← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Oct 6, 2011
00:27:55
A time of shifting and unexpected new relationships in Libya is explored by Allan Little.
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You're listening to a download from the BBC.
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This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on
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the top of our website.
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To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our
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Twitter feed as well.
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But now, with the addition Broadcast on
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Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Today, the Islamists in from the cold in Libya, seeking a role in the new government and a fresh relationship with the West. We find the modern world bringing challenges to a remote community. Out in the South Atlantic, the Sicilian TV boss scared but determined to go on with his anti Mafia broadcasts. And we sit down for a history lesson. And then a feast at a primary school in Cape Town. A battle is still going on for control of the Libyan coastal town of Sirte. It's one of the last remaining places where fighters loyal to the ousted leader, Colonel Gaddafi are still holding out. Libya's acting Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, says the battle for Sirte will have to be won before a timetable for elections can be announced. Already there's speculation about who might be part of the new government which will lead the country away from the Gaddafi era. Alan Little says there are many voices demanding to be heard in the new Libya.
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Hello, sir. Where are you from? The question comes at you everywhere in Tripoli these days. I am from Britain. Then welcome, welcome. Welcome to Libya. The exchange is simple and warm. It is an almost magical time in Tripoli, a moment of immense expectation and great promise. I'd been here six months earlier and witnessed a curiously telling and darkly comic incident in the now notorious Hotel Rixos, where the regime housed foreign journalists. Shortly after the NATO bombing campaign began in March, an angry crowd of young men came into the hotel carrying green flags and portraits of Gaddafi. Some of them were armed. It was early morning and we were at breakfast. The demonstrators rampaged through the restaurant, bellowing their support from Wamar God and Libya. There was a menacing, aggressive edge to it. The breakfasting journalists were bemused and unsettled. But the restaurant staff, you could see, were confronted with a dilemma. To carry on serving omelets or to join in with the angry denunciation of the enemies of Gaddafi. One by one, they raised their fists in the air and started half heartedly to chant for Muammar God and Libya. They were, I suppose, too afraid not to. The omelettes would have to wait now that atmosphere of paranoia has lifted. Hello, sir. Where are you from? I am from Britain. Then you are welcome. Welcome to Libya. This time the speaker turns out to be an orthopedic surgeon who trained in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and lived as I did through the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. We are speaking to each other in Serbo Croat, each of us marveling a little and taking delight in this unexpected, slightly bizarre connection between us. But it is a time of shifting and unexpected new relationships. One of the most powerful figures in the land now is Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who led the liberation of Tripoli and whose fighters now man checkpoints all over the Libyan capital. I went to see his deputy, Sheikh Khaled Sharif. This is a man who left Libya for Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation. He joined the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organization long viewed with suspicion by Western intelligence agencies because of its close links to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. He is a short, graying, slightly portly man with a quiet, scholarly air to him. He speaks softly and courteously, like many devout Muslim men here. He shakes my hand, but not that of my producer because she's a woman. I ask him about his past. Yes, we knew Osama bin Laden. We lived there with him, but we did not support 9 11. We told him it was a mistake to open up this front against the west when our real enemies were dictators in our own Arab countries. Sheikh Khalid, even so, was seized by the Americans shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and held for two years at Bagram Air Base. He was tortured, he says, subjected to repeated sleep deprivation. For a year, they played loud rock music day and night. But, he adds, they investigated me, and I believe they know very well that we Libyans had nothing to do with 9 11. In 2003, the Americans handed him back, rendered him, in the parlance of the war on terror, to Libya, where he disappeared for five more years into Gaddafi's jails. The Libyan Islamic fighting group in the past denounced those who sought democratic dialogue. Jihad was the only way to ensure the victory of Islam. They believed that was their position. He shakes his head. The Islamic fighting group no longer exists, he says. We have chosen dialogue with those Libyans who do not agree with us. We will play our part in the system that will emerge here. The Libyan people can now choose the kind of government they want. We will make our case along with all the others. I ask him about America, the great enemy of the global jihad. Every Libyan is grateful for what America and the NATO allies did here. He says. The change, if we take it at face value, is extraordinary. The Islamists have come in from the cold. They are, or at least they say they are, embracing pluralism, the rule of law, dialogue and a new relationship with the West. We know what Libya is in transition from, but not yet what it will become. But in Tripoli, at this moment of explicit and universally articulated optimism, it is hard not to be struck by the promise this moment represents.
