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From Our Own Correspondent
Return of the Bunga Bunga King
00:27:47
Andrew Harding travels to the centre of Mali to find out how the fight against the is...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent.
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You can hear the version of the
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programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, the fight against Islamist rebels reaches a small country town in Mali. The Georgian government frees thousands of prisoners. Georgians are far from sure it's a good idea, despite the scandals and the court action. The bunga bunga king's back, aiming for one more victory in Italian politics. And there's turbulence at 35,000ft. But diplomacy saves the day. On a flight from Luton Airport, hundreds of African troops have been arriving in Mali to join the French led assault on the Islamist rebels in the north. The US Air Force is also involved. American transport aircraft have been flying into the capital, Bamako, carrying more French soldiers and equipment. And the French, with Malian military support, have already retaken a number of towns which had been held by the rebels. And French warplanes operating from bases in Chad have been attacking rebel positions. Andrew Harding's been seeing how the conflict's been playing out in a small country town in the middle of Mali.
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There's something steady and purposeful about Segu, maybe. The town takes its tempo from the Niger river, almost a mile wide here, so silky blue and miraculous, as it heads northeast towards the Sahara, past Timbuktu, before having second thoughts and curling back south for the long trudge to the Atlantic. Segu is a market town surrounded by a network of canals that feed the rice and cornfields of central Mali. The traffic lights work here. Car drivers give way politely to motorbikes. And an army of donkeys chase each other's tails through the dusty side streets, carrying sacks of grain down to the docks. There's a big mosque in the centre of town, paid for by Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. But Malians, while devout, wear their religion lightly. No veils for women. Mixed crowds sitting in the streets watching the football on television, music bursting from every doorway. An easy going life. The Chinese are here, of course, fixing the main road to the capital and building a giant sugar beet factory on the far side of the river. The familiar signs of modern African economic development. Haphazard, striking and unequally spread. Mali remains stuck at the bottom of the global pile when it comes to poverty. The first hint that there's a war going on just up the road came from the souvenir sellers sitting morosely outside our hotel, seemingly the only idle people in town, the foreign tourists who used to pass through on their way up towards Timbuktu stopped coming abruptly a year ago. Then we ran into a military convoy, a a dozen French armoured vehicles grinding through town, following the river to the north east and the front lines. Are you French? Said the gatekeeper at the hospital with an expectant grin. British? Almost as good. You came to our rescue too. You are welcome here, he said, ushering me through with a flourish. France has indeed just rescued Mali, rushing troops in to prevent Islamist militants from charging south and seizing Segu and the rest of the country. But the job isn't over. Segu's hospital has been receiving some of the wounded from the fighting on the far side of the river. The militants captured a town there last week, part of their sudden, unexpected offensive from bases in the north of the country. Any moderately competent national army should have stopped them in their tracks. Sadly for Mali, its army, like its democracy, has been exposed as a sham. Dr. Musa showed me to the ward. He was nursing an injured wrist from a recent basketball game and seemed genially confident that the unfortunate events of the past year the separatist rebellion in the north, the military coup, the takeover of half the country by jihadists, the sudden French deployment would all drift past like the mighty Niger river, and Mali would be on its feet again in a month or two. If only. The question today is whether this country can avoid becoming the next Somalia and whether the outside world is ready to spe lives and a fortune nursing it back to stability. 30 year old sergeant Malik was picking at the bandage on his right thigh. An Islamist fighter had shot him during last week's battle north of the river in a town called Diaboli. Malik was proud of his wound and anxious to return to his unit to wipe out all the terrorists, as he put it. But our army is broken, he conceded. The French saved us. Thank God for the white man. It's uncomfortable to hear it put like that, but a prominent general from one of the neighboring West African countries now sending troops here gave me a different perspective. We were colonies, he said in private, and even the cleverest, the most independent child, remembers that he has a father. In other words, the French are back here for the long haul. First they'll take the lead in the slow war to drive the Islamist militants out of the big northern towns. Then Mali's army will need rebuilding. Then elections will need supervision and security. And on it goes. Malians rightly blamed their own politicians for the mess. They neglected the army, marginalized the arid north and allowed guns to pour into the region after the war in Libya. Those same political elites were also up to their necks in the cocaine smuggling and kidnapping trades that flourished in the Sahara, providing cover for the foreign jihadists who stormed out of the desert last year. It is depressing stuff. We drove out of Segu at sunrise, swerving to avoid a column of donkeys, proceeding earnestly the other way and heading upstream towards the French positions.
