← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
spaceships in the desert
00:28:19
Stories from correspondents around the world, introduced by Kate Adie.
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent.
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Maya Morav
You can hear the version of the
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Kate Adie
programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Today in Afghanistan, the threat of violence is an everyday risk, especially if you don't follow the social norms. But we hear of a visionary headmaster who's daring to do just that. A spaceship of sorts has landed in the desert of Niger with promises of black gold. But the locals need to read the small print. We visit a graveyard in Jerusalem which provides its own insight into the momentous changes in the Middle East. And it may have taken a year to arrive, and it's not very flattering. So how come our man in Somalia is so happy with his new nickname? It's rarely good news from Iraq. In recent months, the levels of violence, of shootings and bombings, are running at the highest they've been for years. Iraq's prime minister has blamed the surge in violence on a spillover from Syria, but his critics have blamed his own policies for increasing the sectarian divide. Mark Urban has just been to see for himself.
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Kate Adie
Filming can be a tense business in Baghdad these days. There are just too many people trying to stop you. So I didn't mind when a major in the police started chatting away while we recorded street scenes, if that was the price of getting our shots done. We never had this sectarian business before the Americans came, he told me forcefully. It's all their fault. This emphatic message was delivered within earshot of several of his colleagues. But a little later, as the cameraman carried on capturing images of men on mopeds and women carrying home plastic bags of vegetables, the major asked, can we speak privately? We sidled away from the others. And then he let rip. The government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki was disgusting. And the people of Anbar Province, where a revolt by Sunni extremists is underway, were being bombed without mercy, he said. My own family have become refugees, the major added with palpable sadness. And as his tale of woe about the misdeeds of a Shiite dominated government and the suffering of his own kin went on, one thing became as clear as the Baghdad sky. This angry man was a Sunni in the service of a state. He was fast becoming alienated from. And imagine his feelings. Many police stations or vehicles these days are adorned with Shiite banners celebrating the Shia imams or Shia slogans. For some reason, those who make up the majority of Mr. Maliki's forces don't seem to see the harm in this. It's all just part of an increasingly overt sectarianism, with extensive Sunni areas in open revolt and tensions stirred up by the Syrian war. The last thing Iraq needs now, many will tell you, is an election. But there is one coming in April, and if the pattern of previous ones is followed, it'll provide Mr. Maliki's opponents with their chance to prove he's not really in charge by provoking as much mayhem as possible. So the monthly death toll, more than 700 in February, is now up to a level that it was in 2008. That's when I was last in Baghdad at the time that America's troop surge and the actions of Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders were between them, crushing the militancy of Al Qaeda in Iraq. In a prosperous part of Baghdad, I took lunch with Major General Abdul Karim Abu Ktom. I interviewed him five years ago, and as we tucked into chicken deboned and drizzled with lemon sauce, I asked him how important Syria had been in stirring everything up again. Yes, there is a link, says the general who commands police special troops. It's Daash, or to use its English acronym, isis. The Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham, or Syria. That's the common factor. It's a mutation of the old Al Qaeda in Iraq. It parades today in Fallujah and Ramadi, and it's heavily involved in the fighting in northern Syria. But the general is convinced that ISIS is not a serious threat to Iraq. The trend is positive, he insists. The group has begun to weaken in Iraq, and it's weakening in Syria, too. He says. The general is Shiite, and just as ISIS sees its struggle straddling the Iraq Syria border, so does he. While he might only implicitly acknowledge that he and Bashar al Assad's government in Damascus have a common enemy, you don't have to look far to find others proclaiming it openly. On Jamiya street, just outside the compound where Iraq's president lives, there's a bold green poster put up by the swords of the righteous, or Asheb al al Haq. It's a radical Shiite group that carried out many attacks on the British and Americans, as well as kidnapping the British computer expert Peter Moore. The poster shows 11 young men in camouflage battle dress. They're the movement's martyrs who've died fighting on President Assad's side in Syria. Does the proxy sectarian battleground of Syria make things worse in Baghdad, or does it in fact allow Iraq to to send its hot heads elsewhere. The growing number of bombs and assassinations in the Iraqi capital suggest its effect is not palliative. There's one thing that everyone I spoke to, from Sunni citizens to friends of the Maliki government or that police major on the street seemed sure of that. Elections will bring more trouble. You'll see, said the police major as we packed up after filming our street scenes. There'll be bombs every day.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Mark Urban back from Baghdad. In Afghanistan, too, they're gearing up for elections due next month to choose a new president to replace Hamid Karzai. The elections in April are being seen as a test both of the Taliban, who want to disrupt them, and of Afghanistan's armed forces, which have taken on the task of securing the polling stations and distributing election material. Whatever happens, Afghanistan will remain a largely socially conservative country, particularly for women. Chris Terrell, though, recently visited a remarkable school that's been carving out a different path.
