← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Rebuilding a life amid Syria's ruins
00:28:19
In the ruins of the district of Ghouta a man starts to rebuild his home - and his life.
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- [00:00]
Amol Rajan
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Laura Bicker
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- [01:38]
Tom Bateman
Hello. Today, China eyes pole position as a global power with advances in green energy, AI and military might. But what's its Achilles heel? We're in New Orleans, where we hear how President Trump's hold on the Republican Party could be on the wane. We're in Greece, where a blame game is underway as the country battles a sheep pox crisis. And finally, we're Brazil, where a cameraman faces his fear of heights to capture the impact of climate change on the Amazon. But first, a year after the sudden fall of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria, the country's still struggling to spark any kind of rebuilding program. Many of the sanctions imposed in recent years are now being lifted to help encourage the investment Syria desperately needs. The World bank has estimated Syria will need at least $200 billion to rec 14 years of civil war. Though some Syrians are modestly taking matters into their own hands, Lee's Doucet reports from a neighborhood in much of Jobar is gone.
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Podcast Advertiser
Streets are just charred skeletons of shattered cement, a ghostly landscape haunted by pain and loss. Everyone who once lived in these neighborhoods fled long ago or is dead. It's chilling just to be here. Hello? A man's voice suddenly pierces the silence. I look around, my eyes searching the gaping holes in the buildings around me. Hello? He calls out again. I look up a blue and white knitted cap with a shaggy fringe is all that's visible. You're sitting on the windowsill of the room where I was born, he shouts. I turn to look inside a jagged frame which used to be a window. I used to crawl on that floor, comes the voice from above. I step into the street to look up, and what a view. Several stories above there's a balcony, intact, and even more. There's a new pane of glass behind it, and another beside it. They glint on a cold, crisp winter's day. A little light in this dark. Come up, he calls out. I make my way up a winding cement staircase inside this rib cage of a house, and he comes down to meet me halfway. Hello, my name is Walid, he tells me in perfect English, and I get a little tour. That's where our TV was, he says, pointing to an ugly cavity. This was my son's room. My daughter's, he goes on as we climb past jumbles of rubble, stacks of new bricks, and then, at the very top, that balcony where he had stood, and before it, a kitchen, a fresh grey cement brightened by shiny white appliances, a stove, a fridge, even a washer and dryer, and it's toasty warm, thanks to a heater fuelled by solar power. We had to come home, waleed reflects. Did you never give up hope through all those years? I asked him. No. Right will always win. We believe that. And where does that come from? I probe. From God, he explains. Then he adds, it's a human feeling. We have to live. We go to the roof, where rectangular solar panels now take pride of place. I notice some house plans, too, also reaching for the sun. Then he tells me his story. He takes us back to 2011, when pro democracy protests erupted in Syria, just like they did in Tunisia, in Egypt, and more. What was known then as the Arab Spring. Walid's neighborhood was one of the first to rise up, its residents calling for reform. The government's response was ferocious. That house was bombed by warplanes, he explains, pointing to a ravaged building on one side, its ceilings collapsed like pancakes. And yours? I ask. It was looted by the Syrian army, he replies, matter of factly. Everything. My furniture, the wiring, the pipes. Waleed, like many other families, fled for their lives, for their children. He and his wife rented a small flat in a safer neighborhood of Damascus so his two sons and a daughter could continue to go to school, then university, and Walid worked as a mechanical engineer in his father's company. The suburbs they left behind became a battleground as opposition fighters advanced. When the government finally prevailed by brute force. Backed by its allies, Russia and Iran, it became this forsaken land. Then, all of a sudden, a year ago, it was all over. Decades of dictatorship ended after a lightning sweep across Syria by rebel forces. Walid couldn't bear to wait any longer. He took what savings he had to purchase the solar panels and, little by little, the necessities of a simple life. Syria is now full of stories of people returning from displacement camps, from new lives lived abroad. But many struggle to even find their homes. Signposts are gone in this new geography of grief, and most can't find the enormous sums needed to rebuild. Are you optimistic? I asked Waleed, thinking without saying it aloud, of how some Syrians are already braced for the worst, fearing their country will never get the huge amount of aid and investment it desperately needs or even escape another conflict, given the sectarian violence that's erupted over the past year. Others are more sanguine, insisting Syria just needs more time. I'm very optimistic, walid tells me. Even when you look at all this, I gesture to the ruins all around us. It will take a lot of money, he admits. It will take a lot of time. But we are not born to give up. Then he smiles. Even that spirit is a building block in this time.