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And that was Alan Little. Most people are back at work in Athens this morning after a 24 hour national strike against the government's austerity measures. The action, accompanied by skirmishes between riot police and demonstrators outside parliament, caused widespread disruption. The government in Athens says belt tightening is necessary if the country is to avoid defaulting on its debts. But the protesters insist the cuts are making the recession worse. Chris Morris says the argument's going on far beyond the borders of Greece.
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They used to call it the grand tour, a cultural journey across Europe for young men of means to allow them to imbibe the great lessons of history. I wouldn't claim to be a man of means, nor particularly young, anymore, but I've been on a tour of my own over the past few weeks, visiting seven countries across the continent to look not at the past, but at what the immediate future might hold. And the answers are rather disconcerting. Or more precisely, no one really knows what the answers are, and that is more disconcerting still. But talk to people from all walks of life and they know these are difficult times. From ice cream sellers in Poland to underwater archaeologists in Greece to the porcini mushroom collectors in the woods north of Rome, everyone is saying in their different ways, more or less the same. Europe's financial and political culture is in crisis. And the complex overlapping challenges posed by sovereign debt, by vulnerable banks, and by quite profound questions about the nature of democracy when nation states join a single currency, all of them are coming to a head at the same time. Decision number one, what to do about Greece, a country where increasingly nothing is quite what it seems. Last week, for example, I got picked up from the airport by my cousin Costas. Well, I didn't, but that was our cover story. Taxi drivers and all forms of public transport in Athens were on strike, so our hotel chef came incognito to collect me instead. In the land of smoke and mirrors, that seemed appropriate. But pretty soon, the rest of the Eurozone is going to have to decide whether to keep paying for Greece for years and years to come. The immediate debate is over whether it should receive the next installment of its bailout loans. In normal circumstances, the answer would be no. It hasn't lived up to its commitments. But let Greece go, and then what? Bankruptcy, social disorder, collapsing banks. And if Greece couldn't find anyone to lend it any more money, it would have to create its own. In other words, leave the euro and get the central bank in Athens printing brand new but seriously devalued notes. Policymakers across the eurozone insist that they won't allow that to happen. If the euro falls, then Europe falls, they say. So there's talk of beefing up rescue funds, of recapitalising banks, of financial shock and awe. And the numbers are staggering. A billion used to sound like quite a lot to me. Now hundreds of billions are being thrown around like confetti. And the T word trillion is moving to center stage. But the details are supremely difficult. Decision number two, who is going to pay? The answer, first and foremost, one way or another, is Germany. But there are political problems with the idea of imposing a financial solution without consulting national parliaments. And in the longer term, there's talk of much closer fiscal and political union in the eurozone to deal with the realities of a single currency. But that in turn prompts fears of a loss of sovereignty, which many are unwilling to accept. So here we are, still waiting for the magic wand that will never come. A solution, if one is to be found, will be forged in small steps, not grand gestures. They may work, but then again, they may not. I can't pretend I understand all the detail, says Wilhelm Roedekirken. We're in his water taxi, driving around Europe's largest seaport at death defying speeds. Rotterdam looks out to the rest of the world. It's a global hub, but even here, people are looking inwards, worried about what the future holds. Whatever happens, says Willem, will have to pay for countries like Greece. Everyone knows it. And I just can't help wondering why. He steers his taxi towards the dockside next to the old headquarters of the Holland America shipping line. In the early 20th century, thousands of emigrants left Europe from this point in the Netherlands in search of a new life in the early 21st century. They're leaving from elsewhere, from the bailout countries which are facing years of punishing austerity. The price they're paying for all that money from the Germans, the Dutch and all the rest in Greece, Portugal, Ireland. I've met young people with good degrees who can't find work at home and are making plans to leave. The Greeks are thinking about Melbourne, perhaps, the Portuguese about Brazil, and the Irish about wherever the mood takes them. They're all leaving an uncertain Europe behind, heading out on a grand tour of a rather different kind.
