← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 20, 2011
00:28:16
As the political crisis in Lebanon deepens, Jeremy Bowen explores the country's and of...
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You are listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the BBC World Service and presented by Alan Johnston by going to the from our own correspondent website or indeed to that of the BBC World Service. But here's the edition which goes out on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, much more than a local matter, the crisis building among the tangled politics of Lebanon was a ton of gold loaded onto the Tunisian president's plane as he prepared to flee the country. Children from some of the toughest streets in France follow in the footsteps of Napoleon's unruly hussars. And from Moscow, the story of the BBC cleaner who had to iron 100 white shirts. President Obama has welcomed the news that indictments have been issued against suspects in the murder of the former Lebanese prime Minister, Rafi Keriri. He said it was an important step towards ending what he called a period of impunity in Lebanon. The suspects names and the charges have not been released, but leaked information points to members of Lebanon's powerful Shia movement, Hezbollah. While Hezbollah denies all involvement in the killing six years ago, Jeremy Bowen says many Lebanese fear the unfolding CR could lead to a new civil war.
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In an elegant office in Beirut, a senior advisor to the prime minister was helping me with the politics of Lebanon. I've just been reading a book about quantum physics, he said. It might be useful for you. Apparently you can in physics get separate realities that are both real or seem real at the same time. If physics confuses you, think about political geology fault lines, the ones that divide secular and religious Shia, Muslims and Sunnis, east and west, friends of America and friends of Iran, Israel and the Arabs and so on. All of those, and plenty of others, run through Lebanon along its borders or take a diversion through Beirut from time to time. Lebanon is a miniature version of the Middle east because it has all the ingredients of the big Middle east, but squeezed into a country that is half the size of Wales. The mix gives this place its considerable charm and also explains why it's so unstable and sometimes so violent. Normality here is not like normality elsewhere, apparently. The Druze leader Walid Jumblat has been giving some pithy advice about that to Saad Hariri, who, since his father, Rafiq, was assassinated in 2005, has inherited the leadership of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims and the post of prime minister. Not the easiest jobs in the world. A diplomat told me that Mr. Jhumblat's advice to the younger man Boils down to something like having your father assassinated is just part of being Lebanese, so get over yourself and do your job. The advice was hardly sympathetic, but this can be a cruel country. Mr. Jamblatt inherited his position after his father was assassinated. He often used to say, before he started making friends with them again, that Syrians killed his father and would kill him too, unseen because of fears that Israel will kill him. But ever present is Lebanon's dominant Shia Muslim, Hassan Nasrallah. He's built Hezbollah, with the help of Iran and Syria, into the biggest military force in the country, as well as a political and social movement. The belief here is that the names of his men are on the indictment presented to the UN backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Hague. Mr. Nasrallah sees any mention of his people as an attack on the legitimacy of his entire organization. He says the Israelis killed Rafi Kariri and denounces the tribunal as the tool of Israel and the United States, claiming it's sustained by the testimony and of so called false witnesses who are feeding it lies. Saad hariri has refused Mr. Nasrallah's demands to cut all Lebanon's links with the tribunal. He's under huge pressure. This week that's included the broadcast by a TV station of tapes of Mr. Hariri speaking to tribunal investigators. Either the room was bugged and if so, by whom, or the tapes have come from inside the tribunal. In one extraordinary voice recording dated 2007, Mr. Hariri makes detailed allegations blaming the Syrians who controlled Lebanon at the time of the assassination. On the tape, Mr. Hariri says the chief plotters were President Assad's closest advisors. In 2005, his brother Maher and brother in law Asaf Shaukat. Saad Hariri claims they pushed President Assad to to authorize the assassination. The late Mr. Hariri was a self made billionaire and his son says the Syrians blackmailed him by threatening to orchestrate campaigns against him if he didn't pay up. Saad Hariri claims that Syria's head of intelligence in Lebanon received regular payouts. On the tape, his tone is contemptuous. Every month he'd say, give me another 50,000 or 100,000. Presumably, Mr. Hariri is talking dollars. How did your father get the money? The investigator asks. From the safe, says Mr. Hariri. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world to have wads of money in the office. He adds icily, sometimes the jerk he means the intelligence chief would ask for more to fix his toilet or something. He'd send his car around to be mended by our mechanics, or he'd say, my garden needs some flowers. It was pure blackmail. As Rafiq Hariri's relationship with Damascus deteriorated, his son says he was warned by his friend President Chirac of France, that his life was in danger after the killing. The President was a prime mover behind the establishment of the UN backed tribunal. He hoped the tribunal would prove Syria's guilt. Instead, it now seems to be aiming at Hezbollah, which is of course the close ally of Syria as well as of Iran. Syria denies everything and is in a self confident mood. And last year, Saad Hariri went back on public statements he'd made accusing the Syrians of killing his father. So Lebanon is in crisis again. It's the latest round in the fight for the future of the Middle east between America and its friends and Syria, Iran and theirs. This is much more than a local matter.
