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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The United States is getting out of Iraq. Washington and Baghdad have agreed that all US forces should leave the country by the end of 2011. But the Pentagon has warned that insurgents in Iraq are trying to reignite the kind sectarian violence that nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006 and 2007. Today there was evidence to support the seriousness of those warnings. Car bombings in Iraq killed more than 40 people. Two bombs went off near Mosul and two exploded in Baghdad. The BBC’s Natalya Antelava is in Baghdad. Can you tell us what is known about today’s attacks?

NATALYA ANTELAVA: Well the first attack happened in a village near Mosul and that was the biggest of them all. It was two big trucks full of explosives went on just at dawn as people were still sleeping. So those who woke up woke up to their houses in ruins, their relatives or neighbors buried in the rubble. Just as those people were rushed off to the hospital, in Baghdad two more car bombs exploded in different parts of the city and those targeted construction sites just as people were coming to look for work at construction sites. And the government that has blamed al-Qaeda for it says it was also very well coordinated and very well planned.

MULLINS: When events like this happen who responds? I mean right now the United States and its allies have left things in the hands of the Iraqi police and army. Are they the first on the scene and is the United States or US forces anywhere when there are bombings like this?

ANTELAVA: Not any longer. Just over a month ago, at the end of June, the US handed security over to Iraqi police and army that are now patrolling cities. And it was a withdrawal from the cities. They still can be outside the cities and have operations outside the cities in the country. But in the cities it’s now purely Iraqis who are in charge. It’s them who go to the sites. It’s them who are in charge of both investigating it and preventing these attacks. And many people have been telling me that this is exactly what they feared all along – rise in violence after the withdrawal of the American troops from cities in Iraq.

MULLINS: Natalya one quick question before we let you go. What is it like now? Is there any difference now as you walk along the streets of Baghdad specifically – now from the way it was when American troops were very visible on the ground?

ANTELAVA: Well I think the biggest difference is the fact that the American troops aren’t visible and that it’s Iraqi checkpoints now. It’s Iraqis who are patrolling the streets. Also the Iraqi government which is in quite a bit of rush to prove to its people that security is under its full control has, just over this weekend, ordered the city authorities to dismantle those protective blast walls that are everywhere in Baghdad. They surround communities here. They block off main roads. They’re around many houses. And many people here hate these protective walls because you know they really changed the city. Baghdad has lost its face. So many people would like to see them go but at the same time once again people that I’ve been talking to today say that it’s too early. That we’re not quite there yet and the government seems to be just in a rush to show that to create an illusion of security rather that improve security for real.

MULLINS: Alright speaking to us from Baghdad the BBC’s Natalya Antelava. Thank you.

ANTELAVA: Thank you very much.

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More Coverage:
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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: There’s been a major shift in US military policy in Afghanistan. US forces are now targeting 50 drug lords on a so-called kill or capture list. In the past the US military shied away from what it viewed as law enforcement but now it sees traffickers as fueling the Taliban insurgency. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.

JEB SHARP: According to a report in today’s New York Times the US military now considers targeting these so-called drug lords as important as going after insurgent leaders. That’s a dramatic shift in US policy according to Gretchen Peters, author of Seeds of Terror, a book about the opium trade in Afghanistan.

GRETCHEN PETERS: Under the Bush administration and certainly while Donald Rumsfled was the defense secretary there was tremendous hostility to going after the drugs trade and a fear that it would lead to further instability in Afghanistan. I have been, among others, arguing that there will be no stability in Afghanistan until they go after the drugs trade. And that ignoring it has led us to the situation that we find ourselves in today.

SHARP: A situation in which the Taliban control large portions of southern Afghanistan and corruption plagues the government. Peters says the United States is right to go after the business men at the heart of drug trade in the region. B ut it’s not clear that international law allows such targeting. European NATO allies have already raised questions about it. But US officials argue such killings are lawful given the nature of the conflict. Duke University law professor Scott Silliman explains.

