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From Our Own Correspondent
Novice on the Front Line
00:28:02
News and current affairs story-telling. In this edition, the foreign fighters signing...
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You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and here to introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the most politically charged place in China at the most sensitive moment in the political calendar, and the politicians are doing their very best to say nothing at all that's newsworthy. An ancient city on the banks of the Indus river in Pakistan being slowly destroyed by neglect and a lack of interest. There's delight, surprisingly, even some beauty when we visit the tax authorities in the Malian capital Bamako. And no phone signal, no WI fi, no hurry. We find the gaucho way of life clinging on with surprising tenacity. In a remote valley in Chilean Patagonia, the jihadis from Islamic State have been involved in a series of pitched battles this week in both Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, they are fighting government troops which are trying to retake the town of Tikrit, the birthplace of the former dictator Saddam Hussein. In northeastern Syria, they face Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Here, the IS militants, supported by tanks and heavy weapons, are trying to regain control of territory they lost earlier this year. Scores of people are reported to have been killed. The Kurds have had help from American airstrikes, and on the ground they've been joined by a number of foreign fighters. Some are British and, as Quentin's Somerville's been learning, have little if any military experience.
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Can you not show my face? The young man asked as we stood in the Kurdish hospital in Syria. I don't want my mum knowing I've been shot. I'll call him Sam. He's from the south of England and in his early 20s. He's short and slight and standing in his camouflage gear and boots. He only came up to my shoulder. With blue eyes and sallow skin, he looked about 16. Sam had been shot in the arm in a firefight with the Islamic State. There's been fierce fighting in northeastern Syria as the Kurdish People's Protection Unit, or ypg, attempt to hold onto territory they've taken from the Islamic State. The YPG have made gains most spectacularly with the help of coalition airstrikes in Kobani. But on the ground they're often outgunned and outmanned by the militants. So foreign volunteers, some of them terribly inexperienced, have been pushed from the rear to the front, Sam included. It's only a flesh wound. It wasn't a sniper, he said with a giggle. I wasn't laughing. If it had been a sniper and IS has plenty of those, all crack shots, then Sam wouldn't be standing in front of me. Most likely it was a stray round from an AK47. Back home, he had a desk job Here in Syria, one of the deadliest places on earth for foreigners. He was now facing some of the most vicious and capable fighters in the Middle East. He was woefully under equipped in every sense. The YPG have a boot camp which lasts only a week and a half, and much of that is given over to lessons about Kurdish nationalism. There's barely time to learn the rudiments of first aid, never mind the basics of combat. The horrors of IS war crimes had brought him here. His presence alone, given his background, was itself a statement of solidarity with the Cuds, and one which he hoped would bring attention to their cause, he explained. But yet here he was, with a bullet wound to the arm, unable to show his face because his parents didn't know just how close to death their son had come. And he'll be back on the front lines soon, he told me. Good luck, I said as we left. Go home, was what I was really thinking. Men who take themselves to the front lines of other people's wars are propelled by different motivations. Peter is an ex U.S. marine. I met him in Tel Brak, a town which only five days earlier had been in is hands. The Islamic State and its war tears the life out of a place. Shops are gutted, their graffiti is everywhere, and of course, all the civilians have fled. The fighting in Tell Brak had been light, said Peter, but parts of the town were still in ruins. A sign near the entrance said Islamic Caliphacy for the sake of Allah is better than democracy of the West. Another left by the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra, had a cartoon woman in a hijab. The hijab will save you from hell, it said. The women fighters of the ypj, bareheaded and smiling, had painted a big red cross through it. If you can describe a marine as soldierly, then Peter was exactly that, the kind of guy you want by your side in a firefight. He was part of a YPG attack unit, the only foreigner among the group. In four months, his Kurdish had become fluent. The fighting, he explained to me, wasn't quite hand to hand, but it was close, five metres apart. In some cases we'd be tossing grenades over berms and shooting around walls, he said. Like many of the foreigners with the Kurds, he won't discuss his past, but he's concerned about his future. Western governments make little distinction between those fighting for IS and those fighting against it. Bearing arms in another country's war is viewed suspiciously. One fighter Peter knew had been questioned by six agents, two of them from the FBI on his return to the United States. If I ever go back, I'll spend my life on a watch list. They will listen to my phone calls, he said. The truth may not be quite as stark as that returning British fighters have been questioned and let go. Governments fearful of more kidnappings and beheadings by IS want to discourage people from traveling to Syria and Iraq. The Syrian Kurds, though, are desperate. They barely have resupply lines beyond the weapons and ammo they take from dead IS fighters. So for now they will continue to welcome veterans like Peter and novices like Sam. They have no choice. They need all the help they can get.