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And that's Andrew Harding in Mali. In the former Soviet state of Georgia, 3,000 prisoners are being released by the new government, which swept to power in October. The amnesty which follows the release of video showing inmates apparently being brutally abused by prison guards is a key part of the new administration's pledge to clean up the country's jails. But not all Georgians are convinced that letting out the prisoners is a good idea, as our correspondent in the Capital Tbilisi, Damien McGuinness has been finding out.
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As the first prisoners walk free out of Gladany prison in Tbilisi, many for the first time in years, they are hugged and kissed by crying mothers and wives. It's an emotional scene because friends and relatives know that their loved ones are not only free, but but also safe. It was here in this men's prison that inmates were filmed apparently being physically and sexually abused, a scandal which helped to oust the then government in last October's elections. Many of the inmates say that before the change of government, they were regularly beaten by guards and subjected to horrific abuse. Reports of rape are common and those being released today tell me they were jailed for their political convictions and simply because they opposed the government at the time, for example, by taking part in an anti government protest in May 2011. But I might have actually met some of these men before. At that protest, the demonstration turned violent and four people died in the chaos. The fault lay partly with some of the police officers who reacted heavy handedly, using rubber bullets to disperse the crowd and in the confusion, beating peaceful protesters and journalists with batons. I know because I was hit myself. Before the police moved in, I talked to some of the demonstrators, including men who were ripping up rocks from the pavement, ready to throw into the crowds, and who hid sharpened metal sticks and clubs under their jackets. These were not peaceful protesters, but thugs looking for a fight. And they were egged on by irresponsible protest leaders who whipped up the crowd with aggressive fighting talk and handed out metal rods. Looking at the happy scene of families being reunited outside the prison today, it's impossible to know whether any of these men are the ones I saw acting violently on that day. But President Michel Saakashvili, who led the former government, says criminals are being released back into society. Many other Georgians are equally worried, especially those who remember how violent Georgia used to be. Before President Saakashvili took over almost a decade ago, the country was in effect run by organized crime bosses known as thieves in law, a highly codified criminal gang structure which dates back to resistance against the communist state in Stalin's 1930s gulags. Throughout the 1990s, crime was a part of daily life in Georgia. Break ins and street robberies were common. And people would wind down their car windows when they parked so that thieves could just look in without having to smash the windows first. And neighbourhoods would rely on the local mafia boss to keep order rather than deal with corrupt police officers who were rarely paid and so lived off bribes. That all changed when Michael Saakashvili and his team of Western educated reformers swept to power in the US backed 2003 Rose Revolution. He came down hard on crime. Young police officers were recruited and paid well, and the thieves in law and the criminal gangs were either jailed or fled the country. And today, although you can still see bars on the windows of many houses as remnants of the old crime ridden days, Georgia is safer than any of the Western European countries. I know one banal example. The other day, our producer got back to her car. She'd not only left the car unlocked with her laptop sitting inside, she'd forgotten to even close the door, which was left ajar after a full day's filming. The laptop was still sitting there in full view. I just can't imagine that in most Western cities so many people are now worried about what will happen without the previous government's tough approach to crime. Will the criminal gangs come back to Georgia if they think the new government is soft on crime? And are some of the mafia bosses among those who are now being released? Over the last decade, the country has swung from anarchy and chaos to what many said was becoming a dictatorial police state. Now there's a chance for something in between, a system that's neither authoritarian nor anarchic. Most Georgians have had enough of both extremes. But there still remains a country in love with drama, where a leader can be praised as the country's saviour one minute and then condemned as a war criminal the next. And the current prevailing mood as thousands walk free from jail is that almost anyone who is jailed by the previous government is a political prisoner. Given Georgia's crime ridden history, that's clearly not the case. Until now the country's prisons had contained both innocent victims who suffered abuse and the corrupt criminals who once made Georgia so dangerous. The challenge for the new government is knowing who's who.
