← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Sept 17, 2011
00:28:12
Reprisals and revenge in a desert oasis as the battles continue against the final -- a...
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BBC Announcer
You are listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the
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program broadcast on the BBC World Service
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by going from our own correspondent website,
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or indeed to that of the BBC World Service.
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But here's the edition which goes out
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on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Program Presenter
Today, fighting continues in Colonel Gaddafi's final strongholds and in a desert oasis in the far south of Libya. In it's time for reprisals and revenge. A rock star welcome in North Africa for Prime Minister Erdogan. We find out why suddenly it's cool to be Turkish. They're the longest lived people in the whole of the Americas, but for Costa Ricans, it means their health care is now in crisis. And we're off to a distant corner of Argentina to find out if life is good in a place almost untouched by the modern world. Fierce fighting's been reported from Libya this morning, where forces loyal to the deposed leader, Colonel Gaddafi, are still holding the strongholds of Bani Walid and Sirte. There's growing concern about thousands of civilians in both places who are believed to have little access to food, water and electricity. In the south of the country, some of the ancient desert people, the Tuareg, have been staunch Gaddafi loyalists. They there have been accusations that they've been carrying out brutal attacks on his behalf. Justin Marozzi has been to one desert oasis where local people have been settling scores.
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Justin Marozzi
Really, Mr. Justin, now we are in good condition. Believe me, I'm too happy to see you. My God, now I feel shy. The exuberant greetings are one of the great joys of travelling in Libya. In this case, my old friend Muhammad Ali, from the southern Libyan oasis town of Gadamsk, was particularly effusive, having heard I'd just been released by my Tuare kidnappers after being held captive in the desert. We hadn't seen each other in almost 13 years. I'd wanted to travel south from Tripoli to meet old friends from a desert expedition years before. I also wanted to look into stories I'd been hearing about conflict breaking out in Kadams between the town's mixed Arab Berber population and the Tuareg. The two populations have lived together, sometimes uneasily, for centuries. Gaddafi's use of the Tuareg as local enforcers during the revolution had stirred up these divisions. The town had now risen up and expelled them, and reprisals were in the air. The Tuareg can never come back here, one Gadamsee told me in Tripoli, not after what they have done in the last six months. I drove down with my friend Taha and his family who've lived in Kadams for generations. In the end, we never got there. Our car was forced off the road just outside the oasis by 16 Tuareg armed with Kalashnikovs. They hauled us out of the car, forced us onto the ground, tied our arms behind our backs, blindfolded us and drove us into the Sahara. The following morning they told us we were going to be killed unless Tuareg prisoners held in the town were released by noon. The deadline came and went. While I was being questioned, they said the Gadamses had robbed, set fire to and bulldozed their houses, killed the Sheikh of the Tuareg and slaughtered all their animals. 24 hours after we were taken, Taha's wife and two year old son, together with an old man kidnapped two days earlier, were released with me. They kept hold of Taha. According to the local town Council, our 20 something kidnappers were the remnants of the Tuareg Kataib. This was a local militia used by Gaddafi to suppress the uprising in Gadams, which began on 20 February, three days after the revolution kicked off in Benghazi. They had taken to their task, we were told with gusto, rounding up suspected rebels, imprisoning them and beating them severely with electrical cables. Bloodshed had been limited compared with the fighting in other Libyan towns and cities. A total of four people had been killed, but the abuse of power by a minority of the town's Tuareg had shattered relations between the two populations. Abdul Wahab, a former prisoner, showed me photos of his back, a mass of pink welts. I'm really sorry about what's happened with the Tuareg, he said. We were born together, we live together and we work together, but everything's changed now. The morning after my release, Muhammad Ali took me on a walk around the abandoned old city. An evocative labyrinth of covered walkways illuminated by shafts of sunlight stealing down between the tightly clustered mud brick houses. This ancient heart of the oasis, somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 years old, was once one of the great centres of Saharan trade. African caravans, groaning with precious stones, ivory, ostrich, feathers, gold, silver and horses came north together with straggling lines of trussed up slaves. Southbound traders carried exotic luxuries from Europe. Pearls from Paris, fine linens from Marseille, Venetian glass and paper. The Tuareg were an integral part of this age old desert commerce. They ran what today would be called a protection racket, offering their services as guides and armed escorts to caravans passing through areas under their control. Any merchant who declined the offer ran a real risk of having his caravans plundered by the Tuareg. A small part of the Gadamse Tuareg die hard. Gaddafi loyalists has returned to armed banditry. The consequences of this aggression are potentially catastrophic for this small desert town of 12,000. Many Tuareg who had nothing whatsoever to do with their fellow tribesmen's brutality, intimidated by the backlash, have already fled their homes. With some reluctance, my Gadamse hosts showed me a part of the Tuareg quarter on Dhahra street before driving quickly away. Numerous homes lay in rubble. They were old houses, said my friend. For years, Muhammad Ali has been the town's pre eminent guide. Like almost everyone else, he wants visitors to return to see this jewel of the Sahara. Really, the people of Gadamse want peace with the Tuareg, he said. Believe me, for a very long time we have been almost one family.
