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From Our Own Correspondent
The War That Made Itself At Home
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Storytelling from the world of news and current affairs. In this edition: Fergal Keane...
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You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast
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on BBC Radio 4, and here to
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introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Prepare for a Russian offensive. A warning from the Ukrainian president as ending the violence in his country slips ever further down the international agenda. There's an elephantine feast for the aging Robert Mugabe. But behind the scenes, they're scheming about the succession. We meet the women police recruits in Pakistan who want to be twice as good as the men. And is your bird feeling a bit sickly? We're at the hospital in Qatar where they care for the falcons. Feeling a bit under the weather. The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, says his country is now in a real war with Russia. He says he doesn't trust Vladimir Putin to help bring an end to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine, the separatist uprising he insists is being orchestrated by Moscow. Yesterday, Mr. Poroshenko was at an EU summit meeting in the Latvian capital, Riga. There was condemnation of Russia's annexation of Eastern Ukraine. In the closing declaration, the United nations says 18 months of fighting there has claimed more than 6,000 lives and driven more than a million people from their homes. Fergal Keen, who's in Kiev, says there are few signs that the crisis will be resolved soon.
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The soldier was red haired with a thick beard. A girth that spoke of many good dinners. The flushed complexion of a man who lived a life he loved. Although our time with him was short, a brief trip to the front, he was one of those people in whose company you instinctively felt safe. He smiled when he told us we'd be safe. And he meant it. A few days later, he was dead. A landmine did for him in the same part of the front. The war consumed the life of the red haired soldier and took him from his wife and four daughters. It is one year since I first traveled to the east. I came through the gleaming airport at Donetsk into a steadily deteriorating political crisis. There were guns and men with balaclavas at the city's main administrative building. But there was a veneer of normalcy. Couples strolled by the Kalmios river in the evening, passing old men doing stretching exercises and the old women watching their grandchildren play in a sand pit. But how quickly war made itself at home here. Since that summer, trenches have been dug, armies deployed nightly. The rockets and shells erupt in the contested districts. Tens of thousands have fled. I remember the shock of the early civilian casualties. Here, in an apartment block near the railway station, a Ukrainian army shell landed in a playground. Two people passing through the wrong place at the wrong time were cut down. The blood was drying. When we arrived, a shoe belonging to one of the dead lay near the impact point of the explosion. There is little shock anymore. How could there be really, after the shooting down of MH17 and all of those people lying in in a burned field, twisted and broken in the wreckage or hurled across the valley when the missile struck their airliner. That first morning on our approach, we came across a small figure. A local had covered the infant with a sheet. It had been blown far away from where the rest of the bodies lay, among them the child's parents. I remember too that awful week, berating a rebel officer for leaving the bodies of the dead uncovered. I'll never rid myself of the image of one young man lying naked by the roadside while the media, the international observers, the rebels, the locals all passed him by. These are just fragments of the last year of war. A few weeks ago, I walked around the remains of the airport terminal. Fearfully, tentatively, for both armies shell and snipe. Regularly. Here, my colleagues spotted the unburied, headless corpse of a soldier lying by the side of the road. He'd been there for weeks. Many more were buried under the rubble. Vanya Marchenko was 30 years old when he was drafted and sent to fight at Donetsk airport. He was killed in January. I met his mother, Leonida a few days ago at her home on what was once a collective farm outside Kiev. She is bitter. What did her son die for? She asked me. It was the children of the poor who were killed while the rich kept their privilege. A year into the war, and this is a familiar refrain among the overwhelming majority who live outside the small circle of the moneyed and well connected. Ukraine these days is a mess. It teeters on the edge of economic collapse. Corruption is rampant. The government doesn't have the military power to defeat rebels who are armed, trained and bolstered on the ground by Russia. The rebel areas are ruled by the gun, a conglomeration of militias, army, armed personality cults, criminal gangs and the ever present influence of the Russian secret service. Still, a senior American diplomat recently announced her optimism about Ukraine's future. Well, what else could she have said? I suppose the world is preoccupied with other crises and far too divided politically to solve the problem of Ukraine. After all, the violence is at a low level. Soldiers die, but most civilians have fled from the frontline areas. There's no nightly drama and horror from the east on our television screens. The ceasefire is a fig leaf that allows the world to say there's a working peace process, but the fighters don't believe it. Ask them about peace on either side of the front line and you hear the same thing. Not yet. And then frequently.
