← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Spectres of Afghanistan
00:27:57
The past looms large over Afghanistan's new leader -- Fergal Keane says the scale of a...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the spectres of Afghanistan, down from the mountains and threatening more years of blood and battle. How the future of Libya depends upon a scruffy port squeezed between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. The poet, a thorn in the side of Iran's ruling clerics 600 years after his death. And the woman who walked naked around the house in Paris, where today the British ambassador takes afternoon tea. Afghanistan finally has a new president. And the months of wrangling which preceded the swearing in of Ashraf Ghani have done nothing to reduce the size of his to do list. He needs to breathe new life into a stagnant economy and tackle the widespread corruption in his country. Soon, most of the NATO troops who've been leading the battle against the Taliban will withdraw. Mr. Ghani says he plans to resolve the conflict through peaceful means, but it's not clear whether he'll inject fresh urgency into talks with the insurgents, which so far have got nowhere. Fergal Keen in Kabul says these are formidable challenges for the new leader.
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It was, I calculated, 19 years ago, precisely since I last set foot in the city. It was October 1995. There was the same azure sky, the dry air that chapped the lips. The wind starting to turn cold and whipping dust into funnels that raced across the bombed out suburbs. Driving out the Darlaman road. Back in 1995, I wrote the following lines for this program. On either side of us was a wasteland of demolished buildings and rusting vehicles. On those few houses still standing, we could see the deranged artwork of the AK47, its brute patterns sprayed across the wal like a cave painting of some doomed civilization. The southern suburbs of this city give a new definition to the word desolation. But Kabul is a different city now, different entirely. In nearly 20 years, so much has altered. Armies have come and gone. The reign of the warlords was supplanted by that of the Taliban. And the Taliban were themselves overthrown by the armies of the West. On my first trip to Kabul, the Taliban were looming spectres crossing, creeping across the valleys and down the mountains, their rockets and mortars dropping into the city and waking us in the middle of the night. The following year, they took power, but the war went on. Osama bin Laden made his base in Afghanistan and in doing so, sowed the seeds of the Taliban's fall, the Americans and their allies invaded and drove them from power in Kabul and back to the mountains and deserts. But in Kabul today, all these long years of blood and battle later, they are still present. They're spectres again, flitting through the now bustling markets and crowded streets, shading the present and threatening the future. In the lobby of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, after you've been searched twice and your luggage has been sniffed by bomb detecting dogs, there is a cooling fruit juice and hot towel. And then, while checking in, you notice the armed guards in flak jackets. In the evenings, as you eat, they drift along the corridors, automatic rifles at the ready. This is because just over six months ago, the Taliban infiltrated the hotel and killed nine people, including a mother and two of her children. She'd begged the gunmen to spare the children. In the few days I recently spent in Kabul, the Taliban attacked a NATO convoy. They killed two people after sticking a bomb under a car. And they murdered the governor of Nad Ali in Helmand, where 453 British troops died in the battle against the Taliban. Yet Kabul isn't the utterly brutalized city of 1995. The schools are open and the streets throng with girls and young women who are being educated. The debris of war has been swept away and the commercial life of the city is being reborn. And people have voted in their tens of thousands for a new president. The election was marred by allegations of fraud, and only international intervention averted a potentially ruinous collapse of the process. But President Ashraf Ghani has made a vigorous start to his term in office, dropping in unannounced on ministries to see for himself how the work is or is not being done. Sacking senior figures he judges incompetent. It's the kind of action weary Afghans applaud. But it also makes enemies. In the vast money guzzling bureaucracies, there is a network of cronyism. The scale of the task facing the President is immense. Billions in foreign aid have been stolen or squandered. Power and wealth is still divvied out along old factional lines. Now the foreign powers are leaving, their attention pulled to other troubled places. The bilateral security agreement signed with the Americans will help keep the Taliban at bay, but it won't defeat them. No more than all the blood and treasure Afghan and foreign of the last 13 years has been able to do. As I prepared to leave Kabul, the American embassy issued a warning to foreigners to be wary of potential attacks along the Darlaman Road. The same broad avenue I'd first driven down in the heat of battle nearly 20 years before. The road itself seemed a metaphor for the city of the present. The appearance of normality, the bustle of life imbued with a certain hope. But always the presence of the malign, unseen but relentless waiting its chance to upend and destroy.
