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: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Violence is on the rise again in the South American country of Colombia. That’s especially true in the cities. Murder rates in Medellin have tripled in the past three years. Disputes among drug-trafficking gangs have turned the slums of Colombia’s second largest city into a shooting gallery. There have been 1,500 homicides there so far this year. Some of the victims are elementary and high school students. As John Otis reports, the simple act of walking to school has become so dangerous that the city is now providing escorts.

JOHN OTIS:  As children gather on a Medellin street corner, Sandra Torres calls the roll. She’s been hired by city hall to escort these kids to school. The route takes them through Comuna Trece, one of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. It’s only a 10-minute walk to school but the kids are joined every morning by Torres and other escorts who wear bright green vests. The escorts are unarmed, but Torres says their presence discourages gang members from harassing the students.

SPEAKING SPANISH

SANDRA TORRES: Many kids stopped going to school because they felt scared and threatened or their families were at risk. With us they can walk to school safely. Nothing happens to them.

OTIS: Many poor students in Latin America drop out to go to work. But in the Medellín slums, about 1,000 primary and secondary students have quit school this year due to gang conflicts. They’re not overreacting. Since January, 31 students in Medellin have either been hit or killed by stray bullets. These barrios have a history of violence dating back to the 1980s when drug lord Pablo Escobar was at his peak. But today, there’s no kingpin dominating the drug gangs. Instead, some 300 criminal bands are fighting over cocaine sales, prostitution rings and extortion rackets. Schools are prime locations for drug deals and for gang recruitment. But for many kids, the biggest problem is getting to class. Their routes often take them across invisible boundaries between gang territories. High School junior Carlos Córdoba says many classmates have relatives in gangs and are viewed as enemy spies when they leave one barrio for another.

SPEAKING SPANISH

OTIS: “I can’t go to that neighborhood over there or in the direction of those houses,” he says, “because I’ve received many threats.” The Estela Velez school is located on a patch of land that gangs are fighting to control. In August, a nearby gun battle forced students to take cover under their desks until nightfall when they were evacuated on city buses.

SPEAKING SPANISH

OTIS: That’s Íngrid Agudelo, a home economics teacher. She says nearly half of the school’s 650 students stopped coming to school, though some have returned since the escort program began five months ago.

SPEAKING SPANISH

INGRID AGUDELO: If 10 students showed up that was a lot. When the shootouts got really bad only 5 or 6 students would come to class.

OTIS: The surge in violence prompted a visit to Comuna 13 from President Juan Manuel Santos. He promised to hire 20,000 more police officers nationwide. But some here say the police are part of the problem. This police station in Comuna Trece sits just a couple of blocks from the Estela Velez school. But few residents will cooperate with police because they fear gang members have infiltrated the police ranks. So for now, the escort program serves as a stop-gap security measure. When the school day is over, the escorts meet the students and walk them home. As they say goodbye, several grateful children hug and kiss their guides. For many kids in Comuna Trece, however, the escort program comes too late. Due to the violence, many families with school children have pulled up stakes and moved away. For The World, I’m John Otis, Medellín, Colombia.

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.

• BBC coverage
• Back to the bad old days for Iraq?

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.

JEB SHARP:  I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  Iraq’s leaders are calling on the country’s neighbors to do more to keep insurgents from crossing into Iraq.  That follows a pair of suicide bombings against government buildings in Baghdad yesterday that killed more than 150 people.  It was the worst attack in Iraq in more than two years.  Iraqi officials are blaming foreign fighters, but the attacks are fueling fears about Iraq’s ability to protect itself as it gears up for elections and the withdrawal of US troops.  The World’s Jason Margolis reports.

JASON MARGOLIS:  Pick up just about any paper today and the situation in Iraq once again looks grim.  Images of people weeping, charred vehicles and blown out windows in downtown Baghdad.  It’s a horrific scene, but the overall situation in Iraq may not be as bleak as today’s pictures suggest.  Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb just returned from a two week trip to Iraq.  Korb says despite yesterday’s attacks, overall violence is down there.  He says, In part, that’s because American forces aren’t around as a target.