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Quentin Somerville China's biggest political event of the year, the National People's Congress, is coming to an end in Beijing, with most people completely unaware of what's been going on there. The gathering's supposed to be a forum where delegates from distant provinces can air their concerns, but increasingly it's become a platform from which the Communist Party leadership presents its plans for the future. Cary Gracie says some Chinese question the value of a congress, which does little to hold the government to account or to question the growing power of its president, Xi Jinping.
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The sky over Beijing is miraculously blue, and after a long, biting winter, the red flags that bedeck the gold tiled roofs flutter in a breeze just warm enough to hint at spring. On either side of the chairman portrait and Tiananmen Gate, silver fountains make a perfect backdrop for the great Chinese public to pose for selfies. I'm not the only one observing the scene. Tiananmen Square is studded with soldiers in green greatcoats, and scattered among the chattering families and the loving couples are the watchers, plainclothes policemen scanning the crowd. This is the most politically charged place in China, after all, at the most sensitive moment in the political calendar, the annual session of the National Parliament is is drawing to a close in the monolithic Great hall of the People opposite. The politicians and the public may be just meters apart, but they inhabit very different worlds, separated by barricades, X ray machines and red carpet, 3,000 delegates breathe the rarefied air of a bureaucratic state poring over ministerial action plans for the year ahead. It's important for them to look attentive at all times, in case a stray camera catches them unawares. And and in the puritanical climate of the president's anti corruption campaign, they must also avoid wearing expensive watches or belts or saying anything that might mark them out as extravagant or suspiciously wealthy. In fact, the objective for most parliamentarians is to say and do nothing newsworthy at all. Only government ministers and provincial leaders are authorised to speak, issuing a thin trickle of news stories a plan to refinance dangerously high local government debt, for example an insistence that despite what he says, the Dalai Lama will be reincarnated when he dies a warning that some Chinese Muslims have returned from fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq or in Syria to foment terrorism in China's northwest and complaints that corruption in the military is rampant. Though it soon became clear that this last news offering was unauthorised when it was swiftly deleted from the record. Outside, I asked the public milling in Tiananmen Square what they make of their parliament this year. It seems to be the first time they've thought about it. Some plead that their educational level is too low to have a view. Others tell me they're too busy getting by to pay attention. I asked the same question of a captive audience on the subway on my way here, starting with the man on the newsstand. Surrounded by glossy celebrity magazines, he said only old people buy newspapers with political stories on the front page. Under a cartoon of Shaun the Sheep, which was playing on the subway platform, a tourist from northeast China told me she was interested in what the government planned to do for the environment. A young man going for a job interview as a security guard said he wanted to hear what the politicians had to say about housing costs and defence. A drama student insisted China's most important challenge was fighting corruption. Some construction workers from inland China, well, they just laughed at me and then said they were too tired to watch TV news, let alone have a view on it. And the woman checking bags through the X ray machine at the Tiananmen Square subway station said she was just here to work. Absorbed in their political bubble, complete with their own language and rituals, China's politicians inhabit a world opaque to outsiders. But it would be a mistake for the outsiders, who live under different political systems to underestimate China's political insiders. A senior Western executive for a big multinational told me this week that in his opinion, Chinese politicians are higher caliber than their counterparts in North America or Europe. Well informed about the world, he said, with an intimidating grasp of their subject area and the confidence that comes from running big enterprises. An enterprise is perhaps the best model for understanding Chinese politics today, especially in the era of Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader China's seen in a generation. Whatever the language around consultative democracy, the boss is in charge. In fact, the most memorable comment I heard today related to President Xi. A young woman in a fur collar and thigh length boots told me she'd been visiting her dying grandmother in hospital. Through her delirium, the old lady kept muttering urgently, xi Jinping is speaking. Xi Jinping is speaking. As I got on the subway train to leave Tiananmen Square, these words from an old lady's deathbed came back to me. And when the parliament's over and the politicians of all gone back to their provinces, Xi Jinping will still be speaking, and his will still be the voice that counts.