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Fergal Keen In Afghanistan, a pitched battle's been going on in Libya this week. A former general backed by army units, tanks and warplanes has been trying to take back the country's second city, Benghazi, which which was occupied by Islamist militias earlier this year. There's also been prolonged fighting in the capital, Tripoli. Thousands have fled their homes and the internationally recognised interim government has been forced to decamp. It's set up shop in Tobruk, where this week there have been demonstrations against extremism and in support of the army and of law and order. Tim Whewell's been to see if the town's something of an oasis amid a desert of disorder.
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I love Commonwealth war cemeteries, particularly in currently war ravaged parts of the world. Their clean cream limestone lines of graves are often the only order, the only neatness in utterly disordered, untidy places like Gaza or Iraq. It shouldn't be comforting to think that in places where so many lives were lost in conflict in the first or second World wars, so many more are being lost in conflict today. And yet they are comforting. And on any assignment, when there's time, I seek them out. It's not just the delight amid the surrounding chaos of finding meticulously weeded pathways and flower beds. It's that amid the surrounding intolerance, the design of the headstones, uniform right across the globe, is the most perfect defiant celebration of unity and diversity that I've ever seen. Each hero has the symbol not just of his unit, but of his faith and sometimes a dedication by his family. But the size and style of the engravings, whether cross, Koranic verse, Star of David or Hindu aum symbol, never vary. Compare that for example, with French or German military graveyards where the non Christian fallen stick out instantly as different as other, because the whole standard headstone is in the shape of a cross. Dictators don't like to touch Commonwealth war cemeteries, even when all their bile is directed against the countries whose dead are buried there. In Soviet Russia, I saw the cemetery on the Arctic Ocean, in lonely snow swept Murmansk, perfectly maintained. And now in sand swept Libya, I've seen the equally well maintained one in Tobruk. The scruffy port squeezed between Sahara and Mediterranean, where in 1941 the Allies began to turn the tide of the war in the Western desert against the Axis powers at the cost in one Tobruk cemetery alone of 2,282 Commonwealth lives. Whatever Libya's unlamented dictator, Colonel Gaddafi, thought of the west through most of his four decades in power and he didn't like it. He didn't interfere with its cemeteries, but but he didn't really want his people to know about them either. Schools in Tobruk didn't teach their pupils about the war or take them to the graveyards, though they are certainly the only world famous monuments in the town. They taught Islamic history and the story of the struggle against the Italian occupiers. I know this from a thoughtful young man called Farrars who acted as my driver Intobruk. He was taken to the cemeteries by his father, a secret Anglophile who'd worked for the raf. Farrars told me about the nostalgia for the old links with Britain. I saw photos of a young Queen Elizabeth in summer frock and arrestingly bright lipstick guided round the town in 1954 by a gaunt be cloaked King Idris. And an abandoned Italian built church in the town centre was pointed out to me as a symbol of the former acceptance of other foreign cultures. All this seemed very relevant because history has suddenly returned to normally sleepy Tobruk in an extraordinary unexpected way. Civil war has split Libya in two and this small town is now the last refuge of its democratically elected authorities. They've been forced out of the capital, Tripoli by Islamist led militias and Tobruk is desperately appealing to foreign powers for support against what they fear will be a gradual takeover of Libya by violent jihadis. The cemeteries, democracy, a fight against extremism. Somehow I begin to imagine Tobruk as an outpost of openness. But then I see I'm wrong. Tobruk may be anti Islamist, but it's deeply conservative, shuttered to the outside world. Faras, the son of the Anglophile, is well educated and English speaking. He's lived abroad, in Holland, but at home he isn't even allowed to let me meet his mother or sisters. Women can't set foot in most of the streets of Tobruk without being subjected publicly to the lewdest abuse. They can't go to cafes even with their own families. A husband who dared to walk through the town with his pregnant wife would be told he wasn't a real man. Tolerance in a limited political way perhaps. But I come to realise that the multi faith allies, the Lipsticked queen. Of course, they belonged to another world just passing through. The future of Libya now depends on what happens in Tobruk. If the legitimate parliament sheltering there doesn't succeed in returning to power in Tripoli, the revolution three years ago against Gaddafi and the massive international bombing campaign that supported it, we all have been for nothing. That would be some failure. But whether it does or it doesn't, the culture of Tobruk itself and most of Libya will remain the same. And for tolerance of diversity, you'd be best off sticking to the Commonwealth War Cemetery. Out of town, on the road to the airport.
