← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Roman Austerity
00:28:13
Churches and mosques are being targetted by the Boko Haram militant group in Nigeria.
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BBC Radio 4 Presenter
Hello, this is the from our own
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correspondent office at Bush House in London.
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You can check out what we're up
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to by signing up to our Twitter feed, but here's a download of our
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latest program on BBC Radio 4, introduced as ever by Kate Ady Today.
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Narrator/Host
Escalating violence in northern Nigeria. Our correspondence. In the city under siege, its people scared of what may be coming next. Austerity is biting in Rome. The Dolce Vita's a distant memory. Now it's a struggle just to get by. We hear from the Middle Eastern nation with a policy of being nice to everyone. And just in case it's been worrying you, we try to answer the question, why do the French always jog in an anti clockwise direction? Gun battles between police and militants in northern Nigeria have Left up to 30 people dead this week. Security has been tightened, but so far military crackdowns and states of emergency have done little to stop the spread of violence. Much of it is blamed on the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which is said to be responsible for more than a thousand deaths since 2009. The President, Goodluck Jonathan, who has been heavily criticised for failing to restore order, has now sacked his national security adviser and Defence Minister. The President says the militants who had been attacking local rivals and government institutions were now turning on places of worship. Will Ross, who's in northern Nigeria, tells us both churches and mosques are being targeted.
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BBC Radio 4 Presenter
Within minutes of checking into my hotel room in the city of Jos, I received a text. It was the sort of message that focuses the mind and as a journalist, makes you check all your equipment's charged up and ready to go. It suggested around 100 Islamist militants from the group Boko Haram had just arrived in the same city. Jos feels like it's under siege, scared of what's coming next. In front of sandbag checkpoints, soldiers and police in a variety of uniforms search random vehicles. Spotting a potential suicide bomber is a near impossible task. There are plenty of good humoured exchanges and not so subtle requests for a bribe. I'm hungry. What have you got for me? One soldier in sunglasses asked through the car window. In a stunning area of Joss, where green hills are strewn with huge boulders, I saw the aftermath of the latest Boko Haram attack. A building housing what's called God's Chosen Church had been flattened. The rusty corrugated iron roof sheets were flapping in the wind. Through a window I could see the scattered white plastic chairs, the odd shoe and a child's exercise book. Right in front of the building was the twisted carcass of the car that had carried the explosives. I met Toyin sitting on a hospital bed comforting her 11 year old daughter. Sharon, the little girl whispered. We just finished praying when the pastor told us the topic for the day was unity. Then boom. And I looked down to see blood pouring from my leg. Why did this have to happen to me? Sharon asked tearfully. What went on moments after the explosion is deeply worrying for Nigeria. Emergency workers couldn't drive up to the bomb site because in this Christian dominated part of the city, angry young men had gone on the rampage. Seeking revenge, they turned on anyone they believed to be Muslim. Several people were killed on the road right in front of the church. The bombings have reignited a festering conflict that's left hundreds dead in recent years. Different ethnic groups are in dispute over who are the rightful inhabitants of this part of the country. Who was here first. And that ethnic fault line also happens to pit Christians on one side against Muslims on the other. Sadly, these days some areas of the city are completely off limits if you're from the wrong religion. Close to the central mosque, I noticed a sign above a small wooden shop. At first glance I thought it said witch doctor, but I was about to meet the watch doctor. I told him mine had died many years ago and was given a disrespectful burial in a drawer back in England. Bring it and I'll fix it. Salihu Andana Mohammed told me. No such thing as a dead watch. As we chatted, children played on the muddy streets and girls in white veils drifted past on their way home from school. The local health clinic is not even open these days. The doctors have all gone, he said. They were mostly Christians, but they're too afraid to work here now. If things are quiet for a few weeks, they may come back. Salihu then launched into a tirade against Nigeria's politicians. They're the ones fueling the conflict in order to enrich themselves. They don't want us to get along. If there's no crisis, they can't steal as much, he said, pointing out that vast security budgets are allocated, but no one knows how the money's spent. Nearby, at prayer time, long lines formed outside the mosque as everyone was given a cursory frisk. A military helicopter circling above Boko Haram militants have in the past killed Islamic clerics, and so there's unease on both sides of the divide. Not far away, roads were blocked off for a wedding at an Anglican church. The congregation, in stunning outfits, danced as a full band belted out the music. I worried about the bride's false eyelashes, so long I feared they might get caught on her veil. Presiding over the service, the archbishop of Jos, Benjamin Kwashi, was full of smiles, but he sounded deeply worried as we discussed the escalating violence and the prospect of more militant groups springing up. You only need to study the reprisals. The young people are getting out of control. They're rising spontaneously, he said. They're also learning that if Boko Haram is getting away with evil, with crime and criminality, why shouldn't they? The archbishop added. Back in the hotel, I filed reports of yet more bomb attacks in other parts of northern Nigeria, and as I left Jos, two questions were lodged in my mind. From her hospital bed, 11 year old Sharon asking, why me? And countless people wondering when will all this end?