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Damian McGuinness in Tbilisi. In recent weeks, Pakistan seems to have been lurching from crisis to crisis. More than a hundred Shia Muslims were killed in a double bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta. Tens of thousands of anti government demonstrators camped out near Parliament in the capital Islamabad. And the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the Prime Minister in a corruption case. Olagarin has been telling us about living and dying in a nation gripped by crisis.
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A colleague newly arrived in Pakistan summed up the situation after her first week here. It's like living beneath a bulldozer, she said. That keeps heaping more news on top of you. So far this month we have had a devastating attack by Sunni militant extremists, a dangerous escalation in tension with Pakistan's nuclear neighbour India, and a mass protest within sight of Parliament. Elsewhere that might suggest a country on the brink of collapse. Here it's more or less situation normal. Last week, chaos came in the form of tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the resignation of the government. They streamed into Islamabad in a flag waving convoy of motorbikes, cars and buses. A human tidal wave of discontent armed with blankets, plastic sheeting and a mobile dispensary. Their leader was Tahirul Kadri, a charismatic Muslim cleric who reappeared from Canada just last month. The white bearded preacher rallied his faithful with fiery rhetoric, but he didn't get too close. Broadcasting to the masses from inside a bomb proof container, hour after hour, he denounced Pakistan's leaders as inept, corrupt thieves. His followers responded with chants of we want change. They complained about shortages of electricity and gas, about the lack of jobs and the need to pay bribes. On day four of the protest, the sky darkened with rain and the cleric's promised revolution turned into a damp squib. Kadri secured a few minor concessions from the government, then sent the crowds home. The peaceful end of the demonstration was seen by many as a victory for the government, whatever its faults. But there are lingering concerns that the cleric was a mouthpiece for Pakistan's powerful military leadership. It has a habit of playing politics. In all this chaos, some see proof of the country's resilience as well as its many fractures. Over dinner in Islamabad, a retired general with a moderate outlook predicted Pakistan could turn a corner with the upcoming elections due in May. If so, it will come too late for the dead of Quetta. Around A hundred people were killed on January 10 in a sectarian attack by Sunni extremists. They want to wipe out members of the Shia minority who they see as heretics. One of the victims was a human rights activist called Irfan Ali. He was Shia, but he campaigned for all those who are persecuted. That morning, the 37 year old with the curly hair and the broad smile was near the scene of a bomb attack in a marketplace. He made it home safely and tweeted about narrowly missing the blast that killed 11 people. But that night, death came calling again. Irfan was at home with his mother and his younger brother, Mohammed. As they chatted, he gave Mohammed some advice. He told me there was no law in Pakistan and no justice. Mohammed said he told me I must try to help people and bring understanding between different groups. Then they heard a bomb go off and Irrfan did what he always did. He rushed to help those in need. The blast was at the Star Snooker club nearby. It had been crowded for a big game. The last time I saw him, he was putting dead bodies in an ambulance. Mohammed told me, I said, you should go home and get a coat because it's cold. He said, I don't need to go home. I'm here to help people. Those were his last words. Seconds later, Irfan was gone. He was killed in yet another massive explosion, timed to target the rescuers and police who had rushed to the scene. His brother in law, Zahid, died with him. The country Irrfan left behind is plagued by Taliban suicide bombers and sectarian death squads, by economic hardship and political uncertainty. Having lived here for three and a half years, I know Pakistan is resilient. But so are the extremists who want to steal the future. Mohammed says he hopes to continue with the work of the brother he loved. But then he tells me he also hopes to leave the country.