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Cary Gracie in Beijing. The excavation of an ancient site may be a treat for the historians, archaeologists and others eager to see how people lived their lives years ago. But it does tend to bring a whole new set of problems. The riches of Pompeii and Herculaneum, for example, lay perfectly preserved in their bed of pumice for centuries. But the moment they were exposed to the elements and the attentions of thousands of wandering tourists, they started to lose their lustre and in some cases, to disintegrate altogether. Those historical sites in the best condition, of course, have benefited from a costly amount of care and attention. Others, as Razia Iqbal's been finding out in Pakistan, aren't so fortunate.
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As a lover of language, I'm convinced that certain combinations of letters have in them some innate magic, you know, like Kubla Khan or Xanadu or Nineveh. So allow the word Mohenjo Daro to roll slowly off your tongue. And let me tell you about this ancient city rediscovered nearly a hundred years ago, but which had its heyday four and a half thousand years ago. It lies on the banks of the River Indus in the province of Sindh in Pakistan. Along with another historical site, Harappa, it represents the very earliest civilization in the region, rivaling those in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Mohenjo Daro was a city which had been effectively planned and boasted exceptional amenities. Its houses were furnished with brick, built bathrooms, many had lavatories. Wastewater from these led into well constructed sewers that ran along the center of the streets, covered with limestone to keep away flies. Among the many artifacts unearthed here, and one which stays in my mind, is a tiny, just 10 cm high bronze statuette. She's known as the Dancing Girl. A poised figure with hand on hip and face thrusting forward, she tells us not just about the Indus people's skills in metallurgy, but also about their art, society and women as well. Given Mohenjo Dara's archaeological importance, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I was saddened to find it in some disarray. Tourism and heritage aren't high on the government's agenda here. The authorities are far more preoccupied with security and terrorism. It's not what I would call a busy tourist destination. Few Pakistanis visit. We were among just 20 or 30 people there. We walked around the small museum which, though full of interesting exhibits, was badly lit and poorly arranged. Outside, a larger than life statue of the dancing Girl is displayed. The tiny original is in Delhi. We walked to the city itself. It's a wonder in so many ways. A vast site of neat fired brick structures, identifiable streets, and a place where it's not hard to imagine what life was like for its 35,000 inhabitants. Remarkably, only a small part of it has been excavated. One of our party, Maha Khan Phillips, is writing a fantasy thriller set in the ancient city. She wonders if all of it should have remained buried in order to preserve it. So much of what we see today is crumbling. Exposed walls are falling apart from the base up. That's because salinity in the groundwater is destroying the bricks which, before they were unearthed, had survived for thousands of years. But it's still an extraordinary sight. There's a large brick Buddhist stupa at its center. Mohenjo Daro means mound of the dead, and a picture of it graces Pakistan's 20 rupee banknote. Zayn Mustafa, who organized our trip, mused that Mohenjo Daro has much to teach today's Pakistan. A country which appears to define itself from 1947 onwards as a Muslim country, he feels could find much to celebrate in the achievements of this ancient city. But it's hard to believe anyone's taking proper care of a place which has such valuable things to teach us about urban planning and a country's history. Perhaps it should be given over to the care of external conservationists. Certainly the news of the recent wanton destruction of ancient sites in the Middle east has made many wonder about the need for protection here. There were no guides at Mohenjo Daru the day we were there. No one running after us. There were no postcards, few souvenirs, no leaflets about the site. There were a couple of intelligence or security type fellows with guns who seemed particularly interested in the foreign passport holders in our party. I ignored them and instead listened to my companions who told me that some archaeologists think, given the current rate of crumbling, the site will not exist in two decades. I heard the theories about what could have destroyed this civilization so many years ago. A violent massacre, perhaps, or flooding and disease. Or even more fantastic, some kind of explosion, a fireball or meteorite. And now it's being destroyed by something quite neglect and a lack of interest. Next year a Bollywood film of some considerable scale called simply Mohenjo Daro will be released. Quite possibly that will provoke more interest in this ancient site. And although the movie won't actually be made here, the fact that India is interested in celebrating it on film might just spark rivalry in Pakistan and inspire the authorities to do something to conserve this vital part of their history, one which surely they should embrace or at the very least protect.