SCOTT SILLIMAN: The United States is making the argument that the drug traffickers, because the money that they are supplying to the Taliban from the drug trafficking is actually paying Taliban soldiers, and perhaps buying weapons and sustaining them, that that means that the drug traffickers are taking a direct part in hostilities.

SHARP: But Silliman acknowledges not everyone takes such an expansive view of what’s permissible. Robert Goldman is an international law expert at American University. He says it’s one thing to target a warlord who traffics drugs, but targeting a drug trafficker who hasn’t taken part in the fighting may be questionable. Goldman says the particulars of each case matter greatly, but even so it’s a murky area that conflates war, terrorism, and criminality.

ROBERT GOLDMAN: Even though the Obama administration you know is not using the term “war on terror” anymore, this really comes from the war paradigm, from a very discredited paradigm, that essentially equates terrorism with armed conflict. And that can get you in trouble. And this is why I think frankly people are going to have problems.

SHARP: And in fact the US military itself used to resist mixing law enforcement and counter insurgency, but that’s now changing. And Gretchen Peters thinks one reason the US military is now starting to target drug traffickers is frustration over the fact that there’s no extradition treaty between the US and Afghanistan.

PETERS: That means that US law enforcements and American officials have to operate in extremely murky legal territory. A lot of the people who have been brought to the United States; there is about a dozen traffickers now who have been brought to the United States in basically what amounts to a fancy form of rendition. They essentially convinced them that they will be better off facing justice in the United States than facing justice in Afghanistan. It’s very, very murky legal territory to say the least.

SHARP: Peters supports the policy but she acknowledges it could cause more violence in the short term. And she says it raises some uncomfortable questions.

PETERS: Some of these traffickers aren’t… They’re not going to be found on the battlefield of Helmand or Kandahar holding an AK-47 in one hand and a bag of opium in the other. They’re sitting in Dubai in a suit, in an office. Or they’re in Karachi. They’re not necessarily in Afghanistan and actively working on the battlefield so where do you draw the line? And who gets to live and go to court and who gets a predator missile fired into the roof of his house?

SHARP: Despite such dilemmas Peters is glad to see the United States finally trying to cut off the flow of drug money to the Taliban. For The World I’m Jeb Sharp.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: No strategy to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan can succeed without an effective campaign against the Taliban’s counterparts in neighboring Pakistan. But there’s skepticism about Pakistan’s ability and even its willingness to take on the Taliban. Well now might be a good moment. There may be weakness in the Pakistani Taliban leadership and certainly there’s confusion about it. There have been conflicting reports about the fate of a number of senior Taliban commanders. Journalist Nicholas Schmidle is the author of the book To Live or To Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan. Alright Nick there is first Baitullah Mehsoud himself. Now this is the man, as you know, who spearheaded brutal suicide attacks in Pakistan. The man who’s believed to be involved in the assignation of Benazir Bhutto. Most reports now say that he is dead – killed by a US drone. Let’s bring in another figure. This is the militant named Hakimullah Mehsud. He is not a close family member of Baitullah Mehsoud. Hakimullah Mehsud is a contender though to replace Baitullah Mehsoud. There are reports that he is dead but there are also reports that he actually made a phone call to the associated press to say that he was not killed in a clash among potential leaders of the Taliban. What is going on with these contradictory reports of who’s alive and who’s dead?

NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE: Well there is a psychological dimension to this. I think that the Pakistani government does realize and does acknowledge that the militants are a bit frayed right now following the apparent death of Baitullah Mehsoud and so they’re trying to do anything they can to so decent. There are rumors Hakimullah was groomed to succeed Baitullah and there were rumors that on Saturday morning as there was a gathering of the top leaders that gun fight broke out between Hakimullah and one of the other leaders, Waliur Rehman, over who would take over. And the rumors are that both of them have been killed. Now what I think is adding to the confusion is that there have been phone calls out of South Waziristan from Waliur Rehman and then later from someone else close saying that there were going to be phone calls from Hakimullah and there was going to be a video from Baitullah confirming that they were all still alive and none of them have played out.

