← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
July 16, 2011
00:27:33
Could the Libyan rebels be poised to march on the capital Tripoli? Gabriel Gatehouse,...
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Narrator/Presenter
This is from our own correspondent.
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Justin Rowlatt
We make an edition for the BBC
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Tim Eckhart
World Service as well. But this is a download of the latest Radio 4 programme and here to
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Andrew Hoskins
introduce it as ever, Kate Ady.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Today, war, famine, death, and now pestilence too. The drought crisis worsens in the Horn of Africa. An Indian tribe sends victory in a billion pound battle over a sacred mountain. Reporters are warned about peddling lies. It's not Fleet street, it's in the Gambia and the strange events which can happen in the forests of the Seychelles on the night of a full moon. But first, the United States and more than 30 other countries last night formally recognized Libya's main opposition group as the nation's legitimate government. The move, which came in Istanbul at the end of a meeting of the so called contact group on Libya, is seen as a major boost for the rebels. It's five months now since Colonel Gaddafi began his violent crackdown against street protests, triggering an armed revolt. But despite support from NATO, the rebels are failing to make progress. This week there was mention again of a new rebel offensive. But Gabriel Gatehouse, who's been talking to them near the coastal city of Misrata, says they don't appear to be a force capable of securing a military victory.
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It's not often that you find yourself caught up in a real life metaphor that seems so ludicrously appropriate as to become almost a cliche. But that's exactly what happened when, on a recent trip to speak to the rebels about the stalemate on their front line, our car got stuck in the sand. We'd been bumping our way along the dunes just inland from the coast. Our escort was a commander by the name of El Hadi, a softly spoken man with intelligent eyes and a bushy black beard. He was taking us to see his encampment high on the brow of a hill overlooking territory held by Colonel Gaddafi's forces. Suddenly, our 4x4 was stuck, its wheels spinning pointlessly in the sand, angrily throwing up dust and bits of buried shrapnel. The more the wheels chewed up the ground, the deeper our car sank. This, I thought, was not a comfortable place to be. Colonel Gaddafi's men were dug in just over the brow of the hill. The lull in the fighting that we had so fortuitously stumbled upon was already coming to an end. The thuds of falling rockets sounded ever closer by, and somewhere, not far off, someone was loosing off rounds from a machine gun. After much fruitless digging and cursing, we were finally rescued by a couple of teenagers in a pickup truck with an anti Aircraft gun welded to the back. They pulled us backwards out of our rut and we were finally able to move forward again. But we only drove another 50 metres or so before our guide stopped again. This was as far as we could go, he said. Beyond lay hostile territory. We parked on top of the hill, feeling exposed on all sides, and began to walk towards the camp. Until last week, this position was held by Colonel Gaddafi's soldiers. For a month and a half, the two sides had shelled and rocketed each other from fixed positions, neither managing to take any ground off the other. Then, at the beginning of last week, the rebels had made a coordinated dash forward, pushing Colonel Gaddafi's troops back. They dug in and held their ground. It felt like the stalemate had been broken. Despite heavy losses, the fighters were ecstatic. Finally things seemed to be moving again. In actual fact, though, the line had shifted only a very short distance and the momentum seems to have stalled again. We found El Hadi's fighters lounging up against a sandbank, sheltering from the sun and the bullets eating spaghetti out of tinfoil containers. Before the revolution started, El Hadi had been a car tire importer. Now he has around 600 men under his command. They are not soldiers, they are farmers and lawyers, students and engineers. But what they lack in experience, they more than make up for in courage and commitment. Every day I'm more determined to stand here and fight until the end, said Siddique as he pointed to a ditch where, less than 24 hours previously, four of his comrades had been killed when a mortar landed right on top of them. Until last month, this shy 24 year old maths student had never held a gun before in his life. And yet he said he wasn't scared. We will win eventually, he said, but in order to achieve this, we have to make sacrifices. Self belief and determination have proved to be the rebels most powerful weapons against Colonel Gaddafi's heavy artillery and long range rockets. But what a job it must be for El Hadi, the commander, to try to instill military discipline in hundreds of young men. Some quiet like Siddique, others brash and loud daredevils who like to stand up above the defensive sandbanks and shout verbal abuse at Colonel Gaddafi's forces. El Hadi looked embarrassed by the question. He pushed my microphone away and looked round at his men. I don't want to play the boss in front of them, he said. We're all in this together as equals. At Misrata's military headquarters, fighters greet each other not with salutes, but with bear hugs. Kisses and cries of Allah. God is great. There's a frantic atmosphere of energy and industry. Everyone is busy, but no one seems to know what anyone else is up to. And yet, somehow it seems to be working. Close your eyes and you might almost imagine yourself in Petrograd during the Russian Revolution, watching a new order struggling to establish itself. But there is one crucial difference. This is a leaderless revolution whose only ideology is a single common purpose the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. What kind of a country might emerge if and when that goal is attained? At the moment, that's a question that few have time to even ask themselves. But the reality is that the new Libya is likely to be a place of many competing factions, no clear leader, but awash with guns.