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Chris Terrill
It's amazing how snow can make a place look and feel instantly festive and cosy, even when it's actually struggling to keep a smile on its face. Take Kabul. The snow thick on the ground right now is providing a welcome distraction from some sinister realities. My Afghan bodyguard tells me that at least five suicide bombers have moved into the city since the new year. One struck, killing 13. Two more apparently have been eliminated, but that still leads to possibly more just biding their time. So Kabul is tense, its citizens nervous, twitchy, on edge. But the snow has brought some respite, transforming the sprawling city into a winter wonderland. Well, sort of. There are roadblocks everywhere and random vehicle checks are carried out rigorously. But still, on every street corner, gigantic smiling snowmen keep a benign watch over their patch of the city. Kabul might be braced for terrorist attack. It might be the capital of a country on the brink of civil war. But the people of this ancient city, nestling between the snow capped mountains of the Hindu Kush, are nothing if not resilient. Nowhere is this more evident than in the poverty stricken fringes of Western Kabul District 13, where the people are predominantly Hazara. Said to be descended from Genghis Khan's army, the Hazara are the country's most culturally and racially distinct people, and for a long time the most persecuted. It's amongst these people, after centuries of subjugation, that that nothing short of an educational miracle is taking place. For here I find a remarkable school, the Marafat High School, daring to teach girls alongside boys and including in its range of studies, subjects like humanism, democracy, ethics, psychology and even comparative religion. Established in 1994 for Afghan refugees in Pakistan who had fled the Afghanistan civil war, the the school was relocated to Kabul with the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. It started in a mud floored hut with 37 pupils and an initial budget of barely $500. The school now has over 3,000 students, 43% girls, and doggedly continues to swim against the tide of traditionalism. Ahead of presidential elections in 2009, a prominent but fanatical clergy leading a baying mob of hundred reactionaries stormed the school, vowing to destroy it or close it. They failed, for they hadn't reckoned with the firebrand headmaster and founder, Aziz Royes. Jocular and ever smiling, Aziz is a visionary, but he's also a scrapper. I don't take things lying down, he says. Last year the Ministry of Education declared by official edict that all civic education studies like humanism, political science and psychology were against the law, as were mixed sex classes. The students and teachers were devastated, he says. We obeyed the ruling, but immediately introduced extracurricular literacy classes and debating clubs where such subjects could be studied by boys and girls alike. I sit in on several classes where the pupils eagerly soak up the education on offer, particularly the girls. In a geography class about town planning in the USA, I ask one girl, Vezana, 12 years old, what she wants to be a teacher, she says, here at Marifat, so I can help more girls get a modern education. Aziz smiles his trademark smile. Many of our teachers are former pupils, he says. We are self perpetuating. This charismatic headmaster might be an idealist, but is also a realist. The achievements of the past decade, he says, remain threatened by fanaticism and a culture of violence. And at the end of 2014, we face a new challenge. When the coalition forces withdraw, we will be ever grateful for the blood they spilt for us. But now it's time to fend for ourselves. As I leave the school, the snow, falling more heavily now starts to drift in the narrow streets. But not even this, I think, will stop the children from getting to school tomorrow. They are too hungry for education and the opportunity to make a difference to Afghanistan. And something else. If the winning presidential candidate has anything like Aziz Royesh's vision and dedication to his cause, then the Taliban's chance of usurping power will be about the same as well. A snowball's chance in hell.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Chris Terrill, Niger in sub Saharan Africa, is one of the world's poorest and least developed countries on its northern borders, though it has two oil rich states, Algeria and Libya, and also another one to the south, Nigeria. Now Niger too has joined the exclusive club of oil producers. This began in late 2012 when an oil field in the country's remote east came on stream. The field is majority Chinese owned and production still tiny, but Celeste Hicks, who's just been to the area, says it's having an impact on local people.