- [07:43]
Tom Bateman
Please do that. Beijing struck a defiant tone this week with a round of military drills as it moves to reassert its dominance in the region. After the US Sent one of its largest arms shipments to date to Taiwan, Beijing's foreign ministry warned external forces against using Taiwan to contain China. Beijing has continued to stand its ground elsewhere, not least in Donald Trump's ongoing tariff war. But the once unstoppable Chinese economy is now showing signs that it is perhaps struggling.
- [08:18]
Laura Bicker
Laura Picker On a frosty night on a corner of the pavement on the edge of Ritan park, right in the heart of Beijing's business district, a middle aged woman started drawing three circles with chalk. In the center she placed what looked like some old newspapers, or at least I thought so, until I looked carefully. She'd folded the sheets of paper into the shape of a long coat and and a hat. There was also what looked like paper money. At no point did she look up. Instead, she set the paper alight and carefully watched it burn in the center of the circle while squatting on her heels. I stood transfixed. This is a centuries old Chinese ritual. It's a way of honoring ancestors, of sending them warmth in winter. As I followed the line of smoke skywards, the outline of the towering China World Trade center rose up behind the park. If her ancestors had come to visit from the spirit world, they may not recognize this city, which, along with most of the country, has been transformed by three decades of unprecedented growth. The last year has cemented China's place as a leading global power. Beijing stood up to Washington and Donald Trump's trade tariffs. President Xi decided to use the country's economic weight as the world's factory and as a massive market for its goods to push back. It has led some analysts to ask, was 2025 the year China gained an edge in its great power competition with the U.S. china is leading the world in several key industries, something I've seen firsthand on my travels through factories and ports in the last year. It's building more ships than any other country, more electric vehicles, more wind turbines and drones. It makes far more pharmaceuticals than anywhere else, and those are its current achievements. President Xi is already focused on the future. China is investing heavily in cutting edge technology and artificial intelligence. It has more robots working in factories than any other country. Even the end of year gathering for Communist Party officials and journalists featured a dancing humanoid robot. Mr. Xi is also determined to drive a global political agenda. He's deepened his relationship with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and he's mended ties with India. But as confident as he appears on the world stage, the Chinese president has real problems at home. In the central city of Zhengzhou, I clambered over brick walls, through a flooded basement and up a precipitous unfinished stairwell to reach what should have been 32 year old Peng Jo's dream apartment. It was a bare shell with wires sticking out the walls and ceiling. Welcome to my new home, Mr. Zhao said with a sad shake of his head. All his life savings have gone into an apartment that has remained unfinished for three years with no sign of progress. He's one of the estimated tens of millions of householders across China left in limbo by the country's housing market crisis. I've lost confidence in our governing systems, he told me. A system which allowed construction companies to continue to build while racking up the millions of dollars in debt, and the government which promised to finish incomplete homes. This is a rare thing for someone to say openly in China. His apartment was being developed by the Evergrande Group, the country's largest housing developer, which defaulted on its debt in 2021, leading to a dramatic share price collapse and delisting in 2025. The Chinese Communist Party is facing several major economic challenges high rates of youth unemployment, sky high local government debt, and a aging population but economic experts believe the housing market's collapse has hit the country the hardest. Around 80% of Chinese householders have most of their savings invested in their home, and house prices are continuing to fall. The Communist Party has always promised prosperity in return for fealty. It's an unwritten social contract. The party demands loyalty and imposes heavy restrictions on personal freedom. But in exchange, people here have seen huge improvements in their lives. They've had opportunities their parents could only dream of. But what happens if the Communist Party is unable to uphold its bargain? Leaders in Beijing can see the danger in letting these problems fester. Back to that winter's night in Beijing, the paper has turned to a pile of smouldering ashes. The burning of these items is a way of giving the dead the luxuries they did not have in life. And yet I notice the woman has few for herself. Her coat is far too thin for the icy winter weather, and she's wearing sports shoes with a worn sole. China's economy, even with its current struggles, has proven to be resilient. But on my travels, the whispers are always of fears for the future of curbing spending, just in case things get worse. This erosion of domestic confidence is something the party may have to work hard to reverse in the coming year.