MULLINS: Well if nothing else then, even if we don’t know exactly who’s alive and who’s dead, we do know that there is a tremendous amount of in-fighting. When there is in-fighting among successors to the leadership of a militant or insurgent stronghold does the United States benefit from that kind of in-fighting?

SCHMIDLE: It depends on who emerges. If someone from the Mehsoud tribe or a figure that’s very close to al-Qaeda emerges at the top they immediately are going to have the radar of a drone on their head within you know literally 12 hours. So the Untied States almost benefits from the Mehsouds putting forth another Mehsoud because the intelligence that led to Baitullah Mehsoud’s apparent assassination is going to be good enough to get the next guy who comes from the Mehsoud tribe as well.

MULLINS: And that came from Pakistan?

SCHMIDLE: It does. And that actually… And this was a high point in Pakistan and US’s relationship really since 2001 where you had the Pakistanis supplying the ground intelligence, the human intelligence, that the US just doesn’t have the capability to gather at this point, and the US supplying the technological expertise with the drones.

MULLINS: Because their interest. The US interest and Pakistan’s interest intersected in getting this one man – Baitullah Mehsoud – out of the picture.

SCHMIDLE: You hit the nail on the head and that’s actually… So this is the apex of that relationship and it leaves a lot of open-ended questions as to what goes forward now. So both the Pakistanis and both the US have a sort of target list if you will that many of the individuals on those target lists aren’t shared between both countries. Baitullah Mehsoud was at the top of both target lists. Even though he didn’t pose a direct threat to the US homeland per say he did pose a direct threat to US soldiers in Afghanistan and to more importantly to the stability of Pakistan.

MULLINS: So what is the bottom line here if we look at whether or not US strategy is helping to defang the Taliban along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?

SCHMIDLE: I think the bottom line is that this represents a major symbolic and strategic victory for both the US and for Pakistan. Particularly for the CIA who is going to be feeling very embolden in the aftermath of this and is going to be ready to go after more high-value targets on the Pakistani side of the border. But the bottom line is that this was the easy one and the problems now are trying to continue that relationship of cooperation and convince the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment to cut ties with some of the very Taliban leaders they have been supporting for decades that are now endangering and hindering US objectives and goals in Afghanistan.

MULLINS: Nicholas Schmidle is a fellow at the New America Foundation. His most recent book is called To Live or To Parish Forever. Thank you very much.

SCHMIDLE: Thanks Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

(L-R) Mark Algren, Clara Sofia Brunetto, Barry Lipsky, Charles Amorosino

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The spelling bee that’s taking place in New York today is not your run-of-the-mill spelling bee. Here’s the thing. None of the students are native English speakers. They come from Argentina, China, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey. And they’re competing in the Global SpellEvent Championship. The winner’s going to get a $10,000 scholarship from the event sponsor which is Franklin Electronic Publishers Incorporated. Barry Lipsky is the CEO and President of Franklin. And Barry what was the big idea to bring in non-English speakers, or at least not native English speakers, to the competition?

BARRY LIPSKY: I think it’s an aspiration that the world has in understanding globalization and how important English is as a lingua franca in doing business throughout the world. And we partnered in most of the countries with TSOL which is a global organization, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. And they have affiliates throughout the world who helped us in recruiting different either corporations and school systems in having regional competitions which were thousands of students.

MULLINS: So you have some students who were competing there today who are with you right now. I’m surprised with all the pressure they can even speak. But who can we speak with first?

LIPSKY: Why don’t I have you speak to the young lady from Argentina? Her name is Clara Sofia Burnetto.

MULLINS: Clara Sofia Burnetto. Okay I’d love to talk to her.