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Narrator/Host
And that was Will Ross in Nigeria. Algeria next week celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence. The severing of ties with France followed a long and bitter conflict which the Algerians say cost the lives of up to a million of their countrymen and women. Many thousands of French troops and civilians were also killed. Chloe Arnold in Algiers has been looking back at a war which shaped a nation's history.
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Yasmin Belcassem
Yasmin belcassem was just 14 years old when she joined the independence movement. The year was 1959 and the battle was well underway. Four years earlier, members of the fledgling FLN, the National Liberation Front, had killed 123 civilians in the town of Philippeville. Known as Les Pieds Noirs, they were settlers of French origin who'd worked the land since France's occupation of Algeria more than a century earlier. In retaliation, the French army and Pied Noir gangs killed as many as 12,000 Algerians. But Yasmeen was just a schoolgirl with a beautiful face and long black curls, living in the Belcour district of the capital. It was a neighbor who persuaded her to join the cause, and for months she carried messages between members of the FLN and money and food to the freedom fighters in prison. Her father had died three years earlier, and her mother and elder sister knew nothing of her risky activities. Then one day I was taken into the mountains to meet some of the leaders of the movement, she says. They were making bombs to be placed in French cafes and police stations in the capital. Yasmeen had a fierce desire to play a bigger part in the conflict and to help oust the occupiers who she says had forced her countrymen into poverty and humiliation. I still remember the sign that hung over the entrance to one of the beaches near Algiers. She says it said no dogs or Muslims. She begged the FLN to let her plant one of the homemade bombs. Reluctant at first, they finally relented, and they dropped her off near a police station. With great care, she carried the bomb in a little black suitcase towards the gendarmerie. But something went wrong. The timer malfunctioned, and before she got the chance to deposit the suitcase, it was. It exploded in her hands. Two police officers were lightly injured in the blast. Yasmeen, just 14, lost both her legs. We're sitting in Yasmin's house in the centre of Algiers, sipping freshly squeezed orange juice and looking at old black and white photographs of the war years. Outside in her garden, the bougainvillea and hibiscus are in full bloom, and her collection of colorful canaries is chirping noisily. The tranquillity of her life today is a world apart from the chaos that followed the explosion, which injured her when she was imprisoned for two years. Of course, after it had happened, I thought to myself, now I'll never be able to walk again, to swim or dance again, she says, her hands smoothing her trousers, which cover the prosthetic legs she had fitted in the United States two years after the bomb went off. But I knew that I'd done the right thing. It goes without saying that the families of those killed in attacks like Yasmin's might not agree. Yasmeen was the youngest in prison, but by no means the only girl. She was transferred to a jail in Paris. There were more than 20 of US women in prison, she recalls. The oldest was only 21. They were terribly kind. They used to carry me everywhere because I didn't have my new legs at that point. In 1961, months before a ceasefire was signed, Yasmeen was released and an American doctor arranged for her to be treated in New York. He spent $60,000 of his own money paying for my treatment, she says. I was so grateful. 50 years on, Algeria has in some ways disappointed the aspirations of the people who fought for its independence from France. They dreamed of building a just, democratic and peaceful state. The 1990s saw a bitter struggle between government security forces and Islamist insurgents bent on changing the direction of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Today, the authorities maintain a tight grip on power, and despite the oil and gas the country exports, millions of people are unemployed and live in squalid housing. Though she could have done, she says Yasmeen never married. I hated the idea that One day my husband would wake up and think I married a cripple, she tells me. But despite everything that's happened since Algerian independence, for Yasmeen it was worth the struggle. It was what God wanted me to do, she says, brushing a little dust from another old photograph. I have no regrets.
