• BBC coverage
• Laura Lynch on day 2 of the inquiry
• FAQ Britain’s Iraq inquiry
• US investigation of Iraq war

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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.

MARCO WERMAN:  This is the World.  I’m Marco Werman.  Americans still have questions about the decision to go to war in Iraq.  Some wonder what intelligence the Bush Administration had on the regime in Baghdad and whether it was entirely truthful in what it told the public about that information.  Still, there have been no high level government investigations of the process.  There have been in Britain though, including one that started this week.  Today’s star witness was Christopher Meyer, Britain’s Ambassador to the United States at the time.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH:  In often colorful language, Meyer revisited the dramatic days between September 11, 2001 and the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq.  He told the inquiry former Prime Minister Tony Blair set the tone.  Within hours of the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, he vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States.  Working the diplomatic circuit in the U.S. capitol, Meyer noticed an immediate impact.

CHRISTOPHER MEYER:  To be Ambassador to the United States of America was, make no bones about it, a heady and exhilarating experience because wherever you went, people would rise to their feet and give you a storming round of applause.  So you had to be careful not to be swept away by this stuff.

LYNCH:  Meyer was as close to the center of power in Washington as any foreign diplomat could be.  On the evening of September 11, he says he spoke to George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice.  Until that day, Iraq was low on the list of priorities for the White House.  But he says Rice’s comments showed the attacks had moved it and Saddam Hussein all the way up to the top.

MEYER:  And she said well there’s no doubt this has been an Al Quaida operation but at the end of the conversation, as we’re just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection to Saddam Hussein.  And that was the very first time, on the day itself, that I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of 9/11.

LYNCH:  Other British officials testified yesterday they weren’t convinced of any link but Bush and Blair were developing a close working relationship and Meyer says that he began to sense a change after Blair visited Bush at his ranch in Texas in April of 2002.

MEYER:  The two men were alone in the ranch until dinner on Saturday night where all the advisors, including myself, turned up.  So I’m not entirely clear, to this day, I know what the cabinet often says for what were the results of the meeting but to this day, I’m not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford Ranch.

LYNCH:  The next day the former ambassador noticed that Blair spoke about regime change for the first time, in a key foreign policy speech that touched on terrorism and the situation in Iraq.

TONY BLAIR:  If necessary, the action should be military and again if necessary and justified, it should involve regime change.

LYNCH:  From then on, Meyer says the UK/US alliance was tighter and the march to war seemed inevitable.  In fact, he told the inquiry that the military timetable meant there wasn’t enough time to do a proper hunt for evidence of any stockpile of chemical or biological weapons.

MEYER:  We found ourselves scrambling for the smoking gun, which is another way of saying it’s not like Saddam now has to prove he’s innocent.   We’ve now bloody well got to try and prove he’s guilty.

LYNCH:  Meyer’s ringside seat in Washington gave him what he believes was a pretty good view of the in-fighting in the Bush Administration.  But over time, the drum beats of war grew ever louder and he criticizes his own government, saying Britain didn’t push the White House nearly enough to draw up post-invasion plans.  He says it was like a black hole.  Meyer recalled sitting with then-Vice President, Dick Cheney, on the day the British Parliament was debating whether to support the invasion.  Meyer says he tried to explain to Cheney the political difficulties Blair was facing.

MEYER:  And his reaction was quite dismissive.  Well, you know, once you get by your political problem and we get to Baghdad, then we’ll be greeted with cheers and flowers or whatever by the population and all this will be history.

LYNCH:  Blair himself isn’t saying anything about the revelations that have come out at the inquiry in the first three days.  But one of his closest allies in the cabinet back then, Lord Charles Falconer, is defending Blair.  He says there’s no chance he made a pact with Bush to remove Saddam as early as the spring of 2002.

LORD CHARLES FALCONER:  No, I didn’t and that’s right.  And I think the evidence that Christopher Meyer gave this morning made it clear that one of the things that the British government and Tony Blair had been influential in doing was ensuring that America did go down the United Nations route and indeed as a result of today’s persuasion, on the fourteenth of September, 2002, President Bush made a very impressive speech to the UN, making it clear that he was looking to the UN to deal with the issue.  So I think far from it being fixed in advance, it was clear the matter was to be decided by the UN.