LIPSKY: Okay.

CLARA SOFIA BURNETTO: Hello

MULLINS: Hello Clara. How are you?

BURNETTO: I’m fine thank you. How are you?

MULLINS: I’m very well. My name is Lisa and congratulations on making it this far in the spelling bee. Can you tell me how long you’ve been speaking English?

BURNETTO: Well I’ve been speaking English since I was like six years old.

MULLINS: Wow. How come you started learning it them so early?

BURNETTO: Well in my school we have English since we are really young.

MULLINS: Do you have a favorite English word?

BURNETTO: A favorite English word. I like one word in particular – that’s pumpkin.

MULLINS: Pumpkin?

BURNETTO: Yeah.

MULLINS: Yeah why do you like it?

BURNETTO: I don’t know I just like it.

MULLINS: Can you use it in a sentence?

BURNETTO: I don’t know. I like pumpkin.

MULLINS: I like pumpkin. That’s a good one. And why don’t you spell it for us.

BURNETTO: Pumpkin. That’s P-U-M-P-K-I-N. Pumpkin.

MULLINS: Good I’m glad you said it again the second time just to make it all official. Well I’m sure you’ll get much harder words today but we want to wish you the best of luck. Clara how old are you by the way?

BURNETTO: I’m 15.

MULLINS: Excellent so how do you say in Spanish good luck?

BURNETTO: Buena suerte.

MULLINS: Buena suerte to you Clara. Can you put one of your colleagues there on the phone – your fellow competitors?

BURNETTO: Yeah, yeah sure.

MULLINS: Okay thanks.

BURNETTO: Thank you. Bye.

MULLINS: Hi who’s this?

IGNASIA DORGAN: I’m Ignasia Dorgan.

MULLINS: Ignasia Dorgan. And you’re form Argentina too.

DORGAN: Yeah.

MULLINS: How old are you?

DORGAN: I am 15 years old.

MULLINS: When did you start speaking English?

DORGAN: I was five or four years old.

MULLINS: And how often do you study English now? Is it something you do everyday?

DORGAN: Four days a week. It’s like 10 hours a week. But we still have a debating school. I practice there.

MULLINS: Like what kind of debate? You mean you would talk about an issue?

DORGAN: Yeah they give us like a motion and we have to be a proposition or opposition to it.

MULLINS: Oh pro or opposed. And Ignasia do you have a favorite writer who writes in English?

DORGAN: Maybe Conan Doyle.

MULLINS: Oh Arthur Conan Doyle. You like mysteries?

DORGAN: Yeah.

MULLINS: Yeah. So the Sherlock Holmes series and…

DORGAN: Rowling too.

MULLINS: Oh J.K. Rowling. Oh so you read Harry Potter. Excellent. A lot of weird words in that.

DORGAN: Yeah.

MULLINS: Alright well we wish you the best of luck. Buena suerte?

DORGAN: Buena suerte.

MULLINS: Buena suerte Ignasia. Thank you so much and you can you put, let’s see, somebody else on the phone now.

CAROLIN LENZ: Hello.

MULLINS: Hi. Who’s this?

LENZ: It’s Carolin from Germany.

MULLINS: Carolin Lenz. L-E-N-Z?

LENZ: Yeah.

MULLINS: Yeah this is Lisa. How are you?

LENZ: I’m fine thanks. And you?

MULLINS: Are you nervous?

LENZ: Yes I’m very nervous.

MULLINS: Yeah but how long have you been studying English? My guess is you probably have very little reason to be nervous.

LENZ: Well I’ve learnt English for four years at school now.

MULLINS: Four years. Now I have to say, not to add to your nerves, but that’s a little less time than some of the folks that I’ve just talked to from Argentina have. And how often do you study it now?

LENZ: It’s like four hours a week.

MULLINS: You studied how many words for the competition?

LENZ: Eight hundred words or something like that.