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Jeremy Bowen. There are some signs of normality returning to the streets of Tunis after days of disturbance has followed the fleeing into exile of the country's president on Friday. Curfew hours have been reduced. More traffic's venturing out onto the streets. Political cartoons are appearing in the newly free press. Some shops and businesses are reopening. Ministers in the new interim government have been discussing how to resolve deep divisions over the inclusion in key posts of members of the Forum. Former government Adam Minot was in the Tunisian capital reporting on the dramatic collapse of President Ben Ali's regime.
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We met in the main street of Tunis, Avenue Habib Bourguiba. But we were now weaving through narrow alleyways, scurrying along. My guide, a pro democracy campaigner. These men on the corner ahead of us, he muttered, they're secret police. Cross the road and keep walking. We were on our way to meet people involved in the nationwide protest in Tunisia. I'd arrived just over a week ago and the demonstrations which had swept through much of the country had not reached the centre of Tunis. We kept moving past small tobacco shops and bakers, heads down. Right, come in here. We ducked into a doorway, up a flight of white marble stairs. Nearly there, he said, smiling. I'd come to meet men and women involved in the campaign to change the politics of Tunisia. We found them sitting round a long table. I had no idea where we were, but I knew these people were taking a risk, talking to me. It's impossible to move someone like me, a large northern European, through the back streets of Tunis without him being noticed. Agents of the state, I was told, are everywhere, watching. I asked them about the protests the aims, why they'd started, and whether the cost to human life was worth it. These young men who are coming out onto the streets to protest against unemployment, poverty and corruption are very brave. The ones who die are martyrs. A middle aged lawyer told me he doesn't want his name used because he fears reprisals. We owe it to them not to stop until Tunisia has been changed forever. We must take our protest peacefully to the heart of this wicked regime, he said. Here in Tunis later that afternoon, trouble started in the center. A few hundred men had gathered and started chanting anti government slogans. In the southern suburbs, protesters who'd taken to the streets the night before were out again. The police fired volleys of tear gas and before long live ammunition. Reports were constantly coming in of demonstrations continuing and growing in intensity in towns throughout the country. And now shooting had begun in the center of the capital. The protests had become unstoppable and the outcome seemed inevitable. It all began in the southern town of sidi bouzid. On December 17 last year, a 26 year old unemployed undergraduate, Mohammed Bouaziz, set fire to himself. He'd been trying to earn a little money by selling fruit and vegetables by the roadside, but because he didn't have a license, the the hated police stopped him. He was humiliated and slapped by a policewoman. He could take no more, so he poured petrol over his clothes and struck a match. He died two weeks later. This incident sparked something that has never happened before in the Arab world. A popular uprising toppling a government in the space of a month. Zin Al Abedin Ben ali, president for 23 years, was driven out. The flames of protest were fueled by high rates of unemployment, food price inflation and fury about rampant corruption involving the President's family. Everybody has a story about the wealth and greed of the Trebelsys. Lila Trebelsi is former President Ben Ali's second wife. When he came to power in a bloodless coup in 1987, she set about enriching her family. Ahmed Badra is a fisherman who keeps his boat at La Goulette in Tunis. He told me his income had fallen badly in the past weeks because people can't afford to buy fish any more. I used to sell every last fin, he told me. I can't lower my prices. He scratched his grey stubbled chin and nodded towards his skiff rocking gently alongside the harbour wall. If I did, I couldn't even pay for fuel for the boat. He has no doubt who's to blame for his troubles and the demonstrations. C' est la Femme, he said. He pointed across the harbour to the far shore. See those oil tankers? They belonged to her. And that land next to them? She had fingers in everything. Most of it stolen from us. One story about the Trebelses is doing the rounds. There is a rumour that as it became clear President Ben Ali would have to flee, she ordered a lorry to go to the national bank and pick up one and a half tonnes of gold. She put it on her private plane. That's where a chunk of the country's wealth has gone, they say. Into exile in Saudi Arabia with Leila Trebelsi and the former President of Tunisia,