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Gabriel Gatehouse it's being described as the biggest drought in 60 years. The unfolding crisis in the Horn of Africa is threatening 10 million people and many thousands are on the move, mainly towards refugee camp. Britain's International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell is in Kenya today, seeing for himself the scale of the crisis. He's expected to announce that Britain will provide some £50 million in emergency aid this morning. He's at the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, where almost 400,000 Somalis are sheltering after fleeing their own country. Andrew Hoskins Just back from Somalia, we
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Andrew Hoskins
were approaching the town of Gado when our armed guards ran over the goat. It was entirely their driver's fault. We had repeatedly asked him to slow down on the journey from Basasso, but it made no difference. The owner of the goat demanded $60 in compensation, which was far more than the animal was worth. But frankly, if it was my goat, I would have done the same. The guards explained they had to drive fast because a few weeks back two of their comrades had been captured along the same stretch of road and beheaded. They attempted to haggle with the goat's owner, but then paid up. The incident highlighted a central fact about Somalia. Although it has an abundance of men with guns, its shortage of goats is acute. For the first time in 20 years, it looks as if a famine will be formally declared here. The goo rainy season is almost at an end and for the third year in a row the rains have not come. At this time of year there should be pasture in Somalia, but there is precious little to be seen from the air. The country is one large rust coloured waste land. It is only occasionally interrupted by rivers mockingly reduced to a mere trickle of silt. Occasionally there is the odd smear of green. With the appearance and probably all the sustenance of a moss stain on a brick wall. On the ground, life has always been harsh, but now it seems utterly impossible. You may contemplate a shack among acacia trees in the Sahara and think, I wouldn't want to live there. But here in Somalia, you peer through the heat haze at some sun blasted figures and their flocks in this alien landscape and conclude I could not survive there. And now more and more Somalis are coming to the same conclusion. Many make their way to the towns, even to the dangerous capital city, Mogadishu, where the risks are many. But at least there's a chance of getting some food here. Increasingly there is none, and even the camels are dying. Was there some unspoken agreement forged by Somalis with the land that they would agree to live there in return for occasional rain? If so, the compact has been broken, and not for the first time. The authorities have a complicated system. They follow before they say there is officially a famine. But here it seems all their criteria have been met, and a formal declaration may be only days away. Gado is the capital of the Kakar region of Puntland, a self declared autonomous region of Somalia, just where the tip of the Horn of Africa skewers the Red Sea. In the south and central part of the country, there are many conflicts, many between the Islamist insurgency, Al Shabaab and the rest of the world. In the northern areas, such as Puntland, the main security problem is posed by pirates. But at least there is relative peace here. On arrival in Gado, I was given details of the current harrowing situation by a group of Puntland government officials. They told me that 80% of livestock was dead and there was rampant malnutrition. Even formerly wealthy nomads had become beggars, forced into camps for internal refugees. More than half of the population was in danger of starving to death. So there's war, famine, death, and now even pestilence. Here children are dying from measles. It's proving impossible to inoculate them because their families are constantly on the move, hunting for food. When I asked Mohammed Issay, the mayor of Gado, what would happen when the few remaining animals died, he said people could survive by eating the leaves off certain trees. He wasn't being callous. It really is that desperate here. There is a growing feeling among aid agencies and government officials here that it may already be too late to mount an effective response. This was said to me explicitly by Mohammed Baldaji, the mayor of Puntclan's administrative town of Basaso, some 150 miles to the north of Gado. By the time help arrives, the problem is always all over, he said, very matter of factly. Somalis don't like to think of themselves as victims. They have a terror of being classified as ira, people who have lost everything. And many refugees told me that in this disaster they were losing the few things they had their clothes, their sheep, their husbands, even. This is a Muslim country. But the words that popped into my head again and again when I heard these stories came from the parable of the talents in the New Testament. Whoever does not have even what they have will be taken from them, at least for the moment. Many still have their lives, but swift action will be needed if that biblical prophecies not to become reality here.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Andrew Hoskin, back now from Somalia. Recent events in the newspaper world here in Britain may not have come as much of a surprise to the President of the Gambia. Yahya Jama has made it clear in the past he has a low opinion of reporters. He's described them as being bent on character assassination and has warned there are laws in place to deal with those who peddle in lies. But Chris Simpson, who's just been to the Gambia, says journalists there tell a rather different story of a country where the press is anything but free and where telling the truth can be downright dangerous.