MULLINS: Eight hundred words. And do you have a favorite author that writes in English.

LENZ: Stephenie Meyer. She wrote the Twilight books.

MULLINS: Oh the Twilight books. And did by reading her books did that help you learn more English?

LENZ: Well I didn’t read the books in English because they were translated in German.

MULLINS: Oh I think that’s cheating Carolin. It’s alright. I’m sure you could do very well in English. Look I wish you the best of luck. In German how do you say good luck?

LENZ: Viel gluck.

MULLINS: Viel gluck?

LENZ: Yeah.

MULLINS: Viel gluck to you Carolin.

LENZ: Thank you.

MULLINS: Anybody else there?

LENZ: Yeah one girl from Italy.

MULLINS: Okay thanks I’ll talk to her now.

LENZ: Okay.

CAMILLA ANAMANINO: Camilla from Italy.

MULLINS: Camilla Anamanino?

ANAMANINO: Yes.

MULLINS: How old are you?

ANAMANINO: Fifteen.

MULLINS: Fifteen. And where in Italy are you from?

ANAMANINO: Rome.

MULLINS: How long have you been studying English?

ANAMANINO: Six years old.

MULLINS: When did you start reading in English?

ANAMANINO: Reading in English I think since eight.

MULLINS: Since eight years old? Do you have a favorite word in English?

ANAMANINO: I think friend.

MULLINS: Friend?

ANAMANINO: Yes.

MULLINS: That’s a very nice word. Can you spell it and then use it in a sentence for us?

ANAMANINO: Yes. Friend. F-R-I-E-N-D.

MULLINS: And in a sentence, in context.

ANAMANINO: My best friend is Terry.

MULLINS: Alright. And remind me how you say good luck in Italian.

ANAMANINO: Buona fortuna.

MULLINS: Buona fortuna to you as well.

ANAMANINO: Thanks.

MULLINS: Camilla good luck to you and your fellow competitors.

ANAMANINO: Thanks.

MULLINS: Again is Camilla Anamanino from Italy, one of the teenagers taking part in today’s Global SpellEvent Championship. It happened in New York City. And by the way the winner has now been announced. The winner today was our first interviewee there – Clara Sofia Burnetto from Argentina. She’s the 15 year old who likes the word pumpkin so much. She won by spelling the world bizarre. That’s B-I-Z-A-R-R-E. Bizarre.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: An encounter with the police isn’t normally a laughing matter. Well it is in Edinburgh, Scotland right now. A British policeman is performing his standup comedy routine at the annual Edinburgh Festival. Sergeant Alfie Moore calls his show The Laughter Police.

ALFIE MOORE: It’s a lot to do with my views on political correctness both in society and in the police force. And I think an example of that is a poster shows me in a Punch and Judy booth. I’m about to strike punch with a [PH] trunction which would have been fine 100 years ago. And now of course I’ve been more inclined to carry out the risk assessment, call him Mr. Punchinello and record his ethnicity.

MULLINS: Sergeant Moore says the image of British police is too stuffy and unpopular. He finds that his show helps change the image.

MOORE: I play some very rough venues sometimes. I can remember doing a gig in Manchester in sort of a cellar of a bar and the compeer announced that I was a serving police officer and instead of clapping and cheering the whole room was booing. And I thought well how am I going to get out of here in one piece? And afterwards – it went very well – and afterwards a really rough looking young man came up to me and said you know I’ve always hated the police. I’ve been to prison. Despise them. But I really love what you’re trying to do. He shook my hand. And we’d never reach members of the community such as that gentleman.

MULLINS: That’s British comedian and policeman Alfie Moore.

[MUSIC]

MULLINS: This is PRI.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Hilary Clinton is in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. The secretary of state urged Congolese students to speak out against corruption and conflict. Tomorrow she’s expected to raise issues of sexual violence as she speaks with President Joseph Kabila. Later this week Secretary Clinton will visit another African country that has suffered an epidemic of sexual assaults often by government soldiers. That country is Liberia. As Anna Sussman reports the US State Department is trying to reform Liberia’s army by re-training and re-arming.