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Narrator/Host
Chloe Arnold in Algiers after weeks of gloomy headlines in Italy, mainly about the economy, the last few days have given Italians reasons to be cheerful. Most importantly, of course, the football. They beat Germany 20 and are in tomorrow's Euro 2012 final. Prime Minister Mario Monti was also highly satisfied with the agreement struck early yesterday by eurozone leaders to combat the debt crisis. Very he called it. But there's a long way to go, of course. Italy's suffering, record unemployment, and its citizens are being told they must embrace further austerity measures. Alan Johnston in Rome says many are feeling the pinch.
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Alan Johnston
Rome's been enduring the first big heat of summer. It came in on a North African desert wind that they call the Scipione, named after the Roman general Scipio, who won a great victory in Africa. It's hard to know quite what he would make of Rome today, with his legions gone and replaced by the army of tourists. But you don't have to go far from the historic centre of town before the visitors start to thin out, and you don't see many tourists at all. Down in Testaccio, a neighbourhood on a bend in the Tiber, the area's roots are working class, and in conversations on its streets you get some sense of the way many Italians are coping, or struggling to cope in this time of austerity. Of course, you have to keep all this in perspective. Italy remains a rich nation. Elsewhere around the world, in slums and shanty towns, there are those who would very much like a chance to make a life in Testaccio. But all the same for those who have always been there and have known better days, adjusting to the current decline is hard. I found Carla Fratticelli sitting on a bench under some trees on a piazza, chatting to a friend. She was old enough to remember those easier times in the 60s and 70s. We weren't all rich back then, she said, but we did all live better. There was a balance between what you earned and what you spent. Now her small pension is fixed forever, while the cost of everything, even the most basic things, gas and electricity, up and up and up all the time, and then suddenly you need some medicine, and the cost is shocking. Before you could escape the heat of the city and go down to the sea at Ostia maybe three times a week in August. But now, with the petrol and all, it just costs too much. And with everything getting worse, where will it all end? Well, around the corner, in Testaccio's market, a bookseller called Samueli knows how it can end. For a few people at least. He's seen them, he said they used to shop for fruit and vegetables at the stalls like everyone else, but now they come when the market is closing and look through the produce that's being thrown out and take it for nothing. For Samuele, a slightly built, thoughtful man with glasses, things are not so easy either. Italians, he said, just don't read enough at the best of times. And in these worst of times, books are among the first of the luxuries that they give up. Each year gets harder, and this one, Samuele said, had been the worst of all. But he said he'd get by somehow. He could live like a monk if he had to. All he needed was a good book, and unfortunately there were plenty of them unsold around him. He had Henry James's the Art of the Novel under his arm, but it's the classics of French literature that he likes best. Balzac and Zola, France's past helping him escape Italy's present. Samueli at his bookstall. Carla on her bench and others in Testaccio street, said things had got more difficult under the new government, with its talk of cuts and savings and austerity. But they felt things getting tougher. For a long time there was a sense that Italy's malaise was deepening, and there was some searing contempt for the political class that is so often blamed for so much here. So what is to be done? Should we have a revolution, go there and break everything? Carla asked. She didn't think that would help, but still, she said, the people should make their voices heard, and maybe the politicians would do something. But the bookish Samuele said that he'd tried that sort of thing when he was younger. Demos and protest marches, and they hadn't changed anything. Even Carla, though so bleak about so many things, admitted that it wasn't all bad. She said she'd never dream of leaving Testaccio. It had everything she needed. As she talked, her mother, a lady of 90 who Carla called the Contessa, came slowly across the piazza to join. And before they left to take a coffee at a cafe, Carla said that Rome was beautiful. Not as clean as it used to be, she said, but beautiful all the same.
