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From Our Own Correspondent
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00:28:06
Tim Whewell, just back from Mali, talks of retribution. Every conflict throws up and...
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Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting
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House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, time for settling scores in Mali. And it's the Tuareg, once the dashing heroes of the dunes, who are now targeted for revenge. We meet a tearful Lebanese killer tamed by a 12 year old girl. There's outcry in South Africa at the township teenagers trashing expensive clothes. And the trains in Switzerland they still run like clockwork. So why are their passengers so wound up? There are winners and losers in every conflict. And as the French continue their military operation against the Islamist rebels in Mali, it's looking like the biggest losers could be the Tuareg. Not so long ago, these nomadic pastoralists of the Sahara, with their colourful vales and haunting desert music, enjoyed a swashbuckling romantic image, particularly here in the West. Now, though, Tim Whewell says they find themselves increasingly reviled and accused of collaboration with the militants.
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Once upon a time, two brothers went hunting together, far out in the Malian bush. They wandered further and further, but found no game until eventually they collapsed, exhausted under a tree. The younger brother began to complain about how hungry he was, so the elder one went off to try to find food. At last he came back with some meat, which was eagerly cooked over a fire. Only when the younger brother had satisfied his hunger did he start to wonder where the meat came from. And then he noticed a bloody bandage around the other's leg. Horrified, he realized that his elder brother had cut off a piece of his own thigh to save him from starvation. And he was overcome with guilt. That's the story that's told in Mali to explain the origin of a unique relationship between two of the country's peoples, the Bozo and the Dogon. Supposedly the descendants of those two brothers. They're bound forever to help one another in any way they can, but never to intermarry. That way, relations are always kept pleasant as between friends, whereas marriage and family ties can result in horrible complications, as happened between the two hunters. The ties between the Bozo, traditionally fishermen along the River Niger, and the Dogon, hunters and farmers on a high plateau to the south, are just one example of what's called cousinage, special bonds between ethnic groups or traditional castes. So the Dogon are also cousins of the Sonrai, farmers and traders in the east of Mali, while the Furani, the herders who wander the endless yellow grasslands dotted with glossy green mango and she butter trees, are cousins with Families of hereditary blacksmiths of any group. Khusinaj. Part of the generally harmonious relations between the peoples of Mali is based on mutual benefit and respect for one another's territory. Herders need traders to buy goods and sell their cattle. Everyone needs blacksmiths. But there's a particular people in Mali, they say, who have no cousins. The light skinned nomads of the north, the Tuareg. You can find some Tuareg scattered throughout Mali. There are Tuareg MPs and Tuareg ministers. But Tuareg separatists fought the government throughout the early 1990s and and began another rebellion a year or so ago. The rebellion later hijacked by jihadis of many nationalities, that sparked the present crisis for many in the West. The Tuareg are irresistibly romantic, mysterious men of the dunes, and the camel trains their heads swathed in traditional blue turbans and less traditional designer sunglasses. But politics in Mali are about fighting other unromantically, for scarce resources. And while the Tuareg have suffered terribly from repeated drought, the country's other peoples have suffered too. And many feel, rightly or wrongly, that more is spent on the Tuareg because they make more political fuss. Today, as the rebellion is crushed by French led forces, the Tuareg are in trouble. Whether or not they supported the revolt and many didn't, they're afraid now of reprisals. So afraid that in parts of Mali they've completely disappeared, fled to neighbouring countries or gone into hiding down on the bustling banks of the Niger. In the port of Mopsi, the Venice of Mali, as the faded tourist posters call it, I find stacks of square white slabs flecked with grey marble, I assume. But it's salt carried by camel to Timbuctoo from the mines in the deep Sahara, then by dugout canoe to Mopti. Tuareg traditionally control the salt trade, but there are no Tuareg with the salt today, only Bella, the black Africans who were historically the Tuareg's slaves. This is no time to be a white Malian, they say when I ask where the Tuareg have gone. Their pale skin's enough to get them arrested or even killed. Just a few minutes drive away, hundreds of young men are running, whooping and singing through the bushes. They're the gander izzo, the children of the land, a militia composed largely of black refugees from the north, training now to go home and help the Malian army root out those who collaborated with the rebels. We are the ones who know who's who, they say, who looted, who stole, who ordered or administered Islamic punishments for smoking and drinking and who raped. Many say they saw rebels carry girls off into the dunes and and return with them only days later. Mali's government and militia leaders say there'll be no vengeance now in Timbuktu or other northern towns, only justice and no settling of ethnic scores. The authorities may make real efforts to avoid that. But individual militiamen talk of revenge and a Malian military instructor helping to train them. Says the Tuareg, all Tuareg and are enemies of the state. This is a bad time in Mali to be a people without cousins.
