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MARCO WERMAN:     I’m Marco Werman.   This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Exactly 25 years ago, famine gripped Ethiopia.   Few could forget the images of emaciated children, their bellies bloated, and their parents starving and desperate.   In the decades that followed, the nation on the horn of Africa seemed to put that crisis behind it.  But now, a quarter of a century later, Ethiopia may be slipping back into a food emergency.   Today, the Ethiopian government announced it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.  The crisis stems from a prolonged drought that’s afflicting the region.  BBC correspondent Mike Wooldridge witnessed Ethiopia’s famine in the mid- ’80s.  Now he’s back.  And Mike, you are aware it all started 25 years ago right now.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE:  I am indeed.  I’m in the town of Mekele up in the highlands of northern Ethiopia which, along with Quorem, was really the epicenter of that famine and some of the most iconic images and sounds of that famine 25 years ago, came from here.

WERMAN:  Well, we’ll talk in a moment about what’s changed in Mekele and Ethiopia and the current famine that’s unfolding there, but first you mentioned sounds that you heard 25 years ago.  This is actually sound you gathered 25 years ago to the day.

WOOLDRIDGE:  It’s too late to save the lives of many of the people around me here in a corrugated iron shelter on the outskirts of Mekele.  A middle aged man who’s just died in front of me.  His grieving daughter at his side has now lost most of her family in this famine. A few minutes ago, we came across a small bundle in another corner of the shelter which contained the body of a boy of four or five.  He was one of six children whose mother died last week.  Two more children died here this morning.  Here at a Red Cross feeding center for the most severely malnourished children, Nurse Clare Birchinger says it’s heartbreaking to have to send so many needy children away.

CLARE BIRCHINGER:  For the 500 we take, there’s thousands we can’t take and that’s terrible, really terrible.

WERMAN:  Mike Wooldridge, that was such a dire time.  You’re back there in Mekele now.  How have things changed?  I mean, the civil war is over, but how much has life really changed there?

WOOLDRIDGE:  Well, physically, life has changed enormously.  Here in particular, this really was just two or three parallel main streets when I was here with just dusty side streets, but today ,this is a bustling town, a lot of new buildings here.  It’s seen a lot of development.  But that famine of 1984, `985 is of course deeply embedded in the memories, particularly of people here, and particularly of people in Quorem because they saw so much suffering, they saw so much death.  But alongside that, I’ve had people saying to me these past few days, “We don’t want these two places to be remembered only as places of suffering and death.  We also want them to be remembered as places where lives were saved,” because of course, eventually, an unprecedented aid operation got under way and at least bringing together air forces from western countries and from the Soviet bloc of the time to work together, because Ethiopia was very much caught up in a kind of proxy part of the Cold War.  An extraordinary aid operation that did succeed in saving many lives.  So all of that really feeds in to the psyche of people, and particularly in this highland part of Ethiopia today.

WERMAN:  And yet the Ethiopian government today says it needs emergency food aid for over 6 million people.  The World Food Program says $285 million for relief food is needed for the next six months.  What or who is to blame for the current crisis?

WOOLDRIDGE:  I think climate change, if you want to call it that, is most certainly one of the factors, but it’s not the only one.  In a way, the factors that were there right back in 1984 and in the previous famine in 1974, are still at play.  The farming landscape here has been very degraded, high populations. And that population has now doubled in Ethiopia. It’s at least 75 million people here now, doubled since 1984, trying to farm the land. So you’ve got that, you’ve got the climate change, you’ve got the environmental factors and some would say you’ve got political factors too, to do with the government’s land policies and so on, which don’t necessarily give farmers the incentives that they might have to grow, though the government denies that.

WERMAN:  I was in Addis Ababa in 2005, 20 years on from Live Aid, the big concert organized by Sir Bob Geldof as a response to the TV pictures that you and Michael Burke brought back. And the conclusion of a lot of the people I spoke with was that the government was simply holding out for more debt relief, and just not focused on these rural areas where a lot of these crises occur.  The humanitarian group, Oxfam, is today calling for a new approach for tackling the risk of disaster in Ethiopia.  Are they referring, do you think, to some of these considerations in the capital?

