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From Our Own Correspondent
In the Valley of the Dawn
00:27:47
Kate Adie presents despatches from: Tim Whewell in a small town in Syria in the midst...
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Good morning. Today we're in Afghanistan, where there's already trepidation about NATO's departure in 2014. The bawabs of Cairo, caretakers of buildings and moral guardians of their inhabitants. Psychic energy nymphs and symbolic lancers, the Valley of Dawn cult in Brazil and why no west bank party is complete without a Yasser Arafat look alike. In Syria, a ceasefire agreed for the festival of Eid El Ada fell apart after only a few hours. Yesterday, activists reported fighting in several cities and a car bomb exploded in the capital, Damascus. Hopes for a peaceful holiday weekend disappeared. Aid agencies hoping to use the truce to give aid and medical care were thwarted. The United nations says 20,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Bashar Al Assad's government began last year. The fighting between government forces and rebels has divided communities across the country. But Tim Whewell finds the situation is more complicated than it might at first seem when he recently visited a small town in Syria.
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Above all, it's the moustaches that take you back. Those luxuriant moustaches of the early 1980s, as sported by Graham Souness and many of his Liverpool teammates, redolent of an era that in Britain was the heyday of Geoffrey Howe and Boy George. The early taboo breaking years of Brookside. In Syria, it was the time of the Hama massacre, when its dictator, Hafez Al Assad, used tanks, artillery, bombs and mass executions to put down an Islamic uprising. His brother in charge of the operation is said to have boasted of killing 38,000 people. But the moustaches, at least in Syrian provincial football leagues, were the same. I'm in a concrete hut beside an Astroturf soccer pitch on the edge of the small town of Mara, a kind of clubhouse, its walls raddled with recent shrapnel scars. Studying the huge blown up photo that dominates the room, fuzzy and green with age. It shows 13 young men, many with well covered upper lips, their arms folded, faces stern as required in such group shots. All in their early 20s. They were Mara's town team in 1983. It's the year after the massacre, though. The shock waves of that secret slaughter 90 miles away, unblogged, untweeted, unrecorded by mobile phone or even TV camera, were still running through this community and many others throughout Syria. The 2am knock at the door by political intelligence. The disappearance of fathers, brothers and uncles who were never heard of again. Meanwhile, Marah Town Football Club won the Aleppo provincial championship. Top right on the team photo is the captain, midfielder Yasser Al Hadji. At his shoulder, Mohammad Al Najjar, who supported him on the right wing. Today, in Syria's civil war, they're on opposite sides. Al Haji for the revolution, Al Najj for the regime. But they're not actually shooting one another yet. And in the days I spent in the little town of Mara, I realised that war between people who grew up together can bring exceptional cruelty, but also unusual compromise. Al Najjar, a stalwart of the dictatorship's Baath Party, was mayor of the town before government forces abandoned it to the rebels back in April. And the rebels kept him on, even though he's not renounced his old views because he's useful. Almost daily, the regime sends its fighter jets and helicopters over Mara to maim and kill and to demolish its own schools and government offices. But thanks to the mayor and his connections with the manager of the Central bank and other well placed figures in Aleppo, it also sends salaries and fuel for those who survive. In another similar piece of pragmatism, it's said that Mara keeps its electricity supply at least the three hours on, three hours off that most of Syria gets now in return for its new rulers rule. Refraining from attacking a local government military academy, al Hadji, the 1983 team captain, escaped the stifling atmosphere of Hafez al Assad, Syria to make a career abroad in journalism and business, but returned 18 months ago to join the uprising. He took me to the town hall to meet Al Najjar, and immediately they began arguing about how much the mayor, in all those terrible years, had known about the disappearance of common friends. What a strange scene. Two middle aged men, once best friends, haranguing one another in a bombastically furnished office. The wall slightly paler where portraits of the Assads once hung. A flunkey tugging our elbows to take glasses of sweet tea, while outside, the population's eyes are trained forever upwards for the planes that may blow us to bits. I'm caught between two sides, says the mayor. The government that bombs us and the rebels who kidnapped my son. And he's not the only Syrian who feels like that, who thinks this war, in which no outside power will intervene, is going nowhere. But some also think that even amid the killing, seeds of long dormant civil society, of individual and group responsibility, are beginning to sprout as the regime slowly withers, its military machine now its main sign of life. Perhaps Al Hadji and Al Najj's row over those once unmentionable disappearances is a tiny part of that process. A new beginning that far, far down the road may yet produce a negotiated end to the war. Of course, it's odd to even talk about that, about how some towns are organizing their own services, refusing to pay taxes to the state when in other places like Mara, deaths so frequent they dig the graves in advance. But certainly Al Hadji and Al Najjar could never have discussed disappearances openly when they were still teammates on Mara United. In Britain, we tend to look back at those now embarrassing 80s moustaches as a vision of lost innocence. But of course, there was no innocence behind the facial fur in 1980s Syria, only crushing fear and murderous secrets.