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and that was Adam Minot. Education chiefs here and further afield are looking at a new initiative set up in France to provide opportunities for youngsters from poorer neighbourhoods. 13 new boarding schools have opened. They're part of President Sarkozy's plan Espoir Banlieue, the ideas to improve life and prospects in the disadvantaged suburbs. So far, they're achieving good academic results and attracting funding from the private sector. Christian Fraser's been to inspect one of them. Not far from Paris, A foil gripped
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in a youthful hand slices the air in the fencing hall at this former army barracks and until recently, home to one of the French Hussar regiments. Learning to fence is a skill in keeping with the finest military tradition. It was, let's not forget Napoleon's swashbuckling Hussars, an unruly band of youthful cavalrymen who first perfected the art of using a sabre not to cut off heads, but to open champagne bottles. These days, however, a different crowd, albeit still impetuous and youthful, has taken up weekly residence at Sourdan, south east of Paris. The military has moved out, the barracks transformed into a boarding school and the pupils have moved in. This is no ordinary lyce. As well as fencing sordins, 250 pupils can go riding, tend the vegetable garden, play chess and the guitar. They attend world cooking workshops and study astronomy and photography. There are stables, a stadium, a gym, even a shooting range. All are housed in purpose built top of the range facilities which are provided free of charge if they play hard between Monday and Friday. These youngsters also work hard and that is why they are there. Not so much your stereotype, troubled teenagers as frustrated teenagers. These children have been identified as deserving candidates by their existing headteachers and encouraged to apply to Sordan because, for one reason or another, they cannot easily study at home. Some are orphans, some never see their parents. Some, like Johnny Carrer, must contend with seven brothers and sisters at my last school, he told me, they would throw you out of class for misbehaving. But here they want you to succeed. They push you to succeed. It was in 2005 that the French government declared a national state of emergency after three weeks of rioting in some of the poorest suburbs across the country. Mr. Sakozy, the then interior minister, was accused of stoking the unrest by vowing to cleanse what he called the rabble from the streets. Luckily, though, he's adopted a more conciliatory approach, paying particular attention to education. The new schools are the result of a public private partnership through its charitable foundation. The energy giant Total, for example, has pledged 2.5 million euros to the new schools of excellence. Critics say the disproportionate funding they receive could be better channelled into underperforming schools in the suburbs. Certainly the Sordin headmaster, Jean Francois Bourdin, has had plenty of cash to spend a reported 1.5 million euros, with more to come as pupil numbers increase. But he also has impressive results to show for it. Last year, all the 14 year olds in this school passed their national exams, 53% of them with honours, judging by the Internet blogs that some have written in English as part of their foreign languages homework. The teenagers are overwhelmed by the scale of what's on offer at the school. It's too big just for us, marvels one. Anissa Wada, one of those learning to fence, said. For me, it's a complete change living here in the countryside. In other schools, we didn't have the money or a chance to do this sort of thing and and to such a high level. The children are encouraged to apply to these new schools by their teachers in the banlieue, who fear they might never realize their potential. At Sourdan, the goal is to open their eyes to a new world beyond the suburbs that are home. One programme sees pupils travelling abroad to places like Pondicherry in India, which has strong links to France. And through a British council project, they are brought together online with fellow pupils in Romania.
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Where?
