← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Sept 10, 2011
00:28:10
Whatever happened to his notebooks? Jeremy Bowen, charting the demise of the Gaddafi...
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the BBC iplayer on the top of our website. To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of our stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well. But now, presenting the BBC Radio 4 edition, here's Kate 80.
- [00:22]
B
Today, a Libyan mystery. How did a Gaddafi get hold of our correspondent's notebook? The unlikely history makers, the academics, the bloggers, the doctors who've been at the forefront of the Arab Spring. We meet the boys and girls from Zimbabwe, taking risks and travelling illegally in search of a place in school. And an end of summer feeling in Ireland. But also a suspicion that the days of economic gloom may soon be over too. The Libyan forces opposed to Muammar Gaddafi are this morning outside Bani Walid, one of only four towns still loyal to the colonel. Skirmishes have been taking place and it's said there are up to 700 fighters loyal to the old regime there. They've been told they have to surrender by tonight. Fighting's also reported to have intensified around the town of Syrte. Jeremy Bowen spent the last few weeks reporting developments like these in Libya. But his missing notebooks have proved something of a distraction.
- [01:20]
C
I like notebooks. I like writing things down, bits of detail, colour, what people say, their names, memory joggers, phone numbers, you name it. I'm writing this in a notebook because we're out filming and I don't mean a small portable computer. My notebooks have pages, hard black covers, a useful pocket inside the back and an elastic strap to stop them pinging open Hamis Al Gaddafi, the colonel's most feared son, must have liked them too, because it seems he's been writing war plans in the back of one of mine. I lost the notebook, or it was stolen during a futile attempt to get to Misrata when it was a besieged rebel outpost. Back in April. I realized it had gone on the way back to Tripoli. The book has had a few adventures. About two weeks ago, a man called Mohammed rang me in London from a satellite phone somewhere, he said, near Misrata, to tell me he had the notebook. After that, it was cited by various other journalists on the desk of a rebel commander near Benny Walid. Apparently someone has pictures of it. Another colleague even wrote a slightly fanciful story about it. I hadn't had it back. The commander seems to regard himself as the notebook's new owner. A trophy of war. It was found he says in the wreckage of a convoy that supposedly was carrying Hamis al Qaddafi. The anti regime forces say they attacked the convoy and and killed Hamis. As for Mohammed, his satellite phone isn't answering and a message says the mailbox is full. I wonder if he was in the convoy that was shot up and what happened to him. But the Hamis notebook wasn't the only one of mine that's been floating around Libya. I've just been reunited with another which was stolen in June from my room in the Rixos, the five star hotel that was the gilded cage of the Tripoli press corps until the regime collapsed. It was found in a desk drawer at a military base. I went back to the Rixos the other day. The gates used to be adorned with children's pictures depicting the rebels as rats and the Gaddafis as heroes. And nasty looking men from the secret police used to lounge about making sure they knew who was coming and who was going. Once I was challenged three times by Gaddafi thugs between leaving the hotel and walking just down the road to do a piece to camera, even though I had an equally thuggish regime minder with me. Our old home from home wasn't damaged, but it looked shabby and overgrown. Former rebels now in charge were hanging out in the foyer where the portraits of the Colonel used to hang, presumably looking after the Rixos until it reopens. What had evaporated from the hotel were the tension and pressure, often surreal, sometimes threatening, that used to hang over its marble halls. Dr. Shakir was gone. He was a grim faced Gaddafi propagandist who used to broadcast from the basement during the bombing, often condemning Western journalists as NATO spies. And then he'd wait politely in the queue next to the spies at the lavish buffet which punctuated long strange days. And of course there was no Musa Ibrahim, the regime spokesman. For a while he had the room next to mine and I used to hear his German wife talking softly to their baby son. While Musa was out and about, producing increasingly unconvincing sound bites. I think mother and child got out before the end. After the rebels entered the Rixos, someone put a video on YouTube supposedly showing Musa's room papers, family photos, a few toys and some bottles of wine. He never offered me a glass. After the mind has melted away, journalists found transcripts of their emails in the office Musa and his team used. I wonder if one of his people stole the notebook that disappeared from my room. I'm going to admit it, I like Musa to start with, even though I Knew his people were watching us the whole time. He'd spent years in London. He told me he was one of the Libyans who'd come back because they thought that Colonel Gaddafi's heir apparent, Sayf Al Islam was was going to modernize the country. When rumors spread a few months ago that Musa had defected, I wasn't surprised. But I had him wrong. He stayed and became more strident as pressure on the regime increased. His self importance grew along with his presence on TV screens in Libya and around the world. I stopped doubting whether he believed what he was saying. The other night on the phone to a pro Gaddafi TV station in Damascus, he ranted for half an hour about about the Colonel's impending victory. Perhaps he's with him now. Musa, if you tell me where you are, I'll send you a notebook.