ANNA SUSSMAN: On a patch of dry land south of Monrovia young Liberian soldiers crawl on their stomachs through the brush firing machine guns and tossing smoke bombs. Above them several broad-shouldered Americans shout orders. This is the re-training of the Armed Forces of Liberia – the AFL. The old AFL had a reputation for corruption and lawlessness. Solider Edwin Barclay says the training is finally making the army something he can be proud of.

EDWIN BARCLAY: the difference is that this new Armed Forces of Liberia got a new thing. We are seeing a new army. First of all, we got human right violations is not in this new army and this new army full of discipline.

SUSSMAN: Were there human rights violations in the old army?

BARCLAY: I can say yes. I see violence against women. Violence against children. The differences are determined by the kind of training that we’re having now.

SUSSMAN: That training includes lessons in gender sensitivity and human rights law. But the Liberian army’s long history of carrying out abuses against its own people has left many worried about re-tooling and re-arming the force especially since the US helped fund the old criminal army decades ago. Emira Wood is a Liberian native and co-director of Foreign Policy and Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

EMIRA WOOD: What happened in the 1980s was that US tax-payer dollars paid to build this machinery that then killed 250,000 Liberians during these 26 years of war. And we cannot repeat that cycle.

LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD: This is a different day. It’s a different era. I think it’s impossible to compare what happened in the 1980s with what has happened now.

SUSSMAN: That’s the US Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

THOMAS-GREENFIELD: We’re conscious of how security aid is viewed and we don’t want our aid to go to people who would abuse their populations. Did that happen in the past? It probably did. But now we’re monitoring it very, very closely to ensure that that does not happen in Liberia.

SUSSMAN: The American in charge of that monitoring here is Colonel Al Rumphrie. He’s chief of the US Office of Security Cooperation in Liberia. He says if everything goes right the Liberian project could serve as a model for future re-training projects across Africa. But that’s a big if. Rumphrie’s concerned about the Liberian’s government’s limited ability to pay and feed its rebuilt army.

AL RUMPHRIE: We’re worried about what’s going to happen once we turn everything over to the Liberians. Because we don’t think they’re at that level right now to accept responsibility for an armed forces. If they cannot feed the people in the long run, they cannot pay their soldiers in the long run, we just trained a military force to take over government.

SUSSMAN: That worries Liberian officials as well. And they have another concern. Much of the actual training work has been farmed out to American private contractors such as DynCorp. Liberia’s Minister of Defense Brownie Samuki says that’s a potential problem.

BROWNIE SAMUKI: Let me put it this way. We support the participation of active duty military personnel from the US in helping us to re-train our military because these individuals will come to carry out a mission whereas the contractor comes to carry the contract terms. So everything he sees is a dollar sign.

SUSSMAN: Still Samuki is hopeful the peacekeeping experiment will succeed and so is AFL soldier Edwin Barclay.

[SOUND CLIP OF SOLDIERS CHANTING]

Back at the training ground Barclay says he believes the army’s troubles are in the past with the help of what he calls Liberia’s big brother.

BARCLAY: For now realistically speaking to you we will not experience just war from outside but we’ll always have internal problem. That’s why I say it’s really up to our big brother – the US.

SUSSMAN: The US has invested some $200 million in re-training and re-arming Liberia’s military. But come January the trainers will leave and the men and women of the Armed Forces of Liberia will be on their own to maintain the country’s fragile peace. For The World I’m Anna Sussman, Monrovia, Liberia.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: Reality Television is huge in India this summertime. So is the public debate about culture and ethics that reality shows are provoking. One show in particular is stirring up Indians. It’s called ‘The Moment of Truth.’ Participants are asked embarrassingly, intimate questions about their lives right in front of their family and an audience of millions. Answer truthfully they win prize money. If they lie they get nothing. From Mumbai, India the BBC’s Delnaaz Irani reports.