LYNCH:  Tony Blair paid a heavy price back home for his support of both Bush and the war.  In three days of hearings, Blair’s decisions back then have come under fresh scrutiny, guaranteeing he’ll have much to answer to when he testifies early next year.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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• BBC coverage
• The Taliban insurgency
• Inside the Taliban
• Katy Clark on what if the US loses in Afghanistan
• Jeb Sharp on the mission in Afghanistan

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MARCO WERMAN:  There are also some unsettling revelations today about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.  They stem from a U.S. airstrike that a German commander called in, in September.  The target was two fuel trucks that the Taliban had seized.  The air strike destroyed the trucks but it also killed thirty civilians.  Today, Germany’s top soldier in Afghanistan, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, resigned over the affair.  It seems he knew the strike had killed civilians, even though the German government was denying it.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN:  General Schneiderhan is accused of deliberately sitting on information about those civilian deaths following the airstrike.  Today, Germany’s defense minister, Carl-Theodor Zu Guttenberg, announced Schneiderhan’s departure at a meeting of the German Parliament.  Guttenberg said the general has asked me to relieve him of his duties and even if I hear sarcastic laughter now, I would like to thank him for his decades of service to our country.  At the same time, other German leaders sought to distance the current administration of Angela Merkel from the scandal.  Labor Minister Franz Joseph Jung was foreign minister when the airstrike occurred.  Today he said that Afghan officials had told him a number of civilians were killed or injured but he said the officials later stated that the Taliban and their allies were responsible.  The government has promised to make public a report that General Schneiderhan had insufficient information about the danger to civilians, just prior to the airstrike and yet he failed to share that information with his superiors.  Germany’s opposition parties are awaiting that report eagerly.  Former foreign minister, Frank Walter Steinmeyer now leads the opposition in Parliament.  He said we still don’t know who’s going to bear the political responsibility for this disdainful treatment of Parliament and the public and this is why I believe that a Parliamentary inquiry into this matter is unavoidable.  The airstrike scandal could have an impact far beyond Germany.  Its reverberations could reach all the way to Washington.  Today’s New York Times reports that President Obama is asking allies such as Germany to send a total of 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan but the revelations about General Schneiderhan could make Germans even less enthusiastic about answering Mr. Obama’s call.  Opinion polls suggest a majority of Germans want their soldiers to come home.  Today’s scandal could well discourage Germany from sending even the 120 soldiers it’s pledged, so says Professor Cord Jakobeit of the University of Hamburg.

CORD JAKOBEIT:  So maybe the consequence would be what’s, eighty or ninety so they reduce it a bit further and there will be more pressure on an exit option that should be on the table concerns 2012, 2013 reduction of Germany participation, etcetera.  That’s imaginable.  That’s something that might happen as a consequence of the scandal around this thing heating up.

HADDEN: Germany isn’t the only NATO country likely to resist the latest U.S. calls for more troops.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he won’t send any more soldiers but outside NATO, there’s at least one country willing to pony up, Georgia.  It’s responding to political pressures of its own.  Georgians hope to be invited into the NATO club one day.  Fighting in Afghanistan is one way to score points.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden.

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Here are a few hints. It’s a mountainous area, in a chain of peaks that stretches more than 4, 000 miles. These mountains rise above a coastal desert on one side. On the other side of the mountains is the world’s largest tropical forest.

For the Geo Quiz, we want you to identify the mountain chain and the continent where the potato was first farmed thousands of years ago.

The answer is South America, in the Andes Mountains, in an area now occupied by the nations of Peru and Bolivia. That region remains home to the greatest diversity of potatoes on earth.

And it’s a place where scientists are trying to preserve those potatoes, and to help the people who depend on them.

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Pamela Anderson is the director general of the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. In this audio slideshow she provides a brief and colorful history of the potato in South America.