- [06:07]
B
Jeremy Bowen the unrest in Syria, meanwhile, shows no signs of coming to an early end. Yesterday, after Friday prayers, protesters across the country poured into the streets, calling again for President Bashar Al Assad to go. The changes which have swept through the Arab world this year have been largely driven by young people. Michael Hussain has been talking to some
- [06:29]
D
of them in cramped, smoke filled apartments in Beirut. I came to know the two men who for me now embody the Syrian uprising. Both are exiles escaping from Bashar Al Assad, Syria at different times, but now with very similar lives undercover in Lebanon. It's a strange existence, understandably secretive, for these are the people trying to do everything in their power to end Assad's grip on on their country. One is Rami Nakhla, known in the Twittersphere by the pseudonym Malath Omran. He was forced to flee Syria in January as the security services began to suspect he was responsible for a Facebook page fiercely critical of the regime. Rami is an intense young man who seems to live and breathe through his laptop, constantly connected to the protests in his country and relentless in his zeal to spread the word about them. We first met in Beirut, just a few weeks into the Syrian uprising. Unlike many other dissidents, Rami was prepared to be seen on camera and explained the process of gathering the news of Syria and disseminating it to the mass media. It was a Friday, the day of prayer, and his network of cyber activists was braced both for protests and for a tough response from the authorities. The atmosphere in the apartment was was heavy with expectation. Within moments of our introduction, I felt as if I'd been transported to Damascus. Rami's whole existence seemed to be devoted to what he called the Syrian struggle. He looked as though he hadn't slept in weeks, his pale red rimmed eyes staring at his computer, leaving it only to go live on air when foreign TV and radio asked for interviews. As I sat with him, watching him monitor Facebook and Twitter, a video clip arrived via email labeled A Martyr from the city of Hama. Rami said, I don't usually watch these, but clicked on it nevertheless. I was prepared to see a body, but the footage showed a man who had just been shot slumped to the ground as a deep red stain seeped across his clothing. Some of those around him were trying to keep him alive others were filming the scene on their phones. Both Rami and I were shocked into silence, and after a moment he abruptly left the room. I remained watching the last frozen frame. In any other context, it would be grotesque to think of a scene like this being filmed by onlookers. Here, though, it was as if everyone had their task, some to try and save a life, others to capture the evidence. Later that day, I saw reports that one person had been killed in Hama. This time I could visualize that person as never before. The other dissident, Omar Ehdilbi, is very different but an equally compelling character. The father of a young son, he's strongly motivated by his desire to create a better Syria for the next generation. Unlike Rami, he was still in Syria when the uprising began in March and began agitating and getting people out onto the streets. He explained how the first gatherings in Damascus began in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia. The authorities even encouraged them, ignoring the irony of supporting democracy elsewhere while repressing it at home. Omar, like Rami, bad battles with guilt. Some of those he's encouraged and persuaded to join him on the streets have been killed in front of him. It's clear that he feels their loss and his responsibility for it acutely. What sustains him are his ideals, a Syria that he can be proud of, that can live in peace with its neighbours. He was so eloquent, so heartfelt, that when the cameras stopped rolling, the I said he should run for office in a future Syria. He laughed and shook his head. No, he said, I'm a poet, not a politician. His words made me reflect on how many of those who've played a role in these uprisings are unlikely revolutionaries. The university official behind a subversive Facebook page in Benghazi, the suave bloggers of Tunis, the doctors in Cairo and Bahrain, the people who risked arrest to get pictures onto YouTube. Whatever their achievements, for many there's also frustration, especially among the young activists of Tunisia and Egypt who experienced such euphoria in January and February but feel their revolutions are incomplete. Perhaps Arab history is repeating itself. When the soldier and adventurer T.E. lawrence was reflecting upon the 1916 Arab revolt against the Ottomans, he when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world. They knew youth could win but had not learnt to keep.
