← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Nov 19, 2011
00:28:24
Are the generals in Egypt really about to relinquish power? Stephen Sackur in Cairo a...
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Presenter
Hello, this is from our own correspondent,
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a download from the BBC. For a sneak preview of our program. You can join our feed on Twitter and there's a daily airing of from
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our own correspondent on the BBC World Service.
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But now the latest edition as broadcast
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on BBC Radio 4. And it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Reporter
Egyptians prepare to cast their votes. But are the generals who helped run the country for decades really going to hand over power? In Burma, the cronies wait in the wings to see if the country's flirtation with reform will prove profitable. We talk about football and fear in Dagestan, the most volatile corner of the Russian Federation, and learn why in Colombia, gold is the new cocaine. Tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria yesterday to denounce what they see as moves by the military authorities to entrench their power. The army and security forces did not intervene. Demonstrators from across the political spectrum expressed their frustration at the military rulers slow pace of reform despite their pledge to return Egypt to civilian government. The protests came ahead of parliamentary elections this month, the first since President Mubarak was toppled. Stephen Sacher, who's been in Egypt with the news channel's Heart Talk program, has been trying to gauge whether the forces of repression really have been vanquished.
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Stephen Sacher
Autumn darkness has enveloped Cairo. I'm waiting outside high fortified gates. My papers are being scrutinized by an armed guard. A sullen nod ushers me into a crowded compound. Uniformed soldiers are huddled near their armored vehicles. This is Egypt's Ministry of Information. It's my first visit to Cairo's House of propaganda in almost 20 years. It strikes me that very little has changed. The last time I was here, I was in trouble. I'd made a television documentary which infuriated the then information minister, Safwat Sharif. You're undermining this country, Mr. Sharif had raged at me back then. Overstep the mark again and you will no longer be welcome in Egypt. Safwat Sharif now has his own more pressing problems. He's currently in jail, facing trial on a host of corruption and conspiracy charges alongside his political master of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak. But don't be fooled by the striking images of Egypt's former rulers languishing behind bars in their prison pyjamas. Last winter's revolution claimed some prized scalps. It did not tear down the old regime. For the past nine months, Egypt has been ruled by a military council, a junta headed by the man who loyally served Mubarak as military chief and Defence Minister for for 20 years. Last February, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi promised Egyptians the army was on their side. His words then were reassuring. His actions since have been anything but. The real revolution hasn't happened yet, declares Tarek Shalabi, a veteran of the Tahrir Square protests. Six months ago he was arrested, roughed up and and handed a suspended prison sentence by a military court. Now every time he blogs or marches, he runs the risk of joining thousands of other activists in long term detention. Why has the army lost the trust of so many of the Tahrir generation? For an answer, I seek out one of my oldest friends in Cairo, Mohammed Gohar, a canny veteran of almost four decades in the media business, a TV entrepreneur with the hide of a rhino. If you'd been with me on October 9, he says, then you'd understand. He gives me an account so vivid it takes my breath away. How a crowd of protesters, mostly Coptic Christians, gathered on the street below his office that evening to protest about a series of sectarian attacks. How unseen snipers opened fire on the crowd. Then Egyptian army vehicles plowed into the throng, crushing and breaking bodies. How the dead and wounded were carried to his ground floor stairwell. And how he hid 17 desperate men and women in a back bathroom while troops searched the building looking for Christians. You know that movie Schindler's List? I felt I was reliving it, he tells me. I was ashamed seeing soldiers doing this to my people. But why did they do it? I ask. To send a message that without them, Egypt is chaos. The generals have run this country for 60 years. You think they want to give it up now? Egyptians will face an Alphabet soup of political parties, from strict Islamist to committed secularist. But when the votes are counted, real power will still be in the hands of the junta. There's already talk of a new constitution granting special powers to the armed forces and And a mysterious but seemingly well funded political movement is calling on Field Marshal Tantawi to run for President in 2013. Which brings me back to the Ministry of Information. After the revolution, Tantawi decreed that this hated source of censorship and official deceit was to be closed down. Five months later, the generals changed their minds. I find myself shaking hands with Egypt's new minister of information, a dapper former journalist, Osama Haykul. Just months into the job, he exhibits the slippery skills of a veteran. The killing of more than two dozen Copt was unfortunate, he concedes. But the army is investigating. The state of emergency will be ended just as soon as stability has been restored. As I'm heading out of the ministry compound, one of his staff approaches. I suspect he's going to berate me for my impertinent questioning of his boss. Instead, he slaps me on the back. Great interview, he says. What a liar that guy is. They still think they can say what they like and the people will believe them. But they can't. Not anymore.
