← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The World's Troubles - Put on Hold!
00:27:47
A world that's not just full of doom and gloom: Anna Borzello on the remarkable that a...
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- [00:00]
Hugh Schofield
Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
- [00:09]
James Reynolds
It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:12]
Programme Narrator
Today, the troubles of the world are put on hold, at least for the next 28 minutes. Instead, peace descends upon northern Uganda. People feel safe at last. Prosperity is returning, the landscapes transformed. And in the marshes of southern Iraq, the brutality of Saddam Hussein's a fading memory. Great wetlands are being restored. Wildlife is returning. A BBC foreign correspondent is spared the phone call to London he feared might cost him his job. While tribesmen in eastern Yemen finally get a say in the future of their country. And there's a huge roast camel for dinner. The Lord's Resistance army caused misery and distress in northern Uganda for nearly two decades. The United nations believes the guerrilla group has killed more than 100,000 people today. There's still some l activity in parts of Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. But northern Uganda, a territory it used to dominate, has been free of the rebels for seven years now. In the mid-90s, Anna Borzello was our correspondent there and reported regularly on the conflict. It saw huge numbers of children abducted and people displaced. She has just been back to Gulu, the town which was once at the centre of these horrors, to see for herself the changes which peace has brought.
- [01:32]
Anna Borzello
The night before I leave for Gulu town along the Anaka Road, I am terrified. I know it's unreasonable. I know the north has been peaceful for seven years. But in the 1990s, when I lived in Uganda, no one travelled along this route unless they really had to. To venture there was to invite attack from lords, Resistance army rebels who roam through the unpeopled and uncultivated bush. An ambush meant injury, mutilation, death, or, for those fit and young, enough abduction into the notoriously brutal rebel ranks. It's only when I set out the next day, driving along the new tarmac road, that I understand what peace really means. At the height of the insecurity in northern Uganda, over one and a half million people were forced out of their villages into internally displaced camps. Now they have returned home, transforming the landscape. Instead of neglected bush, there are plots of maize, beans, cassava. Men stand in gardens, thudding at the earth with hoes. Women walk slowly by the roadside, carrying food to market. Children, once the rebels main prey, spring along in bright school uniforms. I stop at a trading center and talk to a man chatting with friends under a tree. There are land disputes, he tells me, and the young have lost respect for their Elders. But it's safe now and you can travel along this road day or night. That's amazing, I say, and the men look at me and laugh. As we enter Gulu town, the changes continue. I can see the skeleton of what it was, but it's clothed in noise and, unbelievably, traffic. In the 1990s, the only cars to come here from the capital, Kampala, were escorted in by military convoy and and even that sometimes was attacked. There are more buses now, and trucks, even oil tankers. Gulu used to be on a road to nowhere, but now the route north leads to willing trading partners in the newly independent South Sudan. I step out of the car onto the main street and immediately bump into an old friend. Gideon used to work as a trauma counsellor in a centre that reintegrated some of the tens of thousands of children abducted by the LRA and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves. The centres have long since closed, the former abductees sent back to their families, and Gideon has moved into real estate. It is, he says, a lucrative business, with people from the diaspora finally gaining the confidence to come home and invest. New buildings stretch into what were once off limit outskirts. There are banks, a supermarket, mobile phone shops. I head to the edge of town to visit Brigadier Kenneth Banyer. Once a senior rebel commander. He was captured in 2004 and has lived in Gulu ever since. Banya, like the vast majority of former LRA combatants, benefited from a government amnesty and was allowed to settle back without fear of prosecution. He hauls open the gate of his modest home. His daughter, who returned with him from the bush, stands in the compound, pegging washing on a line. These days the Banya is a pastor in an evangelical church. He seems keenly aware that he has been given a second chance. The people here, he tells me, have kind hearts, and he says he feels favoured by God. Although I understand the sentiment, it's hard not to think of the thousands of abductees who never made it home. My last stop is the barracks, once a whirring hub of whacking helicopter blades wind up field telephones and soldiers singing rousing military songs. I remember the President camping here in a fail bid to end the war, and the colonel who opened beer bottles with his gun. Today there is cut grass and a sleepy air. The region, the commander tells me from behind his ordered desk, is completely peaceful, and the soldiers spend their spare time growing crops to supplement their income. When I leave Gulu, I'm caught in a small traffic jam behind a tanker from Sudan and A knot of roaring motorbike taxis. I pass Bobby, a trading centre once known for ambushes, and the point in a bus journey where passengers would all fall silent in tense anticipation of an LRA attack. Now, in the late afternoon sun, people are slowly ambling home.