- [13:37]
Tom Bateman
Laura Bicker it's nearly a year since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States, a victory built around unquestioning loyalty among the Republican Party and his Maga base. But 2026 will provide an altogether tougher test as midterm elections approach in November. Then voters will give their verdict on Mr. Trump's second term so far and whether he's delivered on his campaign promises. Tom Bateman reports from New Orleans.
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Amol Rajan
A few weeks ago, I was in New Orleans to cover the latest phase of Donald Trump's campaign for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. We spent days driving around, tracking down the Border Patrol squads ready to haul people into their custody. The city is a scramble of identities. Soul and jazz spill out from French colonial buildings in the historic center. Further out are a flurry of Cajun and Creole cafes. Further still, the Latino neighbourhoods where strip malls meet giant hardware stores and people in parking lots carry little except hopes of finding work. But some do this without the formal permission to reside in the United States. They are a sitting target for the masked officers we spot them, ready to raid behind darkened windows of unmarked cars outside the hardware stores. This place is a scramble of politics, too. New Orleans mostly votes Democrat, but the deep red southern state of Louisiana is a Republican heartland, so views here on immigration are double edged. A city resisting Mr. Trump's crackdown in a state welcoming it, or so you might think. It was a key election pledge that, along with the promise to bring down inflation, got him into the White House. The push from the White House, along with the rhetoric, has been aggressive. Mr. Trump's aide and architect of his immigration crackdown, Stephen Miller, has pushed for ever higher numbers of daily deportations. We watch as the border teams target undocumented Latino workers. In one case, armed agents forcing laborers down off the roof of a house they're working on. Every irregular migrant delivered into custody surely delivers on a pledge from Team Trump. But the opinion polling suggests something far more nuanced. Mr. Trump's approval rating for handling immigration had worsened, not improved, by late 2025, compared with when he took office. By November, his approval rating on immigration policies was down nearly 10 points to 41%, according to one measure. A Gallup poll from the summer offered more insight. Much of the changing attitudes have been driven by Republican voters. Many were content, it seems, with Mr. Trump dramatically cutting irregular crossings at the southern border. The hardline policies to deport the undocumented, many of whom have been in the US for years, has garnered less enthusiasm. As for the other issue that saw Mr. Trump broaden his voter base, the promise to improve the economy. The polling is also a problem for him. Many Americans were sick of the soaring prices of eggs, milk, meat and gas on Mr. Biden's watch. But nearly a year into the Trump term, his approval ratings on this have also dipped. The rate of inflation has been slow to fall. But importantly, Mr. Trump seems to be suffering from the same problem Mr. Biden did. Americans just aren't feeling it. Economists also warn his tariffs may add to inflationary pressures. All of this makes 2026 a critical year not just for President Trump's prospects, but for that of his MAGA revolution. He has 11 months before the midterm elections, which will decide every seat in the House of Representatives and a third of those in the Senate. Both are currently controlled by the Republicans, with thin margins. By November, Mr. Trump will be 80 and nearing the second half of his final term. The result of the vote could determine momentum towards his chosen successor, a fractious fight over the soul of the Republican Party or anything in between. Beyond New Orleans, we came across Bear, Minnie, Peep, Finley, Paddy and Rory, who were playing havoc with our sound recording levels in the town of Manderville, Louisiana. We're trying to interview their owner, a woman called Mary Ann, who we spotted in the extensive manicured front garden of a lakeside house. As her dogs barked away. She reels off their names, explaining that the last three, the golden retrievers, have good Irish names, as Marianne's daughter dates an Irishman. Mandeville sits in a Republican leaning parish and Marianne voted for Mr. Trump at the last election, she tells me. She calls herself an immigrant. Her great grandparents settled in America and says she feels conflicted about his mass deportation drive. Many undocumented people are here to work hard for their families, she says, suggesting it is wrong to remove them. The Mary Anns of America will have a chance to express their opinions at the ballot box this year and will return a verdict not just on immigration and the economy, but could also decide the course of Trumpism to come.
- [18:58]
Tom Bateman
Tom Bateman.
- [19:02]
Amol Rajan
At the BBC we go further so you see clearer. Through frontline reporting, global stories and local insights, we bring you closer to the world's news as it happens. And it starts with a subscription to BBC.com, giving you unlimited articles and videos ad free podcasts, the BBC News channel streaming live 24. 7 plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries. Subscribe to trusted independent journalism and storytelling from the BBC. Find out more@BBC.com Join.