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And that was Tim Whewell. The Scottish saltire was much in evidence. There were plenty of Union Jacks too. But these weren't the only flags seen flying. As Scots took part in their referendum campaign in the summer, a host of separatist organisations were there taking notes. There were flags from places like Catalonia and the Basque country, and also the distinctive black headed insignia of Corsica. This island, politically part of France, has experienced a violent independence struggle since the 1970s. But this summer the militants announced they were putting down their weapons. Martin Buckley has been to see if peace has finally broken out.
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As I drove around Corsica, I was struck once again by the island's violent beauty. Against a backdrop of jagged granite mountains, the maquis had erupted into brilliant yellows and purples. The beaches I glimpsed from the twisting roads showed white sand alongside turquoise water. The survival of the Corsican landscape compared with the desecration of so much of the Mediterranean coastline seems miraculous. But as several Corsicans recently reminded me, it's the independence movement's willingness to blow up seashore developments that's protected the so called the Isle of Beauty. It's important to add that no tourist has ever been harmed. For a mountainous terrain where agriculture is a tough challenge, tourism is a blessing. The golden goose no one would dream of killing. But outside the summer months, when the island's population doubles with holidaymakers, an armed struggle has raged for over 40 years. Corsicans have always had a reputation for toughness and vendetta. James Bond fell in love with and married the daughter of a Corsican brigand. According to the newspaper l', Express, Corsica is more violent than its near neighbour, Sicily. In the last three years alone there have been 40 murders, mostly mafia related grand banditry, as it's rather picturesquely known. Executions take place with clinical efficiency, but their motives are opaque. There's often speculation about land deals, murders designed to and a sinister phrase send a message and revenge killings. Tit for tat. But experts on organized crime admit that the threads of violence in Corsica are impossibly tangled. What is certain is that almost none of the murderers is ever apprehended. But why are there prominent public officials among those murdered? Why has Corsica had an armed independence struggle? In 1768, Corsica became a French colony. It had one of Europe's earliest functioning democracies. But France brutally abolished that, shut down the university and banned the indigenous language. Over the next two centuries, the island was rendered into a region of France. But resentment smouldered on. In the 1970s, after Vietnam and revolutions worldwide, armed revolt broke out against Corsica's perceived colonial ruler. The fighters made their mark, wearing down the French state with the kind of attrition shown by the IRA in Northern Ireland. But by the 1990s, various independence factions were turning against each other and political goals were getting foggy. French security forces had ever more efficient electronic surveillance, and public support for armed struggle was declining. Many younger islanders aren't gripped by the nationalist fervor that animated their father's generation. I spoke to a man in his late 30s who has a young family and is building a successful business. He felt uneasily that he should sympathise with the older generation's long struggle. But what did they achieve?
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He asked.
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Undeveloped beaches? Yes. And some say they held back drugs trafficking on the island. But they didn't achieve independence. And, ironically, the ballot box could now be the key to Corsica's future. Recent elections, like the mayoralty of the important city of Bastille, have seen independence candidates gaining power. Why fight a traumatic, clandestine war if you can get what you want by legitimate means? So not everyone was surprised when, in June, the movement called flnc, or National Front for the Liberation of Corsica, unexpectedly announced it was downing arms. Few islanders I met still dream of a genuinely independent Corsica. Indeed, many believe that transnational institutions like the European Union make nationhood increasingly irrelevant. The Scottish referendum excited much interest in Corsica and admiration for British political pragmatism. But all many Corsicans now hope for is increased autonomy, more control over their language and a halt to the land speculation that's pushing property values beyond the reach of ordinary islanders. Many also want a halt to immigration. What the Corsican National Front called for when it declared its ceasefire was a response from the French state. But so far, there are few signs of movement from Francois Hollande's socialist government in Northern Ireland. Arms were eventually put out of commission, destroyed in a process overseen by a neutral Canadian general. When I mentioned this to an elderly independence supporter, he laughed out loud. We might lay down our arms, he told me. But Corsicans will never abandon their weapons. And if Paris doesn't budge, he warned the then Corsican frustration will lead to more violence worse than ever before. Many former independence leaders disagree. They feel Corsica's moving inevitably towards a new non violent phase. But the island of Beauty is also an island of passionate emotions and its militants weapons are very far from being out of commission.