- [06:06]
Programme Narrator
That was Anna Borzello. And there's more good news to report this time from the vast wetlands of southern Iraq. This area of stunning beauty is believed to be the site of that biblical paradise, the Garden of Eden. But its fortune, fortunes went into sharp decline in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein, furious with the local tribes who'd rebelled against him after the first Gulf War, started to drain the famous marshes. Today, though, they're being restored, the remarkable range of wildlife they once played host to is returning. And the Marsh Arabs, many chased away under Saddam, have started to come back to resume their ancient way of life. Richard Porter's been along to take a look.
- [06:47]
Richard Porter
Ahead of me stretches a channel through the reeds, phragmites, reeds that grow in the marshes near my home in England. But unlike those at home, These are over 4 metres tall. They seem to reach the sky above me. As we gently glide through the avenue of still water they majestically flank. We are punting in a mashouf, the common small canoe of the marshes, used for centuries for transportation and the collection of reeds. I'm in southern Iraq, in the marshes of Mesopotamia, the central marshes, to be precise. A paradise for wildlife and home of the Mardin, the Marsh Arabs. For a few days, I've been exploring this wetland paradise with my good friend Mudafa, one of Iraq's top bird conservationists. Our pantsman, Omar, is a lanky youth of about 18, wearing a long flowing thorb and loosely tied headscarf. He moves nimbly round the boat in bare feet, manoeuvring us through the narrow reed fringed passages. Whenever I turn on the radio or television in the uk, the news coming out of Iraq is rarely good. But my visit was to help celebrate a happy event. A wildlife conservation organization, of which Mudufa is the Birdman, and which would not have been allowed under the tight control of Saddam, is holding a green festival to celebrate the restoration of one of the world's great wetlands. Drained to less than 10% of their former size under Saddam's regime. These vast marshes are coming to life again through the actions of environmentally conscious and brave Arabs. The huge embankments have been breached, allowing the water to flow back. Now at least half have been successfully reflooded and with it, the return of the wildlife and the marsh Arabs. Overhead, a pied kingfisher hovers searching for fish in the reeds. I can hear the song of the endangered Basra reed warbler. While on the water, a group of birds takes off four globally threatened marble ducks along the banks of the Euphrates that together with the Tigris, are the lifeblood of the marshes, throngs are gathering. The festival is underway. First in the mud heath, a cathedral like building made of reeds. The town hall of the marsh Arab sheikhs. There is a reading from the Koran. This is followed by the Iraq national anthem. Then come the speeches, music by children and poetry readings on the river. The first boat race ever held in the marshes is underway. Six mashouths, each with a single woman rower wearing a black abaya, battle for first place. There were loud cheers from the crowd, over a thousand strong as the winner crossed the line. A covered grandstand has been erected on the river bank and here sat sheikhs in their full regalia, whilst at the edges, noisy children in jeans and T shirts shirts gathered. One young boy wearing a Chelsea shirt with Lampard written across the back. I asked one of the spectators, Mohammed, if he had bet on the race. He grinned widely and said, probably next year, so perhaps it will become an annual event. Along the Euphrates bank raced several groups of school children, some dressed in blue, others in green, each carrying a plastic bin liner. This was a competition to see who could collect the most rubbish. Ahead of them walked two masked men, one wearing a suit of plastic bottles, the other a suit of tin cans to symbolise the rubbish problem and its effect on water pollution. All against the background of displays about the importance of the marshes, now well on their way to recovery following such devastating drainage. Then the highlight of the day, the arrival along the river of the Tirada. Powered by the oars of three sheikhs, this large canoe with a graceful pointed prow was the war vessel of the marsh, an iconic symbol of pride. With their drainage, it disappeared from the reed beds of Mesopotamia. Today was the first time a tirada had been seen in the marshes for over half a century. For my friend Mudhafa, who has been studying the wildlife and culture of these vast wetlands for 25 years, it was clearly an emotional moment. He never thought he would see this boat again and I was glad to share his emotions with him. Next time I hear bad news about Iraq, I remember this day and the courage of the people who love their heritage. They really wanted to make a difference and so made possible the rehabilitation of these Wild reed beds, these world famous wetlands.
