← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
. Life After Lonesome George
00:28:12
Could Mogadishu be about to lose its title as the world's most dangerous city? Mary be...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, a man with time on his hands in Africa's most ravaged city. A new recruit for Al Qaeda in Yemen. He's been promised vengeance and a new car. There are lobster sausages, sublime music and of course, a Nazi row at the Bayreuth festival in Germany. And in the Galapagos, islanders try to pick themselves up after the death of their most famous resident, the giant tortoise known as Lonesome George. Now, it's not a title any city would covet, but for years, Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia in the Horn of Africa, has been called the most dangerous city on earth. For two decades, it's been a place of war, drought and famine. But could all this be about to change? If all goes to plan, a new parliament and president will be in place there later this month. And already some stability's been restored now that the Al Qaeda linked group Al Shabaab has been largely driven out. Today, there are still frequent suicide, grenade and other attacks, but parts of the shattered city are being rebuilt. And Mary Harper, who's just been there, tells us how amongst all the destruction and human and suffering, she found a place of peace.
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The atmosphere changed completely when we entered the cathedral. Things fell quiet. It felt almost peaceful. The nervous, frantic movement of people, animals and vehicles on the streets outside didn't follow us. The hysterical beeping of horns fell away, as did the sound of gunfire. My five Somali bodyguards, wrapped in long, heavy necklaces of brass bullets, didn't spring into position around me. They bent their heads towards the smashed floor of the cathedral and walked alongside me. It was Ramadan in Mogadishu, the holy Muslim month, and we were inside the remains of what had once been one of the grandest Catholic cathedrals in the whole of Africa, built by Italian colonialists in the 1920s. Its last bishop, Salvatore Colombo, was murdered there in 1998 as he was giving Mass. I felt very tiny inside that building. Perhaps because the roof has been completely blown off, the walls of the cathedral seemed to stretch right up to the blue sky above. As we approached an outline on the floor where the altar used to be, taking care not to step in the human excrement dotted around us. The guards started asking me how the church worked, how Christians worshipped, how exactly did they pray? As I explained how the priest administered bread and wine, we looked up. High above us, carved in the stone, was Jesus on the cross. Bullet holes scarred the carving, the colours faded and gone. It was very different from the streets outside, where people optimistic about the new relative stability and are opening shops, their walls freshly painted with bright images of what's on sale inside. My guards were especially upset by the statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. His head had been blown off and the sheep around him were vague shapes of shattered stone. Livestock is a mainstay of the Somali economy and very dear to the hearts of the Somalis. The guards were unhappy that representations of animals and their saint had been so horribly damaged. In one corner was what looked like a pile of discarded cardboard and cloth. Slowly I made out the figure of a man so deeply asleep he seemed not to be breathing. During the rest of my time in Mogadishu, the guards were always hurrying me along. As a foreigner and a white woman, I stuck out somewhat from the crowds and they didn't want any trouble. I was a potential target, so it wasn't wise to stay in one place for long. But things were different in the cathedral. We took our time. All of us seemed hypnotized by the place and found it difficult to leave. One guard crouched down, lost in thought. Another stood still, gazing upwards past those majestic stone walls to the sky above. We thoroughly explored the cathedral, the every corner, every side room. We glanced down into underground spaces filled with blue plastic bags, rubble and the odd bullet casing. Suddenly there was a bit of noise and movement, a sound of giggling. Two boys, completely naked, rushed in and emptied plastic jerry cans of water onto their bodies, scrubbing themselves as best they could without any soap. They then darted into a dark corner, emerging soon afterwards, dressed in clothes so old and ragged they appeared to be rotting on their bodies. Slowly and silently, an old man appeared. I fled here with my relatives two years ago. I came from the port of Merkah, which was taken by the Islamists by Al Shabaab. I wouldn't have survived under their rule, he told me. I have no food, I have no water. The only thing I have is time. He gestured out through one of the arches. Outside, in the grounds of the cathedral, were small, tattered igloo shaped dwellings made from bent sticks and a patchwork of plastic, cloth and cardboard lashed together with rope. String and quite a lot of hope. I saw such settlements of people forced from their homes on almost every spare patch of ground in Mogadishu. Many Somalis have lived like this for more than two decades. The cathedral stood in the part of town where the physical devastation was perhaps the most shocking. It's now a graveyard for what had once been the city's most grand and beautiful buildings. I wonder if now that things are starting to be fixed up in Mogadishu, it might be an idea to leave that cathedral, how it is, as a quiet place somewhere for reflection, a reminder of the destruction humans can wreak.