LAWRENCE KORB:  The key thing that I found out was that the Iraqis now know we’re leaving.  There was always a certain amount of them that didn’t think we would leave, and thought, “Well, if we kill enough of them, then they’ll go.”  But when we took those troops out of the cities on 30 June, it’s a big difference. You don’t see any US troops around at all in the cities.

MARGOLIS:  Yesterday’s attacks were also noteworthy for the targets: two government buildings in the heart of Baghdad.  Lawrence Korb says the bombers chose government buildings in part because they could reach them.  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently ordered the removal of some protective blast walls in Baghdad.

KORB:   I think Maliki, the prime minister, sort of overreacted after the US left.  We told him they’d take down a lot of the checkpoints and the walls.  I think that was a mistake.  Once you do that, then you’re, you know, giving people more opportunities.

MARGOLIS:  It’s not certain who orchestrated yesterday’s suicide attacks, but many people who follow Iraq suggest the bombings were likely a message intended for Maliki, who is running for re-election in January.

THOMAS RICKS:  I think the message that the bombers were trying to convey, no matter who they were, was that Maliki does not control Iraq as much as he claims he does.

MARGOLIS:  That’s Thomas Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

RICKS:  And the message to Iraqis was, he can’t even protect ministries in the heart of Baghdad.

MARGOLIS:  Ricks has written two books about the Iraq war.  He’s a pessimist about the situation there.  He argues that yesterday’s bombings also sent a message to American leaders, that American troops just can’t pack up in two years and expect a happy outcome.  US forces are scheduled to fully withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

RICKS:  The cost of leaving could well be a civil war.  Could even be a regional war.

MARGOLIS:  But others caution against inferring too much from yesterday’s suicide bombings.  Rick Nelson is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

RICK NELSON:  Things in Iraq are relatively stable to where they were, you know, one, two, three, especially four or five years ago.  We shouldn’t expect that there won’t be any additional

attacks.  And while these attacks are significant, it doesn’t mean that Iraq is not on a road to stability.

MARGOLIS:  Nelson says yesterday’s attacks shouldn’t create a panic among American decision makers, nor does Nelson say the attacks prove that the Iraqi government can’t provide security for its citizens.

NELSON:  We have to give the Iraqis a chance to do this and to see how they respond to these attacks, to gauge their resilience, and most importantly, to see if they can do the elections on January 16^th.

MARGOLIS:  Since US troops pulled back from Iraqi urban areas in June, there have been five significant bombings throughout the country.  But those kinds of attacks are getting less coverage, now that Afghanistan and Pakistan are dominating headlines.  Thomas Ricks says Iraq has become the forgotten war.

RICKS:  Partly because Americans want to forget it.  I think there’s a growing recognition that this was a terrible mistake, in my view the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy, and that little good is going to come of it.

MARGOLIS:  But Rick Nelson sees Iraq’s fade from front pages as a good sign.

NELSON:  It shows that the progress is moving forward, that there’s not a lot of news being made in Iraq, which means a lot of bad things aren’t happening.

MARGOLIS:  Though Nelson concedes yesterday’s attacks were a setback. For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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.

• The World in Words podcast
• Jason Margolis reported extensively from Ukraine in 2008

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.

JEB SHARP: In one of Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine, a presidential election campaign is in full swing, and one of the main issues Ukrainians are expected to vote on in January is their relations with Russia and the Russian language.  Ukrainian is Ukraine’s official state language, but about half of all Ukrainians still prefer to speak Russian. In fact, Russian remains the country’s de facto common language.  But Brigid McCarthy reports that Ukraine is in the midst of a peaceful linguistic revolution.

BRIGID MCCARTHY:  Language is one of the most vexing aspects of life in Ukraine.  At least, for foreigners.  Before moving here last August, I didn’t know which language to study.  I’m still not sure.  Here in Kiev, you see Ukrainian on street signs and on packages of food in grocery stores, as required by law, but on the street, you hear more Russian.

[People speaking Russian]

MCCARTHY:  Here, a little boy and his mother are talking to a man selling miniature cactus plants in Kiev’s botanical garden.

LAADA BILANIUK:  They are speaking Russian, both the seller and the mother and the child.

MCCARTHY: That’s Laada Bilaniuk.  She’s an anthropologist from the University of Washington and author of the book “Contested Tongues” about the politics of language in Ukraine.  A few steps away, two women are standing behind buckets of brightly colored roses.