WOOLDRIDGE:  They may well be, but in a way, Oxfam are pointing to what the government would say that it is signed up to itself.  It would say that its strategy now is very much about reducing the chronic vulnerability of so many people in the rural areas.  Now others might say that that could have progressed much further with different kinds of government policies.  All that’s arguable, but certainly, just about everybody here does talk the language of reducing vulnerability.  Oxfam today is calling it “disaster risk management,” but Oxfam have also got a message for the donors and actually particularly for the United States, because much of the US aid here is still in the form of food aid brought from the United States.  And Oxfam is saying that while, particularly at the moment, food aid is necessary and save lives, the concentration should not be so much on that.  There should be a shift, so that much more in the way of resources, donor resources, private investment too no doubt, is put into helping communities, these rural communities, so hard pressed so often, withstand these what will be probably ever more frequent shocks because of climate change.

WERMAN:  The BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in the Ethiopian town of Mekele.  Thank you very much indeed.

WOOLDRIDGE:  And Marco, thank you very much too.

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• BBC coverage
• El Universal coverage (en español)
• Lorne Matalon’s Mexico stories on The World
• Join the discussion: Are you concerned about the drug war in Mexico?

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MARCO WERMAN: The Mexican newspaper, El Universal, has been running a series this week focusing on drug-trafficking north of the border, in the United States.  The Mexican newspaper reports that the drug cartels are increasing their operations inside the US, and that includes bribing officials in several US border states.  The reports are paired with editorials that say the US should stop blaming Mexico, and do more to stop the drug trade on its own soil.  One of the reporters on the series is Evangelina Hernandez.  She’s in Mexico City.  So tell us what you found out regarding corruption on the US side of the border, corruption specifically.

EVANGELINA HERNANDEZ:  First of all, the US authorities recognize the corruption is inside of the agencies, federal, state or in the local authority.  We talk with people from the border patrol, the DAA and police in the different places in the border.  They have some of the elements under investigation, or even in jail, because they receive money from the Mexican drug cartels.

WERMAN:  And when you say they’ve received money, are you talking about law enforcement officials receiving money?

HERNANDEZ:  Yes.

WERMAN:  US officials recognize there is corruption, but it’s a completely different thing to have solid proof of corruption.  Does proof exist?

HERNANDEZ:  Oh yeah, of course.  Last month, the Sheriff in Texas now is in jail–

WERMAN:  In Texas.

HERNANDEZ:  — and received sentences for 25 years in jail, because he accept money from the Mexican cartel.

WERMAN:  I think a lot of Americans will say, “Yeah, sure there’s drug trafficking here, and wherever there are drugs and lots of money, there’s going to be corruption, but none of this is as bad as in Mexico.”  What did your reporting say about that?

HERNANDEZ:  Maybe the difference is, in Mexico, the corruption is in the agencies.

WERMAN:  In Mexico, you believe it’s the corruption is within the agencies.

HERNANDEZ:  The difference in United States is, you pay one official, yeah?  In the border patrol or the local police.  But the situation is, if you pay one of them, they open the way to put the drugs inside on the United States.

WERMAN:  So in other words, the officials who are taking these bribes are not necessarily being told by drug kingpins in Mexico to let these trucks through, but the drug kingpins are giving their mules the money to pay off people at the border, American officials at the border.

HERNANDEZ:  Yes.

WERMAN:  What kind of drugs are we talking about coming over the border?

HERNANDEZ:  Cocaine, marijuana, and heroin, methamphetamine.

WERMAN:  Let me ask you this, I mean, based on what you found out through your reporting, what do you think the United States should do to change its anti-narcotics policy?

HERNANDEZ:  For me, we share the problem, Mexico and United States.  We fight with the army.  We need to help the young people to have more values and don’t look for everything they’ve found in the drugs, abuse of drugs.  You have to use doctors and psychologists and people who help people.

WERMAN:  Why did your newspaper embark on this series?

HERNANDEZ:  You know what, all the time we Mexican people are blamed because of the official discourse in the United States. It’s, “Mexico is trafficking drugs and they came with drugs to the United States, sell drugs in United States.”  But what are they doing?  Why the Department of Justice says, “The Mexican trafficking organizations, they put drugs in the US border and use the freeways to trafficking drugs inside US territory?”  And I say, who gives the control to the Mexican cartels, to have the power in United States?  The US border has strong security.

WERMAN:  Evangelina Hernandez, a reporter with El Universal in Mexico City.  Thank you very much for your time.