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Mary Harper in Somalia, the authorities in Yemen say they're hunting a group of Al Qaeda linked militants who attacked a police station this week, killing four officers. The attackers are said to be from a group called Ansa al Sharia, which last year seized control of several Yemeni cities during the wave of protests which led to the downfall of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Since then, with American help, the authorities have made significant advances against the militants. But Natalia Antilava, who's been in the capital, Sana', a, says serious problems remain.
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Haled had changed gun was the turban and a long white tunic instead of a jambiya, the traditional Yemeni dagger that men here wear around their waists. He was dressed in a smart grey suit with a neatly pressed checkered shirt. You look like a politician, I told him. He threw his head back and roared with laughter. I first met Haled more than a year ago, the son of a local tribal sheikh from Marib, one of the most volatile regions of the country. He had come to the capital inspired by the Arab Spring and fed up with the long rule of Yemen's veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh. We have no roads, no schools, no jobs, hale told me Back then. The only thing they did have in Marib, he said, were Al Qaeda militants. And that, too he, like many others, blamed on President Saleh. The president, he said, didn't want to fight the militants. He used them as an excuse to milk Washington for military aid. If Saleh goes, I'm sure Al Qaeda will go, too, haled said. He was wrong. Eight months after President Saleh was driven from power alone, Al Qaeda are still in Yemen and arguably stronger than ever. Saleh's deputy, Abdul Rabbi Mansur Al Hadi, is in charge now. The word hadi, khalid laughs, means quiet in Arabic. And that's exactly what President Hadi is the exact opposite of his forceful, cunning, powerful predecessor. But one achievement of his presidency so far has been a military offensive which drove Al Qaeda fighters out of the territories they had occupied. The problem is that very little has been done to cement the success. The army never moved in to take control of the land. There has been no reconstruction effort. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are still homeless, and Al Qaeda, in the meantime, have changed tack. Two big suicide bombs targeting police and military recently went off in the capital, killing dozens. Ever since power changed hands here, one of the most prominent players on the Yemeni political scene has been a man known nicknamed here Sheikh Feuernstein. Gerald Fernstein, the US Ambassador to Yemen, is a small man with a thin moustache and a knack of finding his way into the spotlight in Yemen. He is known for referring to the government as we. He is said to have ordered key personnel changes at the Ministry of Interior. And he doesn't hide his close relationship with Yahya Saleh, the controversial nephew of the former president, who is still in charge of of anti terrorist operations here. A while ago, an American diplomat explained to me that for the U.S. yemen is all about Al Qaeda. The rest, she said, humanitarian, cultural, political stuff is mostly for show. Yemenis know that, and it makes them angry. America's undiplomatic new ambassador isn't helping its image here either. Nor are the repeated airstrikes by the unmanned drone aircraft. Washington will give you a list of terror plots which have their origins in Yemen. But many Yemenis will say this remote control war is counterproductive in the fight against Al Qaeda. Khaleed recently lost his cousin in a drone strike. The man was driving with his two young sons when an American missile hit his car. One of the boys died with him. Haled admits that his cousin may have had some connection with Al Qaeda. The militants have a lot of influence in the region, but he was also in contact with intelligence services in the capital, Sana'. A. The authorities could have arrested him and put him on trial, Haled says, but instead they chose to kill him. The drone strikes he had provide Al Qaeda with new recruits. His cousin's other son has now joined their ranks in exchange, apparently for vengeance and a new car. This is how people join the militants, Khalid says. They have nothing left to lose, and no one except for Al Qaeda offers them help. He believes America shouldn't rely so heavily on the militaristic approach. It should do more to lift Yemen out of an economic disaster which has left millions of its citizens hungry. If the Americans helped us to get back on our feet, then people would never turn to Al Qaeda in the first place, Hahalet says. But instead, he adds, the US is losing hearts and minds here. And that many in Yemen believe will make it much harder to win a battle which Neither Yemen nor the world can afford to lose.