>>> Click here to start the audio slideshow

Click here to view a photo gallery of Andean potato varieties>>>

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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.

MARCO WERMAN:  For today’s Geo Quiz we wanted to know where in the world potatoes originated.  We asked for the continent and more specifically, the mountain range.  The answer is South America, the continent and the mountain range, the Andes Mountains in an area now occupied by Peru and Bolivia.  The region remains home to the greatest diversity of potatoes on earth and it’s a place where scientists are trying to preserve that diversity.  Here’s one of them.

PAMELA ANDERSON:  My name is Pamela Anderson.  I’m the Director General of the International Potato Center which is headquartered here in Lima, Peru.  In North America and Europe, most of us, when we think of potatoes, think of what we call the white improved potato.  But we estimate that there are five thousand varieties of native potatoes currently grown in farmers’ fields in the Andean chain.  And many of these are so diverse that you wouldn’t recognize them as potatoes if I showed them to you.  They come in all kinds of colors. Yellow, pink, purple, blue, orange, I mean rainbow colors.  Beautiful patterns.  You cut one of them open and it looks like a butterfly on the inside.  They come in all kinds of shapes. They look like little pineapples, eagles’ claws, snakes.  All of these potatoes have names that are [SOUNDS LIKE] Ketchua.  This potato is actually the shape of a puma’s hand and that’s what the Ketchua says, [SOUNDS LIKE] Yama Puka Makin, the hand that belongs to the puma.  So our primary mission here in the Andes is to protect this biodiversity but also to work with the populations in the highlands who continue to grow and utilize these and make sure that as they protect the conservation in the field, they also benefit from these potatoes.  So as an example, last year, Pepsi Co/Frito-Lay who does Lay’s potato chips, came up with a brand new product which was their Lay’s Andeans potatoes.  Those are potato chips made out of the native potatoes from the highlands of Peru. The sales have really shot up exponentially.  They are in all of the major supermarket chains in Lima and moving out into other parts of the country.  This is what it looks like.  You can just see how beautiful the packaging is and that, would you like to taste?  Oh, look at that.  They’re purple, they’re pink, they’re yellow.  They’re lovely.  These are the only potato chips I eat anymore, seriously.  They’re good.

WERMAN:  You can see a slideshow of the unusual potato varieties Pamela Anderson mentioned, including that uncanny puma hand.  The slideshow is at TheWorld.org.  Our interview was produced by The World’s David Barren, with assistance from The International Reporting Project.

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• Crosspulse: 2nd international body music festival
• Global Hit archive

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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.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  The International Body Music Festival kicks off next week in Northern California.  The sounds are all made with nothing more than what you’re born with and the music is 100% organic.  Keith Terry is with me in the studio here at WGBH.  He’s a founder and director of the International Body Music Festival and Keith, I’ve got to say, if you had already eaten your Thanksgiving meal, I wouldn’t want you to start smacking your body around but I’m going to have you illustrate anyway what it’s about in a moment, digestion be damned.  Keith, welcome and tell us first a bit about the International Body Music Festival.  It’s the second time the festival’s taking place in the Bay Area.  What’s it all about?

KEITH TERRY:  Yeah, this is the second year, we started last year and it’s a six day festival.  It takes place throughout the Bay Area, Oakland, Berkley, San Francisco.  We do a combination of performances and workshops and open [PH] mic, a lectured demonstration.  It’s kind of all activities, a party every night.  It’s really a nice hang.

WERMAN:  And so international body music.  I mean presumably, this is something that people all over the world actually partake in.  They have the same kind of motivation to make sounds, not using any instruments except their body, right?

TERRY:  That’s right.  We find both traditional, you know culture specific, traditional body music all over the world and more and more contemporary styles that mix a lot of cultural and rhythmic ingredients.  It’s probably the oldest music, you know before we were making instruments, we were probably playing our bodies and using our voices to express those musical ideas.

WERMAN:  So give us a demonstration of body music as you know it and then we’ll kind of get you to give us a little tour around the world, body music-wise.