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Martin Buckley Talks aimed at striking a final deal on Iran's nuclear program are underway in Vienna. US officials believe an agreement can be reached by the deadline of November 24th. The west fears Iran's uranium enrichment program could be used to make nuclear weapons. Tehran insists it's entirely peaceful. There are some inside Iran who believe a deal on this issue, after years of tension, could lead to a lasting rapprochement with the West. In the meantime, as Diana Darke's been finding out, there's comfort to be had from the verses of a 14th century
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poet in Iran, they say there are two books in every household the Koran and Hafiz. One is read, the other is not. To understand why you need do no more than join the millions who regularly throng the tomb of Hafiz, 14th century poet of Shiraz and Iran's national hero. As I did one recent afternoon, the atmosphere was buzzing, happy and relaxed. Iran at its best. Day and night. The tomb, raised up on a beautifully decorated dais surrounded by its own fragrant rose gardens, water channels and orange trees, is crowded with devotees. Stroking his alabaster sarcophagus, declaiming his verses, relishing his clever plays on words, Hafiz represents all the rich complexities of the Iranian identity. His brilliant use of metaphors in their native Farsi language unites them. But there is another reason the tomb is so popular in today's Islamic republic. It is hard to express resistance to the powers that be. The ruling clerical elite has consolidated its grip on power. It uses the rhetoric of revolution while crushing opposition. President Rouhani's smiling face has projected a new image outside the country. But inside, everyone tells me things are worse. More oppression and more executions than ever before. But dissent can be displayed in subtle ways. Thanks to Hafiz, Shiraz is Iran's most liberal city. Women's fashion is the giveaway, affecting the whole mood of the place. While women are obliged by law to cover themselves from head to toe, in Shiraz, the women dress almost outrageously by Islamic standards. The compulsory headscarf is highly coloured and worn, dangling precariously from the back of the head hardly covering any hair at all. The young sport tight black leggings topped by close fitting slinky mini coats, each one daring the next to raise the hemline further. Far from concealing the feminine curves, as the rules dictate, the outfits flaunt them and the lively groups, both young and old, men and women, mix freely, laughing and chatting together. This is Iran at its least compliant, a far cry from the religious conservatism the establishment seeks to impose on its population. A famous actor arrives to pay his respects and is mobbed Hollywood style by adoring fans. As the sun disappears from the sky and the illuminations come on round the tomb, the atmosphere becomes ever more festive. People start singing and reciting their favorite poems. Children dangle their feet in the pools, giggling and soaking up their parents. Infectious high spirits. The scene conceals the paradoxes of Iran. For thanks to the mullah's policy of education for all, there are some surprising changes afoot in Iranian society. More women than men now graduate from university. The birth rate has dropped so dramatically to just one child per family that the clerics have introduced financial incentives for couples to breed more. Most refuse, saying it is still too expensive to have more than one child. While the west remains obsessed with Iran's nuclear enrichment, it is an open secret that the well connected clerics and businessmen enrich themselves through sanctions busting. When I hesitate over buying a Persian rug through lack of cash, knowing Western credit cards are banned from use inside Iran, the carpet dealer Pooh poos my concerns and simply rings a friend in Dubai to seal the transaction. Unfortunately for the mullahs, the mystic poetry of Hafiz, besides lauding the joys of love and wine, also targeted religious hypocrisy. Preachers who display their piety in prayer and pulpit, he wrote 600 years ago, behave differently when they are alone. Why do those who demand repentance do so little of it? Bans apply to many things in Iran, including the BBC. Yet the BBC's Farsi is the most watched TV channel here. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram are all officially blocked. President Rouhani is calling for Internet restrictions to be eased, but the last word on such matters rests with a supreme leader who is so far unrelenting. Small wonder the people of Iran comfort themselves with the poetry of Halfas. Even the mullahs cannot ban their own
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national poet, and that was Diana Dock. On Monday, a gala dinner is being held in Paris to mark the 200th anniversary of the UK embassy there. It was in 1814 that the Duke of Wellington bought the grandiose Hotel de Charost, which is just a few doors down from the Elysee Palace. Ironically, the person he bought it from was none other than the sister of his arch enemy, Napoleon, Pauline Borghesi. For two centuries, the magnificent building and its gardens have played host to history, observing the ups and downs of our two countries, often complicated relationship. Hugh Schofield, who lives in Paris, has got to know the place well. He says that from the Crimean War to the Common Market, it's been the scene of vital diplomatic action as well as intrigue.