BILANIUK:  So those two ladies, that lady is speaking Ukrainian.

MCCARTHY: Laada Bilaniuk uses that language to buy a bouquet of flowers.

[Women speaking Ukrainian]

MCCARTHY:  Bilaniuk says most Ukrainians are bilingual.  They have to be.

BILANIUK: Right now, you can’t watch television without knowing both languages, because one person may be speaking Ukrainian, the other person will be answering in Russian, or they’ll switch half way through

MCCARTHY:  The country’s bilingualism is made easier by the fact that the two languages are closely related.  Both use the Cyrillic alphabet and about a third of the words are similar.  And while this linguistic co-existence may seem peaceful, for many Ukrainians, it’s also a political flashpoint. Some, including President Viktor Yushchenko want to reverse the effects of two centuries of Russian cultural dominance and outright suppression of the Ukrainian language. Yushchenko is a native Ukrainian speaker.  He argues that his country’s survival is at stake. He told a German magazine recently, “If a nation loses its language, it loses its memory, it’s history and its identity.”  Volodymyr Kulyk agrees with President Yushchenko on the language issue.  He’s a researcher on ethnic studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and like Yushchenko, is a native Ukrainian speaker.

VOLODMYR KULYK:  Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union but Ukrainians are still not separated completely from Russians mentally, culturally and for some, politically.  And besides, if we have all Russian in common, how different we are from Russians?

MCCARTHY:  Kulyk says growing up in the Soviet Union, he didn’t question the dominance of Russian.

KULYK: For some time, I was polite in a way most Soviet Ukrainian people were, so when spoken to in Russian, I switched to.  Then I decided, “No way.”

MCCARTHY:  He remembers the exact moment.  It was in 1987, four years before Ukraine won its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union.  Kulyk was at a play with some Russian speaking friends.  It was intermission.

KULYK: I just remember at one point, I said, “Sorry, guys, but that’s enough.  I have to reclaim my language.”

MCCARTHY:  Reclamation of its native language was a cornerstone of Ukraine’s drive for statehood.  One of the very first things that Ukrainian nationalists did was declare Ukrainian the sole official state language.  That declaration was partly symbolic.  Russian speakers kept speaking Russian and it’s still widely considered the more prestigious language.  Many Russians look down on Ukrainian as a peasant language.  But that’s changing, because Ukrainian is now the language of education.  Eighty percent of the nation’s schools, including universities, now use Ukrainian as the primary language of instruction.  And anthropologist Laada Bilaniuk says Ukrainian is starting to shed its humble country cousin image. In fact, it’s becoming fashionable.

BILANIUK: A lot of the musicians that I talk to, from eastern and western Ukraine, might have grown up speaking Russian, or even still speak Russian with their friends, but feel driven to make their music in Ukrainian.

[Band performing song in Ukrainian]

MCCARTHY:  This is Papa Karlo, a popular rock group for mostly Russian speaking eastern Ukraine.  Their songs are in Ukrainian.  Bilaniuk says this is part of the Ukrainian cultural resurgence, led by young musicians and writers.

BILANIUK: They are building something new, and this is a once in a lifetime chance to create this country with this complicated history.

MCCARTHY:  At the same time, Russian isn’t going away.  Even Ukrainian language champions like Volodymyr Kulyk don’t expect it to, or even want it to.  The fact is, Russian is useful. In this part of the world, it’s the language of business and science and cursing.  Some native Russian speakers think their mother tongue deserves recognition as the country’s second official language.  Others, like Marina Yakobovskaya think Ukrainians should continue to learn and embrace both languages.  She teaches Russian at a university in Kiev.

MARINA YAKOBOVSKAYA: Our president was right saying that language, it’s a heart of the nation, but our nation two-hearted, Russian and Ukrainian.

MCCARTHY:  As for me,  I tried to learn Ukrainian before I got here, but it didn’t get me very far, because even if I could make myself understood, people in Kiev answered back in Russian.  So now I’m studying Russian.  One of these days, I might even understand some of those curses.  For The World in Kiev, I’m Brigid McCarthy.