- [19:35]
Tom Bateman
An outbreak of sheep pox in Greece, which began in summer of 2024, has seen a surge in cases over recent months with mass culling affect farmers across the country. More than 400,000 sheep and goats have been killed so far. Now the farming community is at loggerheads with the Greek government as to how best to bring the crisis back under control. Hester Underhill has been in the agricultural heartland of Thessaly.
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Hester Underhill
The plains of Thessaly are about as far from the postcard image of Greece as it's possible to get. There are no white sand beaches here, no bustling tavernas or pretty whitewashed villages. Instead, the land opens up into vast empty fields that roll endlessly into the horizon. Thessaly is about a three hour drive north from Athens, slap bang in the middle of mainland Greece. As we make our way along the highway, clouds hang low and ominous in the sky and dramatic bolts of forked lightning cast sudden strobe like flashes across the land. In a country that so often suffers from water shortages, you might think that farmers here would welcome the weather. But heavy rain isn't always good news in Thessaly. The region is still recovering from the catastrophic impact of Storm Daniel, which dropped three years worth of rainfall in two days in September 2023, killing hundreds and thousands of livestock animals and spreading thick mud across the plains, rendering a lot of land infertile. And now Thessaly faces a new crisis. Sheep pox. The resurgence of the fast spreading viral disease has triggered Greece's worst livestock emergency in decades, leading to mass culls up and down the country. My colleague George and I have come to the small village of Vlokhos to meet Panayotis Paniotopoulos, an arable farmer who makes the majority of his income growing wheat and corn as animal feed. Quarantine measures mean he can't sell his crops outside the region, and inside the region, demand has all but evaporated. A stocky man with closely cropped silver hair, Panayotes picks us up from the bus station in the nearby town of Paloma. These fields, he says, gesturing out the car window, would normally be full of grazing sheep. Now they hold nothing but wet grass. Almost every flock here has been killed and the animals buried, he explains. What sheep remain are being quarantined high in the mountains for eight months. We ask if he'll take us there to see them, but he shakes his head. But strictly forbidden, he says. The authorities worry that the dust on someone's shoes could help spread the virus. He pulls up beside a farm on the banks of the Enipeas River. Outside its tall corrugated iron barns, a Greek flag flaps in the wind. The farmer here used to have more than a thousand sheep, paniotis tells us. Today it stands eerily quiet, save for the barking of a handful of sheepdogs who've been left without a flock to herd. The street that leads into Vlokos is lined with houses that have stood empty since being wrecked by the floods a few years ago. Their front garden's still littered with debris and window shutters hanging off their hinges. Panayotes drops us off at one of the few that's still occupied the home of Costas Jotas, head of the village's Flood Response Association. A tall man in his late 60s, he also makes his living as an arable farmer, although, like Panayotis, the knock on effects of the virus mean he hasn't made any money for months. The row of tractors we saw lined up in the center of the village, Costas explains, would be part of a protest in which he and other farmers were taking part to block the main road that runs between the cities of Kadica and Ioannina. The protesters, he tells us, are demanding the immediate payment of overdue support funds, compensation that they argue should have been issued long ago. But what angers the farmers most, he says is the lack of sheep pox vaccines. It's a scandal, he says. The EU people came to assess the situation and and they advised the Greek government to start vaccinating, but they did nothing. The Greek government has defended its decision to refuse mass vaccinations on the basis that it could lead to the country being classified as an endemic country, leading to restrictions on the export of feta cheese worth more than 750 million euros a year. The government also argues that the effectiveness of the vaccine isn't fully certified, and so there's no guarantee that it would eradicate the disease. In turn, it has blamed the explosion of cases on farmers failing to adhere to biosecurity measures by transporting animals into areas previously considered disease free, allegations now being investigated by prosecutors. For the hundred or so families still living in Vlokos, he explains, there's only one solution to leave. To start over somewhere new, somewhere safer. Our crops are dying, our animals are dying, and people are in danger from floods. He pauses, flicking his cigarette dejectedly into the ashtray. We're afraid, he says simply. Very afraid.
- [24:27]
Tom Bateman
Hester Underhill and finally to Brazil, where a group of industrial agriculture companies are trying to overturn a landmark agreement not to trade soybeans grown on newly deforested Amazon land. Soya is Brazil's biggest agricultural export, but the voluntary moratorium is estimated to have saved tens of thousand of hectares of trees from the chainsaws our climate editor, Justin Rowlatt.