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And that's Natalia and her lover. Three years ago, at the northeastern tip of Sri Lanka, the army finally vanquished the separatist Tamil Tigers. Thousands of people died in this final act of war as the Tigers were besieged in a tiny pocket of land, along with a huge group of civilians they forcibly kept with them. The area has been off limits to journalists and most other outsiders since 2009. But the authorities have just let our correspondent Charles Havilland visit the scene. And this is what happened.
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I was with the army as they detonated leftover munitions near a major battle scene here. Crouch behind these sandbags, they told me as we stood in protective clothing a few hundred meters from the detonation site. If shrapnel comes anywhere near, just duck. I decided to retreat a lot further back. The thud was impressive. We were in the devastated land which saw the last bitter fighting of the war. Many tall palmyra trees had lost their tops, half submerged in the arid ground. I saw a single flip flop and a plastic shoe. Who had worn them? This is where tens of thousands of people cowered, trapped between the Tigers killed who conscripted their children and shot those trying to escape and the army bombardments. Large tracts are still mined. There are buildings sliced in half, buses with an end missing. Most poignant are the mundane things. Someone's trousers, a plastic chair, cushions, a rusting bedstead. I look towards a damaged Catholic church. There are both Catholics and Hindus among the local Tamil population. The church had been cleared of mines and a Sinhalese soldier took me inside. I'm a Roman Catholic, he told me. A minority in the mainly Buddhist military. Sections of the roof had been ripped out, leaving a zigzag pattern of light. Earlier, I'd met a man born and bred in this place. He had lost his brother and his sister. As this area was being besieged. We were climbing over bodies, he said. Only now, after demining, are families beginning to return to their plots in these villages, many coming on recce visits from refugee camps. Surviving buildings are mostly unsafe and will have to be destroyed. And people here have little with which they can rebuild. Not far away, life seems more normal. A Tamil fisherman wades into the Nandikadal lagoon and casts his net. There is a jetty and fishing boats here, a low causeway across which trucks trundle into the town of Mulaitivu. There is little evidence of what happened here in 2009. Huge numbers of Tamils fled from the besieged zone. Across this lagoon, on its shore, the body of the dead Tiger leader Prabhakaran was filmed, his scalp covered to conceal the fact that much of it was missing. There is something which jars. There are many new signs in the neighbourhood giving, for instance, the name of the lagoon or the government's account of what happened here during the conflict. Indeed, a war tourist trail is already springing up for Sri Lankan tourists. But nearly all the signs are in Sinhala and English only, not in Tamil, the local language, and of course the language of the people who lost so much. This is repeated all over the area at a museum of captured Tiger equipment at Prabhakaran's bunker, now a tourist spot. At the bunker, there are in fact many Tamil visitors, including school children from nearby and expatriates from Germany. A Sinhalese soldier fluent in Tamil acts as their guide. That is impressive, but there's barely a word of Tamil on the signs at two places. We ask the military why this is. There wasn't anyone who could speak the language. But we'd like to put up Tamil signs soon, one soldier says. Another, though, tells us he's mentioned it to the higher authorities, but nobody is interested. What does this say? For reconciliation efforts in this country whose war sprang partly from the fact that Tamils had said they felt like second class citizens, there are more immediate concerns. Along with the struggle to rebuild, there is little employment available. By chance, we met a former Tiger militant. He he said there were no opportunities and no jobs, but he didn't want war again. The army presence is still massive. Travelling across northern Sri Lanka is like criss crossing from garrison to garrison. In fact, the number of soldiers on patrol has fallen sharply. They have been asked to reduce their visibility and many places like the army run cafes and shops which had sprung up, have now been closed. But the government says it still fears a resurgence of the Tamil Tigers and it is not loosening its grip. In one place. An officer told us the army's intelligence network had actually expanded. We've been asked to keep a register of what people do and where they go, he said. We even monitor school children's activities. We know what people eat for their lunch.