SHARP: Sorry, we can’t repeat those Russian swear words.  For all kinds of words in many languages, check out our weekly podcast, The World in Words.  You can find that at The World dot org slash language.

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.

Photo: RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images

It’s especially popular in the Middle East where it originated. Today’s Geo Quiz wants to get a bit more specific. We’re looking for the country that, this past weekend, staked its claim to being the birthplace of hummus. Chefs there prepared a massive plate of the dip and we mean massive.

It tipped the scales at more than two tons. The purpose was to remind folks that hummus came from this country. At least that’s what the organizers say.

Here are a couple of other hints. This country has a long coastline with the Mediterranean Sea.

And its southern neighbor, which aggressively markets its hummus overseas, was a target of this weekend’s event.

Now let’s answer the Geo Quiz — tell us where you believe hummus originated? Lebanon is the answer to our Geo Quiz.

• Mr. Bigg’s website
• Wikipedia: Mr. Bigg’s

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.

JEB SHARP: In the United States, fast food is ubiquitous, but there are still parts of the world where it’s a novelty.  Take Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.  There are no MacDonald’s or Burger Kings there.  Nigeria does have a homegrown chain of quick-serve restaurants, but providing fast food is no simple matter in a country where the price and availability of food changes constantly.  Reporter David Hecht has our story.

DAVID HECHT:  Picture MacDonald’s golden arches.  Take the yellow M, turn it on its side and add a vertical line to form the letter B.  That’s pretty well the logo of Mr. Bigg’s, Nigeria’s biggest fast food chain.  Mr. Bigg’s has over 170 outlets in 46 Nigerian cities and towns.  They sell hamburgers and French fries, but also local fare.

MAN: This is obgono soup, which is a local soup.

HECHT:  Aminu Sumila is Mr. Bigg’s regional manager for northern Nigeria.  He and an assistant point out the different foods they make in what they call their fast food village kitchen.

AMINU SUMILA:  This is egusi soup.  Or melon.

HECHT:  What about snails?  You have snails here?

MAN: We have snails, yeah.

HECHT:  And what about cow foot?  That’s another one that’s very popular.

SUMILA:  Yeah, yeah, that one is popular.

HECHT: Do you have cow foot?

SUMILA:  Yeah, it’s for everybody.

HECHT: It’s not only the food that’s different here.  Mr. Bigg’s faces challenges American fast food chains could hardly imagine.  Power outages almost every day, often no running water, and prices for ingredients that fluctuate wildly.  Mr. Bigg’s tries to negotiate what it pays food suppliers six months in advance, but Sumila says that doesn’t always work.

SUMILA: What we do, if the prices in the market changes, we sit down and renegotiate.

HECHT:  But that happens a lot, that you have to renegotiate.

SUMILA:  It does happen.

HECHT:  And of course, all these price changes, you can’t pass on to the customer.

SUMILA:  Yeah, it depends.  If more than 50 percent of our raw materials go up, we also do adjustment from our selling price.  But that’s a last option.

HECHT:  Raising prices is the last option, says Sumila, because fast food customers expect consistency.  So it’s even worse when raw ingredients are simply not available, and Mr. Bigg’s has no choice but to pull items from the menu.  Imagine MacDonald’s running out of French fries.  That doesn’t happen, because in the US and other developed countries, fast food companies buy their ingredients from huge agribusinesses that store food year round to provide a stable supply.  Nigeria could function that way too.  In fact, its government has invested in what it calls its strategic food reserves to protect against Nigeria’s lean season, but the system doesn’t work.  Near the northern city of Kaduna, giant steel silos loom over the farmlands.  The silos look impressive from the outside, but inside they’re empty, and they’ve always been empty.

GUIDO FERATTI: Construction began in the early ’90s…

HECHT:  Construction engineer, Guido Feratti, says the silos have been standing here unfinished and unused for almost 20 years.

FERATTI: Usually it takes between six months to one year, maximum, to build a silo.

HECHT:  He’s now trying to finish the job, which has been delayed and delayed, due to corruption and mismanagement.  Nigeria, with its oil riches, is full of big infrastructure that doesn’t work.  Unfinished highways that lead nowhere. Huge dams and irrigation projects that lie abandoned.  And despite the government’s massive investment in modern agriculture, an estimated 90 percent of Nigeria’s food is grown by small scale impoverished farmers.  So each Mr. Bigg’s franchise buys a lot of its food from local vendors.  That may help small farmers, but it presents big problems for quality control.  So Mr. Bigg’s has installed its own testing equipment to try to assure food safety.  Again, regional manager Aminu Sumila.