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LAUGHTER Fergal keen In Ukraine, Islamic State militants are consolidating the advances they've made in Syria and Iraq. A United nations spokesman in Iraq has spoken out about the plight of an estimated 40,000 people who fled the city of Ramadi, which fell to Islamic State militants nearly a week ago. Many of the displaced, including women, elderly and the sick, are now stuck at a bridge at the entrance to Baghdad, prevented from entering the city. Every day this week, there's been news of fresh advances by the IS fighters, an increasing nervousness on the part of the west and its allies in the Middle East. One of them, Jordan, is particularly aware of the dangers it faces just across the border from Iraq and Syria. So, as Frank Gardiner has been finding out, the kingdom has been redoubling its efforts to confront the threat from the jihadis.
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Barren, bleak, windswept Jordan's desert border with Iraq is one of the most forlorn corners of this otherwise hospitable kingdom. It takes half a day to drive there from the capital, Amman, past the oasis town of Azraq, where T.E. lawrence pitched camp a century ago. There are lines of electricity, pylons, wind blown rubbish beside the road, and blackened basalt rocks, sharp as splinters, that look like they've been dumped there by a giant truck and then abandoned. But today, the Jordanian border town of Arawayshid was looks bleaker than ever. The war in Iraq, just across that border in Anbar province, is growing uncomfortably close. In late April, there was a suicide car bomb on the Iraqi side. Now the jihadists of Islamic State have taken over Anbar's provincial capital of Ramadi, their biggest success in a year. Little wonder that the convoys of freight trucks that used to thunder through the Karama crossing, shuttling goods between Baghdad and Aqaba, have these days slowed to a trickle. Jordan is worried, and it has good reason to be. One look at the map tells you that the metaphorical wolves are snapping at its ankles. On the Syrian border to the north, it faces no fewer than three different armed groups. While the jihadists of Islamic State have periodically issued threats against this stable, pro Western monarchy, one of the key figures tasked by the king to shore up Jordan's defenses has been General TO Walbeck, the head of public security, an imposing, mustachioed figure in a blue camouflage uniform. 60 years after the British army general known as Glub Pasha trained Transjordan's Arab Legion. Britain is once again helping the Jordanians plug the gaps in their security. Police, intelligence, surveillance and cyber security are all areas where Jordan has asked for British technical expertise. General Towalbe gave me a formal invitation to visit. It arrived on my desk by courier on embossed paper. So this was too good an opportunity to miss. They would show us everything, we were told nothing would be off limits. Arriving at the border, we were introduced to the newly formed Desert Brigade, a rather thinly stretched formation of armed policemen in shiny four by fours and pickup trucks mounted with light machine guns. At their last outpost facing Iraq, I found the wind blowing skeins of dust and sand across a motley collection of tin roof cabins and a couple of Vietnam war era armored personnel carriers. Could we see them going off on patrol? We asked. No, came the answer. Only the Brigadier can authorize these vehicles to be moved and he's not here today. Could we ask about Islamic State? We pressed. Were they worried? The border guards exchanged glances and shook their heads. We are not allowed to discuss this, they said. But then suddenly they cheered up. We have prepared hospitality for you, they announced. Come back to the base. Squashed together in a plywood cabin, we tucked into rice and seethed sheep mutton boiled gray with over cooking but drenched in hot liquid yogurt. The last time I had this dish IN Jordan was 30 years ago when I spent a few months living with the Bedouin of Wadi Rum. I remember my host's desert hardened hands diving into the scalding food while my soft urban fingers had to wait for it to cool down. This time, to my shame, I used a spoon. Jordan's security problems aren't just beyond its borders. Over 2,000 young men have left this country to go and join Islamic State, a crime that carries a mandatory prison sentence. Those who return and are caught face arrest and trial. But a small trickle have told the government they've turned their backs on violent jihad. They're part of a de radicalization program started by General Toualbe. I have to say that having met so called repenters referring to reformed jihadis released from prison in Yemen who then went on to rejoin Al Qaeda, I retain a degree of skepticism in this area, but in a hilltop prison west of Amman, I met a young man who really did appear to regret his actions. Dressed in a dark brown prison suit, this 22 year old student told me how he'd been convinced by a friend over the Internet to come to Syria to defend Muslims from attack by President Assad's forces. He told me that after just two weeks, he he'd become disillusioned watching Muslims fight other Muslims. He ran away to Turkey, came back to Jordan and handed himself in. He got a five year sentence. Now his parents, initially furious, come to visit him every week. His future prospects, once promising, are now possibly ruined. If I could give anyone my age one piece of advice, he said, his eyes fixed on mine, I would tell them, don't go to Syria. It isn't worth it.
