brother and his sister in law in the landslide, when the truck they were travelling in was covered by the tonnes of earth that fell from the mountainside. He was only saved because they'd told him to put some tools away in his workshop while they ran an errand. Margarito describes how the mud was like a swamp and that if you stepped on it, you'd go under too. He told a harrowing tale of running through the streets fruitlessly searching for his father's pickup until the terrible realization dawned, of finding his mother on the floor of their home, hysterical with grief, but having to leave her to trek with some of the other young men to the next town along to get word to the authorities of what had happened. All too much for any 18 year old to endure. But then the final heartbreaking comment. The president, Enrique Pena Nieto, had visited the shelter a day before and Margherito had spoken to him. What did you ask him for? I asked. A visa to the United States, he replied without a hint of irony. I have aunts there. Maybe I can finally meet them in person. Now, as we were taken by helicopter to other affected areas, it was clear, even without the hurricane damage, why so many young men and women would try to escape this part of the world. Over the noise of the rotor blades, I asked one of the soldiers if this was normally drug trafficking territory, the mountains being the perfect altitude and climate for the production of the region's famous strain of marijuana, Acapulco Gold. Normally, yes. Shouted back the soldier Los Caballeros, referring to the Knights Templar, a particularly violent and cult like gang which operates in these hills like everyone else, though the cartels were being hampered by the floods, another TV crew we know walked through waterlogged opium fields as the rains washed away illegal poppy plantations and farmers maize crops alike. The cartel's presence was another reason some communities were too frightened to leave their homes and make the trek to safety. Acapulco, too, seems a shadow of its former self. The famous hideaway for the Hollywood stars. A place where the Clintons took their honeymoon is looking washed up, an undercurrent of street crime never far from the crumbling facades of its beachfront hotels. As we drove down the promenade known as La Costera, in search of a coffee shop with sufficient WI fi to send our material back to London, we stopped at some traffic lights. Suddenly we heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire. Shots were being exchanged on the road behind us. People began to scatter. Others got out of their cars. We could see the police with their automatic weapons raised, pointing at unknown assailants. On the other side of the road, a gun battle in broad daylight in the heart of one of Mexico's tourist hotspots, while nearby villagers struggled with their grief. Little wonder Margherito wants to leave.
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Reporter
Will Grant In Acapulco, the next four years will feature much reflection on the First World War. But in Germany right now, they're remembering a battle recognised as one of the major turning points in European history. The Battle of the nations, or Battle of Leipzig, was fought 200 years ago. Between October 16th and 19th, 1813, 600,000 troops from Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden and France took part in what was the biggest battle before the First World War. the end of it, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Today the battlefield is marked by a huge memorial. Steve Evans has been to see it.
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Steve Evans
I must say that I am something of a connoisseur of memorials to the dead. I find a cemetery or a cenotaph or a mausoleum always worth a visit. And the Monument of the Dead at the Battle of the nations is one of the best. Firstly, it is, well monumental. It stands in its granite and sandstone immensity 91 meters high, as high pretty well as a football field is long at its core. Inside the monument itself is a vast sepulchral cavern in which there are huge statues of Teutonic knights, their eyes closed in death, their hands crossed on their swords in peace. There are endless carved statues of the dead. And this is what makes it so moving. A hundred thousand people died in the battle, the greatest slaughter before the First World War. And at the monument you do find yourself sitting in the gloom on the granite inside the tower, just thinking about them. And this is what a monument ought to be about. It is the grief in those dead stone eyes which make the memorial moving, not just its immensity. After all, every despot probably does a nice line in large memorials which fail to move even the softest heart. In the southeast corner of Berlin is another truly vast memorial. But the dead there seem to be secondary. The Soviet war memorial in Treptow park is where 5,000 Red army soldiers who died taking Berlin are buried. But they aren't the main focus. Rather, it is Soviet power, and above all, the power of one J. Stalin, whose quotes are engraved on the 16 large sarcophagi that line the avenue leading up to a giant statue of a Soviet soldier with a sword in one hand and cradling a child in the other arm, he's trampling on a broken swastika. The quotations from Stalin include such poetic gems as for two decades, the Red army protected the peaceful building of the Soviet Union. But in 1941, Hitler's Germany brutally and treacherously invaded our land by breaking the non aggression pact. This memorial is not about remembering the dead, but about reminding the living of who is boss. This is a memorial to the conqueror. Whether a memorial is moving or not seems to me to depend on who it's meant to be memorializing. Is it the ordinary person who suffered, or is it the ruler who ordered the suffering? Does it speak directly and simply to us? Today, in the center of Berlin, the memorial to Jews murdered in the Holocaust consists of 2,711 concrete blocks. I find it completely unmoving. The designer had some complicated concept or other which is lost on me. Unlike, for example, the small plaques in the cobbles of Berlin outside houses where Jews lived and were then forced to leave to be murdered. Or the shoes on the bank of the Danube in Budapest to commemorate those shot there who then fell into the river leaving their shoes behind. I sometimes wonder if the kids who jump from block to block in the Holocaust memorial are being disrespectful, but I don't think they are. The plain fact is that they aren't moved either. If the memorial had done its job, they wouldn't have felt light hearted enough to play. After all, kids do not play at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. This is a memorial which gets it right. A simple idea close to the people. Just the names of all the American dead. And when you go there, you see parents pointing out names to their children, who trace the inlaid letters with their fingers. That's your Uncle Jimmy, the parents say, and the kids are silent, in awe. It does bring tears to your eyes. It is immemorial to the fallen. The monument in Leipzig was designed as a commemoration of victory by the Prussians and others over the French. It was meant as an assertion of nationalistic might. But it's become a memorial to the dead lads barely out of boyhood, slaughtered in their tens of thousands. When I was there, people of all ages were just sitting on the granite and thinking. When a memorial prompts that kind of reflection, you know that it's truly touched our souls.
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Reporter
Steve Evans in Leipzig, musing on memorials and remembrance, subjects we'll doubtless hear a lot more of as we start to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Great War next year. That's it. More on Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.