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And that's Tim Whewell. The effects of the crisis in Syria, still apparently no nearer resolution after two years of bloody conflict, are of deepening concern throughout the Middle East. The flood of refugees from the fighting is stretching resources across the region and fears are repeatedly voiced about the possibility of the violence spilling over borders. The danger seems particularly acute in neighbouring Lebanon, where resentment between groups loyal to different Syrian factions has often led to bloodshed. Darius Bazargan's been to Tripoli in the north of Lebanon to investigate the tension between two such neighbourhoods.
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Abu Rami has killer's eyes like a shark's, and he is certainly a killer. 35 years, a militia leader, a gunman since his teens, and he fought in plenty of Lebanon's wars. Who knows how many lives he snuffed out? It goes like that when you choose the life of a fighter, when you become, as he puts it, a bit brutal. He's been shot 30 times himself and nearly died after being hit by a mortar shell. Round here they call him Jabbar, meaning the mighty. He is Mr. Indestructible, the living martyr of Jebel Mohsen, a legendary warrior. On this particular hilltop, men like this don't usually open their mouths, let alone their hearts. But he's been changed by his only daughter. I had three sons, but they were born in wartime, he explains. But my daughter Maya was different. She made me feel the taste of fatherhood for the first time. I have this feeling I'm responsible for our area, so I can't show emotions. But Maya has a very special place. I don't want her to be affected by this environment. Because of a iling, pink obsessed 12 year old girl, Aburami is finally learning how to love and he thinks it's weakened him. His eyes gleam through the darkness, welling up with a hard man's tears. There's plenty to cry about here in the city of Tripoli and north Lebanon where the inhabitants of two slums are one Sunni Muslim, the other Alawite, have been slugging it out since the 1970s. The conflict has come to define both areas. The Alawites ruled the roost here back in the 80s when Syria occupied Lebanon. But now their 50,000 strong community is crammed onto a hilltop called Jebel Mohsen, surrounded by hostile Sunnis. Every few weeks, armed clashes erupt and the neighbours go at each other with sniper rifles, machine guns, rifle, rocket launchers and mortars. People die and homes burn. Then the Lebanese army sends in its peacekeepers. The guns fall silent. Both sides bury their dead and prepare for the next time. In Tripoli, there is always a next time. What does sectarian warfare look like when it becomes a way of life? On the one hand, it looks like Aburami, exhausted, remorseful and paranoid after a lifetime wasted in chaos and killing. Everything he'd achieved as a fighter, rendered meaningless by the realisation his beloved young daughter might herself grow up in wartime. On the other hand, it looks like Sheikh Bilal al Masri. He's a Salafist street preacher in his 30s who owns a mobile phone shop in an indigent Sunni Muslim district called Bab al Tabane. Tabaneh lies below Jebel Musin. In its shadow and its gun sights, his life seems dominated by his hatred of the Syrian regime in Damascus and its Alawite allies up on that hill. His long hair and wild eyes remind me of a young Rasputin. Like the abu Rami of 30 years ago, he's young and trigger happy. When not preaching jihad or selling Nokias, he leads a small militia of local toughs. Sheikh Bilal is also a killer, but not yet war weary. He thinks that the slaughter in neighbouring Syria will lead to the overthrow of the Assad regime that back in the 1980s murdered his father, his friends and many of his neighbors. After that, Bilal is sure that the Sunni of Tabana can rid Tripoli of the non believers, as he calls the Alawites. At home, playing with his three year old son, Muawiya, he seems like any indulgent father anywhere. But once the TV news mentions Syria, he starts coaching the lad. What does Bashar Al Assad do? He kills people. What does he do with kids? He slaughters them. Dad Muawiya is not yet out of nappies. Out on the streets of Babal Tabane, other young boys shoot their toy rifles uphill towards Djebel Mohsen. Up on the Jebel, the kids point their plastic Kalashnikovs downhill and squeeze off make believe rounds just as their fathers do in real life. Nobody really wants this war, or so they say. The young men of both militias look identical in their skinny jeans, knock off Adidas vests and Maori style tattoos. They all want jobs and investment in their slums, and politicians who pay attention to their troubles. They want to get married and raise families in normal conditions. Up on the Jebel, a mournful Aburami despairs. I wish I could open my arms and bare my chest to them, he tells us. Let them kill me. I'm ready. But I don't want my kids and their kids to pay the price. If only things were that simple. After we left, Maya was out on the balcony collecting the washing when a sniper shot at her. The bullet missed her head by 5cm that time. She was lucky, but there will always be a next time.