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Tim Huell In Syria, the Eid holiday also turned deadly in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber killed more than 40 people at a mosque in the northern city of Maimouna. The apparent target was local politicians and senior police officials, but it was mostly policemen and civilians who were killed. Killed. Six children were among the dead. In two years, NATO troops will leave the country. There will also be elections in 2014. And as Andrew north has been finding out, Afghans are already looking ahead with trepidation.
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It wasn't long before 2014 came up. I was having a meal with some Afghan friends, sitting cross legged on floor cushions and tearing into a plate of spiced lamb kebabs. Do you think you could get me a visa? Said one friend. I'll call Saleem as he paused to sip a glass of green tea. In different forms, you keep hearing the same conversation. As the twin deadline of NATO's pullout and Afghanistan's next elections draw nearer, 2014 looms in everyone's mind like a boulder balanced precariously on a mountainside, threatening to come crashing down. Some are already moving before it can roll, fearing a new civil war and quietly getting their families abroad. Talking with another friend about someone we both know returning to Afghanistan after studying in Europe, he laughed in surprise. Why did he come back? The government of President Hamid Karzai angrily attack such doom laden talk nonsense and garbage, officials said about a recent international think tank report predicting a post2014 meltdown. But as we passed around the last of the kebabs soaking up the juice with hunks of bread, the blame for the pessimistic mood was being shed out equally between Mr. Karzai and the West. A friend who works with foreign contractors was telling tales of their profligacy, spending huge sums on renting accommodation that was never used or paid for by Western taxpayers. But they also pointed the finger at the Afghan leader for his actions or lack of them. So far, he has done nothing to allay fears of a repeat of the systematic fraud in the last election. There are concerns Mr. Karzai will try to fix the result in 2014, not for himself, as the constitution prevents him standing again, but for a proxy who he can control. Some speculate that could even be his brother. Just smears Mr. Karzai's backers say Afghanistan is looking forward to an election free from foreign interference with was how one of his advisors put it. Of course they are, said a prominent Afghan politician I was talking to who used to support Karzai. So this time they can do whatever they like. The sourness in his voice is a flavor of the tension. Some fear will spill over even before the election, toppling that boulder and sparking a renewed battle for Kabul. At least 50,000 people died in the city during the last civil war, far more than during the past decade. The Afghan commanders or warlords responsible for the carnage have used the last 10 years to regain power untouched by any process of justice. Backed by past American ambassadors, President Karzai decided that letting them be was the safer course. But to many Afghans, it looks like the government has gone further and is trying to rehabilitate them. On my way to see a doctor friend the other day, I passed one of Kabul's universities. Seeing the big, freshly painted sign above the entrance, my taxi driver shook his head in disgust. The sign read Bahanadin Rabbani, preceded by the word for martyr. A small tribute, you might say, for a man who headed a peace council charged with trying to reach out to the Taliban. Until he was assassinated, probably by the Taliban. But Kabul residents remember Mr. Rabbani better as the president during the civil war, whose faction helped turn the city to rubble. As America's longest ever war enters its 12th year, there's cynicism and suspicion all round. This distrust is made worse by the fact that most foreigners here are more separated from Afghans than ever. Not just the military, but diplomats, aid workers and even journalists living behind high blast walls, never walking, only venturing out in four wheel drives. Somehow they still manage to write books about Afghanistan, though Saleem laughed. Yet for all this gloom, the worst predictions may still turn out to be wrong, for the simple reason. A lot more people have a lot more to lose. During the last civil war, the commanders were, in effect, fighting for the spoils after the Soviet withdrawal. Now, after 10 years of NATO intervention, they're wealthy and many with positions in government. While there are fears the Taliban will regain control in their heartlands in the South. It will be much harder to repeat their takeover of the whole country. Which they did partly by buying people off. The cost will now be too high. After all the blood and treasure that's been spent here. This is hardly a verdict of success. But it may be enough to stop the boulder falling.