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Program Presenter
Justin Marozi, who's back now from Libya, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, last night wound up a triumphant tour through the three North African countries whose governments were overthrown by popular uprisings this year. Turkey, a growing political and economic power, was once the colonial ruler of this region, and in recent times it's been enjoying growing influence there. Jonathan Head, who was with Mr. Erdogan on part of his trip, says the Arab world isn't just impressed by his increasingly confrontational attitude towards Israel.
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BBC Announcer
There were the giant roadside billboards showing the Turkish prime minister hand on heart, promising a shared future. There were the rapturous crowds waiting to greet him wherever he appeared. In Cairo, the rock star treatment that Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets is unheard of for a politician in the modern Middle East. You can find his picture plastered on walls in the West Bank. Palestinian babies have been named after him. That a Turkish leader could be elevated to the status of an Arab champion, he is extraordinary. Mr. Erdogan speaks very little Arabic, and it's a struggle to find anyone who speaks Turkish in Cairo these days. There are few visible signs left of the 400 Years of Ottoman rule in Egypt. The modern Turkish Republic parted from its former colonies on bad terms, bitter at what it saw as a stab in the back by Arab rebels led by Lawrence of Arabia. Until the last few years, Turkey maintained frosty diplomatic ties with most of its Arab neighbors. It's easy to put Mr. Erdogan's popularity down to one thing his outspoken attacks on Israel when he stormed off the stage during a televised debate in Davos two and a half years ago, accusing the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, of knowing how to kill. He became an instant hero. Nothing is so guaranteed to win cheers from an Arab population aggrieved by decades of perceived humiliations by Israel. But it's more than that. The young Egyptian activists waiting for the chance to see or even meet their Turkish idol in Cairo talked of Mr. Erdogan's sincerity. He seems to speak from the heart. They said something they've never seen their own leaders do. This is actually true. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a canny, calculating politician, but he's also a very emotional one, prone to tears at times and bouts of poetry at others. His outbursts are often impulsive, sometimes embarrassing for the officials who later have to explain that they're not actually government policy. His anger over the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza seems to be genuine. It's also selective. He never gets as angry about victims of repression in Iran, for example, where he's developed a personal rapport with President Ahmadinejad. Still, for young Arabs, this is a refreshing contrast with their own taciturn rulers. It was there for all to see when Mr. Erdogan, bounding with energy, met Field Marshal Tantawi, the stiff, elderly officer who now runs Egypt but is hardly ever seen or heard from by his people. It was even more obvious when the Turkish leader delivered a blistering critique of policy towards the Palestinians at the Arab League, an organization best known for saying and doing very little. It was as if a bare knuckle boxer had been let loose in a gentleman's club. The delegates from what are still mostly undemocratic states shifted uncomfortably in their seats as he scolded them for thwarting the will of the people. This is all very gratifying for Turks, who've long lived with a sense of acute isolation, stuck as they were at the eastern end of the NATO alliance in a hostile region. Suddenly it's cool to be Turkish, even if no one speaks your language. Turkish TV dramas are bestsellers all over the Middle east, and Turkish businesses honed on their experience of trading with Europe, are now marching triumphantly through new Arab and African markets. Some even dare to call this neo Ottomanism. It looks almost too good to be true for Turkey. And it probably is. For all his anti Israeli bluster, Mr. Erdogan's government has just agreed to station part of an American missile defense shield in eastern Turkey, and the presumed purpose of this is is to defend Israel against Iranian missiles. The friendship with Iran has suddenly got a lot cooler, and it won't be long before some of those Arabs who are now in awe of the Turkish democratic model start asking questions about its unresolved war in the Kurdish region, or about why many of the world's jailed journalists are in Turkish prisons. For all his electoral success, Mr. Erdogan is a divisive figure in his own country, feared as much as he's admired. The crowd which came to welcome him at Cairo airport had been largely organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, still the most effective political force in Egypt. As the head of an overtly Islamic party, Mr. Erdogan seemed a natural ally. But they weren't there when he departed. In outlining his vision for a democratic Arab world, he described Turkey as a secular country which just happened to have a Muslim prime minister. All religions are free to practice, he said. That wasn't what the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to hear. It's campaigning for an Islamically inspired legal system for Egypt. As he was about to leave, the Turkish prime minister was warned by the Brotherhood spokesman not to get carried away by his popularity. Don't think that you alone can lead our region or draw up its future, he said. If there are any Turks dreaming of an Ottoman revival in the Arab world, it's probably time to wake up.