- [11:22]
Programme Narrator
Richard Porter in southern Iraq. Providing news coverage of what's going on inside the Islamic Republic of Iran isn't easy, especially if you're from the BBC, not the regime's favorite broadcaster. Even our Iran Tehran correspondent, James Reynolds can't get into the country. The government in Tehran refuses to give him a visa. But with elections coming up next month, James has been particularly keen to report on the activities of the departing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So when he heard the President was paying a visit to Ghana in West Africa, he thought he'd follow him there. But even that assignment didn't go entirely to plan.
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James Reynolds
When you're sent abroad to cover a story, sometimes at fairly alarming cost, there often comes a rather dreaded point when you have to ring up your boss in London and confess that you just can't get the story. I remember having to explain to one editor that the reports on pollution in China I'd been sent to get would be rather difficult to film. Since the sky on the day that I arrived was a very rare and very clear blue. I found myself having to make one of these mouth drying phone calls recently in Ghana's capital, Accra. I'd been sent there to cover the visits of Iran's outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. West Africa, it's quite an unusual place to travel to in order to report on a Middle Eastern president. But in the absence of a visa to Iran, going to Ghana was my best hope of being in the same place as Mr. Ahmadinejad's. My colleagues and I spent several weeks arranging the right visas and credentials. I looked forward to 24 hours following Mr. Ahmadinejad, perhaps occasionally chatting to him about foreign policy, Persian food and his plans for life after he stepped down. But an hour before the President's arrival, the authorities in Ghana told me that our names would not make the final list. We would not be allowed into any of the President's events. I'd essentially gone all the way to Ghana to wait on the street. I might not even meet the man I'd flown many hours to see. I took a sip of water and made that rather dreaded phone call to London, wondering what other career I might be able to pursue after my inevitable defenestration from the BBC. But the instruction from London came straight back. Don't give up. So early the next morning, we went to the mausoleum of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled to lay a wreath. We were approached by an elderly gentleman in a threadbare suit, who announced that he'd been Nkrumah's personal interpreter and was now, in later life, an entrepreneur. He told us a complicated story about the history and current status of Nkrumah's presidential limousine and offered to go into business with our cameraman, a suggestion that he politely said he would consider. Our conversation was soon interrupted by a Ghanaian official who asked to see our credentials. We had none, so he threatened to confiscate our camera and ordered us to leave. We decided to do so. There is, of course, one call more difficult than the one to say you've missed the story, and that is the call to say that you're in prison. Liberty intact, we decided to try to get into Mr. Ahmadinejad's final event in Ghana, a speech at the Islamic University College in Accra. We made friends with some students who invited us to sit with them. Iran gave money to the college, and its students were strong supporters of the visiting president. We love him. We love him. We love him. Why don't you like him? One student asked me. In some ways, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is more popular in developing countries than he is at home. Over the last eight years, he's built up an image of the little guy who stands up to the West. The president arrived to huge cheers. I ducked down in my seat, hoping not to be spotted by the same bodyguard who'd thrown us out of the mausoleum earlier in the day. It seemed to work. I was finally in the same place as Iran's president. We are standing up to the bullying powers, Mr. Ahmadinejad told the crowd. He settled into his speech. Free people will never accept humiliation. And he continued, long live Africa. Afterwards, he stepped into his car and kept his hand out of the window as his motorcade headed to the airport. I never got to have that chat with him about foreign policy or Persian food. But at least I had the minor satisfaction of calling London and telling them that a little later than planned, I had been able to cover the story they'd sent me to do.