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Our Europe correspondent, Chris Morris. It's 50 years now since the entire population of the world's remotest community was evacuated when a volcano began to erupt. 268 refugees were plucked from the British island of Tristan d' Acunha in the South Atlantic and resettled in England. Almost all of them went back home two years later. Half a century on, Chris Carnegie is on the island and getting a glimpse of a way of life under pressure.
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Nicky Swain doesn't talk much, but he smiles a lot. He's got the trademark Tristan da Cunha blend of old fashioned reserve and happy generosity of spirit. He's 30 now, and the great, great, great grandson of Thomas Swain, one of the pioneering settlers who turned this volcanic speck of an island into the world's most isolated human settlement. And Nicky's life is being played out as the people of Tristan da Cunha try to navigate between the splendour of isolation and the realities of a connected world. On Tristan, most people have two jobs, at least. For Nicky Swain, there are three electrician, lobster fisherman and farmer with cattle, sheep and potatoes to tend. And he's one of a precious breed on Tristan, a young man with a family. I met Nicky with Emma, his wife, who works in finance for the island government. And with Ryan, their young son, who's learning to copy his dad's big toothy smile. But here's the question, what else will Ryan learn now? Life's changing so fast on Tristan da Cunha. He's four years old, which means the boy was born just as telephones were first installed across the Tristan village, a cluster of single story homes tucked beneath the soaring volcano peak. There's the Internet now, too, and television pulled in from the British Forces satellite that's meant for the Falklands. Tristan is 1500 miles from the next human settlement on St. Helena. But suddenly it's feeling the pull of the 21st century. 50 years ago, there was a faster, harsher clash of cultures. When the volcano erupted, every islander was shipped to England and billeted for nearly two years in disused Air Force quarters on the Hampshire coast. The authorities hoped they'd want to stay, but 1960s Britain brought them face to face with bureaucracy, crime and harsh winters. They voted overwhelmingly to go home as soon as they could. The chief islander at the time summed it In Tristan, he said, where we don't have a jailhouse and very rarely an argument, a man can come to grips with his soul. The volcano and the well meaning British officials of the 1960s failed to bounce Tristan into the modern mainstream. But economic reality might do it now. Nicky Swain could revert to the old ways, eking a life from the sea and the land. But his salary buys him some welcome luxuries. He runs a Mercedes car even though there are almost no roads on the island. His son will take computer lessons at school. And he says he won't stand in the way if young Ryan decides to leave when he grows up and seek the bright lights of Britain. This tiny island has plenty of challenges. A falling birth rate is forecast to shrink the population, currently around 260, by a third in three decades. There's rising dependence on imported food and drink, and with it, a rising tide of problems with obesity, high blood pressure and alcohol. The physical isolation is just as stark as it was in 1961. It takes a week for a visitor or a new stock of processed food to get here by ship from South Africa. And now they've had a taste of consumer society. Islanders need a growing economy to feed the habit. Faced with deficits, the Tristan government knows what it wants to do. It plans better harbour facilities, a push into new markets for the lobster, faster broadband and more advanced teaching. But it looks like having to dig deep into its modest reserves to buy them. Tristan's had its fair share of bad luck. Since the volcano, there's been a devastating cyclone, a fire that destroyed the lobster factory and just this year, a shipwreck that spilled oil, disrupting the fishery and killing thousands of penguins. It might be easier to give up. The fishing company could just take their catch straight to Cape Town and island life could simply peter out as people leave or die. But Nicky Swain doesn't think that'll happen. He likes his modern consumer goods, for sure, but he still knows what's really important fresh air, sea spray, community, family. He defines his Tristan de Koonha in terms of the sheer, grounded joy of a life lived close to the elements. There's walks on the mountain, there's fishing, there's freedom. And he cracks a big, toothy smile.
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Chris Carnegie. A new Italian law regulating digital terrestrial television may mean that hundreds of smaller stations will lose their broadcasting frequencies and have to close down. Among them is one called Teleato, which campaigns against the Mafia on the island of Sicily. Danny Mitzman's been to meet the man who runs it. He's organising protest meetings and writing to the Italian president. He says the station's reporting has given local people the courage to stand up to intimidation, to Break the tradition of au metat, the code of silence.