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Wales and Hungary. Seeking to broaden access to educational excellence is not exactly new. In France, when President De Gaulle launched the country's prestigious Ecole National d' Administration graduate school back in 1945, the lofty aim was to open access to the senior civil service. At the time, the newspaper Francois Run the aspirational headline a son of a postman can become an ambassador. Some might say that scheme has failed. The majority of people who attend the so called Grand Ecole still come from privileged backgrounds. Today, France's director general of schools, Jean Michel Blanquet, who described these new establishments as the Etons of the suburbs, is perhaps more clear sighted about what happens next. The children may never fence again once they leave Sourdan. They may not go to the opera or even excel academically, but they will certainly leave with a perspective on life that goes beyond the estates from which they came. Napoleon was equally level headed about his motley crew of hot headed and reckless hussars. I'd be surprised, he once said, if any of them lived beyond the age of 30. Their successors at Sordan have much more to look forward to.
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Christian Fraser in Paris. Vietnam's Communist Party has been meeting to decide on the country's new leadership and on policies for the next day decade. While still nominally communist and a one party state, the country has to some extent embraced capitalism. Luxury cars can now be seen negotiating the streets of the cities. The bicycles of just a decade ago seem to have ridden off into the pages of history. Alastair Leithhead's just made the journey from Ho Chi Minh City in the south to Hanoi in the north. It gave him a chance to see how these two apparently contradictory ideologies managed to sit side by side.
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I've had some odd days, but Sunday in Hanoi was certainly a very odd day. It started off with me gawping at a preserved and somewhat waxy looking man. Then there was a taste of Vietnam's most expensive soup and a sight of its most costly car. I dropped in on the inaugural meeting of the Harley Davidson Owners Club before getting a touch of realism, supping beer cross legged on the floor of a local's restaurant. Uncle Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's founding father, supposedly asked to be cremated rather than to lie as he does in the middle of a darkened mausoleum surrounded by soldiers who impatiently herd visitors around in silence. Hands out of pockets, hats off, hundreds of Vietnamese people and tourists queue to see him just as he was when he died more than 40 years ago. The Communist Party here doesn't like change, but with skyscrapers going up around Uncle Ho's memorial, change is coming to him. The next stop was for pho, the breakfast staple. 60 pence a bowl, noodle soup that fuels the nation and steams from big pots in the cold Hanoi air. But we weren't going to any old street food joint. We were to sample the country's most expensive pho at more than 20 pounds a bowl. The restaurant owner talked us through the quality of his Japanese beef, the cleanliness of his kitchen and how much the Rich were willing to stump up to slurp down Vietnam's priciest soup. One diner admitted he'd had the expensive special, and when I asked him his profession, he almost apologetically told me he worked for the government. The party also likes to be in control. This isn't a communist country, we might imagine from the 1950s or 60s. Yes, the red flags are flying on every street corner, but the hammer and sickle flutters across the road from the Chanel store. The old style propaganda posters on guard near Louis Vuitton, icons of socialism and capitalism. Odd bedfellows. The restaurant owner explained his interpretation. The shell is communist, but the guts are capitalist, he said. We'd seen the shell. The collective of comrades at the Party Congress unanimously agreeing on the country's new leadership. Any objections? The speaker asked with a cursory glance. Of course not questioning. The system is not tolerated. But then all the fighting and bickering, debating and arguing happened behind closed doors. The appearance of unity is strength. And we'd seen the guts. A morning with one of the country's richest men did that. His multi million pound development, soon to be the tallest building in Central Vietnam. His seafront hotel and condo blocks at close on 2 million a flat. His industrial parks and his aim to make even more money by replacing the shirt and shoe factories with high tech electronics. If the party goes a different way from the people of Vietnam, then surely it cannot survive, he quipped bravely. The confidence of wealth. And there was plenty of confidence about the 26 year old who showed me round the custom built Rolls Royce Phantom, which stared snobbishly out of the showroom, sneering down its bonnet at the hawkers who passed by wearing their old conical bamboo hats. He oozed bling. You can afford a gold mobile phone and diamond encrusted watch when you own a dealership selling cars as expensive as these and the Harley Davidson Club. You never see so many high end bikes in one place anywhere else in the world, one of the gnarled expat members explained to me. And it's certainly an expensive habit. Bikers are supposed to be rebellious in a way. Here I guess they are. But their engines just roared money at the poor of Hanoi. A day with the haves when there are so many millions of have nots. After the excitement, I met a local journalist for a drink. She described the intimidation and late night calls, the phone taps and tales. Those who challenge the party can end up in jail. The shell is still strong. The principles preserved in Uncle Ho's vault still prevail. There's a knack to making money here. There's a system. But as cash pours in and the economy heats up, change is unstoppable. The party can try to ride it and guide it, but it would take a firm hand indeed to hold back the tide.