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Narrator/Reporter
And that's Stephen Sacher. The Burmese pro democracy leader Aung San SUU Kyi says she intends to stand for elections to parliament in the first test of her popularity for two decades. Her party, the National League for Democracy, earlier agreed to register for upcoming BY elections after boycotting a national poll last year. The decision follows a series of reforms by Burma's nominally civilian government, including the release of some political prisoners and an easing of censorship. David Loyne is there.
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Presenter
Driving through the Burmese countryside, I passed a Land Rover that must have been half a century old, four monks clinging to its green frame as they rattled through the countryside, saffron robes blowing in the breeze. Women with their faces daubed in sandalwood paste under conical straw hats glanced up as we passed. Behind them, a man stood under an awning, rhythmically treading a water pump to irrigate the paddy fields as they worked. Our destination could not have been more different from this timeless scene, the neat lawns in the strange fantasyland of the new capital, Naypy Door, carved out of the jungle where everything is on a gargantuan scale. When it was built, civil servants were told to move north overnight from Rangoon, disrupting families and lives. Suicide rates in this weird place are said to be very high. There are tens of thousands of hotel rooms, empty most of the year except during a gem fair, when Chinese buyers descend on Naypy Door to deal in Burma's mineral wealth. The presidential palace, with its vast air conditioned spaces and chandeliers sparkling with thousands of lights, seems more than incongruous in a country where state spending on health per person is less than 70 pence per year. The new town exists in a fantasy economy, and as it's a capital city, foreign diplomats will be expected to move here, and areas have been marked out for them already. But one Western embassy worked out that the way the sites are financed, it would cost 45 million pounds over 30 years if they took up the offer. But in a military state, normal economics have been turned on their head for a long time. There are several exchange rates for the Burmese currency as black market money flows in and out of the country. The real Power here lies in the hands of men who are called cronies in normal conversation. Like Russian oligarchs, the cronies in Burma are the men behind the scenes, close to China and outside democratic control as they profit from monopolies in timber, gems and gas. They are watching in the wings as a government with reform on its mind moves steadily away from the corruption and repression of a world that in the past suited them well. Change means that recently released prisoners can write in dissident newspapers that are no longer censored and are distributed openly. Until only a few months ago, there were daily attacks on the BBC. In Burma's main newspaper, Aung San SUU Kyi said that one of the biggest signals of change was that Xi, for the first time, had been able to talk openly to the BBC in Rangoon after I was given an unprecedented visa. The political impact of all this is seismic. Bumping along in the back of a van on our way to see a school opened in the last year by Aung San SUU Kyi's supporters. Umyo Yan Nongthain, the leader of the last major student protest back in 1996, told me in clear and stark terms, that protest is over. He and his comrades, who made new alliances in jail, have formed a loose network of pro democracy groups backing Aung San SUU Kyi and working within the system. For the first time, he said, if you can't beat them, join them. In a graphic image, the former student leader said that if Burmese people were willing to line up 10 by 10 by 10 in front of soldiers shooting, then revolution would be possible, as they would wear out the will of the army after thousands had died. But, he concluded, we don't have enough blood to shed. In calling off protests, the pro democracy activists are putting all their trust in secret conversations that the new president, Thein Sein, has had with Aung San SUU Kyi. In a sequence of carefully choreographed moves, the government is easing its relationship towards this iconic figure, not unlike the way white South Africa changed course and opened Nelson Mandela's prison doors. Posters of Aung San SUU Kyi are openly for sale on the streets, and she will run for Parliament probably next year. But Aung San SUU Kyi has not brought all of her party with her in her decision to compromise with the regime. There was another protest by Buddhist monks in Mandalay this week. Small demos like these are a distraction. More widespread protests, though, could destabilize the confidence built between Aung San SUU Kyi and the reformist president and his allies, and it would strengthen the hand of hardliners opposed to reform. In the strange fantasy capital, formidable obstacles to reform remain, and high hopes rest on the slender figure of Aung San
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Narrator/Reporter
SUU Kyi David Loyne in Burma. Once it was Chechnya, but today the republic of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea is the most explosive corner of the Russian Federation. Here there are bomb attacks almost daily, shootouts between the police and insurgents, accounts of torture and of people going missing. Moscow's attempts to restore calm have met with little success. Lucy Asch says the latest idea is to seduce disaffected youth with football, and millions have been pumped into the local team.