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Programme Narrator
Satisfaction at last for our man, James Reynolds. Now, what kind of a country do you want? That's the question the people of Yemen have been trying to answer these past couple of months. The National Dialogue, as it's called, was launched in the wake of the revolution, which unseated the unpopular president Ali Abdullah saleh late in 2011. The dialogues now produced millions of words in speeches, articles, television shows, and, of course, online contributions have come in from all corners of the country, even those which were formerly neglected. The Mahri Tribes in the east had long complained under the old regime of being ignored by central government and of having what they regarded as their natural resources taken from them. A British academic called Elizabeth Kendall has been helping the Mahri tribes convey their opinions to the capital, Sana'.
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Anna Borzello
A.
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Elizabeth Kendall
So where were the armed guards I'd been promised? We were just leaving Oman's border fort for the lands of the Mahara tribes, a vast and breathtakingly beautiful wilderness of deserts, mountains, and coastline. Each of my four companions was the son of a prominent sheikh. It was they who had convinced me to take on the daunting task of surveying the hopes, fears, and political aspirations of Yemen's easternmost tribes. We rounded the first corner beyond the border fort, and my heart pounded as a convoy of idling Land Cruisers came into view. Before them stood a long row of armed tribesmen in flowing white robes and colorful headdresses. Each had a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and a traditional dagger lodged in his belt. Was this good news or bad? My companions and I moved along the ranks of suspicious faces. The men kissed and rubbed noses. So it was good news, then. Khabor Sheikh Rashid, a formidable figure and apparently something of a legend for his warlike prowess among the northern desert tribes, let the command linger in the air. A volley of voices responded, Khabor Khair, the news is good. Then a barrage of questions. How is your health? How is your family? How are your circumstances and answers? Praise be to Allah. Allah is all giving. May the blessings of Allah be upon you. This ritual din continued for a good five minutes, everyone talking at once. Eventually the men leapt into their vehicles, and we left the border road, heading up into the hills on a rocky dirt track. My fellow travelers were clearly relieved. They could see that each of the three main tribal alliances in Mahra had contributed to my guard. Foreigners in Yemen often make the mistake of paying for protection, but securing an oath of allegiance from the tribes is a more effective guarantee of safety. If any of our convoy were harmed, the entire tribal structure would bear down on the perpetrators. This was quite enough to deter random tribesmen, Islamic militants, and the entrenched interests keen to put a stop to our survey of popular opinion. After several days seeking the views of the Mahara among the ramshackle towns and tented Bedouin encampments along the stunning coasts line, it was time to move north into the deserts of the empty quarter. The men were on edge, and every 40 minutes or so the convoy would pull over and swap me swiftly into a different vehicle. Just a precaution they assured me. But then an almighty crunching sound shattered the desert piece, and we realized the exhaust had come loose. Why aren't we pulling over? I yelled, but the men assured me with unconvincing smiles, not here. I grasped from their chat that we were passing through the territory where quantities of guns lay hidden among the dunes prior to their onward journey towards rebels in Yemen's far north. These rogue elements, deeply involved in the lucrative business of smuggling guns and drugs, posed our only truly unpredictable danger, and so we limped noisily on to the next oasis. Seven hours later, well after nightfall, we reached the flickering fires of our intended desert encampment. A huge camel had been roasted over an open fire for many hours in expectation of our arrival, and the tribesmen now stood in a row to receive us. I exchanged brief but affectionate greetings with the harem. The women of the household then moved to sit with the men, who were already discussing the survey in serious tones. It was the first time in living memory that anyone had ever asked their opinions on anything. We sat on mats spread over the sand and tucked into an enormous round tray of freshly roasted camel nestled in a vast bed of rice. Food is scarce in Mahara. Hunger had quickly taught me how to stretch out my right hand into the shared tray, squeeze a handful of rice into a sticky ball, then flick it into my mouth using my thumb, chasing it up with a hunk of meat. Ever hospitable, the tribesmen pushed the choicest meat my way. Nostrils, brains, ears. How could they deal with such enormous amounts of gristle? My teeth ached as the spillage from our feast was swept from the mats. The men reached for the rough reed broom and plucked out some bristles, deftly using them to pick the camel gristle out of their teeth. With the embers of the dying fire glowing under the stars, this corner of Mahara territory felt a world away from the cut and thrust of Yemen's ongoing national dialogue. But as we talked, there could be no doubting the fierce and overwhelming desire of these people to have their voices heard in the debate about the future of Yemen and about Mahra's role in it, or indeed outside it.