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That's Razia Iqbal. Chile is one of the richer nations in South America and one of the most stable too, having largely the revolutions and violent changes in government that have plagued other countries on the continent. The exception, of course, was the bloody 17 year rule of General Augusto Pinochet, which left more than 3,000 people dead or missing. Times have changed though. Today Chile has one of Latin America's most successful economies. People have money in their pockets. Lifestyles have changed. But Tom Ford tells us that in some rural parts of this two and a half thousand mile long country, the old ways are still evident.
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The oldest gaucho came by as I was sitting on the veranda outside the lodge, disposing of a much needed cold beer. His name, they told me, was Tito. He was in his 80s, had a mother presumed to be over a hundred in the local village, 13 children and Lord knows how many grandchildren and great grandchildren distributed through Patagonia. He rode his horse at a slow pace. It seems that the notion of hurry in anything other than the direst emergency is anathema to the gaucho, and he was as upright and straight in the saddle as a flagpole. He wore jeans and a checked shirt with a kind of misshapen beret on his head. He stopped outside one of the homesteads near the lodge, swung himself down easily, tethered the horse and went inside to pay his social call. The gaucho way of life clings on with surprising tenacity in this remote valley, perhaps because no other way of life is available, or indeed is easily imaginable. Electricity did arrive a few years back and some of the wooden and tin cabins now sport satellite dishes. But to reach Chile's seething capital, Santiago, requires a three and a half hour drive on mainly unmade roads to the nearest airport, followed by a three hour flight north. There is no phone signal, no Wi Fi. In fact, until the late 1940s there was almost no one here at all. Here being The Valley of the Cynis, which cuts east to west through the central section of Patagonia, flowing 100 miles through the Andes to the Pacific. At Puerto Sisnis, the Chilean government, fearful of Argentine infiltration from over the nearby border, dispatched settlers into the Sisnes Valley with promises of land. They found it cloaked in temperate rainforest, and to clear it, they. They lit fires which got out of hand and burned on and off for 10 years, leaving great sways still littered with bleached trunks and branches like giant splintered toothpicks. In time, the valley was divided into estancias, mostly owned by absentee landlords. Cattle and sheep roamed the meadows and through the new grown forest, very likely supervised by the gauchos. I have never been to a place where the touch of human occupation seemed so light. To the east of the Andes, towards the Argentine border, the landscape flattens into one of tawny grass, low trees and bare ridges of rock. Downstream, there is a great canyon, 10 miles long, formed when a vast glacial lake bursts through the rock at the end of the Ice Age. Below the canyon, rainforest sweeps across the lower slopes of the mountains, with meadows where the valley is flat. And through it, swinging from side to side of the floodplain, is this glorious river, the Cystnice, to which I had come from a long way away in order to enjoy its extraordinary fly fishing for trout. Trout fry were imported to chile from the US and Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, but were not planted in the Cystnice until the 1970s. They were intended as a food source for the campesinos, the country people. The fish find a perfect ecological niche. Cool, abundant water, perfect gravel for spawning, ample food, absence of predators, and they thrived and spread prodigiously. So much so that Chilean Patagonia now boasts some of the finest fly fishing in the world. As it happens, the locals hardly bother, and when they do, it is with a homemade spinner thrown out by hand with a line wrapped around an old tin can. The accidental dividend is that the trout, supposed to provide them with protein, now attract discerning anglers from all over the world who catch them, admire them, and tenderly return them alive to the water. One day, on our way to fish a remote lake hidden in the forest, far from the road. Along the valley, we passed a gaucho's cabin, guarded by a dog, like an outsized foxhound. The gaucho came out for a chat and eager for human contact, not surprisingly, as he spent six months of the year up here with horse Dog and radio for company before returning to the village for the winter. By the lake was another cabin, wooden, with a shingled roof in the traditional style. But this one was abandoned, a reminder that even here, the old way of life is in retreat and will not last forever.