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Lucy Ash
Bashir was 20 rows up behind the goal, squashed between his flag waving nephew and a man chewing sunflower seeds. Rhythmic chanting washed across the stadium. The game, which started so well for the home side, was going wrong, and the cries of Angie and Angie grew increasingly plaintive. I thought of Mick Jagger's anguish ballad about a doomed love affair, but Bashir helpfully explained that the team's name means pearl in Kumyk, one of the local Dagestani languages. Like any self respecting Russian oligarch, Angie's owner, Suleyman Karimov, has been on a global shopping spree. His biggest extravagance so far is the Cameroonian striker Samuel eto. He's now the highest paid footballer on the planet, getting some £40,000 a day, and that's in one of Russia's poorest republics, where the average wage is less than £250amonth. I wondered idly what Bashir did for a living and was surprised to hear he's in the police counter terrorist department. Oh, that's interesting, I said, trying to sound casual. Would you mind if I dropped in to see you at work tomorrow? The next day, Bashir that's not his real name, by the way was wearing a smart grey suit and lots of eau de cologne in the passenger seat of his car. I fumbled with the seat belt. What are you doing? He exclaimed. Don't you trust my driving? That's the first time a policeman has told me not to buckle up, I joked, but Bashir didn't smile. Men from the Caucasus can be very touchy. The atmosphere in the centre of Makhachkala is tense, with armed police on almost every corner. We drove up one street, past rows of workmen hammering and drilling. They were repairing shop fronts after two car bombs recently killed a policeman and wounded 60 police and passers by. When our guys rushed to the scene of the first explosion, a blast about 12 times more powerful went off, said Bashir. It was. It was a trap. They wanted to get as many of us as possible. Bashir said the insurgents chose this street because many shops here sell alcohol. I could still see signs advertising the finest cognac. It comes from Derbent, the republic's second city, which is also the place where Islam entered Russia soon after the prophet Muhammad's death in the seventh century. Now such paradoxes are in danger of tearing Dagestan apart. Some shops pay protection rackets to trade in peace. Threats are delivered on USB sticks thrown through car windows or into a letterbox, said Bashir. Those fighters make out they're devout Muslims, but they behave like bandits ready to murder you if you don't cough up. Bashir looked weary when asked why so many young Dagestanis have joined the rebels and gone into hiding. Known here as going into the forest, their leaders target weak people who'll be ready to blow themselves up, people who believe they'll go to paradise for taking part in the jihad. They destroy those kids psychologically and send them to their deaths. Over tea back in his office, I met his boss, a colonel with a square jaw and a laugh that sounded like a dog barking. He rolled his eyes when I asked if unemployment and widespread corruption could have driven some people into the forest. The extremists kill women and children. They have no conscience. You can't call them people. They're animals who have to be destroyed. But neither side has a monopoly on cruelty. As he spoke, I thought of the persecution by Russian security services of suspected rebels and their families, and the hundreds of young men who've gone missing during special operations. I'd just met an old woman from a remote mountain village on the Georgian border whose mentally disabled son was buried in a pit up to his neck and tortured by masked police officers. The colonel laid a stack of black edge photographs across the desk. These are our colleagues, all killed in the past year, he said. The story of one Ruslan Magomedov was particularly shocking. His father, the former chief of police in a deeply religious Salafist village called Gubden, died in a shootout with militants in 2008. A year later, his wife, daughter and older sister went to the cemetery on the anniversary of his death. As they began to read passages from the Koran, a bomb hidden next to the grave exploded, killing them all. Then, last summer, Ruslan was assassinated, a whole family wiped out, he went on, before adding, you've seen the monument to our fallen comrades outside the interior Ministry. They've had to enlarge it because they've run out of marble slabs to engrave all the victims names.