TERRY:  Okay, alright so this is a style that I’ve been working on for like thirty years.  So it’s a contemporary style, it’s not a traditional style but I just kind of play around a little bit here.

WERMAN:  So what we’ve got going on here because listeners aren’t here in the studio but I’ll describe it, you’ve got a piece of plywood, about an inch thick that you’re stomping on and you’ve got kind of tap dance shoes on, is that right?

TERRY:  Well, they’re actually, they’re just leather-soled shoes, there are no taps on them.  But they’re hard leather-soled shoes.

WERMAN:  But they’re thin soled and you’re really feeling the floor and then there are the hand claps of course and you’re hitting other parts of your body.  Are there parts of your body that make slightly different noises than other parts?  I mean do you know where your kind of like cavities are?

TERRY:  Sure, I mean they’re subtle.  I mean basically you know, you’re playing the equivalent of a cardboard box or something. There are subtle differences between like the chest and the belly, where you can get these slaps.  In some parts of the world they really get these high slaps like in Sumatra, they get this really nice thing.  And then you’ve got you know, the back side, the butt.  You’ve got a brush on the hip and then you know, thighs and you know, so it kind of moves around.  Visually it moves around and also sonically it has subtlety.

WERMAN:  And the idea of the International Body Music Festival, I mean one could say is that people don’t just speak this universal language of music, but they also you know, speak it using a universal instrument, our bodies so give us a little tour around the globe.  Maybe you can illustrate what’s going on in Bali and then show us some stuff around the Mediterranean, kind of Spanish flamenco palmas which is the hand clapping and maybe some of the interlocking clapping from the Middle East.

TERRY:  Sure, well in Bali, Indonesia they have a [SOUNDS LIKE] Katchok which is interlocking vocal percussion and these are done by men in the past but more and more women’s groups are popping up.  These are concentric circles of performers and the group may vary from anywhere from like 20 performers to a thousand.  I mean sometimes it’s really a spectacle.  And they often use this syllable, [SOUNDS LIKE] cha-cha-cha-cha and it’s just a beautiful kind of whirlwind, it’s like a vortex of how these parts lock in together and it’s very fast.

WERMAN:  So they vocalize but it’s kind of a percussive vocalization.

TERRY:  Very percussive and this can go on for you know, 45 minutes, an hour.  I mean it takes quite a lot of endurance and just great concentration.

WERMAN:  Alright, give us a taste.

TERRY:  Yeah.  [SOUNDS]

WERMAN:  So there’s actually very little smacking of the body with Katchok.

TERRY:  Exactly.  It’s really a local percussion.  There is some, there are choreographed moves where people’s arms are kind of you know moving together and hands are splayed and shaking, it’s kind of a shimmering look with all these hands.  I mean you can imagine, you know, you get 200, 300 people in very tight concentric circles.  It has a strong visual impact as well.

WERMAN:  And to contrast that in Spain and in the Middle East, hand claps are pretty common and especially in flamenco and you know, the antecedents to flamenco in the Middle East.

TERRY:  Exactly, exactly.  Well all throughout Northern Africa, Tunisia and Morocco, all the way into the Persian Gulf, you hear this high popping sound.  It sounds kind of like this.  So you get those high overtones.  I’ve got my hands really splayed, the fingers are almost rigid and it’s a very flat and when you clap, the fingers are aligned.  It looks as, I mean if you look from the side you see one hand basically and the entire surfaces of your hand strike it once and it kind of captures that air in there to get that high popping sound.

WERMAN:  Right.

TERRY:  And you hear these interlocking clapping patterns throughout that region, that whole region.

WERMAN:  And when you say interlocking you’re talking about many clappers kind of going through these patterns and then those patterns interlock [OVERLAPPING]

TERRY:  Exactly.  It’s like a, it’s a weaving of these rhythmic patterns, these polyrhythmic patterns.

WERMAN:  And then make the connection between that and the flamenco palmas.  Literally, the palm, right?