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And that's Ola Guerin. Italy is in the grip of an election campaign. Polling day next month should mark a return to full blown democracy. For more than a year, the country has been run by a small, perhaps rather grey army of professors and experts. Unelected technocrats led by Mario Monti. They were asked to take over when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned at the height of a financial crisis. Mr. Monti has taken much credit for having apparently steered Italy away from the sort of economic catastrophe that engulfed Greece. But the time of the technocrats is over. Their government's been brought down and our man in Rome, Alan Johnstone, is watching the election campaign unfold.
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The media used to wonder obsessively what would happen when Professor Monti's time in office ended. Would he step away from power gracefully, turn his back on the Prime Ministerial palace? Or would he fight to stay? Would this unelected technocrat become a real politician? Would he try to win a mandate to continue his reforms, try to make real his vision of a better Italy? In the hours after his government was effectively brought down, Mr. Monti went to the opera on a snowy evening in Milan. And as he listened to the strains of Wagner's Lohengrin, he must surely have been contemplating his big decision. Soon afterwards, this rather grandfatherly academic figure said that it was time for him to start thinking, thinking like a warrior. So now he's taken charge of a coalition of centre parties and he's in the fight of his life, confronting the most formidable veteran on Italy's political battleground. Silvio Berlusconi got his campaign off to a faltering start. He seemed uncertain about whether to lead his party into the fray one more time. But his dithering's over now. In the end, this is a man who loves a stage, and there isn't a bigger one in Italy than the election campaign. And he's out there in the spotlight every day, giving it the old routine and revelling in it. You might think he would dread the television studios. He ought to be the easiest target for questioning journalists. Not much more than a year ago, he led Italy to the brink of financial catastrophe. A few months back, he was convicted of tax fraud. The judge actually described him as having a natural capacity for crime. Then, of course, there's his private life. This was a man who gave the world, while he was still Prime Minister, a whole new name for big raunchy parties. Silvio Berlusconi was the so called bunga bunga king. And he's on trial right now for having sex with an underage prostitute, a charge he denies. Any of those things would have destroyed any other political career in Europe. And of course, his past is flung at him on the campaign trail all the time. But he dodges and weaves and rants and blusters and charms. And his poll numbers have been inching up, he's been gathering momentum. Part of his secret is that he makes things interesting, unpredictable, funny. You never quite know what he might say or do next. He brings theatre, or at least pantomime. The other day on television, I watched him banging an enemy journalist on the head with a huge piece of cardboard that he'd found in the studio. People who might Normally flip channels when a politician appears. Keep watching the Berlusconi show. And the fact is, most Italians made up their mind about him years ago. Those who loathe him believe he's guilty of everything he's accused of in court. They wouldn't vote for him in a third thousand years. But those who've decided that they like Mr. Berlusconi's style probably believe him when he says all his legal troubles are a conspiracy cooked up by his political enemies in the judiciary. But surely the most important explanation for his growing appeal now is that some voters like what he says about the economy. Professor Monti's answer to Italy's financial crisis was austerity, spending cuts and tax rises. And a lot of families have had enough. They're desperate for a break. And some are ready to listen when Mr. Berlusconi says that it's time to ease up, that his government would cut their taxes. Mr. Monti described his rival as a pied piper who's always led the Italian people astray with false promises. Mr. Berlusconi snapped back that if he was the pied piper, the professor would probably try to tax his flute. But actually, neither Mr. Berlusconi nor Mr. Monti is on course to win this election. There's a third man, almost unknown outside Italy, who looks set to inherit the earth. Pier Luigi Bersani's Centre Left Democratic Party is ahead in the polls. So this cigar smoking former Communist from the hill country south of the Po Valley is most likely to be Italy's next Prime minister. And if the down to earth unflashy Mr. Bersani is a little short on charisma, he tries to make a virtue of that fact. He says way too much attention's been given to big personalities in Italian politics. Mr. Bassani says he's the antidote to what he calls this disease.