- [11:42]
B
Misha Al Hussein and the concluding part of her film How Facebook Changed the World can be seen on BBC2 next Thursday evening at 9 o'. Clock. There's growing concern about children in Zimbabwe falling victim to human trafficking and other sorts of crime. These are the youngsters who, despairing of getting a proper education or jobs at home, have been travelling illegally across the border into South Africa. Mukul Devichand has been meeting some of the thousands of boys and girls who've been making that risky journey south.
- [12:13]
E
Innocent and Memory are two young Zimbabwean boys on the same dangerous road south. They don't know each other because children like them travel alone. Unaccompanied minors without parents or family or friends both crossed the border into South Africa illegally aged 12, and they now live not far from each other, but they seem to be heading in very different directions. Memory Story is infused with hope. The pain of the road has taken Innocence Innocence away. I met them Both along the N1 road in South Africa, one of the continent's busiest routes. But as you drive from the vast crocodile infested Limpopo river that marks the border with Zimbabwe, it's the desperate human traffic at the roadside that catches your eye. Congolese, Somalis or Zimbabweans who've managed to get across illegally to Africa's richest nation. Innocent, now 13, sleeps just by the roadside in a metal cabin donated by a charity. He uses big mannish gestures to disguise his obvious distress as he begins to tell me his story. When Innocent was born, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe was already 18 years old and its once prized education system had begun to collapse. Teachers were attacked, school fees, like all prices, skyrocketed. Age 12, with absent parents and from a poor home, he made the momentous decision to wade across the Limpopo river alone. I just wanted to go to school, he says. It was after he got across the no Man's land before the electric fence, that the three Magomagoma attacked him. These feared armed robbers are known for attacking children and raping the teenage girls. They just came out of the bushes, innocent told me when he defied Them, they went to work on him with a machete and a knife. Nine months later, the gaping wound across his leg has not healed. Not every child migrant is attacked in this way. Memory Matshesa, now aged 16, managed to just walk across the border at the age of 12. He also never knew his parents and felt ashamed in his hometown of Gueru when his teachers asked why their star pupil had left school. Because the poor aunt who raised him couldn't afford it. So one day, in tattered clothes, he hitched a lift towards the border and chose the street life begging for food. When he finally crossed, he didn't feel elated. I felt miserable, he told me. To be out of a family. It's like being a seed out of the farm. Today, Memory is still thin and sleeps his nights in a boy's shelter in the scruffy border town of Messina, run by a local church short of funds. But the star pupil is now in a South African government school, and in that he's achieved what most Zimbabwean street children dream of when they head south. He's also now the proud author of over 30 poems. His favorite one is autobiographical. Look, look and Listen. It goes. The little boy goes slowly. Where to, my little boy? Where to, in the dreams of most Zimbabwean children is Johannesburg, Africa's richest city. Because Innocent speaks only Shona and knew no South African languages, he couldn't find his way to the famous church run school for Zimbabweans in the city. He slept in the park at night and was awoken by an unprovoked violent beating by a South African street gang. They robbed him and ran off. Frightened, crying, Innocent fled the city and now survives washing cars and begging by the road. When I see other children, I feel shame, he tells me, because they are going to school. No one knows quite how many of the estimated 2 million plus Zimbabweans who have crossed illegally to South Africa are unaccompanied children. But the numbers in schools are barely into the thousands. These stories do provide hope amid the suffering. If Memory can graduate from secondary school, his obvious intelligence may well carry him to university. He gives me a message for Zimbabwean children thinking of making this journey. I don't encourage them, he says. His own journey has been dominated by this feeling of how I could be killed in the road, of how my life could be lost. He finishes reading his poem. Where is that young boy? It asks. Will you please help me?