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Darius Bazargan in Lebanon There was a heart stopping moment this week in America's renewed debate over gun related crime. The former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, herself the victim of a mass shooting two years ago, delivered a short, halting but passionate appeal to senators to do something to stop the killing. But the week has seen several more shootings in Chicago. It's been the deadliest month for more than a decade. Paul Adams has been travelling around the US Trying to gauge whether the debate will lead to any significant change.
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Once or twice a week at the moment, I find myself looking at a scene I've come to regard as quintessentially American. A view usually from the air. A sprawling building, emergency vehicles parked at crazy angles. Clusters of figures hunched in anticipation or seemingly dazed by something that's just happened. And a newscaster's voice intoning elements of a familiar mantra. Detail still coming in. The building is in lockdown, a shooter still at large. We're coming to you live. I look down from the news helicopter's dislocated, impersonal vantage point and wonder as everyone is wondering, is it happening again? Should I start to write the script now? Is this another massacre like Newtown or. Or Columbine? Or just another disgruntled former employee, co workers barricaded in the bathroom, two dead and a suicide as police officers close in a small local tragedy that threatened for a few minutes to go global. And so it falls to every foreign correspondent in America at some point along the way to think about guns, about what they do and what they're for. Since Newtown, it's been relentless. Other spasms of violence have cast brief national shadows, but it seems it's going to take an Awful lot longer to forget the 20 children of Sandy Hook Elementary. The nation has plunged headlong into a tortured debate about how to respond, about complex arcane gun laws, constitutional rights, access to mental health care, and the role, if any, of violent video games experts, policemen, politicians and the public, all trying in one way or another to fathom the deadly formula lurking behind the numbing statistics. In the course of more than three years of trying to understand this story, I've met an awful lot of people with guns. Middle aged ladies and family men, shop assistants and historians. They've invited me into their homes, shown me their pistols, shotguns and semi automatic rifles, patiently explained how they work and more importantly, why they feel they need them. Not one of them, as far as I could tell were was a menace to society. No one made me feel uneasy around their weapons, although the historian did make me jump a little when the clip kept falling out of his wife's semi automatic pistol and clattering to the floor. Some are collectors, others hunters or member of gun clubs. Most say they need guns for personal protection, especially at home. Many believe that Barack Obama came into office determined to take them away, and some say they'll fight literally to keep them. In St. Louis, just a few months into the President's first term, Brian, a mild mannered entrepreneur, showed me the multitude of weapons he keeps under lock and key in his bedroom closet. He was stockpiling ammunition, preparing for the day when the long awaited government crackdown finally begins. Never mind that Barack Obama had at that stage barely mentioned guns. Bryan was convinced the day would come. It's the kind of fear about creeping government tyranny which plenty of Americans naturally feel and which the country's hugely influential gun lobby is only too happy to exploit. There was another run on guns and ammunition when Mr. Obama was re elected in November. Yet another after the shootings in Newtown. All over the country, ordinary law abiding Americans are arming themselves to the teeth. It seems the debate over guns has somehow morphed into a new or revived front in America's culture wars. On one side, gun owners crudely identified with traditional rural conservative small government America. An America full of rugged individuals, each ultimately responsible for his or her own protection, not just from criminals, but possibly from their own government too. On the other side, urban progressive big government liberals who argue that America has changed, that this is no longer the wild frontier that we live in, a modern, complicated, interconnected society with government here to help, not hinder. At a packed hearing on gun violence in Hartford, Connecticut earlier this week, an emotional Neil Heslin asked why anyone would want to possess a semiautomatic rifle of the sort used to kill his own six year old son Jesse, in the massacre at Newtown. His question was greeted with silence, so he turned around and posed it again. This time a chorus of pro gun voices responded, one shouting that the second Amendment to the Constitution, the right of the people to bear arms, should never be infringed. It felt like the moment when the reverence surrounding the Sandy Hook parents and the passions generated by talk of gun control finally collided in an almost unbearable way. When it comes to guns, America seems to be wrestling with its own sense of self in ways that can sometimes be very painful to watch.