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Charles Haviland In Sri Lanka, the death of the most famous resident of the Galapagos is continuing to cast a shadow over those islands out in the Pacific Ocean. The giant tortoise known as Lonesome George died earlier this summer at the ripe old age of a hundred. Or maybe he was 150. No one really knows. For generations, visitors made a beeline for his enclosure and there was a brisk trade in Lonesome George T shirts. You could of course, purchase them emblazoned with his name in Spanish. Solitario. Sounds even more lonely that way. Henry Nicholls has been finding out that those responsible for promoting tourism in the islands are a little concerned. There may be plenty of other giant tortoises, but none boasts the charisma of the late lamented Lonesome One.
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The day after Lonesome George's unexpected death, Marilyn Cruz took a phone call she'd rather not have done. Owing to Ecuador's constitution, the first in the world to afford the same rights to nature as it does to humans, the famously celibate Lonesome George had to be afforded a full autopsy and Cruz would have to do it. She's a vet, perhaps in her early 40s, who's the coordinator of Agrocalidad in Galapagos, the government agency responsible for agricultural standards and biosecurity in the islands. She takes me to her laboratory and walks towards a large chest style freezer. I half expect to see some frozen peasants, a tub of mint choc chip ice cream and a bag of oven ready chips. But instead I'm looking down on the carefully preserved remains of a giant tortoise called George. I'm so taken by surprise at this surreal sight, I find myself genuinely speechless. A breathy oh is all I can come up with. Once Cruise has closed the freezer and I gather my senses, I ask her what it was like to have carried out George's autopsy. She hugs her bare arms against the chill of the lab and perhaps the gory images flitting through her mind. I felt a confusion of emotions, she tells me. As a Galapagenia born and raised on the island of Floriana, she felt great sadness at the loss of this national treasure. But she had to put her sentiments aside, pick up an electric saw and cut through his plastron, the curved underbelly of a tortoise to get at his insides. It was not something I wanted to do, but it was something that had to be done, she says later. I walk down Puertai's main street that runs east west along the coast. It's smart, it's friendly and it's lined with restaurants and souvenir shops. The Lonesome George brand is very much in evidence on T shirts as jewellery and in the shape of miscellaneous Knick knacks. I'm off to meet a man regarded here as something of a living legend, Fausto Llerena. He joined the Galapagos National park in 1971 and his long career as a ranger has been largely defined By Lonesome George. He looked after him day in, day out for 40 years. And it was Fausto who found him dead at the end of June. We sit beneath the shade of bright green vegetation and I ask what Lonesome George meant to him. I study his bronze features, his shining eyes, a wrinkled fold of skin beneath his chin, and think how like a tortoise he looks. He talks slowly and fondly of George, of the times they shared together. It's only towards the end of our conversation that his emotions get the better of him and his upper lip begins to tremble. He was my best friend, he says. How does Galapagos pick itself up after this loss? One response has been to look for another tortoise to take on the celebrity role. The most likely contender is Diego, an aggressive male who sired more than 600 giant tortoises. Prolific he may be, but. But he doesn't really have the same celebrity quality or quiet, plodding pathos of Lonesome George. Fausto Llerena clearly isn't so fond of him. When you enter his pen, Diego comes near and his intentions aren't friendly. He once bit me, he says. I make my way to the Charles Darwin Research Station, hoping to get a glimpse of Diego for myself. First, I climb up the wooden walkway to the platform that overlooks one. What was Lonesome George's enclosure? There are still two tortoises in there, females with whom it was hoped George might mate. One of them is taking a walk through the pool in the middle of the corral and the other is crunching her way through some stick of plant matter. I wonder if they notice George has gone, if they miss him as much as the human residents of Galapagos do. The fruity odour of tortoise dung, not unlike that of a cow pat, mingles with the cool Pacific breeze. It's nearly midday. The sun is directly overhead and the tortoises are flat out, legs thrust into the dusty earth as they soak up the heat. Then one of them begins to move. It's Diego. Slowly but deliberately, he maneuvers into position behind a slumbering female to begin the strenuous climb up onto her shell. As he begins to grunt. I have to admire his commitment to the conservation cause. But there is something a little unseemly about all this grinding of shells coming so soon after the sun has set on Lonesome George's celibate life. Sex at midday just doesn't seem quite right.