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Frank Gardner in Jordan. The conspiracy theories are swirling in Zimbabwe as speculation grows about who will eventually replace the aging Robert Mugabe as leader. It was his birthday recently, and while he was up for a lavish party, his countrymen and women can't help wondering how many more such celebrations there can be. In recent weeks, there have been signs of upheaval inside his ruling Zanu pfe. Insults have been flying as senior figures jockey for position ahead of the succession. And yesterday, seven senior officials were expelled from the party amid talk of plots to oust Mr. Mugabe. Amid all this uncertainty, the economy's shaky fight back has ground to a standstill. Stephen Sacher's just been to Zimbabwe, where people, he says, are wondering quite what the future might bring.
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When Robert Mugabe recently turned 91, he invited several thousand of his closest friends to a resort hotel near Victoria Falls. Local landowner and Mugabe loyalist Tendai Musasa took it upon himself to handle the catering. Only the best for our provider and our hero, he said. So it was that guests were reportedly presented with a dizzying choice of meats, including cuts from two buffalo, five impala and a baby elephant. For once, the fabled elephant in the room was actually on the plate. Rumours of this elephantine feast at a time of renewed economic crisis in Zimbabwe drew a storm of criticism from Mr. Mugabe's critics inside and outside the country. The hotel was moved to issue a clarification. The elephant hadn't actually been served because the beast had been too big to fit in the fridge. But the truth of Elephant Gate doesn't really matter. Robert Mugabe at 91, isn't quite the fearsome force he once was. He gets laughed at and mocked by his fellow countrymen in a way that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, when he was a mere stripling of 80. The new vulnerability was most painfully manifested after he took a fall while gingerly negotiating some stairs at Harare Airport last February. His aides tried to confiscate all photographic evidence of his tumble, but of course it went viral. He then fired a dozen bodyguards for failing to protect his dignity. The sense of a leader raging against the ebbing of his powers intensified, and I felt the winds of political change blowing in Harare the other day. In recent years, a BBC visit to the Zimbabwean capital has been about as welcome as a fly touching down in a bow bowl of soup. But this time I received a personal invitation from one of Mr. Mugabe's most controversial allies, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo. Throughout his career, Mr. Moyo has swung between vociferous criticism of and slavish loyalty to the veteran president. Now this most wily of political operators is turning his attention to the post Mugabe era and how best to ensure that the ruling party, Zanu people retains its grip on power. Last year he was an enthusiastic backer of the president's wife, Grace, known as Gucci Grace for her expensive shopping habits. But now Moyo and other key ministers appear to be lining up behind a different heir apparent, a former military chief, Emerson Munangagwa, whose ruthlessness is captured in his nickname, the crocodile. Mr. Moyo and the Crocodile too, have been in discussions with senior representatives from those Western governments which continue to impose targeted sanctions on the Mugabe regime. As one diplomat put it to me, they understand what changes they must make to bring Zimbabwe in from the cold, and we believe they can do it. The need for urgent change is glaringly obvious. I travelled out of Harare to a sprawling collection of shanty shacks known as Kumbayatswa. This was one of the neighbourhoods Mr. Mugabe infamously tried to erase from the map with his brutal slum clearance program a decade ago. Tellingly, hundreds of destitute families have returned. There was nowhere else for them to go. No piped water, no electricity, and for most of us, no jobs, shrugged Jairos Muteru as he showed me his mud brick hut. Many in Kumbayatsua eke out a living by hawking vegetables and sweets on the side of the road into Harare. Others, including Jairus Sister, have gone to South Africa to escape Zimbabwe's broken economy. Before leaving Harare, I went to the bus station. Dozens of Zimbabweans queuing up for the journey to Johannesburg. Many were traveling without a work permit, just a sense of quiet desperation. I feel sorry for my generation, said Fidelis, a laborer who spent most of the last six years in South Africa. We can't feed our families. It makes me angry. But what can we do? The chances are Fidelis will be in Johannesburg when the Mugabe era in his homeland finally comes to an end. Question is Will what comes next persuade him to return?