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Paul Adams in Washington now how can a company like Swiss Railways, with a rock solid reputation for comfort, punctuality and generally top quality service, manage to seriously annoy large numbers of customers? The railways are one of the glories of Switzerland. Wherever you go, from the metropolis of Zurich to the tiniest of mountain villages, there's a train that will take you there, always on time and often in considerable style. There's even one where the steward will pour schnapps from a great height into your glass while you gaze out of wraparound windows at vistas of Alpine glory. But nevertheless, as Imogen folks tells us, we all is far from well.
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As I write this, I'm travelling home, watching the sun set over the mountains which flank Lake Geneva. It's bitterly cold, there's been a good deal of snow, but the train is right on time. It's warm. I have a seat and even a little desk for my laptop. I feel pleasantly smug as I look out at the rush hour traffic, nose to tail on the motorway. I feel smugger still as the aroma of fresh coffee heralds the arrival of the drinks service. Swiss friends often tell me proudly that their rail service is the best in the world. But recently the Swiss love affair with their railway has turned a little sour. It all began with the decision to abolish ticket sales on trains, though ticket collectors stay in theory, this should work. You can buy tickets from a machine on the platform, online or by smartphone. In practice, it has become a rancorous public relations disaster, and all because of a Byzantine logic over what constitutes a valid ticket and a policy of issuing huge fines to passengers who don't have one. The key lies in the word valid. For example, there's the young man with a ticket which must be date stamped by a machine on the platform. The machine is out of order, so he carefully writes in the Date by hand, gets on board and is fined by the conductor for not having a valid ticket and for defacing a ticket. There's the pensioner out for a day with his grandson, who kindly bought both their tickets on his mobile phone. But it turns out you're only allowed one E ticket per person, so poor old Grandad is fined. And then there's me. One frosty morning, I arrived at my local station to find that the ticket machine was broken. No matter, I thought, I've got a smartphone. And I hurriedly set about buying my ticket that way. This wasn't quite as easy as I'd hoped, fiddling between credit card and phone with freezing cold fingers. But by the time I got on the Intercity to Geneva, I had an E ticket and I showed it to the conductor with a feeling of pride that I'd solved the first problem of the day so easily. Unfortunately, she was less than impressed and told me in no uncertain terms that my ticket was not valid. Why? Only became clear several weeks later when a letter arrived from Swiss Railway's euphemistically named Revenue Protection Service. The good people there tell me they have proof that the formal payment authorisation for my ticket from my credit card company arrived four minutes after my train left the station. That means, they say, that I bought my ticket on the train, something that's not allowed. Together with the letter was a fine for 190 francs. That's £130 and that's on top of the price of the ticket I had already bought. In vain do I protest that the policy of abolishing ticket sales on trains surely can't be taken that far.
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Far.
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In vain do I point to the broken ticket machine and my paid for ticket valid only on that day for that journey. And in vain are the protests of the 750 other passengers across Switzerland receiving similar fines every single day. Swiss Railways say their policy is designed to protect honest, fair paying passengers. But a quick look at their balance sheet suggests something else. The company is making a cool million pounds a month from fines alone. It's a nice little earner, but it's left a nasty feeling with passengers who believe they're being punished as fair dodgers, when in fact they've done their level best to buy a ticket. Some are even taking their cases to court. That should be interesting. Swiss Railways versus the people. In the meantime, although train travel is still popular, those seats don't feel as comfy. The coffee doesn't smell quite so good because Swiss railways have lost, for now anyway, something much more precious than A million pounds a month. Good relations with their customers.