SUMILA:  And when production commences in the morning, there is microbial analysis.  After the process, the confirm the product is fit for consumption, and we open the door, we start selling.

HECHT:  The system sounds good, but the equipment is in shambles.  Wires dangle where machines have been ripped from the wall.  Aminu Sumila can’t say when the equipment might be working again.  Still, Mr. Bigg’s remains open for business and continues to serve its customers something that resembles fast food.  For The World, I’m David Hecht, Kaduna, Nigeria.

SHARP: David Hecht’s travel to Nigeria was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis reporting.

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.

JEB SHARP:  In Iraq’s eastern neighbor, Iran, the issue is the country’s nuclear aspirations.  Western powers want Iran to send its low-enriched uranium to Russia for processing.  That would allow Iran to develop nuclear energy, but it would restrict Iran’s ability to develop weapons grade uranium.  Today Iran’s foreign minister said his government may agree to send some of its nuclear fuel abroad, but he insisted that  Iran will not give up its right to enriched uranium at home.  Joseph Cirincione is a non-proliferation expert and he’s president of the Ploughshares Fund in Washington, which is an underwriter for this program.  He says mixed signals from Iran’s leaders are an indication of the political turmoil in Tehran.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE:  They have various factions, reformists, hardliners, harder liners, and they’re all jockeying for domestic political advantage.  Remember, this is a regime on the rocks.  This is one that’s had deep troubles since the rigged elections this summer, and it’s not at all clear how long it’s going to survive.  So an issue like this, which gets at the very core of the regime’s national security strategy, is subject to this kind of intense debate.  We just don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

SHARP:  And spell out what the real incentive is for Iran to go along with the deal.

CIRINCIONE:  Well, they’re under intense international pressure.  There is a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency coming up next month.  They would like to go into that board meeting with some of the pressure relieved.  Agreeing to this kind of deal would do that.  The US and Europe have talked about bringing in other sanctions resolution before the UN Security Council. They could do that in late November, early December.  A deal would probably forestall that kind of action.  And finally, Iran has severe financial problems, due to the sanctions that have hurt not so much economically, but have strangled financial investment in the country.  They

desperately need to improve the economy in some way, so there’s pressure on them to make a deal, to loosen up some of the sanctions that are restricting banking and other financial activities.

SHARP:  And to flip it on its head, what do they gain by not complying

CIRINCIONE:  Internally, the harder line factions would be able to pose as the true defenders of the Irani and Islamic revolution against those that would give up Iran’s national security interests.  There really is no international gain for them.  It’s all domestic politics, which is why in the end, I think they’re going to agree to this kind of deal.  What they’re going to try to do is modify it.

SHARP:  And Joe, just one question to follow up to something earlier.  You made a reference to the regime being in the rocks.  Did you mean that?  I mean, how do you characterize the strength or state of the Iranian regime?

CIRINCIONE:  The Iranian regime is much weaker than people realize.  It’s true that Ahmadinejad has sort of purged the bureaucracy and put more of his people in place, but a large faction, maybe the majority of the Iranian population, is now permanently alienated from this regime.  There are splits in the mullahs who rule the country.  There are serious financial and economic difficulties facing this country, huge unemployment among the youth in the country.  Remember, 60 percent of Iran is under the age of 30, and you’ve got unemployment about 40 to 50 percent.  That is a very dangerous situation for any country at any time.  And Iran doesn’t really have any allies.  There’s nobody that really backs Iran.  Russia is the closest they get, and that’s a sometimes thing.  So for those reasons, I believe that the days of this Iranian regime are numbered.  We can’t predict how long they will hold on, but I would not want to be in their shoes.

SHARP: Joseph Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund and the author of “Bomb Scare:  The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.” Thanks so much.

CIRINCIONE:  My pleasure, Jeb.  Thank you.

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.