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And that's Stephen Sacher. Now, there aren't many jobs where you can routinely expect to be a target of suicide bombers, armed gangsters, religious extremists and just about anybody else with a real or imagined grievance. But this is the challenge facing police officers in Pakistan, one of the most violent countries on earth, where daily duties might also include dealing with kidnappers, drug traffickers, armed smugglers and would be assassins. But still the recruits come forward. And as Shaima Khalil's been finding out, at a police academy near the capital Islamabad, some of the keenest are women.
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The Sahaba Police College is huge. It sits on a site as big as 400 football fields and it's an impressive campus with numerous green spaces where there's training going on and big buildings housing dormitories and classrooms. I'd come along to see cadets of the two year postgraduate program in action. This is a unique group, the head of the college, General Aamir Khan, tells me as we walk to one of the training sites. I'm told how the students are now trained in professional hands on crime scene investigation. Before, it was just rudimentary theoretical classes, but now we're training them with the very latest evidence gathering technology. Next, I visit a staged crime scene. There's been a robbery. The cadets are keen to display their skills in interviewing complainants, collecting evidence and briefing the media. We train them to avoid the difficult questions, one of the trainers laughed. Pakistan's police force has long been criticized either for not doing enough to protect the public when riots and violence break out, or for being too brutal when they do get involved. During one sit in by opposition groups in Islamabad last year, scores of protesters were injured in clashes with the police. The head of the Capitol Police Division had to apologize publicly for what he described as excessive use of force. We're trying to change this mentality, General Khan tells me. We tell our cadets that they're there to serve the people and that they should treat them with respect. Now, this group of cadets is unique not only because of the advanced training, but also because it contains more women than ever before. We have 76 women cadets now, the General tells me this is the first time in Pakistan that so many women have taken part in police training. Pakistan is of course, a religiously conservative country, so it's not surprising to hear that 95% of the police force is male. But the head of the college insists this is an image they're trying to change. To me, they're cadets who will be police officers, he says. I don't care if they're men or women, they all get the same treatment and training. We have even made the new women's uniforms similar to those of the men. Next I see young men and women standing in rows, looking very serious as they hold on firmly to their semi automatic guns. A trainer blows his whistle and immediately the cadets put their guns onto the floor. Then they take out blindfolds and cover their eyes. Another blast of the whistle and they start taking the rifles apart. Another whistle and they're putting them back together again, still with their eyes covered. Two of the women cadets are among the first to finish. The head of the academy looks over and smiles. At the end of my guided tour, there is a chance to join the female cadets for an informal chat. We sit in one of the classrooms and I ask them why they joined the college and what their family thinks about them being police officers. One of them puts her hand up. My name is Sana Nazir, ma', am, she says seriously, standing straight and looking ahead. My father encouraged me to join. I want to serve my country. More hands go up. My village was attacked by terrorists, ma', am, and I want to be there to defend it. Another one says. My husband is in the police force, so he encouraged me to join. Ah, a police couple, I say. Your home must be the safest in the whole of Punjab. And finally there's some laughter in the room. The women cadets also have questions for me. What's it like working with so many male journalists? They wonder. How do the men respond? You're married, ma', am, one of them remarks, sounding surprised. What does your husband think of your work? I say. He's normally happy to have me out of the house so we don't fight over the TV remote. More laughter. It seems to me that despite the seriousness and the attempts at gender neutrality, these women are a bit nervous about getting out into the field. After all, it's one thing roleplaying at a staged crime scene in college, but it's a totally different matter leading an investigation under pressure and in difficult circumstances, with people doubting your abilities as a woman, especially in a society like Pakistan's. You know what, ma'?
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Am?