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Andrew north, the capital of Brazil, moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in 1960. This futuristic and modernist city owes much of its architecture to Oskar Niemeyer, still alive Today, age 104. The aim was to draw development and prosperity north from the shores of the Atlantic to an underdeveloped part of the country. The plateau on which Brasilia rests is apparently endowed with crystals so luminous they can be seen from outer space. It's become a magnet for traditional and unorthodox religions. Amongst them the Valley of Dawn cult. As Rajan Datta has been finding out,
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the road heading north out of Brasilia becomes flat, open and very dusty. By the time we arrive at the gates of the Valley of the Dawn. I'm in one of many run down satellite districts that encircle the city. It's very different here to the space age landscape of the capital I've just left behind. Brasilia was designed as a utopian political and administrative centre for the chattering classes. They didn't really foresee these outlying slums. But this is the home of the so called Valle de Amanise, the Valley of the Dawn. Inside, in a sheltered courtyard, I can see every shade, size and age of Brazilian. The most striking are dressed in bright robes, stiff high collars and colorful storybook dresses. These, I'm told, are the psychic mediums. The followers of the original cult of the Valley of the Dawn. A movement founded in the 1950s by a woman called Tia Naver. Who is reputed to be Brazil's first ever female truck driver. Now, just like any hard bitten journalist would, I have my doubts about this place. And they're not dispelled. As I walk through the semi darkness of the elliptical Temple of Dawn. Where mediums, I'm told, are engaged in the ritual of cleansing the world of negative psychic energy. One person stands waving his hands around the head of another. Who is seated and said to be harboring suffering spirits. They shiver, moan, rant and sigh. Apparently all this negative energy is then sucked up into a huge vortex by a giant spaceship from the planet Capella. Which then recycles it into positive energy. We're talking some kind of cosmic power plant or psychic ecosystem here. My eyes begin to adjust to the murkiness of the temple and I make out illuminated icons and images from a mishmash of cultures and religions. Catholicism, animism, African mysticism, shamanism, and a lot more isms. For good measure, I'm now introduced to a short, softly spoken 36 year old called Junior, who turns out to be the grandson of the founder, Tia Naver. Junior has been helping his uncle run the show since the matriarch of the movement died in 1985. We wander over to a large open air arena and encounter what looks like a fancy dress party for grown ups in a brightly painted and adventure playground. This is the thrice daily ceremony of the shooting star. Junior points out that only women, or the nymphs as they're called here, are allowed to carry the symbolic lances. The men, sorry, the masters or jaguars aren't allowed to. That's because throughout human history men have deployed them to ill effect. Officially, the Catholic Church disapproves of the Valley of the dawn, but only the week before a deputation of 50 friars had paid a visit. Pope John Paul II apparently sent a letter of blessing and even presidents have come to pay their respects. But come on, what about the giant spaceship? What about the spiritual engineer called Tiazinho, who apparently project manages the whole show from somewhere in the ether? He's the spirit who's said to have sent Tia Neva the elaborate blueprint for the settlement, which he then drew with a stick on the ground. And what about all those weird costumes? Doesn't Junior accept that people will think he and the valley are, well, a bit strange? Sure, junior says, but we don't mind. We think religions can coexist and many of our moral positions are not so different to those of the Catholic Church. In some respects we're more liberal. We certainly don't think we're superior. Later, as we wander through the evening throng of locals and mediums mixing side by side dodging kids on bikes, I ask Junior what time they shut up shop and close the doors for the day. He tells me maybe 11 or 12 at night, but he still has to be available to receive outsiders who might want to come in at any time, day or night. And then as I look around, I realize that many of the people present have come with psychological problems or with a history of drug taking, and that once here they're accepted, cocooned from the poverty and violence that lurk outside and taught to re channel their energy. Basically, it seems to me, the Valley of the dawn operates as a refuge for lost souls and who on earth hard bitten journalist or not, am I
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to mock that Rajan Datta the concierge has long been a feature of apartment life around the world. In Paris, they typically have a small set of rooms at the entrance to a building, ideal for clocking comings and goings. In New York, an inappropriate Christmas tip to a doorman can result in your post going missing for the next 12 months. Cairo also has its own special breed of caretaker, with her own particular concerns and foibles, as Tom Dinham discovered when he moved to the city.