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Program Presenter
And that was Jonathan Head. One of the earliest countries to declare its support for the Libyan rebels was the tiny but very rich Gulf state of Qatar. It immediately offered its Mirage military aircraft to patrol the no Fly zone set up by NATO. It was the first Arab state to commit military assets to the operation. But when we called NATO HQ in Naples this week asking how much action the Qatari pilots had actually seen, the man in the press office was friendly, but information was not forthcoming. Katie Watson, who's in the capital, Doha, says the ruler of Qatar, which owes its wealth to its oil and gas fields, had already made clear his support for the rebels by establishing in his emirate an anti Gaddafi television station.
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Katie Watson
One of my favourite spots in Doha is the corniche. It's a rather glamorous word for what's basically a concrete walkway snaking along the coastline. From the corniche, you can see dozens of traditional wooden boats, known as dhows, bobbing in the water. But set against this quaint image is a dramatic backdrop of skyscrapers. There's one that looks like a rocket, another resembling a tornado. Some are half built. But what's a skyline in this part of the world without half a dozen cranes showing? There's more to come Just a few minutes walk inland from the corniche is Souq Wakif. I say walk, but in the summer months in Doha, you're more likely to drive even short distances so as not to be dripping with sweat on your arrival. Sut Waqif is also new, full of whitewashed buildings and narrow little alleyways built on the site of an old market where Bedouins came to trade their livestock. The small shops are rich with the aroma of spices and Arabian oud, a powerful perfume that men and women here spray on liberally, leaving a fragrant trail as they walk by. The souk evokes images of a long lost Arabia, and it's the closest you can get to stepping back in time in modern day Doha. Today, tucked inside a part of the souk is an unlikely rebel force. Libya TV Aisha, the newsroom coordinator, showed me around proudly telling me that back in March, Gaddafi's media was having too much influence over Libyans. It was the idea of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, to try to counter the Gaddafi propaganda machine and tell people the truth, she said. Doha is of course also home to the better known Arabic TV station Al Jazeera. Launching the new operation, LibyaTV took just five days. It's funded by the Qatari government and uses borrowed office space and equipment. It started out with just three hours of programming a day. Eventually it hopes to run around the clock. Travelling around the Gulf these last six months, I've noticed at times that there's a bit of a heads down, let's not talk about it approach towards the Arab uprising. But the violent unrest in Bahrain earlier this year provided a wake up call for its neighbours who don't want to see that happening in their backyard. Talk to any local here and you'll soon realize that generally they view the uprising with pride. But ask them if it's likely to happen in their country and the answer is without exception, no. Now some monarchs, like those in Saudi Arabia, have tried to stave off any sniff of unrest by giving their already comfortable subjects big cash handouts. Others are stepping up their efforts to get their people into work. Qatar's strategy is a little different. Although the emir may not be averse to helping some of his people, the other day salaries for officers in his military were increased by 120%. This isn't the most democratic country in the world, but Qatar's bankrolling of the rebels in Libya has propelled it to stardom in the Arab firmament. It may be early days, but at the moment, it seems that the country's gamble backing the underdog has paid off. One young Qatari, Mohammed, told me his country wanted to show the world what it could do. Yes, it's small, he said, but now people know it's the state which has been the most supportive of Libya. And Mohammed's right. This time last year, the definition for Qatar, among most journalists anyway, may well have been just another oil rich Gulf state. It has oil, certainly, but in fact its gas reserves are what have made its people the richest in the world. They've helped it to rebrand itself as a powerful nation, aided first by winning the contest to stage the 2022 Football World cup and and now by stepping up as an aspiring political heavyweight. And while Qataris may boast of their country's achievements, Libyans here in Qatar are positively gushing with gratitude. Yusra is one of them. An enthusiastic young Libyan born and brought up in the us she decided to return to Tripoli in December to reconnect with her roots. Bad timing, she told me shortly afterwards. She had to leave again because of the fighting, and she's ended up in Doha working for the Libya TV station. She loves it here. It's great to be in a country that understands the complexities of Libya, she tells me, recognizing a country that's so in need of support from its Arab friends. And that's why Qatar's onto a winner in a region that's so used to foreign outside intervention, Qatar's embracing the challenge of leading the Arab world. It may not have the history of Arab leadership that Egypt has, but while that traditional regional leader is sorting out its own revolution, Qatar's filling the void nicely and feeling quite proud about it, too.