- [21:54]
Programme Narrator
And that's Elizabeth Kendall. Now, as teenagers will know only too well. Exam time is fast approaching, and not just here in the uk. In France, students are feverishly cramming in final revision for the baccalaureate, which starts later this month. It's a peculiarity of this examination that it includes a compulsory paper in philosophy four hours in which to show off your powers of inductive reasoning? Or perhaps your appreciation of the nostrums of Kant? Hugh Scofield in Paris has been looking in admiration over the shoulder of his 17 year old daughter as she embarks on a last mental haul before the dreaded backfillo.
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Hugh Schofield
My primary thought is, thank the Lord I was spared the torment. I mean, can you imagine having to sit down one morning in June and then spend four hours developing an exhaustive coherent argument around the subject? Is truth preferable to peace? Or does power exist without violence? Or possibly, can one be right in spite of the facts? Perhaps you'd prefer option B, which is to write a commentary on a text. In which case, here's a bit of Spinoza's 1670 Tractatus Theologico Politicus. Or how about some Seneca on altruism? I take examples from my daughter's revision books. My heart bleeds for her as I look at what she has to get through. Ruby has chosen to take what they call a baccaliterre, the literature baccalaureate. There are alternative, more science based versions of the baccalaureate. They all include an element of philosophy, but in the back litteraire philosophy is king. It means eight hours a week of classes and in the exams it has the top coefficient of 7. In other words, in the calculation of your overall mark at the back, it's philosophy which counts the most. It also means having to master a host of what they call notions, notions or themes. Here are some from Ruby's books. Consciousness, the Other, Art, existence and time, matter and spirit, Society, law, duty, happiness. And among the writers you need to refer Plato, William of Ockham, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Sartre. Why this emphasis on philosophy in France? Other countries of course have school leaving exams which cover the history of ideas and religion and so on, but the French are very clear that that is not what theirs is. The purpose of the philosophy back is not to understand the history of human thought, but to leap into the stream that is the actuality of human thought. If you learn about what Kant or Spinoza once said, it's not so much to understand their argument as to use their argument. Napoleon launched the baccalaureate in 1809 and philosophy was one of the subjects in the first ever exam, though back then it was oral and in Latin and only 31 males took it. The idea behind philosophy was itself entirely philosophical in the newly created republic. And yes, I know Napoleon had just made himself emperor, but the point still holds. It was important to create model citizens. Had not the great writer and thinker Montesquieu himself said that the republic of relied on virtue and that virtue consisted in the capacity of individuals to exercise their own freely formed judgment. So the purpose of teaching philosophy was and remains in theory, to complete the education of young men and women and permit them to think, to see the universal arguments about the individual and society, God and reason, good and bad, and so on, and thus escape from the binding imperatives of the now. By which I mean the dictatorship of whatever ideas are most pressingly forced on us in the day to day by government, media, fashion, political correctness, etc. How wonderful. You can't help thinking, what a great idea. Now that is what I call civilization. Or is it? I mean, maybe this is one of those very French situations where the theory is all very well, but somehow reality doesn't behave as it's supposed to. Because one of the effects of having such an ideas based vision of society and elevating ideas to such heights is that people actually start believing in them. And then maybe they start thinking that the ideas are worth fighting for, or perhaps dying for, or perhaps even killing for. And then what? A few days ago, for example, a man shot himself dead in Notre Dame Cathedral. Dominique Vener was a philosopher and an essayist of the far right. In his last blog post he quoted Heidegger saying that the last second of a man's life had as much significance as all that went before. Here was a man, arguably, who fell so in love with his own ideas that he decided to take his own life. How very French. But that's to be morbid. Back here at home, I am merely awe inspired by the change that has come over my daughter since she started her philosophy studies. A year ago she was utterly lost, panicked by the density and the abstraction of it all. Today she's not just at ease, she's enthusiastic. A world of thought has indeed been opened to her. So is it absurd to desire the impossible? Can one ever be certain of being right? Is art real? I'll have to ask her.
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Programme Narrator
An English dad in Paris, Hugh Schofield with questions his daughter can now answer. That's it. Can't promise there'll be lots of good news in our programmes on Thursday and Saturday of next week, but you never know. Goodbye.