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Justin Rowlatt
We clip into heavy harnesses and pull on hard hats before starting the climb. The tower disappears into the rainforest canopy above us, and the heat is brutal, over 30 degrees Celsius with humidity above 80%. To make matters worse, Tony Jolliffe, our cameraman, hates heights. I know the tower's been here for 27 years, but it looks unnervingly flimsy, a lattice of metal scaffolding with narrow steel staircases at the center. It is only 3 meters by 3 at the base, but rises 45 meters, about 15 stories straight up into the air. I'm here in the Tapejos forest reserve in southeastern Brazil because a group of Brazilian farmers have redoubled their efforts to end an agreement which bans the purchase purchase of soya grown on Amazon land deforested after 2008. They say it goes against Brazilian competition law and they're demanding it be struck down. The rickety looking tower was built by NASA as part of a long running mission to better understand our home planet. It's part of a network of eight similar structures that monitor how the Amazon ecosystem is responding to climate change and to human pressure. Each tower bristles with high tech instruments, sensors that track almost everything moving between the forest and the atmosphere. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. The project, known as the Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment, is led by American scientist Dr. Bruce Forsberg. With nearly three decades of data, he says it provides an unparalleled look at how one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems is functioning. And the picture is troubling. As we clank up the stairwell, the forest reveals itself in cross section. At ground level, the understory, it is dim and shadowed. Many plants here are a deeper green, Dr. Forsberg explains. Their leaves loaded with chlorophyll to squeeze every drop of energy from the little light that reaches them. Even the forest soundscape changes down here, he says bird calls are often deeper, perhaps because low frequency sounds travel further. In the maze of trunks and leaves. In the rainforest, the diversity is often heard, not seen. To appreciate the astonishing variety, you really need an app that can identify bird calls. On one dawn walk, we logged 67 different species, many with marvelous names. How about the short tailed pygmy tyrant? The rufous browed pepper shrike, or my personal favorite, the violaceous euphonia. When we finally break through the canopy and into the bright sunlight, it is noticeably less humid, although cameraman Tony looks distinctly gray and queasy. As Tony regains his composure, Dr. Forsberg explains that a combination of climate change and increasing deforestation has left the plants, animals and people here facing more frequent and more intense droughts. He describes an experiment conducted from this tower more than a decade ago. It confirmed how, during droughts, the stomata, the tiny pores on the leaves through which trees breathe, begin to close. When they do, the trees stop releasing moisture into the air. And because roughly half of the region's rainfall comes from the forest itself, this can deepen droughts. Dr. Forsberg tells me he fears this part of the Amazon may be nearing a dangerous tipping point, with big trees dying off, meaning less moisture and cloud cover and therefore hotter conditions. A potential feedback loop that could push the forest towards irreversible decline. In the worst case, he says, some areas could shift towards a savannah like dry grassland ecosystem. As we clatter back down the tower, Dr. Forsberg says his big worry is whether the divided Brazilian government will hold the line. President Lula has made forest protection a key plank of his administration. But he faces a hostile Congress, much of which appears determined to dilute environmental regulations. If that happens, the pressure on the already stressed Amazon rainforest ecosystem will only intensify, Dr. Forsberg tells me with a sigh, when we finally reach solid ground again.
- [29:43]
Tom Bateman
Justin Rolatte that's all for today. We'll be back again next Saturday morning. Do join us.
- [29:50]
Amol Rajan
Hello, I'm Amol RAJAN and from BBC Radio 4. This is Radicle. We are living through one of those hinge moments in history when all the old certainties crumble and a new world struggles to be born. So the idea behind this podcast is to help you navigate it.
- [30:08]
Justin Rowlatt
What's really changed is the volume of.
- [30:11]
Amol Rajan
Information that has exploded and also by offering a safe space for the radical ideas that our future demands, go to.
- [30:19]
Justin Rowlatt
The Chancellor and say cut, radically cut the taxes of those with children.
- [30:23]
Laura Bicker
Telling our stories is powerful and a radical act.
- [30:28]
Amol Rajan
Listen to Radical with Amol Rajan on BBC Sounds. At the BBC we go further so you see clearer With a subscription to BBC.com you get unlimited articles and videos ad free podcasts, the BBC News channel streaming live 24. 7 plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries from less than a dollar a week for your first year. Read, read, watch and listen to trusted independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com find out more@BBC.com unlimited.