TERRY:  Yeah, yeah.  Apparently the Moors brought it from North America, the Middle East into north, into Spain.  And we have palmas in flamenco music and dance and you hear that a lot.  Palma, palm and you hear palma and contra-palma.  So the palma is the downbeat and the contra-palma is the upbeat so you get this [SOUND], you get this sound a lot in the music and dance and that is created by two or more players, you know, kind of [SOUNDS LIKE] hocketing these pieces together.

WERMAN:  So what happens when you get together people who take different approaches to body music?  How many countries are represented at this?

TERRY:  Well, let’s see.  At last year’s festival we had a group from Brazil; we had then from Turkey, from the Arctic, from Bali, Indonesia, from France, Canada and the U.S.

WERMAN:  So it’s going to be somewhat mirrored this year, right?

TERRY:  Yeah, it’ll be similar this year.  We have [SOUNDS LIKE] Apuve Zapateo which is footwork which is accompanied often by Cajone, the wooden boxes and guitars, but this time it’s being accompanied by vocal percussion.  All the parts are created by the vocal.

WERMAN:  Well Keith, it’s wonderful to talk with you.  Maybe you can set up for us some body work to end the show with today.  Something that’s really just impressed you recently.

TERRY:  I think I’d like to play a piece from [SOUNDS LIKE] Baba Tukas which is a group from Sao Paolo, Brazil.  They’re a 12 member group.  They’ve been together for 10 years and they just have a beautiful style.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

WERMAN:  Keith Terry is the founder and director of the International Body Music Festival.  The festival takes place in the San Francisco area next week.  For more information on the festival and to see an exclusive web performance, just go to TheWorld.org.  Keith Terry, thanks very much for coming in and happy Thanksgiving.

TERRY:  Thank you, Marco.

WERMAN:  The Brazilian group Barbatuques brings our Thanksgiving Day program to a close.  From the Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH in Boston, I’m Marco Werman.  We’ll be back tomorrow with another spin of The World.

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
• In pictures: Mumbai one year after
• On The World: India Muslim community

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The people of Mumbai, India held tearful memorials today.  They were remembering the attack that militants launched against their city one year ago.  It was November 26, 2008 when ten gunmen staged the attack.  They hit the city’s biggest train station, luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other sites.  The raids killed 166 people.  Fursaj Jahani owns one of the places that was hit, the Café Leopold.  Jahani says he and other shop owners in Mumbai are back in business one year after the terrorists struck.

FURSAJ JAHANI:  We wanted to prove to the world that we won, they lost, we pull the shutters up, we’ve opened again.  You know people that had come twenty years back, thirty years back, they came back.  These are the people that supported me, supported this place to bounce back.

WERMAN:  The Pakistan based book, Lashkar-e-Taiba is blamed for masterminding the attacks.  India broke off talks with Pakistan after the violence.  Yesterday, a Pakistani court indicted seven Pakistani’s in connection with the siege.  Shashi Tharoor is India’s Minister of State for External Affairs.  He’s urging Pakistan to prosecute, convict and punish the attackers. He also says Indians should feel pride in their country today.

SHASHI THAROOR:  Today where of course we remember our grief and our mourning, a day in which a horrendous loss of life a year ago will continue to stir our consciences and our hearts.  But it is also a day to salute the courage and the bravery of so many people, our security forces, the police and then the ordinary human beings, the hotel workers, people who went out of their way to save the lives of innocents.  Let the message go today from India to the rest of the world.  India will not be terrorized.

WERMAN:  That seems to be the mood at the Trident Hotel, one of the targets of the militants.  The BBC’s Tinku Ray is there.

TINKU RAY:  I’ve spoken to people here at the hotel.  Many of them here were actually present when the gunmen entered the hotel last year and the stories are so harrowing and so eerie, I actually had nightmares last night but thankfully, it sounds like none of the staff actually left their jobs.  Both of them came back within a few days of the incident ending and people basically have really, really bounced back.