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Tom Fort. Now tax evasion and avoidance seem to have become staple ingredients of the news. Whether it's the goings on of the gnomes of Zurich or the complex schemes designed to save our pop stars a quid or two, scarcely a day goes by without tax in the headlines. And it's not just in this country. It's clearly no easy task bringing in the revenue in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy. But for Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, there's a tip from the International Monetary raise more cash in taxation suggests it'll help you fulfil your spending commitments. Now, perhaps it's all this tax talk which has driven Alex Duval Smith, our correspondent in the Malian capital Bamako, down to her local revenue office to register.
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Outside the yellow concrete building, a man is tethering a ram to the railings. It's not an uncommon sight. He's probably just bought the animal and has an errand at the tax office on his way home. Inside, a row of cashiers are seated behind aluminium framed thick glass. Each has a large handbag plonked on the counter. Each bag is a different colour. Mali, for all its poverty and problems, is always hitting you with moments of accidental beauty. But the cashier's eyes are glazed over from inactivity. The International Monetary Fund believes Mali has the potential to improve its revenue raising by 20%. It's not happening in here. My mission to register as a taxpayer takes me round the back of the cash desks to Mrs. Yattara's shoebox office. She shares it with three colleagues. There's a handbag on each desk. There's a computer, too. It's used to print out pro forma tax declaration forms. But all the data is written into stacks of exercise books, some in red ink, some in blue. I first met Mrs. Yatterer, a smart woman with glasses, during the annual tax census. This is when the entire staff, bearing clipboards, leaves the office to search the neighbourhood for more taxpayers. There's always an early casualty, an unlucky shopkeeper who gets closed down as an example to others. This year, a soft drink seller was presented with a tax bill of 80,000 CFA francs. That's about a hundred pounds, and when he couldn't pay, they padlocked his shop. After A week. He offered to pay half the amount and added a few crates of orange squash for the tax staff. Problem solved. Mrs. Yatterer leads me to her boss, Mr. Conte. He has an office all to himself and offers me a seat, a seat from which I can hardly see him. Tax rule books and copies of Finance Ministry decrees are piled into turrets all around his desk. He asks me about my expenses as a freelance journalist. It's unnerving because he's writing things down, but I can't see what you have. The choice between two income tax regimens. 30 per cent or 3 per cent. Which shall it be? Oh, 3 per cent, I venture. 3% it is, he says, adding that now we'll have to go and see his boss. Mr. Kantanko's office is enormous, with chairs lining three walls. That's normal, because in hierarchical Mali, people move around in delegations. The meeting involves a lot of niceties. Curiously, I am expected to provide the British government's position on the demands from Tuareg rebels for self rule in northern Mali. Oh, Britain just wants peace, I say limply. All my energy's going on, suppressing my delight at paying 3 per cent income tax. The inspector asks Mr. Kante to brief him about my case. Both men pore over a calculator. 236 thousand. I'd like a rounder figure, says Mr. Cantaco. The pound is strong. I think we'd like 300 thousand francs from you. He gives me that open look, the look you get when buying almost anything in Mali, as much as to say, that's my offer, what's yours? But I'm not going to squabble over a tax bill of £400 for the whole year. We'll want that in cash, he says, but you'll be given a receipt. As we go back downstairs, Mr. Conte offers some explanation. 80% of Mali's economy is informal, he says. The government believes the new 3% rate will attract more taxpayers. No one ever consults us, of course. As things stand, we struggle to raise 1 or 2%. So this new rate represents an increase for most people. Seen that way, the Malian tax authorities haven't done too badly out of me, perhaps because I strangely volunteered to pay tax. Mr. Kante and his boss looked kindly on my case, treating me more like an informal trader than someone belonging in the 30% bracket. As I leave, so does the man with the ram, except the ram remains tied to the railings. Monsieur, I call out. He turns around. Your ram? He shakes his head no no, it's for them, he says matter of factly, and walks away.
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And that was Alex Duval Smith with the tax men and women of Bamako in Mali. The ram, I fear, was not consulted. That's it. More on Thursday and on Saturday of next week. Until then, goodbye.