HERNANDEZ:  Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Here’s a daydream for you.

You’ve quit your job, but you’re actively encouraged to write down your thoughts about the whole thing, and then send them off to your former colleagues. Well, that was long standard practice for British diplomats, as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  For centuries, British ambassadors wrote “valedictory dispatches,” final thoughts on their overseas postings.  The reports were then fed through the veins of the British government.  The tradition ended in 2006, but the dispatches still make for good reading.

VOICE OVER: Sir David Hunt, Lagos, 1969.

GALLAFENT:  All the excerpts, by the way, are read by fruity British actors.

VOICE OVER:  The Nigerians certainly deserve a happy and united future after all they have gone through.  I have a great affection for them, because they’re generally cheerful and friendly, in  spite of their maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interest.  They’re not singular in this.  Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face.  They regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery.

GALLAFENT:  If it’s not clear by now, the private tone of British diplomats hasn’t always been, well, politically correct.  Their parting shots were confidential.  That allowed the authors to write freely.  But now the dispatches are coming to light.  Sir Christopher Meyer is a former British ambassador to the United States.  For him, the quality of valedictory dispatches varied as much as the quality of those who wrote them.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: What I think one looked for was not only profound analysis, but you looked for wit, and you also looked for a person touch, which necessarily meant a reflection of the ambassador’s personality.  Now some ambassadors are incredibly pompous and boring, and that would come through.

GALLAFENT:  For instance: Ambassador Roger Pinsent, on leaving Nicaragua in 1967.

VOICE OVER: There is, I fear, no question but that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, and alcoholic of the Latin Americans. Their version of Spanish is quite the least attractive I have come across.

GALLAFENT:  Today, the British valedictory dispatch is no more.  Email made confidentiality harder to preserve, and recent freedom of information laws allowed the public access to the documents.  Some say British lawmakers are losing a source of candid opinions from their departing diplomats. For instance, Dame Glynne-Evans wrote this on leaving Portugal in 2004.

VOICE OVER: The more we stand by principle the better. Expediency does not pay. Departing from international humanitarian law, even just a little bit, is like being just a little bit pregnant

GALLAFENT:  But maybe some opinions won’t be missed.

VOICE OVER: Sir Anthony Rumbold, Bangkok, 1967.  I have very much enjoyed living for a while in Thailand.  It is true they have no literature, no painting, and only a very odd kind of music.  Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all.  But it does a faded European good to spend some time among such a jolly, extrovert and anti-intellectual people.

GALLAFENT:  Britain’s current ambassador to Thailand has already reacted to the release of that missive from 1967.  Quinton Quayle praised ”the richness of Thai culture, and the charm and warmth of the Thai people.”  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Election officials began delivering ballots across Afghanistan today. They don’t have a lot of time.  The ballots are for the presidential run-off election scheduled for November 7th.  The first round of voting, in August, was marred by widespread fraud.  In the run-off President Hamid Karzai will face his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.  The southern province of Helmand forms the backbone of President Karzai’s support.  It’s also a Taliban stronghold.  Washington Post associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran has just returned from Afghanistan.  In today’s Post, he writes about a town in Helmand called Nawa.  Just a few months ago, the Taliban ran the small farming community.  They had set up checkpoints, seeded the road with bombs, and scared off thousands of residents.  Not anymore, so Rajiv Chandrasekaran, tell us what happened.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN:  Well, what happened was three months ago, a battalion of US Marines descended on this town and the surrounding areas.  A battalion of Marines is about 1,100 of them, and they were joined by about 300 Afghan soldiers.  Prior to the Marine arrival, there were only something like about 100 British soldiers in the area.  And almost immediately after the Marines arrived, interesting things started to happen.  The Taliban, which had sort of swaggered through the area with impunity, pretty much packed up and left.  And so there’s been this sort of fundamental transformation, and what Marine officials say is, this is because we have the right level of force here.  In fact, when you add up the number of Marines in this area, it’s almost identical, the ratio of troops to population, as what is called for in the military’s counter-insurgency guidelines.

WERMAN:  Is that all it takes though, is just getting the right number of Marines, this 1:50 ratio, one marine to 50 residents that General Stanley McChrystal is recommending?  Are they actually doing stuff there?