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One of the many things any fresh faced arrival in Cairo is likely to notice lugging bags and suitcases to a new abode is that there will be somebody sitting in front of it, sternly looking into space with a stare so stoical that it can only have resulted from a lifetime of gazing, sitting, and waiting. In Cairo's hectic maelstrom of activity, there is one person who can take things relatively easy the bawab. Security guard, porter, enforcer of social mores and general snoop rolled all into one, the bawab is a quintessentially Egyptian figure and can be found sitting in front of almost every building in the capital, often from Upper Egypt. The bawab brings a distinctly rural flavor to life in the largest, most populous city in Africa, sporting the long, flowing robes favored in Egypt's countryside, along with a distinctly non cairn dialect of Arabic. Many bawabs are in the city, but not really of it. Forget the anonymity of city life almost anywhere else in the world. In Cairo, your bawab will be keeping a beady eye on the comings and goings of anyone associated with you, especially if they happen to be female. The mixing of foreigners and Egyptians of the opposite sex, however, is where the trouble really begins. On the occasions I've headed up to my apartment with an Egyptian lady, she's often frozen at the sight of my bawab, whom I'll call Uncle Mahmoud, slouched on his plastic deck chair, watching the world go by. I can't come up to your apartment with him there, hissed one friend of mine, blushing. I just can't stand him judging me. He'll think I'm a whore. To her, and many like her, Mahmoud's opinion really mattered, and his moral judgments carried weight, even if they had no basis whatsoever in reality. I often found it hard to believe that Uncle Mahmoud, the jovial and somewhat annoying man who occupied his days sitting staring at the front door of my apartment building, could be the object of sheer terror for Egyptian female visitors. This was further reinforced when my Egyptian girlfriend started spending nights at my apartment, apparently without incurring his wrath. The only change I noticed in Mahmoud's behavior was his joyous salutations and congratulations on the moza, Egyptian slang for attractive girl who was visiting me. In Mahmoud's world, it seemed the fact I had a pretty Egyptian woman visiting my apartment made me a hero. This didn't seem like the austere moral enforcer who had so terrified my female friends. Until, that is, my girlfriend let me know that perhaps the reason Uncle Mahmoud was so happy was that she had been bribing him every time she came to visit. It seems my bawab belonged in the venal rather than the liberal category. What on earth for? I inquired. I can just tell him to mind his own business. True, she said thoughtfully. But he'd cause a scandal and ruin your reputation in the building. It's easier this way. After some weeks, I realized what she meant. I had a new bawab by now. Let us call him Uncle Sharif. He let it be known that he was unhappy with the official contribution I was making to his finances, a nominally fixed rate agreed upon when you sign your housing contract. Sharif wanted more. I refused. The payback came soon enough. A friend of mine on the street informed me Sharif had been openly speculating about why a Westerner would be visited by Egyptian females, and the word was I must be an iswangi, or womanizer. I confronted him. The game was up. Throwing his arms wide in an exaggerated embrace, Sharif kissed me on both cheeks, apparently a sign of sincere apology and respect. From that point onwards, my bawap has never again looked me in the face, and the rumors, I have been reliably informed, have stopped.
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Tom Dinham it's almost eight years since the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died suddenly after falling ill, aged 75. Some Palestinians have long suspected he may have been poisoned by Israeli agents, something the country has always denied. Now, though the Palestinian Authority in the west bank says it plans to exhume Mr. Arafat's body to allow scientists to carry out tests. This follows a recent television documentary suggesting that his death may have been caused by a radioactive substance. Yasser Arafat still remains a huge figure in Palestinian society, as John Donison explains.