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Narrator/Host
And that's Alan Johnstone, the defection of a Syrian Air Force pilot who flew his MiG21 jet to Jordan has been causing a certain amount of awkwardness in Amman this week. The kingdom has always made a point of trying to get on with all its neighbours. It's giving back the rather venerable aircraft but allowing its pilot to stay. The incident led to a call from France for all Syrian military personnel to defect and has dealt a blow to relations with Damascus. Jim Carey says that in a volatile corner of the world, Jordan's a country which would rather be known for its hospitality than for causing embarrassing headlines.
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Jim Carey
I could well imagine the first word uttered by a new baby in Jordan might not be the Arab name for Mama or Papa. It could be Challah. It is by far the most common word I hear. I say hello, they say challah. I say goodbye, they say Challah. When I say thank you, they say challah. And when I say no thank you, they say Challah. Challah is an Arabic word for welcome. Currently pouring across Jordan's northern border, tens of thousands of Syrians, many requiring urgent medical treatment, come in search of healing, housing and hala. These latest refugees join the thousands of Libyans already receiving treatment here and the near 2 million Palestinians who have already found sanctuary in the country. But as I traverse this arid land, a question demands an answer. How can a country which, unusually for this region, has no oil and very little mineral resources, a land blistered by a hot sun and relentlessly thirsty, afford to be so nice to everybody? Saleh, a Bedouin musician from Wadi Rum in the south, offers one answer. It's always been the culture of this region to welcome strangers, he says. But with a precarious economy suffering in the face of the global financial crisis, Jordan's challah is also its life support system. The United nations are just one of the organizations pouring money into the Jordanian economy to help the country cope with with the latest influx of Syrian refugees. While the current Libyan government pays the medical bills of its citizens being healed in Jordan's quality hospitals, Palestinian refugees have brought their own money into the country, but they've also attracted further UN and other aid packages. We are the foster carers of the Middle east, observes Salaman, a hospital worker from the capital, Amman. Jordan treads a remarkable path in the region as a friend to many and an enemy to few. A co founder of the Arab League, Jordan is still one of the few countries around here to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. It also maintains relationships with both the US and Iran. Usually in a world which pursues alliances and enemies, being a friend of one is to be the enemy of another. Somehow Jordan is doing it differently. In Aqabar, Jordan's only seaport, there are big government efforts to welcome international trade. When local restaurant owner Abu finds out I'm from the uk, his smile widens. Ah, he says, our king was educated in your country. For this you will not pay for your prawns. In the end, it's all I can do to stop him giving me the whole main cause for nothing. Challah, he says. The USA and EU poured billions into Jordan to help it stay so friendly. All over the hotels near the country's biggest tourist attraction, the ancient city of Petra, I notice stickers. They say, U.S. aid, a gift from the American people. It's a logo stuck on loads of things, from air conditioners to signposts. Jordan uses this money from its strategic friendships to build up another industry based on Challah tourism. Petra's vast array of gargantuan temples and tombs are stunning, but so are the hefty entrance fees Jordan needs to cash in on its history. It's more money to be allowed to view the fetid green puddle at Bethany, the place where Jesus is thought to have been baptized. Both Israel and Jordan cash in on this unattractive biblical attraction. And whilst two Israeli soldiers with machine guns watch people in white robes baptizing each other on the Israeli side, on the other a similarly armed Jordanian soldier looks on as members of our group take photographs. The unsavoury situation is aptly and theatrically played out by a white dove coaxed out of hiding by our guide with a handful of grain. The dove has the manky plumage of an inner city pigeon and is vigorously trying to peck at an unreachable itch on its back. It runs away whenever anyone draws near with a camera. A paranoid, knackered, flea bitten dove of peace. And there's a problem for Jordan. Tourism has been hit severely by the international perception that the entire region is unstable and best avoided. And when there are fewer visitors, there'll be more refugees. It's a precarious line to tread for the Jordanian economy, relying on challah, come what may.
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Narrator/Host
And that's Jim Carey. Now, the tension between individuals and society is one of those great constants of human existence resolved in different ways in different times and places. In so called Anglo Saxon cultures like Britain and the usa, personal liberty and originality tend to be valued very highly. No shame for us in being the odd one out. In fact, it can even be a mark of distinction. But others, like the French, place an even higher value on maintaining harmony in wider social groups. It's a matter which troubles our man Hugh Schofield, when he's out jogging in Paris.