CHANDRASEKARAN:  I think a big part of it does have to do with having enough troops on the ground, but it’s also how you’re using those troops.  But one should note that what has occurred here may not be easily copied in other parts of Afghanistan.  First off, to have similar troop ratios in other places would require tens of thousands of more troops, even more than what General McChrystal’s asking the White House to give him.

WERMAN:  Now the Taliban fighters left this area, left this town of Nawa.  Where did they go, and are they just exporting their troubles to another part of Helmand?

CHANDRASEKARAN:  Well, for the moment, they’ve beat a retreat to a community about 10 to 15 miles to the northwest, amid a network of irrigation canals that were built in the desert back in the 1950s by the United States government, to help spur development in Afghanistan back then.  Right now, that area is sort of a haven for opium growers and drug smugglers, and the Taliban have sort of hunkered down in there.

WERMAN:  It does seem like 1,100 troops for one district, the fear instilled in the locals and the bloodshed by the locals and the troops, it seems like a pretty high cost just to get the Taliban 10 miles down the road, and maybe they’ll come back at some point.

CHANDRASEKARAN:  It certainly does, and that’s what a lot of critics of this would say, that yes, if you throw in a lot of troops in a small area, yeah, you can see improvements.  But does this really represent what you can do more broadly?  And US military officials acknowledge that there is an element of an artificial quality, what’s going on there, but they also wonder whether there are some lessons that they can try to apply more broadly, particularly in the way the troops are going about engaging with people and also just in terms of ways that they can try to spark a degree of reconstruction, and engagement with local officials to promote better governance and fight corruption.  And so they’re looking to unique aspects of what is transpiring here, as opposed to saying, “This is a sort of just add water and reconstitute in other parts of the country” approach.

WERMAN:  Rajiv Chandrasekaran, associate editor for the Washington Post, thank you very much for you time.

CHANDRASEKARAN:  A pleasure to talk to you today.

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MARCO WERMAN:   Afghanistan’s embattled President Hamid Karzai belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group.  So do about 40 percent of the country’s people.  If you want to reach that major population block in Afghanistan, you have to do it in their language, Pashto.   Inayatulhaq Yasini hosts the BBC’s Pashto-language radio program “Your Voice.”  He says the weekly call-in is not just heard in Afghanistan.

INAYATULHAQ YASINI:  The issue is for all of the Pashtun living in different parts of the world, particularly our target is Durand Line.  Durand Line is the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.  So most of them are listening to this program.

WERMAN:  Right, and what is exactly the demographic of Pashto speakers in Afghanistan?  How many people are there?

YASINI:  Pashto speakers are mostly in the south, and some northern provinces.

WERMAN:  And numbers, do you know how many people speak it?

YASINI:  I would not be able to give you the exact number now, because of war and the infighting in Afghanistan, people spread all over the world, particularly millions of them are living in Pakistan, Iran, and they have migrated to Europe, America, as well.

WERMAN:  So Inayatulhaq, tell us what’s on your callers’ minds today.  I imagine the phone lines are getting increasingly busy every day.

YASINI:  Yes, sir, yes.  Today’s show was regarding how much people are prepared to vote for the second round.  The first round was not popular, as far as the voting percentage is concerned.  And now people, I saw very enthusiasm from the side of the people.  Even there were people calling us that, “I didn’t vote in the first round, in the first part of the election, but now I will vote.”

WERMAN:  Right, and they’re saying, “Now I will vote in the second round.”  Are they saying that as a way of kind of protesting what happened in the first round?  Do they really see suddenly they have a stake in the future of their nation?

YASINI:  Different reasons.  Ethnicity plays a role here.  The people who are calling us, they were calling on other Pashtuns or Afghan to come to vote and decide about their future.

WERMAN:  Right, and with a few minor nuances, it seems that the Pashto speaking population has up until now mostly supported President Hamid Karzai.  What are you hearing from some of your listeners, from people calling in, about whether they are still behind Karzai?

YASINI:  Yes, as I mentioned, the ethnicity card is very important in this election, it seems.  A lot of people not expressing it openly, because using the card of ethnicity is considered– it is a taboo if somebody uses it.  But practically it happens.  If you compare the people who have called us, most of them were supporting.  They’re saying that if Karzai comes to power, it will be in their benefit.