WERMAN:  I mean those scenes, those dramatic scenes are unforgettable, the scenes coming from the security cameras at some of the city’s cafes and the train station and the, of course, the gunmen storming the Taj Hotel and where you’re staying, the Trident.  What is the sentiment now among the Indians who came back to their jobs and are now working in those places?  Any sort of heightened sense of vigilance among them or it’s just kind of business as usual?

RAY:  Oh, security is just amazing at these hotels now, Marco.  You’re talking about airport type security and both of these hotels which were struck, the Taj and the Trident, have spent millions of dollars on increasing their security.  Cars are not even allowed to enter up to the doors.  You have to have your bags scanned and then you are frisked by security personnel.  It’s amazing.  But, shockingly, the station which was also attacked, this is the main station here in Mumbai, has practically no security.  I went there yesterday and we’re talking about a station where millions of people go through every single day and there was not a single bit of security to check people, stop people and I think it’s impossible to do so, that’s the main thing.

WERMAN:  Now Tinku, another target of attack was the city’s Jewish community and I’d like us to listen now to some comments from Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz who is in charge of rebuilding Habbad House.  It’s a Jewish center where six people were killed last year in these attacks.  Here he is explaining why instead of rebuilding the destroyed center, it’s been moved to another location.

RABBI ABRAHAM BERKOWITZ:  Our immediate security concerns take us to a discreet location and I must say that there hasn’t been one week that we haven’t had continued activities and we are not giving up and we won’t go away.  We will not let terror ruin our way of life.  We just are doing it very carefully, with very important steps to be taken.

WERMAN:  Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz there in Mumbai.  Tinku Ray, you said there was no security at the train station, a contrast with the elaborate security at hotels in Mumbai.  The fact that the Jewish center has moved to an undisclosed location suggests a lack of faith in Indian security forces.  Do the Jews of Mumbai feel safe?

RAY:  Well Marco, I think it’s not really a lack of faith for the Jewish community.  I mean you heard Rabbi Berkowitz, who’s from Brooklyn, he’s come here to take over the center from the Rabbi and his pregnant wife who were killed in those attacks last year and he said that the Jewish community in India has never been attacked by any of the communities here so they’ve always felt safe.

WERMAN:  And a year after these attacks, what is the plight of the city’s Muslims?  Do they feel threatened at all?

RAY:  Well that was a really surprising thing.  Following the attacks, there was absolutely no backlash and nobody in Mumbai or even India blamed the Muslim community for these attacks and especially after it was discovered that these gunmen came from outside of the country.  In fact, there were rallies and protests and marches in which people from all communities came together.

WERMAN:  The evidence points to the Pakistan based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba being behind the attack and many Indians claim the Pakistani government hasn’t cracked down enough on the group or at all.  Is the Indian government satisfied that Pakistan is taking steps to ensure similar attacks aren’t in the works?

RAY:  There’s always been this uneasy relationship between the two countries, Marco, India and Pakistan, ever since partition.  Every time there’s an attack in India, Pakistan is automatically blamed. I think this time there has been a lot more cooperation between the two governments and just yesterday we saw the Pakistani government charging seven people in connection with these attacks and I think that’s a very positive step to be taking by the Pakistani’s and I think we’ll have to see how things develop and whether the dialogue between the two countries can now resume at some level at least.

WERMAN:  Tinku Ray, one year after the attacks in Mumbai.  Thank you very much for speaking with us.

RAY:  It was a pleasure talking to you, Marco.

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MARCO WERMAN:  Ben Gilbert arrived in Kabul this week on assignment for The World.  Ben has covered conflicts before in Lebanon and especially in Iraq.  But Ben, this is your first time in Afghanistan.  What are your first impressions?

BEN GILBERT:  Well, it’s a bit different then Iraq, from my experience there. The first time that I went to Iraq in 2004, I arrived to the airport and had to lay down in the back of the vehicle so that I wasn’t seen by any insurgents or people who wanted to kidnap or kill Americans at the time.  Upon my arrival to Kabul International Airport, there’s a big sign from a cellphone company that greets you saying welcome to Afghanistan.  I got into a vehicle that wasn’t armored.  It was with a western security contractor.  He didn’t even bother to lock the doors actually and on our drive home, we dropped off an Afghan who was with us and I stepped out of the vehicle on the street with lots of Afghans around and got into the front seat.  I said you know, that’s okay here and he said yeah, this isn’t Baghdad so my initial reaction was surprise actually at how laid back, at least, I mean this is a former military man and they are often more paranoid than journalists about security here so I was surprised actually at how laid back it is and more laid back at least compared to my experience in Iraq.