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Henry Nicholls in the Galapagos Islands, one of the world's greatest annual arts festivals, has Just opened in the hills of Bavaria in southern Germany, the Bayreuth festival takes place in the opera house created by the composer Wagner. It opened for business in 1876 and today remains much as it was in those days. Wagner himself remains a divisive figure associated with anti Semitism. Hitler was once guest of honour at his festival, and Steve Evans says today, controversy continues to stalk Bayreuth.
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No Bayreuth festival is complete without a Nazi row. And this year's has been a really good one. Everybody who's anybody was dressed up and ready to go. Angela Merkel's best frock, cobalt blue in my view, was pressed and shimmering. The red carpet was scrubbed clean. The lobster sausages were ordered. This being Bavaria, there have to be sausages, but posh ones. And everybody was very excited about the Russian baritonev Genya Nikitin in the title role of the new production of the Flying Dutchman. And then the papers had to go and spoil it. They got hold of a picture of the star singer in a previous incarnation as a heavy metal drummer in a Russian rock band, with a very large swastika tattooed on his chest. A Wagnerian thunder was unleashed. Nikitin promptly withdrew the singer, regretted the tattoo and had had it covered with a non offensive, even bigger one. But he paid for the mistake of youth by losing the most prized role in opera, the star of a new Wagner production in the opera house that is a shrine to Wagner. In the event, the South Korean stand in was excellent. There were though booze for the production, which in I think a very German way was. How can I put this? Overly intellectual. In the opera, as Wagner wrote it, the Flying Dutchman is doomed to sail the oceans for eternity. He can be released from the curse only if a woman vows to love him forever. But in this production there are no waves or storms. The Dutchman is a businessman, complete with a wheelie suitcase, cursed to roam the soulless city represented by neon tickers of flashing numbers. Maybe stock prices. It's about capitalism, you see. Finance, capitalism. And Wagner's spinners of thread are now factory workers filling cardboard boxes with electric fans. It must have meant something, though I have to say I. I'm not sure what. Anyway, the audience cheered the musicians and booed the idea. It seemed to me that the best mental stimulation was actually outside the house, in the grove of chestnut trees, sheltering a statue of the stern face of Wagner himself. In this glade is a new exhibition called Silenced Voices. On either side of the manicured lawn are upright metal slabs, and on them are engraved the biographies of musicians. Nearly all Jewish, either killed in the Holocaust or forced to flee. The inscriptions say it all. Henrik prinz, violin. Born September 12, 1881. Died Auschwitz, June 29, 1943. Lucian Horwitz, cello. Died Auschwitz. Date unknown. And also musicians who survived but by fleeing were lost to Germany. Fritz busch. Died London, September 14, 1951. One of Germany's greatest conductors, he was stripped of his post in 1933, publicly on stage at the Semper Opera in Dresden, where he conducted premieres of operas by the Nazi acolytes. Richard Strauss. There will be much wrestling with the past next year, Wagner's 200th birthday. He was the author of nasty little anti Semitic tracts and there is an ongoing and fiery debates about whether antisemitism permeates the operas. And if it does, and to my mind, you can't avoid it in some can they still be enjoyed by right thinking people, Jewish or not? Bayreuth will be busy then. During his birthday, a controversial director has been hired. Cue more row headlines. The music will still be sublime. Of that I'm sure it will be. Wagner in Wagner's acoustic, with the orchestra hidden and balanced with the singers, as it isn't in any other opera house where the band sits in the open pit in front of the stage. There is much talk of authenticity in music, getting close to the sound of the time. Bayreuth surely has close to the authentic sound and also the the authentic feel. The wooden seats will be as hard as they were in Wagner's day, hard as his glower in the statue outside. You know you can have too much authenticity.
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And with those hard facts from Steve Evans in Bavaria, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be back with more from correspondents around the world next Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.