TALK SHOW HOST: Speaking Hindi.

TRANSLATOR: Have you ever had an affair with a married man?

NAJMA HEPTULLA: The questions started becoming very filthy kind of questions like whether he slept with a prostitute or he slept with a girl younger than his daughter. Did he cheated his wife? All kinds of things.

DELNAZZ IRANI: Najma Heptulla is a prominent member of parliament. She says programs like The Moment of Truth should be taken off mainstream television in India. And because the channels bombard the viewer with advertisements throughout the day she has no choice but to watch this very personal spectacle.

HEPTULLA: If somebody wants to confess they should confess to the person or to a priest or to mullah or to a Hindu priest – whoever religion they belong to. But why should I be forced to see it.

TALK SHOW HOST: Do you believe that [PH] Sachin could have done more to save you from the self destructive behavior?

IRANI: Whether such shows should be confined to specialist channels or not shown at all the root of the objection is that they don’t sit well with Indian society.

HEPTULLA: We are not Britain and we are not America. We are India. We have different values and we have a different kind of living system. And I think, looking at our society, it doesn’t match with it at all.

TALK SHOW HOST: Have you ever had surgery to physically enhance your appearance?

UVASHI DELAKIA: I had no idea that the parliament would get rocked. I became the [INAUDIBLE] in the parliament which sometimes is good and sometimes it’s not quite good.

IRANI: Uvashi Delakia lives in one of the suburbs beloved of Bollywood’s elite. She was the actress whose appearance on Moment of Truth first prompted MPs to raise the issue of reality television in parliament. She says those objecting to these programs simply miss the point.

DELAKIA: They are television shows and television is here to provide entertainment. And if you’re here to learn something out of these shows then you’re watching the wrong channel. If you really want to learn something read an encyclopedia. That’s better – full of knowledge.

DELAKIA: For Uvashi reality television was an idea whose time had come.

DELAKIA: I think it’s having a wonderful impact because I think today’s people are opening up; they’re moving along with times. People have broadened their minds. They have broadened their avenues of the way they think and I think it’s great.

IRANI: It is opposite downtown Mumbai we met Rajish Camut, the head of one of India’s leading television channels – Colors. Not surprisingly he agreed with Uvashi Delakia.

RAJISH CAMUT: Indian society is becoming far more acceptable. Television as a medium was used as something to escape from the tragedies of real life. Today what happens is you don’t mind seeing something that is real on television and accepting it. The Indian audiences are becoming far more tolerant and are open in terms of accepting the kind of content.

IRANI: Beating the city’s hellish traffic we took the train across town to speak to O’Neil Dakha, a leading Mumbai commentator. According to Dakha the Indian society that MPs have been so quick to defend has always been a sham.

O’NEIL DAKHA: Indians are human beings. They live like everyone else. They tell lies. They tell the truth. They love their family. They don’t love their family. They fornicate. They have extramarital affairs. But we have tried to show the outside world that you know we are morally superior. We occupy some higher moral plane.

IRANI: MPs concerns seem a long way from Mumbai’s noisy streets and as Uvashi Delakia argues even further from the expectations of modern Indian.

DELAKIA: It’s crazy. I mean to say you’re telling me that it’s an independent country and you cannot really voice out your own likes and dislikes. You do not have the freedom to voice out opinions? If we don’t remove democracy.

IRANI: For now it seems Uvashi Delakia’s view is holding swayed. Only last week the Indian high court threw out a public petition to have Moment of Truth banned. The judge advised the petitioners to switch off their television sets and follow the Gandhian way to see no evil.

MULLINS: That’s the BBC’s Delnaaz Irani in Mumbai on the roiling controversy over some reality TV shows in India.

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