- [16:39]
B
That was Mukul Devichand. It's been another jittery week on the financial markets with continuing concern about a global economy, which can't seem to shake off the spectre of recession. The markets were especially fidgety about the indebted Eurozone nations and the unemployment crisis in America. President Obama's $450 billion jobs initiative, announced to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, failed to propose Provide immediate cheer Leslie Kirwan's just back from the United States, where she's been looking at the effect the ailing economy has been having on American families.
- [17:15]
F
Christina Grodkowitz opened the door of her pretty cottage style house in Lambertville in New Jersey and welcomed me into the cosy living room where her handmade ceramics were on display. Christina is an art teacher at the Voorhees High School and her husband, Steve Smith, is an elevator engineer. They're expecting a baby very soon. It sounds a bit like the plot for a schmaltzy 1950s movie about the American dream. In fact, it is a gritty 21st century drama. Their life together in the last few years has been coloured by the ups and downs of the American economy. They're the kind of middle class citizens who've been squeezed by the Great Recession and its aftermath, who've had to struggle with employment and housing. Christina found it difficult to get a teaching job. She took one far from home and for a year and a half they lived apart. It was rough in the beginning, said Steve, but we made it through. For the last three years, Steve has been worrying that the elevator work will run out because the industry depends on a construction sector hit hard by the downturn. Then there's housing. The couple tried to sell their first house. They couldn't because the great US housing bubble had burst, destroying an estimated 8 to 10 trillion dollars of wealth. Christina and Steve let their house out to tenants and moved into their current rented home instead. Trouble is, the money they get from their tenants doesn't cover the cost of their mortgage. As Steve put it, we owe more than the house is worth, so to sell it we'd have to exhaust our life savings to repay the mortgage. Of course, there are other Americans who are worse off. More than two years after the Great Recession officially ended, 14 million are unemployed and millions more have given up looking for work. But this couple typify working Americans whose finances have become more insecure. They feel let down by the nation's politicians. Following the lengthy disagreements over raising America's debt ceiling, Christina told me, we're all expected to control our spending and our debt, but the people in power can't control theirs, so how can they expect us to be able to do that for ourselves. According to Steve, the left blames the right, the right blames the left, and we're just kind of casualties in the middle. President Obama's challenge is not just to overcome this sort of skepticism among Mr. And Mrs. Average, but to kick start an economy which has slowed almost to a standstill, partly because confidence was shaken by that undignified squabble over the debt ceiling and the humiliating downgrade of America's government debt. The various job creation measures he proposed this week will need support from the Republicans in Congress to get funding. Some commentators doubt he can achieve that, given the bitter disagreement between the parties. Perhaps a new burst of economic growth needs to come from elsewhere. Cristina's younger brother, Devon, has just graduated from the Voorhees High School where she works. At the age of 18, his expectations are very different from hers. He doesn't expect to be employed. Since he was 15, he's been investing his money in the stock market with the intention of starting up his own company to control his own financial future. I met Devon on the football field of Voorhees while a single runner loped around the running track on the perimeter. The sun beat down and the crickets sank. The day seemed to shine with promise and optimism. He told me his investment portfolio has actually beaten the stock market for two years now. In his jeans and T shirt, you could mistake Devon for the average carefree teenager, but he was remarkably focused on making his own fortune. If you get capital investment from an outside source, it's no longer all your company, he explained. I didn't want that. I thought if I start really young, I have the potential to make a lot of money before I have to worry about starting this company. Devon was full of optimism. The very next day. He was due to start a university course in biology while continuing his investment career. His sister, though, was less confident about the future. Christina told me her parents generation don't think their children will see the kind of financial gains they've enjoyed. For Devon, though, it's all to play for. Even in the chaotic markets created by so much uncertainty, he advised me now was the perfect time to put money into the stock market. I'm willing to take that risk, he said. And by taking that risk, I'm helping the economy. The previous generation of working Americans expected to be employed in secure and well paid jobs. Devon's generation may increasingly want to seize control of their working lives themselves through entrepreneurship. In the long term, perhaps that's what will really create new jobs.