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Partinico's a pretty nondescript little town. A handful of baroque churches, a couple of elegant palazzos and a lot of ugly concrete in between. If it weren't for the fact that it's in the so called Mafia Bermuda Triangle, perhaps nobody outside the province of Palermo would have heard of it as it is. Like Corleone, it's a name that prompts Italians to raise an eyebrow and suck in their breath when you tell them you're planning to visit. My point of departure is San Giuseppe Iato, another former Mafia stronghold. Having just visited a vineyard on land confiscated from an infamous jailed boss, I decide to try my luck with the only direct bus of the day to Partinico. I do what the traffic warden advises and wave it down in the middle of the road, just in front of the toy shop. After a picturesque journey through the Jato Valley, I alight an hour later in Partinico, where the mountains rise up above the church steeples and illegal attic extensions. I find the block of flats which is home to Tele Jato without too much difficulty. As I climb the staircase, the smell of cigarette smoke gets stronger. Like the Bisto kid, I follow the aroma up to the second floor, through an unlocked door and into the newsroom. Its 1:20 and they go live at 2:00pm Pino, his daughter and a couple of volunteer journalists are putting together the news bulletin. When I come in, he turns towards me, cigarette between his lips. After the briefest of greetings, he we're on air soon, so sit down and don't break my balls. His daughter looks up and grins. Don't worry. That's how he talks to everyone. Indeed, Pino Magnacci, when not inhaling smoke, is invariably exhaling expletives. Unable to sit still and not wishing to be a ball breaker, I nose around the small converted apartment. You can tell by the pictures, tributes and cuttings on the walls just how proud Pino is of telejato. He's turned a tiny local TV station into one of Sicily's most powerful anti Mafia voices. He says nearly all the locals watch it. In the heart of Cosa Nostra territory, he was the first journalist to dare give the full names of arrested mafiosi. Before him, nobody published more than initials for fear of reprisals. Pino, his family and a small team of volunteers put together a daily news show which is dominated by Mafia and corruption stories. We're always first on the scene, he tells me. Even international channels like CNN call and ask to use our footage. The station works closely with the various police forces, including the Caturandi di Palermo, a special squad that hunts mafiosi in hiding. Wherever we show up, they're there. Wherever they show up, we're there. Pino's childlike bravado conceals his genuine courage. With his Groucho style moustache and Chico style accent, he boasts that even the Mafia watch Teleto. We were the only ones to interview the brother of Bernardo Provenzano, one of the biggest Mafia bosses, he tells me with a gleeful twinkle. Pino. We even discovered that Provenzano himself had an aerial specially positioned to pick up our signal. If you listen to the police wiretaps, you can hear our signature tune. Teleto has a they consider themselves men of honour. For us, dishonouring them is a question of honour. Pino uses derision as both weapon and shield. But he admits he's scared, especially for his family. I smoke three packets a day and I always joke that it's just as well. The biggest room in our tiny station is the bathroom. Living under police escort, he's suffered countless attacks. Slashed tyres, severed brake cables, burnt out cars, windscreens shattered by gunshots. They even tried to bump me off, he chuckles, describing a failed attempt to strangle him, which left him with four fractured ribs, a broken leg, a black eye and several broken teeth. But he refuses to be intimidated, considering himself a missionary journalist out to rid his beautiful Sicily of the scourge of organized crime. At 5 o' clock, it's time for me to head for the station to catch a train up to Palermo. Pino refuses to let me go without showing me some true Sicilian hospitality. Police escort in tow, we go to a nearby coffee bar. Everyone, including the officers, gets an espresso, and Pino insists I taste a cannolo, the island's famous ricotta filled pastry. I have to keep Telejato going, says Pino between mouthfuls, so that one day Sicily will be more famous for these than for the Mafia.