ROBIN WILLIAMS:  Good morning, Vietnam!  Hey, this is not a test.  This is real–

JEB SHARP: You may well remember Robin Williams’ portrayal of an American DJ for the Armed Forces Radio Service in South Vietnam.  Today, radio listeners in Afghanistan were treated to a new station and a new program.

DUSTY MILLER: Good morning, Afghanistan.

SHARP: Dusty Miller greeted his listeners in Helmand province this morning on the first British forces radio station in Afghanistan.

MILLER:  It’s a music station with music and chat and interviews and features about the British and the US forces, the international forces and the work they do in Afghanistan, interspersed with pop music.

SHARP: What’s your biggest challenge?

MILLER: Our biggest challenge is the fact that we’re based in Camp Bastion and outside of Bastion, certainly in southern Helmand and further in the north, in the Kabul area, it is very dangerous getting to and from any bases.  So although we would love to get out and about and see a lot of the troops who are outside of Bastion, the military here can certainly get us to a location.  They cannot guarantee to get us back in the timeframe that requires us to be back.  So we can’t be away from the station more than 24 hours, because we have a daily commitment on air.

SHARP: Now today, for instance, was not a good day for troops.  A number of soldiers killed in helicopter accidents, and I wonder how you deal with that as a broadcaster.

MILLER: Well, we have a new service that comes in on the hour.  We have a half hourly headlines and sport and we’re in constant touch with the media operations people on the ground.  And we are informed before anybody else that there has been an incident.  In that respect, we are very mindful and very respectful of what’s going on.  We don’t get into the politics of the thing.  We don’t go somber every time there is an incident.  There is a mission, there is a job to be done here, and I think our British and international forces, and of course US forces, who we are right alongside here at Camp Bastion there and Camp Leatherneck.  I think they appreciate that.

SHARP: Dusty Miller, tell us a bit more about what it took to get this thing going, given the harsh conditions and the security precautions you’re operating under. I mean, what was it like getting the infrastructure set up?  How much of a roll out was there, and how difficult was it?

MILLER: Well, we’ve actually been doing this for many years now.  We had the operation in Iraq up until July when it was all handed over to the Iraqi authorities and the British forces pulled out, as did the American– some of the American forces, and so our radio station moved.  And all we’ve done is effectively moved our operation from Iraq, where we were broadcasting via satellite into Afghanistan anyway, to actually come here on the ground.  The biggest problem is the supply chain, getting stuff here in the timeframe that you want it here.  The military move heaven and earth to aid us and assist us and get us here on the ground.  We’ve effectively started building this studio from scratch, on the ground here, since end of May, beginning of June.  So it’s taken four to five months to get to where we were this morning at 6:30 when we opened up our faders and said, “Good morning, Afghanistan.”

SHARP: And what song was the first one played on your station this morning?

MILLER: Well, we put it out to our audience to choose over the last two or three weeks, and I said, “Look, you come up with the title of the track that you actually would like to hear as the very first track and we’ll play it.”  And the number one song at 6:30 this morning, just ahead of “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits was the Boo Radleys and “Wake Up Boo!”
["Wake Up Boo!" starts playing]

SHARP: We spoke with Dusty Miller.  He’s the station manager and morning host of the new British Forces Broadcasting Service radio station in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

["Wake Up Boo!" continues]

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.

JEB SHARP:  I’m Jeb Sharp.  This is The World.  Journalists, it has to be said, kind of enjoy revealing politicians’ secrets.  Now one Russian newspaper has struck on a timely way of doing it.  Here’s The World’s Alex Gallafent.