WERMAN:  Well, we actually have some tape of a call made by one of your listeners who’s not too happy with either candidate, not Hamid Karzai nor Abdullah Abdullah.  Let’s hear that.

RADIO CALLER:  [speaking Pashto]

INTERPRETER:  My opinion is that these two candidates, Karzai and Abdullah, both of them have done a lot of fraud, and because of that, they should be punished and banned from the election.

WERMAN:  So, Inayatulhaq Yasini, I mean, is that opinion typical of what you’re hearing from your callers?

YASINI:  Yes, it seemed that people, it is my own personal observation as probably the percentage of people will be higher than the first round.  We had 5 million, 1 million was declared fraudulent, 4 million left.  I think this time, at least it should be double the number.  The enthusiasm I saw, I couldn’t manage to accommodate all the callers, emails yesterday.  When I was announcing, just in minutes, I was receiving emails and responses.

WERMAN:  I’d like to know what people are saying about the fraud allegations from the August 20^th election.  I mean, the results were thrown out because of fraud.  So many allegations came in of fraud during the counting of ballots.  Do your listeners accept that fraud happened, or are they still questioning whether it even took place?

YASINI:  No, there were different opinions.  Some of them were saying that Karzai won the election despite these claims, because they were saying the claims of fraud were not correct, and that was baseless.  Even before the elections, the opposition was claiming there will be fraud.  So they are saying that Karzai has won it, but for the sake of national unity, Karzai accepted that he has not secured the required percentage.

WERMAN:  Inayatulhaq Yasini, the host of the BBC’s Pashto-language radio show, “Your Voice,” thank you very much for talking with us.

YASINI:  You’re welcome.

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Kyaw Zaw Lwin (left), Khin Ohmar (middle) from The Forum for Democracy in Burma and Tate Naing, Secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)

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MARCO WERMAN:  While the Obama administration is mulling over its policy in Afghanistan,  it’s also rethinking how to handle Myanmar.  The US has long pursued a policy of isolating the military government in the country also known as Burma, but Washington says that policy isn’t working.   Yesterday a State Department official said the US will soon send a diplomatic team to Myanmar for talks.  One issue that’s likely come up is the case of a US citizen named Kyaw Zaw Lwin.  Zaw Lwin has been in prison in Burma for nearly two months.  He was born in Burma, but has been living in exile for 20 years.  Recently he went back, and was arrested.  Reporter Bruce Wallace spoke with his fiancée, Wa Wa Kyaw, at her home outside of Washington.

BRUCE WALLACE: These are some of the things that Wa Wa Kyaw hears about jail cells in Myanmar: they’re tiny, airless, no windows, no toilets. The food’s inedible; torture is common.

WA WA KYAW: It’s not like a prison in the United States.  You cannot imagine the prison in Burma.

WALLACE: But prison conditions aren’t the first thing that went through her head when she learned that Kyaw Zaw Lwin had been arrested.

WA WA: He could be dead.  That’s the first thing that came to my mind. They could kill him and then he could be not found anywhere.

WALLACE: Kyaw Zaw Lwin was arrested going into Myanmar on September 3^rd.  He never got to the family members who were waiting for him at the airport. It was 17 days before someone from the US Embassy was allowed to visit him in prison.

WA WA: I was very much relieved that he was still alive, but on the other hand, the news that really disturbed me was he was beaten, he was tortured physically and mentally. And also he–they didn’t feed him for seven days.

WALLACE: The US Embassy has filed a complaint with the Burmese government about Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s treatment.  Kyaw Zaw Lwin originally fled his home country in 1988 after taking part in student protests there. He came to the US as a refugee in the early ’90s, became a US Citizen, studied and got a degree in computer science.  All the time he continued to do pro-democracy  work. For the past two years he’s been working in Thailand with other Burmese activists. This summer he delivered a petition with nearly 700,000 signatures to the UN urging stronger action to free Burmese political prisoners.  His fiancée says she doesn’t know for certain why he chose to go back to Myanmar in September. But she says he’d been increasingly worried about his mother and two cousins. They were arrested two years ago during a political crackdown and they’ve been in jail ever since. His mother is battling cancer and in need of medical attention.

WA WA: He’s been feeling so bad for his families, and the colleagues, and all these political prisoners in Burma. So he might be thinking that he can make a change.  Probably that is why he went back to Burma.