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Celeste Hicks
For the centre of operations in one of the world's newest oil producing states, the road to the Soraz refinery from the eastern town of Zinder is a bit of a letdown. My 4x4 car judders over the potholes in the dilapidated tarmac, narrowly avoiding collisions with oncoming oil tankers. We pass a number of ramshackle villages, flimsy kiosks, vehicle repair shops and goats spilling out onto the road. My only glimpse of the refinery is from about a 10 kilometer distance. It shimmers on the horizon in the Saharan midday sun, looking as incongruous in this barren landscape as the Emerald City in the wizard of Oz film. A stern looking Nigerian soldier is stationed at the gates of the refinery, leaning against a camouflaged jeep, and he refuses to let us past. Disappointed, we continue on to back in Berje, the village which lives in the shadow of the joint Niger Chinese owned refinery. In the shade of a ragged umbrella in the dusty backyard of the village's only restaurant, I meet Ab Salam Buh. He's a tall, lean man, slightly stooped. The ravages of the Saharan sun are clear to see on his skin. He's wearing a long golden robe, a booboo, the traditional dress for men around here. Abdisalam's voice shakes and he fumbles with a cigarette packet as he talks about his employment at Soraz. He was hired to look after a water pump and claims that he was obliged to work 24 hours a day. If I even left my post for just a few hours to visit my family, they would call and tell me the pump had broken, he said. His biggest complaint, though, is that he was sacked. He tells me that along with about 800 other dismissed employees, he's looking for a lawyer to fight his case for unfair dismissal. Do you want to see my contract from the Chinese? He asks, sensing a good story. I agree, watching eagerly as he unfolds a clearly venerated piece of paper, fragile and yellowed by the desert. It's difficult to hide my confusion when I see a French translation of the Chinese characters clearly stating fixed employment term of eight months until August 2013. So when were you sacked? I ask him, and he responds with the precise date on the document. But it says here it was a fixed term. I pause. Did you read this document before you signed it? At the bottom of the page, where his signature should be, there's just a blurred thumbprint. No, he replies with a quizzical glance at my translator. Abdisalam's confusion over precisely what he had agreed to is symptomatic of the relationship many ordinary people hear seem to have with the nascent oil business. A shimmering piece of 21st century technology has landed like a spaceship in their fields and local people feel locked out. Yes, Nigerie and Chinese officials came and gave them some money a few years ago. But in back in Berje I hear from families who didn't seem to realise what they'd agreed to, who say they'd been promised new land but have received nothing. Civil society in Niger is beginning to wake up to the issue of how natural resource extraction is affecting the country. Currently, the government is engaged in a David and Goliath struggle with the French nuclear firm Arriva to get higher fees for the country's crucial uranium producing sector, and crowds have taken to the streets demanding a better deal. Around Zendair, the idea of resource nationalism manifests itself in a lot of talk about cheap fuel. Time and again I heard incredulous comments about the price of petrol not dropping at all for consumers, despite the country joining the exclusive club of oil producing nations. Remarkably, the streets of Bakan Berje are lined with rickety wooden tables where smuggled and often stolen fuel from over the border in Nigeria is on sale in whiskey bottles right in the shadow of the oil tankers lined up to take the official fuel to the petrol stations. People are simply not willing to pay what the Chinese are asking for Nigerien fuel and about 70% of it has to be exported. It's still early days, and Niger is hoping to increase the industry's capacity from just 20,000 barrels per day by building an export pipeline. Although it's difficult to see today, the country is being pulled into the modern world. Jobs have been created and business is booming for hotels and services. In Zindair, Abdisalam now drives a minibus, earning about half what he used to at Sorez. Sipping a sugary tea in the restaurant garden, he reflects philosophically on his time in the oil business. Even after all this. It was good work, he says. I'd do it again.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Celeste Hicks In Nigeria, the Great War of 1914-18 may have been largely concentrated in France and Belgium, and that's the focus of most of the commemorations this year. But the largest theater of war in terms of territory was in fact in the Middle East. It pitted the British and Russians, amongst others, against the forces of the Ottoman Empire, supported by the Central Powers, in other words, the likes of Germany and Austria. But it also involved all sorts of others, including Kurds, Turkomans, Assyrians, Berbers, Arabs and Jews. James Rogers, who's been writing a book on the region, has been exploring some of the consequences of the fighting.