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Alastair Leithhead in Hanoi. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the vastness of Russia, as the armies of both Napoleon and Hitler found to their cost. And any journalist trying to build up a picture of life all across this sprawling nation has to do a huge amount of travelling. Over the years, our Moscow correspondents have filed stories from pretty much every corner of the country. But recently, Steve Rosenberg, who started a second stint there, realised there was a telling interview he could do much closer to home.
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I've only been away from Moscow four years, but in that short space of time, so much has changed. Today there are branches of Barclays bank on the Russian High Street. Never saw those here before. Down in the metro, there are new underground trains with bright new carriages and flashing signs. And even more shocking, one of my favourite supermarket chains, the one with a giant green kangaroo as its logo, has completely disappeared. Apparently it's been taken over by a different food chain whose sign is a big red bird. That's going to take getting used to. But amid all these disorienting differences, I'm glad to say there's one thing in Moscow that hasn't changed a bit, and it's to do with the BBC office. When I popped into work last weekend, I heard something which brought a smile to my face and happy memories flooding back. Tea, coffee, coffee, tea. I looked up and seconds later, there she was in full view. Maria Ivanovna, the cleaning lady. She must be 80 now, but she's still working weekends and keeping everything spick and span and everyone in the bureau refreshed. And she was just as I remembered her, in headscarf and woolly jumper, a big red bucket in one hand, a duster in the other. She sped through the newsroom like a souped up snowplough, cleaning tables, clearing cups and telling everyone that the kettle's just boiled. Help yourselves to another cup of coffee. Babushka Musha, as I like to call her, has so much energy, I'm sure that if scientists could find a way to connect her to the national grid, Russia wouldn't need any nuclear power stations. The reason I was so pleased to see Babushka Masha working away and looking so well is that, to me, this wonderful lady epitomizes Russia. And Russia's ability to triumph over adversity. When I look into her face, I see the history of Russia etched into every wrinkle. Barbushka Masha has lived through Stalin's terror, through World War, Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet empire, a decade of wild Russian capitalism, and a decade of Putin's Russia, and she's still as energetic, as warm and friendly, and as positive as ever. She told me she'd been working with foreigners since 1954. That's just one year after the death of Joseph Stalin. It was her uncle who got her the job in what was known then as the USSR Foreign Ministry's Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps, or Upper Deca for short. In Soviet times, all foreign diplomats and journalists living in Moscow had to reside in Upedeka, blocks of flats guarded by police, and all nannies, home helps, and cleaning ladies had to come from Opedeka as well. It was, of course, the time of the Cold War, so not surprisingly, there are plenty of stories from that era of bug departments and foreigners under surveillance from their Soviet staff. But Babushka Masha says her bosses never asked her to report back about the goings on of the foreigners she worked for as a cleaning lady and a cook. Before we started working for a new family. Our instructions were simple, she told me. Don't be rude, and no thieving. One journalist she was assigned to clean for used to leave money lying around on the floor to check her honesty. I never took any of it, she said, but I was always so worried I'd vacuum it up by mistake. She chuckled when she spoke of her job with the ambassador of Senegal. He had 100 white shirts, Babushka Musha recalled, and I had to iron them all. One day the wife of an English correspondent took Babushka Masha to the Bereoskas shop, the foreign currency store out of bounds to normal Soviet citizens, where foreigners could buy food and drink they couldn't find in Soviet stores. Babushka Masha helped her do the shopping and packed the bags. Shall I help you carry it all up to the flat? Babushka Masha asked. No, thank you, the Englishwoman replied. It's all for you. And she handed the shocked cleaning lady all the shopping. What about the foreign journalists now? I asked. Are we different from the kind of correspondents you used to work with in the old days? Babushka Masha smiled. Not really, she said. But back then, foreign correspondents in Moscow lived very well indeed. You see, in those days, the vodka and champagne were so cheap.
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Oh, it's not like that. Today, Steve Rosenberg in Moscow takes us to the end of another edition. I'll be back on Saturday with more. Do join us. Goodbye.