WALLACE: Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s arrest comes at a time when the Obama administration is rethinking US policy towards Myanmar’s military regime. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that sanctions have had little effect. Now the US is considering increasing diplomatic engagement with the country. A State Department spokeswoman told me it was too early to say how Zaw Lwin’s case might affect policy considerations.  Brian Joseph, director for South and Southeast Asia at the National Endowment for Democracy, says the case should be part of the mix.

BRIAN JOSEPH: The fact that he is an American citizen does put a whole host of obligations on the United States, and my sense is that he will have to be part of, if not a critical piece, of any discussion they have with the regime.

WALLACE: Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s is expected to appear at a hearing tomorrow.  He’s charged with traveling with fraudulent documents. He’s being represented by the same lawyers that defended Aung Sung Suu Kyi in her recent trial. Myanmar’s embassy in DC couldn’t say anything about the case.  They said they only know what they read in newspapers and online. Wa Wa Kyaw says despite all that’s happened she still supports her fiancé’s work.

WALLACE: Was any part of you that’s angry at all that he took such a risk, knowing that he’s a pretty visible critic of the Burmese government?

WA WA: My answer is not at all. No. Our heart, it’s in Burma.  We were born in Burma, we were raised in Burma. Whatever we have to do, whatever he has to do, to free Burma, I totally understand.

WALLACE: Still, she’s not optimistic about his trial, and she doesn’t expect him to be released in time to celebrate his 40th birthday.  It’s next Wednesday.  For The World, I’m Bruce Wallace, Gaithersburg, Maryland.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  There’s no question that Mexico is struggling to cope with a wave of drug-related violence.  There are daily reports of killings, kidnappings and shoot-outs involving Mexico’s drug cartels.  But if you think the cartels stop at the US border, listen to this.  Today, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced the arrest, on American soil, of more than 300 alleged members of a major Mexican drug cartel.  It’s the one known as “La Familia”, the family.  The arrests occurred over the past two days, and involved law enforcement in 19 US states.  The World’s Katy Clark has more, and a warning, her report includes some graphic descriptions.

KATY CLARK: Attorney General Holder says the arrests were part of a nearly 4-year-long investigation known as “Project Coronado.”  He says that with the arrests announced today,  nearly 1,200 people have been seized in the operation, along with more than eleven tons of illegal narcotics and a large number of weapons.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: This unprecedented coordinated United States law enforcement action is the largest ever undertaken against a Mexican drug cartel.

CLARK: Holder went on to say that the operation dealt a significant blow to “La Familia’s” supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons, and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States.  But Holder acknowledges, it wasn’t an easy operation by any stretch.

HOLDER: The La Familia Cartel demonstrated an incredible level of sophistication and ruthlessness. To combat this violent criminal enterprise, we must be coordinated at all levels of law enforcement. That coordinated approach is what today’s take-down is all about.

CLARK: Holder says it’s also about introducing those unfamiliar with “La Familia” to the group which he describes as one of the newest and most violent of Mexico’s five drug cartels.

HOLDER: The sheer level and depravity of violence that this cartel has exhibited thus far exceeds what we unfortunately have become accustomed to from other cartels.

CLARK: That’s an assessment shared by George Grayson, author of “Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?”   Grayson has tracked the rise of “La Familia” from its origins as a vigilante group in 2006 in the central Mexican state of Michoacán.

GEORGE GRAYSON: The first time they appeared in public was when they tossed five heads of their foes onto a dance floor. They accompanied this gruesome action by saying they were carrying out divine justice because they believe that the Lord tells them to undertake their various nefarious activities.

CLARK:  Grayson says the group favors executions over negotiations, and is known to hand out bibles while professing that they’re out to protect women and young people from the ravages of drugs.  Asked whether he thought today’s announcement of 300-plus arrests really was a significant blow to “La Familia’s” operations, Grayson says it depends on who the people arrested actually are.

GRAYSON: If they’re actual chiefs in organization, yes, but if they’re merely part-time operatives, and there are lots of those in the United States that work for all of the Mexican cartels, then I think the damage less severe to “La Familia.”

CLARK: Still, George Grayson says that when you have members locked up of an organization that uses chainsaws to decapitate their foes, and then parade the heads in public places, that’s a step in the right direction.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

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.