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Narrator/Presenter
At 10 o' clock on a Sunday evening, I could have done without the ferry ride from Barra to Banjul. It's a beautiful journey in daylight, but something of a chore once the sun has gone. Like myself, many of my fellow passengers had made the long road journey south from Dakar in Senegal. After buying tickets and paying off the touts and helpers, the women sat stoically guarding large bags of clothes and fruit, keeping a watchful eye on their children who were impatient to set sail. A black and white TV was showing a Brazilian soap opera dubbed into English. The drama eventually finished, the high voltage domestic rows and improbable plot twists eventually giving way to the local evening news. And there he was, His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul Aziz Cemus Junkung Jame Naziruddin, commander of the armed forces and the chief custodian of the sacred constitution of the Gambia. The man is better known simply as yahya Jammeh, the 46 year old President of the smallest country on mainland Africa. Mr. Jammy is not bashful in front of the cameras, and on this occasion he was instructing onion producers on how to improve their cultivation techniques. Mr. Jammy comes from a military background but has developed many new skills in office, claiming at one point to have discovered his own cure for aids. Commentators outside the country often mock this brand of leadership. Part quack, part spiritual mentor, part father of the nation. A colleague from West Africa talked of the North Korean feel to the Gambia. Driving around the capital, Banjul, you see endless posters of the white robed president, accompanied by slogans of the day. Your welfare is my concern is one of the more benign ones. Others urge Gambians to strive hard for innovation and excellence. A Gambian journalist friend, speaking from exile, said it was a mistake to write Jamayoff as a buffoon, a quirky maverick with with no handle on reality. You don't get to run a country for 17 years by simply being a follower of fads with an oversized ego. A singular ruthlessness is also required. Gambian journalists have known this for a long time. To their shame and frustration, the Gambian press lags well behind what you find in other West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria. Editors and proprietors are saddled with high overheads, low circulation and a scarcity of newsprint. All that, they acknowledge comes with the territory. Of much more concern are the punishments meted out in the past to journalists who have fallen foul of the authorities. His former colleagues and friends talk with quiet anger about the killing by persons unknown of Taida Haidara, the publisher of the point newspaper, in 2004, and the disappearance into state custody of newspaper journalist ibrahima maneuver in 2006, never to be seen again. Six journalists were convicted of sedition and defamation in 2009 after criticizing President Jammeh's attitude towards these cases. Presidential pardons followed. But as a newspaper owner pointed out, self censorship inevitably becomes the norm for journalists when the alternative could be a bullet in the head or a burnt out office. The Gambia's newspapers certainly serve up their share of craven pro presidential fodder, featuring headlines like Bevy of College Beauties say Jammeh Is Most Loving Leader. But amongst the more free spirited titles, there are signs of a shrewd, resourceful attempt to look at meteor issues, be they the new quirks in Jammeh's foreign policy or the performance of the courts. A recent case featured a market trader brought to trial for allegedly shouting his mouth off and predicting that a border tiff between the Gambia and Senegal might develop into all out war. The accused was tearfully grateful to get a fine and not a prison sentence. He at least got some sympathetic editorials. There was no way this should have come to court, a veteran newspaperman told me. People say all kinds of things down the market. You shouldn't be arrested on the basis of hearsay or for having a big mouth. Optimists say the overall media climate is improving, albeit slowly. They cite a recent meeting between Jammeh and a selection of high ranking journalists from the independent press as proof that the president at last won some dialogue. Sceptics point out that for a dialogue to work, both parties have to listen as well as pronounce. The journalists dutifully requested the repeal of draconian libel laws and raised uncomfortable questions about the maltreatment of their peers. The president told them bluntly, I will not sacrifice the peace, stability and security of this country at the altar of freedom of expression.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
And that was Chris Simpson in the Gambia. India's storming economy is good news for many. It's lifting people out of poverty, giving them jobs, better housing and, in some cases, prosperity. But with the development comes an insatiable appetite for resources, for the raw materials gobbled up by the factories which help power the economic boom. Justin Rowlatt, who's been travelling in the east of the country, has been talking to members of one community who are determined to keep the modern world at bay.