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Alan Johnston there. And from the election in Italy to the poll in Israel, and the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he intends to build a broad coalition following his victory this week, Mr. Netanyahu fared worse than expected and lost about a quarter of his seats. He's been talking about power sharing with Yahya Lapid, the leader of the centrist party Yeshatid, which has emerged from the poll as a new force in Israeli politics. Paul Moss says it isn't just the election results which show that Israelis have different views about who should be running the country and what should be done to solve the long running problems, which,
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face it, the conflict was awfully familiar. The Israelis were arguing with the non Israelis and indeed with each other, over who was entitled to what territory. Some were polite, but others more hostile. It was an ugly scene. At one point I thought people might well come to blows, and still they couldn't sort it out who was supposed to be in what seat. The plane hadn't even taken off yet, but already Flight 2085 from Luton to Tel Aviv had become a microcosm of the Middle Eastern East. Some argued from a point of legal entitlement. They held up their boarding passes, the seat number clearly visible. I have a right to be here, they protested, but others simply pointed out that they had got there first. I felt I'd heard this before somewhere. Meanwhile, bolder passengers were simply shoving their luggage and themselves into the places they wanted. You might call it establishing facts. On the ground. They ignored the would be occupants towering above them now, waving boarding cards in their faces like title deeds to a house. Sit down. Yelled the exasperated air stewardess, sounding like a teacher dealing with unruly children on a school bus trip. But no one was listening to teacher that day. Eventually, the captain's voice came over the intercom, more imploring than commanding. If you do not take your seats soon, he explained, we will miss our slot and take off could be delayed by a very long time. In other words, if the fighting continued, everyone would lose. Yeah, well, that kind of reasoning has never seemed to work too well in the Middle east, and it certainly didn't make an impression on Flight 2085. The standoff continued, tensions rose, and so did voices in English, in Hebrew, and in Russian. I speak only one of those languages, but I'm quite sure I was being treated to a crash course in their finest insults. And for the first time, I found myself awfully glad that metal implements are no longer permitted in carry on luggage. And then she appeared, the heroine of the day. I don't know her name. I guess I never will. But she seemed like Florence Nightingale and Mother Theresa all rolled into one. A clever, sensitive air stewardess who came up with a compromise. Sit down where you are for now, she said, and we can sort out who goes where once we're up in the air. Brilliant. The passengers looked at her, they looked at each other, and they meekly obeyed. Those wanting a window seat accepted an aisle. Couples hoping to travel together agreed to be rented asunder. It reminded me of the Oslo Agreement back in the day, when that seemed like a solution to the Middle east problem. Let's all calm down a bit, live in our respective places for now and sort out the final agreement later on in the day. I thought of telling the stewardess she had missed her metier, that instead of serving gin and tonics to rude passengers, she should be working for the United Nations. She certainly couldn't have made a worse job than others who've tried. I drifted off into a reverie, imagining this diplomatic Wonder Woman circling the globe, perhaps still wearing her EasyJet uniform. She would shuttle between north and South Korea, between the US and Iran, everywhere bringing her homespun approach to international crises. But I soon snapped out of my fantasy, because a while after takeoff, a new problem arose. A group of Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews had been given space at the back of the plane to to hold a prayer meeting. They bowed, they recited, and in the process they attracted more worshippers and who knows, perhaps new worshippers converted to the faith by this stirring display of mid air religiosity. Eventually there were so many offering their thanks to God they were blocking the aisle and the non observant passengers found they couldn't reach the toilet. One unfortunate lady found herself stuck inside the lavatory, pushing on the door but meeting resistance from the mini congregation now gathered outside. And soon the secular bladders were causing real problems to their owners, who began to complain that the religious people were getting things all their own way. Now that's a complaint you'll hear in Israel itself, where there have been furious quarrels between zealous followers of God and those of a more skeptical inclination. But here we were having the same battle, still more than a thousand miles from the Holy Land and quite a few thousand feet up in the sky. I searched in vain for EasyJet's unappreciated ambassador of peace, the stewardess who had brought unexpected calm to our conflict ridden flight. But she'd gone back to serving gin and tonics, and it looked like this time she just didn't want to get involved.
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And that was Paul Moss, breaking new ground by writing the dispatch before he even arrived. And that's it. More groundbreaking reportage from around the world on Saturday morning. I do hope you'll join us. Goodbye.