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Danny Mitzman in southern Italy. So much has changed in South Africa in the 17 years since the end of apartheid. After decades of violence and oppression, its peaceful transition to democracy once seemed almost like a political miracle. But even the new South Africa, the so called rainbow nation, is still riven by racial and economic divides. Much of the country's black population still feels marginalised. Millions continue to live in squalor, with little chance of a job, let alone a shot at real prosperity. Even sport is divided. Nelson Mandela may have famously worn a Springboks rugby shirt back in 1995. But rugby remains a mainly white game, while football is predominantly black. The complexity of South Africa's diversity and its history have been giving Rajesh Mochandani food for thought.
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On the menu was springbok, that cute antelope type creature we'd seen on safari just the week before. Now, as we drove past the guard's hut up to the baronial house, we braced for the sight of a whole one turning on a spit. Not to worry. In the fireplace was a warm welcome, nothing more. And around a huge table, a dozen or so guests entranced by the TV in the corner. This was an evening of rugby, and Braai Bry is the Afrikaans version of barbecue and as much a national pastime as rugby. Now the movie Invictus led us to believe a canny President Mandela united a divided South Africa through rugby. Maybe there were black people somewhere else watching the same game with the same fervor. There were none in this room. Appetizers came, sausages made from game hunted by our host, and then the promised springbok in pink bite sized steaklets, thankfully unrecognisable. The wine flowed freely and had not travelled far. We were in the heart of wine country, where I'd struggle to find a post office but but couldn't move for art galleries, balsamic reductions and artisan chocolates. Many of the guests tonight were farmers and winemakers, wealthy white South Africans whose economic clout had outlived their political power. One woman told me her family gave up their farm in the 90s, between Mandela's release and his election as president. They were persuaded to sell up and make way for low cost housing. Did they force you? I asked. No, but as she put it, they bust in a lot of blacks to bump up the ANC vote. It caused, she said, big problems with squatter camps on their land. You see, she went on, black Africans were never native here. This was the traditional home of lighter skinned tribes, the Koikoi and the Bushmen. Whites settled here nearly 400 years ago and started cultivating grapes not long after. As she refilled my glass with wine made by her neighbor, it was clear these party guests felt a strong claim to this fruitful valley and, judging from the sport fuelled conviviality before me, truly settled. They were now in their small corner of the rainbow Nation, white roots as old and intertwined as the vines planted centuries before. Just an hour away, that same sense of belonging is is marked out by rows of houses tightly packed and brightly painted and interspersed with Mosques and halal meat shops. Two days after my Springbok banquet came another feast and wine was certainly off the menu at St. Paul's Primary School in inner city Cape Town. The area called Beau Kaap is unique. Hundreds of years ago, the Dutch developed the Cape as a stopping off point on the spice route from Southeast Asia. Ships brought slaves from Malaysia and Indonesia and dumped them here in horrific conditions. Now their descendants call themselves the Cape Malay and this is a proud Muslim quarter of South Africa's most diverse city. But Cape Town's biggest ethnic group are coloreds, a term used by the apartheid regime that's now offensive to many. But it's how South Africans of mixed race choose to describe themselves. So at this school, little Sikulele was friends with Dean Gloria played with Song and Amara and Mushtaq and Luxolo were twinkle eyed troublemakers, Blacks and Coloureds and Kate Malay. All together in the shadow of table mountain and history. I'd spent some time as a volunteer at the school and now was invited to the end of term. Teachers meal tables were arranged in a U shape in the school hall and spread before us were spicy curries and flatbread called roti, sweet potatoes roasted and mashed to a sticky goo and a hefty dessert called potato pudding smothered in hot stewed fruit. Dishes every bit as South African as braai. But in a room where of 30 people, only two were white. Some ate with forks, others used their hands. Some women wore headscarves. A colored teacher said Grace. The black principal thanked her brothers and sisters for their hard work during term time. And as a first time visitor, it made me understand something. South Africa's violent history lies close to the surface, as if time has formed just a thin cooling crust over the molten lava of the past. The landscape it's left behind is strange, sometimes difficult to navigate, but like the food, never bland.
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Rajesh Merchandani chewing it over in Cape Town and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be back on Saturday morning with more stories, probably more food as well from correspondents far and wide. Do join us. Goodbye.