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Justin Rowlatt
The ceremony began when the shaman came staggering out of his hut. He had splashes of fresh blood daubed on his face and stared blindly as he began a shuffling, swaying dance to the rhythm of the drums. After a few moments, the first woman fell to the ground. She seemed to be having some kind of fit. I watched in the flickering firelight as she jerked spastically on the ground, her legs twisted at an improbable angle underneath her. Seconds later she lurched up to her feet, then bent double at the waist. She began to sway, her feet stamping in rough time, her long black hair hanging down over her head and face. Soon eight people had joined in, all bent over, all apparently also in a deep trance. The shaman took up two fierce looking long curved swords, which he waved around in front of him. This was becoming genuinely frightening. We were in an isolated forest clearing deep in the hills of the Indian state of Orissa. I turned towards Laddo, the village headman. I was surprised to see he was smiling broadly. He was clearly thoroughly enjoying the festivities, and I suspected my discomfiture too. They have been possessed by gods, he explained. Maybe the God of the earth, the forest, or Niamraja, the God of our mountain. Whatever they do now is not them. It is the play of the gods. I was here because the Dongria's traditional way of life has come crashing up against Modern India's seemingly insatiable appetite for resources. Niamgiri, the mountain the Dongria people worship and whose spirit apparently possessed the dancers, contains an incredibly rich seam of bauxite, the ore from which aluminium is made. According to some estimates, the bauxite in Niamgiri Mountain could be worth more than 2 billion pounds. The scale of the threat became apparent when Laddo led me on an exhausting five hour trek over the mountain. He wanted to show me the billion pound aluminium processing plant built way down in the valley by a UK based multinational called Vedanta. Laddo described how a couple of years ago, one of the vice presidents of Vedanta had come to the village and offered to pour money into the community if they'd support mining the bauxite in Niamgiri mountain. Laddo said he'd told the company's men, we don't need your schools, we don't need your houses and we don't need your road. When they tried to take photos, he threatened to smash their cameras. They left pretty soon after that, Laddo told me with a grin. Laddo is an easy man to like, and it was hard not to enjoy the pride he felt at having seen off the representatives of this powerful multinational. But in my experience, the apparently inexorable power of money and modernisation almost always wins out against the claims of indigenous people. Nevertheless, as Laddo and I talked, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Dongria might just be an exception to the rule. When the aluminium plant was built, it seemed mining the bauxite in Neamgiri Mountain was a done deal. The Government of Orissa signed a Memorandum of understanding giving permission, and the Indian government assured Vedanta that its vast investment here would be secure. Then Lado and his fellow tribespeople began their campaign and managed to get support from around the world. Soon, Vedanta's investment began to seem a lot less safe. Last year, the tribe won an important victory when the Indian Environment Minister ruled that no mining could take place on the mountain. Vedanta is now challenging that decision in the country's Supreme Court. I was keen to hear the company's side of the story and Vedanta had agreed to an interview. But when they spotted us in town talking with Lado and some other tribal people, they called it off. It's so difficult for us to get our message across, Tony, Vedanta's spokesman said plaintively as he explained why the company had changed its mind. I could understand his frustration. Here in Llanjigar, Vedanta has built Schools and roads and a modern hospital. It's also created 1500 jobs. There's no doubt that allowing mining on Neamgiri mountain would generate a lot more money for people here. But there's also no question that the Dongria have a very strong claim to the land. The problem is that mining the bauxite here might destroy not just the land the Dongria have lived on for centuries, quite possibly millennia, but also their God. I felt rather sorry for Tony and Vedanta. It's very hard to justify destroying someone's God, however compelling your case.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Justin Rowlatt in the Indian state of Orissa, the Seychelles, a thousand miles east of the African mainland, are a botanist's paradise. The islands there are more than a hundred of them, boast several plant species found nowhere else on Earth. When the honeymooning Duke and Duchess of Cambridge left the Seychelles in May, the government there presented them with a souvenir. A cocoanut. But not just any old cocoanut. This was a coco de mer. And Tim Eckhart has been learning why this rare species has acquired a reputation as a love nut.