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Narrator/Reporter
Lucy ash in Dagestan, 2,000 Afghan elders have been attending a national assembly called to discuss the future of the American military presence in their country. Security around the gathering, known as a lawyer jirga, has been particularly tight, but that didn't prevent it coming under rocket attack. Two were fired. They missed their target, but one man was injured. The security measures also saw much of Kabul being put into lockdown mode, with some foreigners prevented from travelling around the capital. Mike Thompson, who's just back from there, says that anyway, it's become something of a closed city. Difficult to negotiate, hard to get to know.
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Presenter
If you're looking for a hotel, restaurant, foreign embassy or almost anywhere that non Afghans might meet, you've got your work cut out in Kabul. After decades of conflict suicide bombs, mortar and rocket attacks, it's perhaps not surprising that this city seems to hide from itself. In most other places, businesses naturally keen for custom go out of their way to be noticed. Neon signs, billboards and towering nameplates are the order of the day. But Kabul's commercial gems are hidden behind incognito metal doors and featureless concrete blast walls. I could have gone round in circles for weeks trying to spot my hotel if it wasn't for the trained eye of my driver. And when you finally find where you're going, don't expect to be greeted by smartly clad doormen. Instead, a knock on the anonymous door brings, after a minute or two scraping sounds as a sliding metal hatch slowly opens to reveal a suspicious eye staring at you through a small hole. If its owner is happy with what he sees, thudding bolts and elaborate locks are pulled and turned, and you're faced with a machine gun toting security man. I'm given a series of searches taken through further security walls, doors and humming X ray machines. The that leave me hunting for my boarding card as if I'm about to take a flight somewhere on the way. During a thorough search of my pockets, the guard takes particular interest in an old supermarket shopping list. What is this? He inquires, holding it up to the light as if looking for a watermark. I explain that it's a receipt for my groceries. He hands it back reluctantly, as if deciding to let some gross misdemeanour pass. This time at least, the hotel's reception area is surprisingly attractive, which comes as a shock after all that concrete, barbed wire and rusting metal outside. I decide to take a photo but as I raise the camera to my eye, a man in a bright blazer, looking as if he could have walked off the set of the 1960s Prisoner series, rushes over, waving his arms. No photos, sir. No photos. Not allowed.
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Alistair Leithhead
No.
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Presenter
No photos. Soon after checking in, I call the representative of an international aid agency to arrange a meeting. How about coming over to my hotel? I ask her. We could have a coffee and discuss plans. No, that's not possible, she replies. I can't come to your hotel because I'm not allowed to. It's considered a security risk, so we don't go there. Rather surprising news, given that on security grounds, this is about the only Kabul hotel that the BBC allows its staff to stay in. It turns out that the reason my aid agency contact can't come here even for a quick coffee is because the hotel has been attacked by insurgents a couple of times and is therefore thought to be a Taliban target. The BBC evidently takes a very different view. A security advisor tells me this hotel is secure because it's been attacked. This has made it combat tested and therefore best equipped, along with its posse of security guards, walls and gates to repel any future attackers. To settle this one, we may need to consult the Taliban. The people who seem most determined to hide away in Kabul are those who, until the summer, were responsible for protecting it. Most of NATO's people can be found, if you look very carefully, in inside an enormous concrete fortress, often referred to as the Green Zone, a bit like its famous counterpart in Baghdad. Its concrete walls within walls within walls are also home to most of the city's embassies. Locals, most of whom seem to do without security of any kind, joke that the main mission of foreign forces here appears to be to protect themselves. But Kabul's efforts to hide away start even before you get there. Those flying in via Dubai have first to solve the mystery of Terminal 2, Dubai Airport's version of Platform 9 and 3/4 is said to exist. This is where flights for Kabul leave from, or so I was told. But nobody I asked in this otherwise well ordered airport seemed to know where it was. Or rather they all claimed to know where it was and sent me off to different places and and in opposite directions. It took me more than two hours and that included a trip out of the airport, even though I was supposed to be in transit to find it. The city of Kabul, it seems to me, is a bit like those people who take a lot of getting to know. Discovering what it's really about can be a struggle, but it's worth it. In the end.