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Maya Morav
At this time of year, the grass in the cemetery seems at its greenest, watered not by sprinklers as in the summer heat, but by winter rain. Earlier, unusually, there was snow. There are more than two and a half thousand headstones standing out against the hillside. They rise in rows up a gentle slope. In the distance, through trees and telegraph wires, you can see the domes and spires of the Old City of Jerusalem, the prize which brought to the Holy Land the soldiers who are buried here. When I visited, a team of gardeners were weeding the flower beds which lie at the foot of the gravestones. I was looking for names I had seen in my local church in London the afternoon before my departure. Noticing a wooden cross above a book of remembrance, I had gone for a closer look. The cross turned out to have been carved from wood from the Mount of Olives. Soldiers from my area had, it seemed, served in Gaza and Jerusalem during the First World War. Having spent two years as the BBC's correspondent in Gaza a decade ago, the connection fascinated me. So when I returned to the region to conduct research for a book, I decided to see if I could find their graves. I wasn't having much luck. Then someone behind me called out, hello. Where are you from? I turned to see one of the gardeners rising from his work. He introduced himself as Mohammed and said that he had worked there since 1974. Decades and more did not seem to have decreased his enthusiasm. His hair was white and some of his teeth were missing, but his work seemed to invigorate him, and he had a mustache to make a patriarch proud. Had I been to other cemeteries? After I told him I had been to the ones in Gaza, we chatted about the gardener who had tended those for many years and whom I had met when I reported on his retirement. With Mohammed's help, I was pointed in the direction of the graves of some of the men from my local parish. They had been killed a few days before Christmas 1917, as British forces sought to consolidate their hold on Jerusalem. Their occupation of the Holy Land then was part of the process, the defeat and dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, which would see the Middle east divided by borders we largely recognize today. British forces stayed in Jerusalem until 1948. Their commanders came to use the King David Hotel, opened in the early 1930s, as their headquarters. This made the building a target for Jewish fighters seeking to drive them out of Palestine. In July 1946, bombers disguised as milkmen blew up the southern wing of the hotel, killing 91 people. Today, the King David hosts presidents and prime ministers. Guests sitting in the lobby on my recent visit seemed casually dressed, but snatches of conversation and ubiquitous smartphones and tablet computers suggested they were doing big business. I had come to learn more about the experience of my journalist counterparts in the late 1940s. Some of them had narrow escapes from the explosion. It was here, explained Maya Morav, the hotel's PR manager, flicking on the lights to a basement room. Now it's a hall for conferences and meetings. Then it had been a subterranean kitchen, the place where the bombers left the milk churns they had packed with explosives. Less than two years later, the British Mandate came to an end. British involvement in the Middle east, of course, did not. When you are covering the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a correspondent, you need to have history at your fingertips, often more than one version of it. One of my earliest experiences in Gaza was being welcomed and then chastised by an elderly Palestinian refugee because I was British. He saw me as bearing some of the blame for events of the previous century, which had left his family in a shanty town in one of the most crowded parts of the world. Perhaps he had a point. As events remembering the First World War gather pace in Europe, perhaps the real focus should be on the Middle east, where decisions taken then helped to shape Jerusalem, Gaza, Israel, Syria and Iraq as they are today.
- [22:47]
Narrator/Correspondent
James Rogers now back in London, road signs and traffic lights have started to appear on the streets of Mogadishu, the chaotic capital of Somalia. It's an indication that some progress has been made in the three years since most parts of the city were in the hands of the extremist group Al Shabaab. There are also now traffic policemen, but they're finding the going tough. Many in this city of 3 million people are unaware there are traffic laws they should be observing. While some aspects of life in Somalia change slowly, others remain the same, particularly the locals love of nicknames. Justin Marozzi, who's been working there as a government advisor, warns this is no place for shrinking violets.