- [22:16]
B
Lesley Cohen in the United states. And while that country struggles through hard times, there are other nations where the mood's more upbeat. Forecasters for the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggest that Ireland, which has suffered the worst recession in its history, is set for a strong recovery. They talk of 2% growth in gross domestic product strengthening exports, and of the country becoming, if not a Celtic tiger reborn than at least one of Europe's big performers. Armand Fergal Keen, just back from the Republic, believes there's good reason for optimism.
- [22:51]
G
Sergeant Patrick Hassett gazes out with the certainty of a man who knows that his place in the world is secure. He is of slender build, medium height, with a handlebar moustache and a severe expression. The four constables beside him, hardy looking countrymen all are clearly conscious of his authority. You can read the deference in their faces. I came across the photograph of my great grandfather by chance at an exhibition of local history in the village hall in Ardmore, County Waterford, my ancestral home and the place to which I returned every summer and Christmas. It was a cousin researching our family genealogy who alerted me to the photograph's existence. In recent years there's been an explosion of interest in local history, a reaching back into the past of family and community. It's no surprise this is happening at a time when the Irish present has been filled with uncertainty. There's been one blow after another to the economic and moral fabric of the nation. Corrupt politicians, greedy developers, reckless bankers helped to create an economic disaster. At the same time, the once mighty Catholic Church was revealed in a series of horrifying scandals to have covered up the sexual abuse of children on a massive scale. I often wonder what that imperial policeman, Sergeant Hassett of the Royal Irish Constabulary, would have made of the current mess. How would those stern eyes have viewed the grim parade of paedophile priests or the ravening snouts of boom era Ireland? With shock and disdain, I imagine. Yet at home in Ardmore over the summer, I was reminded that for all the wretchedness of the last few years, the Irish story can also be one of hope. My great grandfather was a commander of the barracks in Ardmore during the reign of Queen Victoria. Back then, most Irish people believed that their future lay under a Home Rule Parliament within the British Empire. The notion that Ireland might eventually become a republic, that it would, in the words of one dead revolutionary, take its place among the nations of the earth, would have been unimaginable to Sergeant Hassett. He lived to see a violent revolution against the Crown he had served an uprising in which his own son took part as a member of the ira, but Ireland's transformation into a modern state happened long after his death. It's happening still. The Ireland that I experience through the daily life of one community is certainly shaken by the upheavals of recent years. It is poorer. Gone are the flashy statements of the the Celtic Tiger era, the brand new cars, the Jet Skis bouncing noisily across Ardmore Bay, the permanent tans from frequent foreign holidays. Public sector pay cuts, cuts in benefits have all been imposed, but there's been very little significant public protest. I was initially tempted, in a mood of cynicism, to put this lack of demonstration down to the deference to authority which helped create our national crisis in the first place. But a few weeks in Ardmore has led me to believe that it has more to do with a new, more realistic kind of patriotism. One recent evening I sat drinking coffee with my friend Nicky at Whiting Bay, a lovely expanse of white strand that runs between Ardmore and the mouth of the Blackwater river, the natural boundary between the counties of Cork and Waterford. Across the border in Cork we could see the lights of the combine harvesters moving through fields of barley, a methodical procession tracing a path to the end of summer. Below us on the shore, our children were hurling themselves into the darkening surf, their shouts of pleasure echoing up to us. Nicky has a job which takes him around the world, working for a multinational company. He's well placed to contrast the mood in Ireland with that in America and Europe, the Middle East. I asked him why the people of Ireland hadn't taken to the streets and rioted against the political class that had failed them. Because that won't get us out of the mess, will it? He replied. There's nothing to be done but get on and get through this and make sure it doesn't happen again. And that is what most people seem to be doing. My sense is that the justifiable fury with the political elite is hardening into something more valuable, a genuine culture of questioning, not least of ourselves. For the hardest lesson of the last few years has been that as a people we were content to allow our elites political, financial and clerical to do as they wished as long as life was comfortable for the majority. I came back from holidays infused not with the familiar melancholy of summer's end but with tentative faith in a new Ireland, a country shorn of illusions.
- [27:59]
B
Fergal Keene in Whiting Bay in the Republic of Ireland, and bringing this program to a close. Next week, we'll have two editions once again on both Thursday and Saturday mornings. Do join us. Goodbye.