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Program Presenter
Katie Watson in Doha There are many parts of the world escaping the big budget squeeze at the moment, and the Central American state of Costa Rica certainly feeling the pinch. The president there is warning that cash shortages are leaving the country's health surface in crisis. A health minister has resigned over the issue, and medical staff have been taking strike action over changes to their contract conditions. Basic healthcare in Costa Rica is free, but an ageing population coupled with increasing costs of treatment mean that services are now under threat. Claudia Hammond has been there looking at the state of care for the oldest in society and not just the people.
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Claudia Hammond
Eight of us stand in a line in the dark, waiting in the bushes behind the beach. We're waiting for the signal from the spotters who are out on the grey sand, armed with nothing but torches, with subtle red beams. We're wearing dark clothes, hoping to camouflage ourselves. But this is no army mission. Costa Rica disbanded all its armed services back in 1949. What we're waiting for is a female green sea turtle with a shell that's a meter in length. We get the call. She's landed on the beach and is heaving herself up towards the undergrowth. She digs a nest and then it happens in silence. We stand behind her and watch as she squeezes out egg after egg. They're rubbery and bounce slightly as they land. It looks like a pile of hard boiled eggs without their shells on. Then she begins flapping her flippers, moving gusts of sand to conceal the eggs. Costa Rica is a country which is well aware that conservation is the key to its future success. The village of Tortuguero was built on logging and all the primary rainforest was destroyed. But now the logging has stopped, secondary rainforest has grown up and every person in the village works in tourism. They rely on the turtles for business and the turtles rely on them to enforce strict rules which mean they're not disturbed while they lay their eggs. Even then, only 1% of eggs survive. And when they do, the turtles can live to at least 120. But they're not the only ones living to a ripe old age these days. The Ticos, as the Costa Rican people are known, are now the longest lived people in the whole of including the United States. Costa Rica is a peaceful, stable nation with some of the best health care available in any low income country. There's free basic care for everyone, including the elderly. I visited a small residential home in one of the capital suburbs, Santo Domingo. The 13 residents were sitting on a large veranda and the humid weather means they're not shut away, but can look out onto the street, chatting to passersby. I met Flor de Maria Perez, who moved into the home with her husband. Flor has seen the rise in life expectancy for herself. She's 88 and told me that her parents had both died by their mid-60s. She remembers when the oldest people she'd ever seen were just 70. Now she sits surrounded by people in their 80s and 90s and even a centenarian. She puts it down to healthier food and to exercise. Now all the old ladies are exercising and walking a lot, she told me. On a small sunny terrace at the back of the home, I met an 84 year old man sitting alone, reading. He spent 53 years welding cars in a garage, a job to which he told me he was so devoted that he never smoked and never drank. Every morning he walks to the bakery to get the day's bread for the home. He's an avid reader, the staff told me. Always has his head in a book. Not quite books, he laughed, showing me the Photo Love magazine he was reading. While I was looking around, several residents came up to invite me to their rooms. Some have a room to themselves, others share with one or two others. Down the corridor, there's an altar for prayer and a dining room with a TV set. But no one's looking at it. They're more interested in watching real life outside. While I look around, one lady comes up every five minutes or so to show me a soft toy or a picture. She's childlike and the staff treat her kindly. Another tells me he leads the residents on walks in the park. A woman shows me the dolls she's making to raise funds for the home. This feels like a surprisingly active place. But with the birth rate dropping and fewer families able to care for their older relatives at home, coupled with the great ages people are reaching, the demand for such homes is growing. There are just 13 beds in this one, and yet they have another 200 people looking for places. You'd think that this high life expectancy would be a cause for celebration, but it's also putting a strain on health services. Some of the money saved on defence has been ploughed into health care. But with increasing numbers of older people and more expensive new treatments, there are now constant debates over the funding of the health service. Although the hospitals I visited were clean and modern, the president has admitted that the health system is in crisis. The public is split with some feeling more money should be invested instead into infrastructure and complaining that the state of the roads, constantly potholed by rain, is holding back the economy. Meanwhile, back on the beach, the turtle struggles back to the sea, inching forwards painfully slowly and even stopping with exhaustion just a foot from the water. Her future relies on the conservation policy, which allows her to return to this beach safely. It strikes me that her future depends on policy decisions about priorities, and so does Flors. The turtle has the advantage that tourists will pay a lot to see her. In the current circumstances, the future for elderly people is more uncertain.