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If you want to know the secrets of a stately home, I always say, just ask the butler. Happily, the British Embassy in Paris, the sumptuous architectural pearl that is the Hotel de Charost, boasts a butler who is in every way befitting of his charge. I say butler because that's how he's referred to on his business card. But in fact, Ben Newick is rather more than that. Head of Embassy Admin, I guess would be the modern business parlance, except it sounds so grim. So let us stick with butler and let us stick with the wonderful Ben Newick as he conducts me around the UK Ambassador's residence in Paris. Not technically the Embassy anymore, because that's now next door. The hotel was built in the 1720s, when the Rue de Faubourg St Honore was a winding road that passed through fields and market gardens to the village of Roule. For our purposes, it comes into its own when it's bought in 1803 by the wayward Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon, wife of an Italian prince, and by all accounts, a bit of a wronggan. In history of the Embassy, we read that at her levee or receptions, Pauline liked to walk around naked in order to be admired. A magnificent black man carried her into and out of her bath, and if she felt cold, she warmed her feet in the decollete that's bosoms to you and me of a lady in waiting lying on the floor. She can't have been all bad, though, Pauline, because the house as we see it today is basically hers. Much of the furniture, Empire style, is what she acquired, as are the silk damasks on the walls. In one room, next to a bed that was later slept in by both Edward VII and the Queen Mother, there's a stunning framed mirror known as a psyche. I can just imagine the narcissistic Pauline just twisting round to get a rear glimpse of her own stunning frame. Napoleon himself used to come to the house to have assignations with One of Pauline's ladies, a certain Madame de Matiss, he came in by the garden and they made love somewhere near where the current ambassador and his wife like to take their tea. Time is too short to describe the beauty of the Hotel de Charost. Suffice to say that in all its wonderful salons, the marbled hall, the ballroom, the state dining room, the Duff Cooper Library, it combines the elegance of classical French design with the warmth and the comfort of the British feel. One quirky factoid is that the writer Somerset Maugham was born in an upstairs room. In the early 1870s, after France had just been beaten in war by the Prussians, there was talk of a new law imposing French citizenship on anyone born on French soil in order to secure manpower for the future war of revenge. Well connected Brits like Somerset Maugham's parents could have babies delivered at the embassy so as to avoid the dreadful fate of being forcibly made to be French. A few weeks later, there was another rite of passage. The American beauty Jenny Jerome married Lord Randolph Churchill, conceiving at roughly the same time their son Winston, who was born seven months later. And so Ben's tales roll on. Here's a lock of hair of Napoleon. Next to it, here's a lock of hair of Wellington. Did you know that according to British etiquette, cutlery has to be laid face up? That is fork prongs in the air. But in France it's vice versa? Prongs down. It causes no end of raised eyebrows with some of the guests. And today the current ambassador, Sir Peter Ricketts, lives in a modest flat in a small part of the building. It's a blessed relief for everyone, says Ben. At last the ambassador's got a kitchen of his own and doesn't have to summon the staff for a boiled egg. And I suppose that's the point, really. The hotel is a magnificent building, but it's no longer in any meaningful sense a residence. What it is is a constantly functioning part of of Britain's diplomatic machine. Last year, there were 500 separate events here, promoting trade, educational links, culture. Just the day I was being shown around, there was a talk in the Evening on the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference given by the historian Margaret Macmillan. And earlier, the gardens had played host to the launch of the new Jaguar Land Rover. The lawn had been crawling with British car executives. I wonder if any of them caught a glimpse of of a little man in uniform sneaking through the bushes on his way to Faire l' amour avec Madame de Matisse. In the gallery of the glorious Hotel de Charost.
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Hugh Schofield there, uncovering the secrets of our man's residence in Paris and bringing this edition to a close. More correspondence stories on Thursday and Saturday of next week. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.