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That's Imogen, folks, who's in Bern. South Africa has seen a phenomenal growth in the black middle class since the days of apartheid 20 years ago. These people, many of whom grew up in poverty, now form the backbone of the South African economy. Some of their children, of course, know little about the discrimination of apartheid, nor the desperation and brutality which accompanied it. Today, the townships around the big cities are very different to how they were. And there's a new phenomenon irritating some of the older residents, as Hamilton Wendy's been discovering. It involves teenagers roaming the streets dressed in extraordinarily expensive clothes, money gleaming crisp
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new banknotes being counted in the sunlight. On a Soweto street, two young teenagers wearing designer jeans, shimmering silk shirts, bright pink and blue shoes, and wearing white straw narrow brim fedoras are passing a large wad of cash from one to the other. There's not enough, one says. We'll get more, his friend replies. They wander across the road to join a group of their friends who are all dressed in the same patchwork of colour and glitz. An animated discussion breaks out and somehow, almost like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, more and yet more money emerges from backpacks, handbags and the tight pockets of designer jeans. Now it seems they have enough. The group, ranging in age from 12 to 15, wander over to a parked minibus. Taxi. Sipho, with the sky blue patent leather shoes and the white fedora, negotiates with the driver. He counts out nearly £700 in cash and 10 kids climb inside. They have rented the minibus for the afternoon and the evening. Later, when I chat to Sipho, I discover that he's only 13 and is the ringleader. As the minibus draws into the Saturday afternoon traffic, the boys take off a shoe, each lining the dashboard in a colourful array of expensive Italian leather. There are only a few shops that stock these shoes and the silk shirts that the children buy. The shoes cost £300 a pair and the shirts £200. Adults in the cars around us look away as the minibus slowly navigates the traffic. In township slang, these children are known as isikotane, or the boasters. In recent years, they have become a huge social phenomenon as they gather in their hundreds, even thousands, at parks dressed in their expensive outfits. Loud music blares while the children dance and often ruin their clothes and shoes, stripping them off and sometimes pouring custard on them and rubbing them into the ground to show off and to pretend to be rich. There's a growing outcry from many adults about this behaviour, but the popularity of the Isikotanas among young township teens is high. They even have a Facebook page with pictures of kids covered in money or breaking an expensive smartphone, holding it under a running tap. They force their parents to tap into their savings or to go without essentials so that they can buy and sometimes destroy these luxuries. The first stop is a nearby bottle store, but there isn't enough stock of the sweet liqueur called Amarula Cream that the children like, so they pile back into the minibus and the traffic. A 15 minute drive sees them arrive at a shopping mall which has a larger bottle store. The kids mill about in the parking lot, shouting, laughing and showing off their lurid outfits. Many of the shirts still have the price tags attached, which they eagerly shove in each other's faces to compare costs. Where our crates are, beer and that sweet liqueur are wheeled out of the store by the attendants. Adults stare, agog at what is happening. One man stops to talk to me. He explains that as a teenager he grew up fighting apartheid in the streets. He was one of the students in the bloody protests in 1976 that have become a part of history known as the Soweto uprisings. He shakes his head as he watches one of the kids unscrew a bottle of liqueur and start gulping it down. This isn't what we struggled for, he says and turns to open the door of his small, battered hatchback car. He is still staring through the window at the kids as he drives away. The minibus is soon on the road again. Now Sipo has turned up the music and the kids are chugging beers and liqueur and making the bus rock on its chassis as they move their bodies to the music while they cruise down the highway. The driver says nothing, but he hunkers down over his steering wheel. A few minutes later, he is stopped at a police roadblock. There are a number of empty bottles on the floor of the bus, and many of the underage children are already drunk, but the police simply wave them on. Finally, we arrive at a park heaving with drunken teenagers and cars trying to make their way through the pandemonium amidst the noise and the confusion. One of the children tries to explain what this all means, how it says something about adolescent identity and pride. You must dress like this, he says, even if you live in a shack
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and exploring a novel use for custard in Johannesburg. That's Hamilton Wenday bringing this edition to a close. Two programs next week on Thursday and on Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.