ALEX GALLAFENT: If you’re a politician in a place where the economy isn’t too strong, where people are having a hard time, most places I guess, it doesn’t make much sense to flaunt your own personal wealth.  But that’s just what Russian polls are doing, according to Vedomosti, a daily business paper.  Now members of the Russian political elite generally don’t reveal their wealth, so Vedomosti guessed by looking at their wristwatches.  Turns out some Russian politicians have expensive tastes.  President Dmitry Medvedev owns a Breguet Classique Moonphase. In the US, that costs about $32,000.  Transport Minister Igor Levitin wears a Patek Philippe watch, almost 75,000.  The governor of the Samara region, Vladimir Artyakov, tells the time using a DeWitt watch.  That costs more than 200 grand.  And then there’s Ramzan Kadyrov.  He’s the powerful president of the Russian republic of Chechnya.  According to official documents, he earns $100,000 a year and owns a Lada, the fabled car of the Soviet proletariat.  But his wrist is adorned by a Bovet-Fleurier minute repeater.  That’ll set you back $300,000.  But wait for it.  Here’s the priciest watch worn by a Russian leader, and why not.  Let’s use the company’s online soundtrack for dramatic effect.  The watch is the DeWitt La Pressy Grande Complication.  Vedomosti, the business daily, reports that it’s worn by the deputy mayor of Moscow, Vladimir Resin. The timepiece is worth just over $1 million.  It’s a beautiful thing if you’ve got the cash.  And as another high end watchmaker puts it, a watch is not merely a method of telling the time.  It is a silent statement about your values.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

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.

JEB SHARP:  I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The trial of Radovan Karadzic began in The Hague today.  The former Bosnia-Serb leader faces charges of war crimes and genocide.  Those charges include his alleged involvement in the deaths of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.  But there was an empty chair where Karadzic was supposed to be.  That’s because he’s boycotting the proceedings.  Reporter Emily Kopp attended the opening of the trial.

EMILY KOPP:   Family members of those who died during the Bosnian War in the 1990s stood outside the courthouse, waiting to hear if they had seats to the trial.

[People speaking Bosnian]

KOPP:  They help posters and photographs of loved ones, but inside the building, it was anticlimactic. Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon noted that the defendant, Radovan Karadzic, was not present.

O-GON KWON:  I also note that as he has chosen to represent himself in these proceedings to date, there’s no counsel present on his behalf

KOPP:  Karadzic had warned the court that he would not be there.  He said he needed another ten months to prepare his defense.  But prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff said Karadzic is just stalling for time.

HILDEGARD UERTZ-RETZLAFF:  The accused, despite having exhausted the legal remedies, now wants to dictate the commencement of trial through other means.

KOPP:  The defiance Karadzic is showing towards the tribunal brings to mind the trial of Slobodan Milosevic before the same court.  The ex-Yugoslav president obstructed the proceedings for four years before that trial ended with his death in 2006.

[Relatives talking in Bosnian]

KOPP: Relatives of victims of the Bosnian war voiced frustration with today’s proceedings.  Suada Mooch came here from Srebrenica.

SUADA MOOCH: [speaking Bosnian]  I think Milosevic made a circus of this court and Karadzic is doing the same.

KOPP:  One of the defendant’s legal advisers says Karadzic will stay away from the court again tomorrow.  The judge says the trial will resume anyway, with opening statements by the prosecution.  For the world, I’m Emily Kopp in The  Hague, the Netherlands.

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.

JEB SHARP:  Karadzic’s absence from the courtroom today struck Amherst College law professor Lawrence Douglas as sad, sad but predictable.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS:  This is something that Karadzic had threatened, and I think it will be interesting to see whether he continues with the strategy in the future, because the court made it clear that if it does, they will simply appoint a counsel and whether he’s present or not, the trial will continue.

SHARP:  So this strategy of his could actually backfire.

DOUGLAS:  I think it could, because, you know, one of the things that Karadzic wants to do apparently is, it’s like he’s trying to take a page out of Slobodan Milosevic’s playbook.  He’s trying to make himself the focus of the trial.  He wants to challenge the legitimacy of the tribunal, and in order to do that, he actually needs to be present.  So I think his strategy of boycotting could actually backfire on him and I think, given his interest in showmanship, he actually wants to be in the courtroom.

SHARP:  Yeah, that’s very interesting. We should remind people that Milosevic carried on his own defense.  There were many antics.  There were also legitimate delays because of his many health problems.  But there was at times a circus atmosphere, and as you say, that’s what people will be worried about.  What do you think the tribunal is thinking, in terms of trying to prevent that, should Karadzic return to the courtroom?

DOUGLAS:  I think first of all it’s important to emphasize that even if Karadzic wants to play Milosevic part two, that the prosecution learned a lot from the first Milosevic case. I mean, for example, the indictment of Karadzic is a far more streamlined document than the really kind of massive and unwieldy indictment that the prosecution brought against Milosevic.  And the other thing to bear in mind is Milosevic, he actually was a student of law, and it wasn’t simply to harangue the court.  He actually was pretty quick on his feet.  And I’m not sure if Karadzic is capable of engaging in that same kind of antics.  And maybe the third thing worth emphasizing is, what was very effective when Milosevic did it, that was kind of fresh.  And to se Karadzic doing it, it might really just bore people, and the court can just cut him off.