MARCO WERMAN: Ethiopia is hardly the only part of the world plagued by drought these days.

Two thousand miles or so to the north, parts of the Middle East, and the eastern Mediterranean, are suffering water shortages as well.  One of the worst-hit regions is the island of Cyprus.  The World’s Aaron Schachter has our report.

AARON SCHACHTER: I’m standing beside what sounds like a raging Kouris River.  But this 10-foot-wide swath of muddy brown water that runs into the Kouris dam represents a trickle compared to what the Greek Cypriot city of Limassol needs, just down below.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Water was once plentiful here.  Then in the 1960s, Cyprus started promoting itself as a tourist haven, and officials scrambled to get water for new swimming pools, gardens and golf courses.

GEORGE PERDIKES: For many years the policy was to make drills and take out the water from the earth.

SCHACHTER: George Perdikes is Secretary General of the Greek Cyprus Green Party. He says development helped deplete the island’s groundwater.

PERDIKES: When they destroy the underground water, they tried to make the big dams.  Everybody was celebrating that it’s going to be the solution, the final solution for the water problem in Cyprus.

SCHACHTER: But since the late 1980s, rainfall has dropped by 15 percent.  Last year was the fourth straight drought year, with half the average rainfall.  During recent summers, Cypriots have sometimes found themselves without water for up to four or five days a week.  They’ve had to import hundreds of millions of gallons from Greece and Turkey. And experts fear it’s only going to get worse. Nicolas Jarraud is a scientist with the United Nations based in Cyprus.

NICHOLAS JARRAUD: The eastern Mediterranean region, as a result of climate change, is going to face increasing aridity, increasing desertification and a rather smaller amount of rainfall.  And this we are very much certain about.

SCHACHTER: One recent study predicted that by the end of the century, the once relatively lush island could become a Saudi-Arabian-like desert.  But climate change is only exacerbating a problem that Cypriots helped create. Islanders have been profligate in their use of water.  Kyriakos Kyrou works for the Water Development Department in Nicosia. He says officials are just starting to take the problem seriously.

KYRIAKOS KYROU: The situation was getting worse and worse and worse, but the decisions are not being taken by the technocrats.  So, it’s very frustrating.  We are under tremendous pressure here because we need to produce the water, but in reality you have no say in how the water’s being used.

SCHACHTER: Despite the development binge, the number one offender remains agriculture.  Farms suck up three-quarters of Cyprus’s water, often for thirsty crops like citrus and potatoes that are sold outside the country.  The UN’s Nicolas Jarraud says Cyprus’s farmers aren’t greedy or callous.  They’re just stuck in old ways.

JARRAUD: If one can provide farmers with alternative crops that would per input of water provide more financial returns, for example the production of pomegranates instead of citrus, I think it’s a question therefore of convincing the farmers of the financial benefits and secondly of showing the methods they can use.

SCHACHTER: Of course convincing farmers to change their ways takes time.  But many in Cyprus think they have a quicker fix.

BURAK CELIK: The cheapest, and maybe the best way, is now desalination.

SCHACHTER: Burak Celik is a Cypriot environmental engineer.

CELIK: The sea is endless.  If you do not destroy the habitat.  I mean, maybe if all the countries used the sea, so maybe it will be a problem, but no need for all countries for desalination.

SCHACHTER: There are three desalination projects now in Cyprus and more being planned.  Dozens of similar plants exist all over the Mediterranean and Middle East as water shortages continue to grow.  But the plants are expensive, they use a lot of energy, and some worry about the impact of the tons of salt dumped from the plants back into the sea.   Meanwhile, the broader solution to the region’s water woes requires money and political will.  Both are lacking.  The small island has been divided into a Turkish north and a Greek south since a conflict in 1974.  Turkish and Greek scientists have worked together on water solutions in recent years, but the politicians have yet to reach agreement.

And while the Greek Green Party’s George Perdikes says ordinary Cypriots understand there is a problem, they don’t seem to feel much sense of urgency.

PERDIKES: If you go to the street and speak to the people the majority will say, the Greens are right, saying that we have a problem with water; that Cyprus will be a desert.  But then they do nothing.  After all, god is blessing our country and the people.  <laughs>  That’s not wise, I mean, the solution is in our hands.

SCHACHTER: For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, Nicosia, Cyprus.

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.