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BBC Radio 4 Presenter
I am a runner. Not a good runner, not a fast runner, certainly not a long runner, but a regular runner. And my regular runs take me from my home in Montparnasse, past the cemetery, across the boulevard and down to the Luxembourg Gardens. Once the pleas of Marie de Medici, wife and mother of French kings, today preserved at lavish expense for the delight of the Parisian citizenry. There I do an inside perimeter taking me past canoodling couples and dope smoking lyce students, the bull players and the chess players. Police in their smart bright blue guarding the Senate building, Statues of long forgotten composers, the beehives, the orchard, the bit where the dogs are allowed, and back to the canoodling couples. If you run in a circuit along with plenty of other people, then logic dictates that fairly frequently you'll either overtake or be overtaken. We all run at different speeds. Either that or you'll match your speed to someone a bit further ahead and keep them in constant view. But on one of my first outings around the Luxembourg Gardens, I noticed something peculiar. I wasn't passing or being passed, and there was no one constantly ahead of me, or for that matter, I looked round. Behind what there was was a steady succession of runners going in the opposite direction. I was going clockwise around the perimeter. Everyone else, I realised, or to be fair, nearly everyone else, there were a few other loners, was going anti clockwise. I don't know if you've seen the 1978 film Midnight Express. It's about a young American, Billy Hayes, who's caught with drugs on holiday in Turkey and descends into the hellish nightmare of the Turkish prison system. I hasten to note that the Turks at the time were furious at what they said was a gross distortion of the reality. Anyway, when he's absolutely at rock bottom and driven half insane by drugs and despair, Billy Hayes finds himself in the darkest, steamy nether reaches of the jail, where in a ghastly cavernous chamber, the most abject prison, those who've completely abandoned themselves to their fate walk in endless circles around some kind of totem. Billy Hayes joins the procession and seems destined for mental annihilation. But then something clicks. He wakes and starts walking in the other direction, alone against the flow. They all start pawing at him and pleading for him to turn and join them, but he won't. And that's the moment we know that his spirit is still alive and he's going to rebel and get out. Twas even thus that I pictured myself in my vanity as I countered the monotonous, unidirectional movement of the jogger and the jogues. Me, the individualist, me, the nonconformist, them the compliant, the conditioned. The rulemaker's fodder. One makes them all run together like that, I thought, unquestioningly, like a herd. They don't have to, they only do it because everyone else does. And they don't dare to be different. Ridiculous, of course, but you know how when you run, your mind is freed up and it wanders in all sorts of directions. And in any case, it's not entirely fanciful. The French are conformist. I was struck by the same thought a few weeks back at President Hollande's victory celebrations at the Bastille. What was remarkable there was seeing a big crowd of left of centre youngsters doing precisely, I mean, precisely the same place, the same language, the same look what their parents had done 30 years previously at the election of Francois the First, that is, the children wanted to be their parents. The French pretend to rebel, but generally they don't, not really. And sometimes I think that's partly because in the past they have actually lived through revolution and insurrection many times, indeed in the last two centuries. And they know from experience that it gets scary. So most of the time in normal life, they'd rather not take the risk of real rebellion. It might get out of hand. Most of the time they stick to the conventions anyway. There I am, running against the flow, listening to Exile on Main street and feeling mighty proud of myself. When I turn a corner round an all concealing hedge and fly into what feels like the torso of a rugby prop forward, stars momentarily fly. He's undamaged. I'm okay. We resume, but I'm left thinking there's a moral here. If everyone jogs in one direction, it could be for a reason. To prevent accidents and to ensure the smooth functioning of the collective running experience. Maybe good manners, the interests of the group, the non rebellion. Maybe these should count for more than my very personal, individualistic, egotistical desire to go against the flow. Maybe. But I'm afraid I still jog clockwise.
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Narrator/Host
Hugh Schofield determinedly going against the flow. And that's it. I'll be here again on Thursday and Saturday of next week with more from correspondence far and wide. Do join us. Goodbye.