SHARP:  What do you think is critical about this particular case?  What’s specific to the indictment against Karadzic and why does this case matter on its own merits?

DOUGLAS:  Well, I think there are a couple of things.  The prosecution sees this as their chance to make good for everything that went wrong in the Milosevic case.  Most emphatically what went wrong, of course, Milosevic died before any judgment could be rendered.  So Karadzic is really the highest level perpetrator to come before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and I think for bringing this whole trial program to a conclusion, the prosecution would like nothing more than to have a high level perpetrator convicted of genocide.

SHARP:  And meanwhile, you have these incredibly poignant moments, as this morning, when you have victims and survivors in the audience, on the edges of their seats, waiting for a trial to begin and it doesn’t start.

DOUGLAS:  Absolutely. I  mean, this is something where this is the difference between some kind of legal retribution and vengeance.  The law proceeds by its own very careful procedures, and even though your heart can go out to victims who see the delays in the proceedings as just another example of the inability to bring these perpetrators to justice, we also need to bear in mind that you can’t just drag a recalcitrant defendant into a court and shackle him to a chair.  That doesn’t serve anybody’s interests in the long run either.

SHARP:  Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law and jurisprudence at Amherst College.  Thanks so much for talking to us.

DOUGLAS:  It was my pleasure.

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.

JEB SHARP:  A court in South Africa today postponed a very controversial trial.  The defendants are four white college students who attended the University of the Free State.  They were expelled after making a racist video that was posted on the internet.  The case has inflamed racial tensions that remain just below the surface in South Africa, 15 years after the end of apartheid.  The university’s black chancellor has tried to defuse those tensions by inviting the students back and dropping charges.  Buts the BBC’s Karen Allen reports from Bloemfontein, that’s only ignited more controversy.  And a warning, this report includes a description of the disturbing video.

KAREN ALLEN:  The Free State’s historically been the seat of Afrikaner nationalism, but a video posted on the internet by four white students caused a storm. It showed five black cleaners forced to eat food that apparently had been urinated on.  The disturbing footage plunged the university into racial controversy that just won’t go away.

[audio of incident]

BRANDON BOSCH:  That incident, it has caused a lot of pain.

ALLEN:  Brandon Bosch [PH] represents the students’ union here.  It’s furious that the university’s new black vice chancellor has dropped charges against the four white students, and invited them back as a gesture of reconciliation.

BOSCH: There must be justice.  Professor Jonathan Jansen did not consult with anyone when it arrived to the point of taking those decisions.

ALLEN: In an elegant Dutch building, overlooking manicured lawns and fountains, Professor  Jonathan Jansen, the first black vice chancellor and rector of the university, is trying to set new terms of the race debate.  His decision to show what he says was compassion is one he believes will pay off in the long term.

JONATHAN JANSEN:  This is a division about what kind of society we want to be.  There are people who believe here that you’ve got to shame and blame and denigrate and humiliate white people, and there are others in our society that believes yes, there must be judgment and punishment, yes there must be outrage, but at what point do we provide an opportunity for, you know, symbolically speaking, or metaphorically speaking, parole?

ALLEN:  Professor Jansen’s clear belief is that the university as an institution is to blame for creating an environment where racism persists, and it must share some of the responsibility for righting those wrongs. In the main coffee bar where students have been taking a break from their exams, reaction to his decision to drop charges against the white students has been mixed, largely along racial lines.

WHITE MAN:  I admire the way that he treats the whole subject.

BLACK MAN:  It sets a precedence that if I can do anything I feel like doing, and I’ll get away with it.

ALLEN:  Although the university has dropped its case against the white students, charges are being brought by the Human Rights Commission.  This incident and its aftermath shows a country still struggling with its past, a sense of mistrust in a post-apartheid generation.

SHARP:  That was the BBC’s Karen Allen, reporting from Bloemfontein in the Free State, South Africa.