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Sana said as I prepared to leave. We just have to be twice as
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good as the men that Shama Khalil. In Islamabad thousands of years ago, nobody knows quite where or when, a hunter had a great idea to work together with birds of prey to track and catch other birds to eat. So the sport of falconry began and it's gone on to become a pastime for princes and others around the world. Today, some of the keenest practitioners are in the Gulf States. Extraordinarily wealthy Qatar has an entire souk devoted entirely to the predators. They can change hands for up to a quarter of a million pounds each. Justin Marozi, just back from the Qatari capital Doha, says that in this environment, there is of course, deep concern when your favorite feathered friend starts to feel a bit under the weather.
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If you're not ready for it, it could be an alarming sight. The first thing that greets me in the reception is a hooded falcon standing to attention on a perch. Behind the bird is a large television screen showing X ray images of what could be mistaken for a scrawny supermarket chicken. Not much breast on that. Medical staff in smart blue scrubs bustle about the place, impressively consulting charts and comparing notes on patients. Whichever way you look in this immaculate air conditioned building, you see state of the art equipment and the occasional feathered predator in need of medical attention. Welcome to Suk Waki Falcon Hospital. This extraordinary institution, with its 30 vets and staff from right across the Muslim world, from Pakistan to Iraq, caters to the needs of falcons and their deep pocketed owners, passionate players in this ancient sport of kings. Falconry is big in the Gulf, and with Qatar emerging as a fantastically wealthy state rich in natural gas, perhaps it's no surprise that the facilities here are so lavish. Falcons are very brave birds and they will attack anything, so sometimes they come to us damaged, says Mohammed, a medical engineer who proudly shows me around. If your falcon is missing a feather or two after a nasty scrap with a hubara bustard, not a problem. The hospital has a well stocked featherbank. A broken wing whisk the bird off to orthopaedic surgery. Digestion issues, time for a fecal and blood check. And if that doesn't do the trick, perhaps pharmaceutical and toxicology analysis is the answer. We pass one endoscopy station where a bird under anesthetic is being examined with a tube down its throat. A micro camera relays images of the falcon's insides onto a large monitor. All this sort of treatment must come at a fearsome price. I suggest I'm completely wrong. A checkup costs 100 riyals or £20. An X ray will cost 20 riyals or less than £4. We get people coming from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and all over the Gulf bringing their falcons in here, says Mohammed. No wonder when the treatment is so heavily subsidized the Falcon Hospital is just one of many signs that this once sleepy village of pearl divers and fishermen has become an astonishingly rich Arab city. Between my first visit in the late 90s and my second in 2014, an entire new city has soared into the skyline of once empty West Bay, skyscraper after skyscraper, including the very beautiful Doha Tower creation of the French architect Jean Nouvel. It's as though they've built Singapore or Hong Kong in a decade, says an expat. If the Falcon Hospital points towards the future of Doha, the private pearl collection of the businessman Hussein Al Fahdan, said to be the largest collection in the world, pays heritage to the old pearl diving tradition, which came to an end in the 50s. There are pearls of all shapes, sizes and colors here, including the world's largest, a 276 carat whopper cunningly fashioned into a ring. Most of these pieces are not for sale, but the price tags for those collector pieces that are available are not for the faint hearted. I offer quiet thanks. My wife is not with me to see these amazingly opulent jewels. No less impressive in the annals of conspicuous consumption is the private carpet collection of Sheikh Faisal bin Qasim Al Thani, a billionaire businessman and member of the royal family. In one of the sheikh's many Doha tower blocks, what used to be a hotel parking lot is now given over to hundreds of fine carpets, mostly antique Persians. This is in addition to the sheikh's huge museum outside Doha, a must see, highly eclectic collection of everything from antique coins and elderly daos to Islamic art and American sports cars. He just keeps on buying, says a Qatari. These days. You could say the same of Qatar. Back in the Sukwaki Falcon Hospital, we say our goodbyes. Some of the owners really love their birds, our guide says. They hold them close to their chests, they kiss them and they look after them like a member of the family. What happens to those falcons the vets are unable to save, which have gone to chase bustards in the great hunting skies of heaven? Do they bury them? I ask. Muhammad shakes his head. No, he says. We have an incinerator upstairs.
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And with Justin Marozi keeping a beady eye on the falconers and their facilities in Doha, it's time for us to fly. Don't forget you can catch up with all our stories by downloading the from our own Correspondent podcast here on Radio 4 two programs next week on Thursday morning as well as on Saturday. Do join us. Goodbye.