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Program Presenter
Claudia Hammond Argentina is one of the biggest, most technologically advanced economies in Latin America. Yet in this huge country, far away from the bustling, brash capital, Buenos Aires, there still exists some remote corners barely touched by the modern world. Daniel Schweimler, with a few tortuous bus journeys and some arduous trekking, has just visited one such place deep in the mountains in The Far North west there's
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BBC Announcer
an advert showing on Argentine television for a bank that sends a mobile unit to the remote town of Eruja in the northwestern province of Salta. Getting there is not easy. The final two and a half hours are along unpaved roads that wind their way through the mountains. At more than 13,000ft above sea level, Eruja is a picturesque, thriving little town full of hostels and quaint restaurants that attract tourists from both Argentina and beyond. The purpose of the advert is to show that the bank cares even about the country's most remote communities. Argentina is dominated by its capital, Buenos Aires. More than half the country's 40 million population lives in the city, or the province of Buenos Aires that surrounds it. Much of the rest of the eighth largest country in the world is sparsely populated. A common complaint, as it has been for the 200 years that Argentina has existed, is that Buenos Aires doesn't care about the rest of the country, that too much attention, too much investment is focused on the capital. Even the great Inca empire was late getting round to conquering this often forgotten territory and what is now northwestern Argentina. Evidence of Inca domination is sparse, but they did reach the peak of the highest mountain in the region, Juja Jaco, in 1999. Archaeologists found the well preserved bodies of three young people who had been taken to the mountaintop to be ritually sacrificed to the gods. They had been given an alcoholic drink to put them to sleep, then they were left to die. The two young girls and one boy were found with items of jewelry and other personal possessions. Their remains are displayed in the Museum of High Altitude in the city of Salta. There it explains that it was considered an honour to be sacrificed and only the healthiest, most attractive children were chosen. They were fed a nutritious diet before walking, probably from the Inca capital, Cusco, to their death. Then, like now, this region was a long way from the centre of power. What I noticed as I travelled north, away from the bustle of Buenos Aires, is that the banknotes get increasingly grubby, torn and illegible notes that would be treated with contempt in the capital, or they possibly wouldn't even be accepted as legal tender. Are exchanged freely and without comment in the cities of Salta and Jujoy. Even the news on national television is of crime and traffic congestion in Buenos Aires, hundreds of miles away and and with no bearing on the lives of the inhabitants of these distant communities. Beyond Eruja, there is a dirt track leading to the village of San Isidro, where electricity arrived Only a year and a half ago. Then, beyond San Isidro there is a narrow mountain path. It's a four hour walk to the next village, San Juan. About 60. San Juan is not so much a town or a village as more a sprawl of adobe, brick and stone houses, each surrounded by ploughed dry earth. In the folds of the mountains, there's a small compact white church, and the only other white building is a rectangular school with solar panels where the Argentine flag is raised every morning. There's no mains electricity here. There are no roads, just steep paths strewn with stones that crunch underfoot. The silence is only broken by the sound of dogs, donkeys, goats and chickens, and the tweeting and squawking of birds. The sky is a deep blue, the contours of the mountains razor sharp. Since San Juan is largely without power, when the sun goes down, darkness prevails, pierced only by the occasional flicker of candle light. By 8:30pm the sky is a blanket of stars and milky white stains. Its inhabitants tend goats and grow carrots, alfalfa and several varieties of potato. But they can't sell their produce in local markets since their town is too remote, the roads too few and far between to get it there. So they harvest what they need for their own consumption and operate a system of barter with what is left over. It looks idyllic, but our guide Evaristo, who runs the only hostel in the community, told me that many have left to seek an easier life in the cities, as he's got paying guests. He needed to install a bathroom, but the only way to get the sink, toilet and pipes to San Juan was by donkey. Evaristo went to buy us a bottle of water from the house of a relative for the return trek to Arauja. He handed me my change, a 2 peso note, the grubbiest and most fragile that I had so far encountered, with the face of national hero Bartolome Mitre. Barely recognizable, but it was still legal tender. Just symbolic, perhaps, of how far in so many ways, San Juan is from Buenos Aires.
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Program Presenter
Daniel Schweimener getting away from it all and bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here with correspondence flung far and wide on both Thursday and Saturday next week. Do join us.
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BBC Announcer
Goodbye.