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Tim Eckhart
The forest groans, squeaks and rattles. Even a light breeze causes the giant fronds of the coco de mer trees to rub against one another with a sound like the creaking rigging of an old wooden schooner. Underfoot, there's the loud crunching of enormous dead leaves, each about 20ft square. Here in the Valais de May, on Pralin, Seychelles, second largest island, the dominant plant is the coco de mer palm tree. I visited the Valle de May many times in the past 20 years, but each time I go, I learn something new. This time I'm accompanied by Dr. Christopher Kaiser Bunbury, an ecologist who studies the networks of life supported by the palms. There's nowhere on Earth like the Valle de May, he enthused as we stepped through the thick, dry leaf litter. All this dead matter prevents any other plants taking root and competing with the coco de mer. Look how the giant leaves blot out the sky above. They starve all the other plants of light, too. It's almost like they have a strategy. The Valle de Me is probably the most visited tourist spot in Seychelles. People flock here to see the coco de mer, partly because it's the biggest seed in the world and a true botanical curiosity, and partly because it's well best described as a rude shape. On the tree, the coconut is a giant green orb, but inside, with the outer husk removed, it closely resembles a female human bottom. Not surprisingly, coco de mer nuts sell for high prices. And you need an export permit to take them out of Seychelles, a measure introduced to combat poaching. The erotic connotations of the coco de mer are obvious, whether or not you are a royal honeymooner in China. The meat of the nut is taken as an aphrodisiac. And as if the nut's rotund charms were not enough, the trees themselves are clearly male and female. While the female trees bear the nuts, which grow for about seven years before they fall, the male trees grow enormous catkins, giant phallus shaped tubes studded with hundreds of delicate yellow flowers that give off a musky odor. In Seychelles Creole, the fruit is called coco fess, which crudely translates as bum nut. For Chris Kaiser Bunbury, the charms of the coco de mer go well beyond schoolboy humour. What the tourists often don't appreciate, he says as we stand surrounded by the towering palms, is how many other unique species live here, supported by these amazing trees. He shows me giant white slugs crawling along the smooth stems of the leaves, fat brown coco de mer snails that sit on the tree trunks. And high up in the palm crowns. He spots several bright green geckos that feed off the tree's nectar and flowers. And then, so well camouflaged that I struggle to identify it as an animal at all, we spot a giant bronze gecko found only on the male trees. Several of these creatures, including a breed of fruit fly that lives on the rotting husks of the coco de mer, are found nowhere else in the world. But here in the Valais de May, the coco de mer remains mysterious. No one knows whether the palms are pollinated by the wind or by an insect, or even, indeed by a gecko. Their lifespan is unknown, some say 500 years or more. And why is it found nowhere else on Earth? The granitic islands of Seychelles are known for their lush green slopes. But the Valle de Me is a dry forest, and the leaf litter formed by the dead coco de mer leaves is a tinderbox. The Seychelles Islands foundation, which looks after the Valais, has cut a series of fire breaks along the hillsides. Part of the reason it's so dry is that the palms have evolved their giant leaves to capture as much as 98% of any rain that falls. The leaves funnel the water straight down towards the base of the palm, ensuring that no other plants benefit. Most plants try to disperse their seeds away from the parent, Chris Kaiser Bunbury told me. But it seems that coco de mer nuts tend to germinate naturally, very close to the mother tree. That's because she's found an ideal spot for growing. And the offspring will have a higher survival rate if they don't stray too far. And indeed, with the nuts weighing 50 pounds or more, there's no way for the wind or animals to disperse them anyway. A Seychelles legend says that during a full moon, the coco de mer trees walk around the forest in order to mate. That's how they produce their erotically shaped love nuts. Standing under the dense green canopy, with the lilting cry of the black parrot echoing through the trees, it does seem like a place where stranger things have happened.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
And with Tim Eckhart, amid the flora and fauna of the Seychelles, we've come to the end of another edition. We'll be here again next Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.