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Picture the scene. You've popped down your local fruit and veg market to pick up a pack of potatoes, possibly a pepper, a couple of onions. You're beginning to daydream about the corned beef hash you're planning to rustle up later, when who should emerge from behind a Pile of peaches. But Yasser Arafat. Decked out in green military fatigues in his trademark chequered black and white headscarf, Chairman Arafat saunters through the crowds, pausing occasionally to admire the cherry tomatoes or a nice looking melon.
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Two for a five.
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Arabu Ammar, as Arafat is often known here. Shouts a trader in what I assume must be something akin to cockney Arabic. Abu Ammar responds with a victory salute and a toothy smile before moving on past the cabbages and courgettes to shake the outstretched hands of shoppers. And to be clear, this was just the other day in Ramallah. Now, before the conspiracy theorists work up too much of a lather, there'll be plenty of time for that later. This was obviously not the real Yasser Arafat back from the dead. The man in the market was Salam Smirat, something of a minor celebrity as the West Bank's most impressive Yasser Arafat look alike. And this doppelganger is the unreal deal. He has the same slightly hooked nose, the pouting lips, the twinkle in the eye. Salaam can often be seen at Palestinian festivals, working the crowds. He's available for weddings, birthdays and bar mitz. Well, weddings and birthdays. On this occasion, I'd actually arranged to meet him down the market. I was keen to hear what Saleh made of current plans to bring the actual Arafat back from the grave. The Palestinian Authority says it intends to exhume the body from its tomb in Ramallah to investigate whether he was murdered. It comes after a television documentary reignited allegations that Arafat was poisoned, specifically by using the radioactive element polonium. Perhaps. Strangely, the new accusations did not cause much of a stir amongst Palestinians. Most have long taken it as unproven fact that their leader died of unnatural causes, poisoned by Israel with help from somebody inside Arafat's circle. It's no secret that Israel tried to kill me on many occasions, says Salem, looking pained as he lapses back into character. The Israeli government has always denied the poisoning allegations, and it's hard to imagine that whatever the outcome of the latest investigations, it will end the argument. As is often the case, I suspect Palestinians and Israelis will each stick to their lines. But I was also intrigued to know what Palestinians think of Arafat now, eight years after his death. Salem, as you might imagine, was emphatic. Everybody loves Yasser Arafat, he declared, pointing to his chest. And it's true that you find few Palestinians who at least publicly speak ill of their former leader. While for most Israelis Arafat was a terrorist who became an untrustworthy partner in peace. For most Palestinians, at least in the west bank, he remains a hero, a freedom fighter against Israel's occupation and a unifying figure. He was a father to us, the father of Palestine, mansor Taboub tells me as he guides me round the Yasser Arafat archive collection in Ramallah. But as we look over old photos showing Abu Ammar as a fresh faced pencil moustache youth, I ask Mansoor about all the allegations of corruption. Look, he tells me, you love and respect your father, but he isn't perfect. He makes mistakes, but you still love him. Privately, many Palestinians are much more damning about the kickbacks and cronyism under Arafat's leadership. And publicly, there are a few people who challenge his legacy. He was like a king, a sheikh with all the power in one man's hands, says Hazam, a young political activist. When I ask him how Arafat might have fared in the so called Arab Spring, Hazam stopped short of calling his former leader a dictator. He tells me people love Arafat, but that he was a terrible manager and that Palestinians are still recovering from the system he created. Perhaps Arafat's most enduring legacy, though, is that in terms of popular support, Palestinians have never been able to fill his shoes. He was too big an act to follow. Across the west bank, you see graffiti and murals celebrating Abu Amr, but you don't see much depicting Abu Marzan, the current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinians have an Arafat look alike, but for many the real thing has remained irreplaceable.
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John Donnison on the West Bank, Yasser Arafat gone but not forgotten. That brings us to the end of this edition, but there's more from our own correspondence on both Thursday and Saturday next week. Do join us then. Goodbye.