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Narrator/Reporter
And that was Mike Thompson. The Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is visiting the UK next week to meet David Cameron. It's part of a charm offensive aimed at attracting new allies and investors. He's been in power just 15 months, but his social reforms are proving popular and the economy is booming. This month, his troops killed the leader of the FARC revolutionary group, already severely weakened by decades of war. But as Alistair Leithhead has been finding out in Colombia, cocaine still poses a huge problem and illegal gold mining is causing trouble for the authorities as well as.
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Alistair Leithhead
Hello, nice to meet you, the President said as I shook his hand. Sorry to hear about your wallet. Yes, thanks. Entirely my fault, I replied. I think he was trying to offer sympathy rather than make me feel stupid ahead of our interview. But there's something about being pickpocketed that makes you feel stupid, like it's a basic thing that you shouldn't let happen, especially as a foreign correspondent. But I've always travelled with a premise that you'll get ripped off somehow in a new place in the first 24 hours. It's just a matter of how much buy. And the fact it was the wallet rather than the passport or that little phone that now runs our lives was a blessing. But they were good. A flick of paint as a distraction amid the melee of a student street protest. A tiny old woman blocking me in. And then a light fingered final strike. It took seconds, but in a country known for war, drugs, murder and kidnap, it wasn't the worst way to be ripped off on day one. President Juan Manuel Santos did appear genuinely sympathetic. He's an affable and seemingly very popular man. Fifteen months after taking office, his approval rating is over 80%, making him the most popular president in Latin America. He counts London as his second home after living there for 10 years. Oh, where? I asked. Mayfair. Knightsbridge. He comes from rich Colombian stock as grandson of a former president and son of a newspaper tycoon. Just days before our interview, the bearded and bookish leader of farc, the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, had been killed in a government raid. A significant hit. The group that once controlled a third of the country is now reduced to a bunch of guerrillas squeezed against its borders. The cartels which ran the coca growing business and fed the West's cocaine habit have been broken, even if the vacuum has been filled by smaller armed gangs. President Santos admits drugs are still a huge problem, but shares the blame. As long as people in the UK sniff coke, he told me, we will suffer here. But driving out into the main drug trafficking corridor in Antioch province. Over steep, winding mountain roads, we discovered a new threat to the stability and peace the President is so desperate to sell to investors as he travels the world drumming up trade deals and collecting international allies. Coca is still grown on the high Andean hillsides where the clouds swirl ominously and the birds of prey circle in the thermals rising up from the deep valleys. It's not as easy to find as it once was, but down in the plains, in clear view of the main road, there's a new source of illegal income. Gold diggers. Deep pits, pools and rattling machinery punctuate this deforested land. Men working in holes blast through orange earth with fireman's hoses as sediment is sucked up into filtering machines to trap the flecks of gold, which can be separated off with mercury in the lakes left behind from this process. Men who used to grow coca spend hours of every day panning for what's left. Our guide was a fixer straight from central casting with long streaked hair and a sagging face with huge bags hanging under each eye. Think an even more gaunt and lived in Keith Richards, his sidekick driver, an over or perhaps under sexed showman, would wolf whistle at teenagers, pensioners and cows with equal enthusiasm from the car window. They negotiated as through a gold rush town, a modern day wild west of saddle shops, bars, general stores and of course gold trading shops with heavily barred doors and windows. We were allowed into one to watch them smelting. I held a small gold ingot in the palm of one hand, an ingot worth £30,000. The high price of gold has turned a traditional industry into a new cocaine, where violent criminal gangs take their cut. And it's a real threat to the grand plan of President Santos. On what was a brief trip through the country, one thing was very clear. Colombians do seem to have a lot of fun. Fast paced music blares from shops and taxis. Nobody seems to be more than a heartbeat away from breaking into dance and shaking their stuff. Bottom implants are more popular than boob jobs in Bogota. And given the changes coming to this country, however annoying the petty crime and its people, might at last really have something to dance about.
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Narrator/Reporter
Alistair Leithhead gets to the bottom of it. And with that from Columbia, we're out of time. More stories from around the world. Next Saturday, same time, same place, goodbye.