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Justin Marozzi
When I got my ID badge for the president's office in Mogadishu the other day, I knew I'd finally been accepted. It had taken a year. There it was, communications advisor, Office of the president, and next to my name, the two Somali words in brackets Timo ade, literally white hair. At last I had a nickname. Somalis are inveterate givers of nicknames, but for the past 12 months the closest thing I've had to one is gaal or infidel, and let's face it, there's little distinction in that. It's routinely used to refer to any non Muslim, black or white ghal, come here. Where's the ghal? And so on. Now, Timo Ade, or white hair may not be the most flattering nickname in the world, but I'll take it any day over infidel. The first time I came across Somali's love of nicknames was when the cleaning lady in our house asked where was Farole, the young man who delivered our lunch? His name's Abdi Fattah, I said, thinking she'd made a mistake. She shook her head vigorously and held up a couple of fingers. No, Farole, she said stubbornly. Now farole means no fingers. Abdi Fattah lost two fingers a few years ago during a mortar attack on the presidential compound by Al Shabaab, the local Al Qaeda franchise. So much for sympathy. A word of explanation. Somalis are no shrinking violets as a rule and certainly don't hold back when it comes to giving nicknames. My predecessor in the president's office, another Brit, had a hare lip. He was always known as faroore, or hair lip. Somalis would helpfully put a finger to their upper lip just to make sure you understood. Direct physical observations, generally negative, are the order of the day when it comes to choosing someone's nickname. Dentistry here is not what it could be. So there are plenty of Somalis called genai, meaning missing tooth or chipped tooth, suffer from hair loss, and chances are you'll be called Bidar or baldi. Somalis can be quite a xenophobic lot, and foreigners are frequently given short shrift. The Chinese are known as indayare small eyes, while Arabs are dega', a red ears. While I've lived in Mogadishu, I've met a Jilbo Wainy, a shigshigaya stutterer, Yare Shorty, and Yarisso Tiny. Before he was busted in a sensational sting in Belgium, I had a rooftop lobster dinner with the notorious Somali pirate Afwene. Big Mouth. Boy, did he live up to that one. One of my best friends, a senior official in the Prime Minister's office, is Indade White Eyes. Somalis do a great line in Schadenfreude. A while back, some of my colleagues went to Uganda. They returned with a story told with huge delight about one of our team chasing a Somali girl. He's a good looking young man with a large scar on one cheek. He was starting to chat up the girl until she suddenly caught sight of his scar, at which point her whole demeanor changed instantly. She looked at him contemptuously, snarled get lost, Anje or Scarface, and turned on her heels. Romantic encounter over. After more than two decades of fighting in Somalia, there's no shortage of people with war injuries. So you'll come across men and most nicknames are reserved for men called Langare, Limpi or Orian. Handicapped. An amputee is Lugai or One Leg. A fairly high incidence of eye defects accounts for people called Wedashe Cross Eyed. Those without sight are Indole blind, and if you've lost your hearing, you're Dagole deaf in a regrettably unchivalrous move. Women with larger than average behinds have been known to be called Photo Big Bottom, but women are generally spared the abuse. Lul or diamond is a common nickname. Then there's Mahane, Sweet Odwene, Rich Voiced, Dahable, golden and Indo Darele Gazelle Eyes. My favorite nickname. It's got to be the Somali American I heard about recently, with a large gap between his front teeth. Only one possible nickname for him, Field Goal. I was talking to my friend Sheikh Mohammed about Somali nicknames the other day in the uk I said some of these could get you in trouble with the police if someone objected. He snorted pah. You know what would happen if someone called the police? The policeman would come. He'd look at the guy and say, what's the problem? He called you Lookai or One Leg. So what? You have got One Leg. That was Allah's decision. Now stop wasting my time.
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Narrator/Correspondent
Justin Marozi and the somewhat blunt nicknames of Somalia. I won't ask him what mine would be. That's it for this edition, but do join us again on Saturday morning for more from our own correspondence.