WERMAN:  Hm, interesting.  When I hear the word Kabul, when I hear the name Kabul, I think when a lot of Americans hear the name Kabul, we envision a bombed out wreck of a city.  Describe it for us.

GILBERT:  Well actually, I mean I was talking to people here about that and you know, in eight years since the beginning of the war here, it still is a very, very poor country and flying in there are still a lot of houses that do not look like they’ve been repaired but apparently geo workers and other people who work here say that actually the country has improved quite a bit since 2001 and especially the roads is what I’ve been told are the biggest improvement because before they were basically pot-marked with artillery shell holes and now they are smooth.

WERMAN:  And physically what is Kabul like?  Is it flat, is it hilly?  What does it look like?

GILBERT:  No, it’s actually quite beautiful.  I mean it’s stunning actually.  It’s about, it’s at about the height of Denver.  It’s about five, six thousand feet and when I came in it was raining actually and it was cold, like about probably fifty degrees but this morning, it was a clear day, you’re at a high altitude so the air is thinner and there are these very spectacular, dramatic mountains kind of rising up on all sides of it which makes it a spectacular looking city.  Obviously it’s still a dangerous city and still obviously a city that’s very poor and needs a lot of help, but visually it’s quite stunning.

WERMAN:  So tell us about the first story you’re working on Ben.

GILBERT:  Well everyone is anticipating the announcement by President Obama on whether or not to increase the troop numbers here and what the numbers will be if that does happen and so, I think, it’s kind of anticipation.  I mean the country kind of feels, it seems like journalists here and aid workers and various other people are kind of in a holding pattern right now.  They’re wondering what’s next, what’s going to happen, what is the U.S. decision going to be?  This is the deciding moment for the future of Afghanistan.  It’s been eight years and I think people here are just kind of holding their breaths to see what’s going to happen and what’s happening next.

WERMAN:  So where are you going first?

GILBERT:  Well the plan is to go to Kandahar in the south of the country, which is not just a city, it’s also a province and it’s pretty much where the Taliban originated and it’s seen as kind of a major priority in terms of the U.S.’s mission here and if President Obama does increase the troop numbers, it’s widely expected that many of those troops will go there to try to secure both Kandahar and the larger province in the neighboring province of Hellman, which are both seen as strategically significant to the military strategy here and the counter-insurgency strategy.

WERMAN:  Ben Gilbert who just arrived in Kabul this week on assignment for the program.  Thanks very much for speaking with us.

GILBERT:  Thanks, Marco.   Happy Thanksgiving.

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• Photo gallery with romance novel covers

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Romance sells during hard economic times and the world has been undergoing some hard economic times.  Ergo, romance is selling.  The World’s Jason Margolis has our steamy story.

JASON MARGOLIS:  Dan is tall, dark and handsome.  A young Navy Seal.  Jen is awkward, not especially pretty.  She gets by on smarts.  She’s the chief of staff of a New York State assemblywoman.  Dan is Jen’s bodyguard.  They find themselves in a tiny, New York City studio apartment, alone.

SUZ BROCKMANN:  Here it is.  It’s from, this is from, let’s see, Hot Pursuit, page 129.

MARGOLIS:  Author Suz Brockmann picks up the tale.

BROCKMANN:  Dan kissed her.  Jen saw it coming.  He telegraphed it totally, his gaze flickering down to her mouth once, twice, lingering that second time before he looked into her eyes again and leaned toward her, catching her mouth with his.  It was gentle and sweet, reverent almost.  As first kisses went, it was quite possibly the loveliest she had ever had.

MARGOLIS:  Now you might like that kind of writing, you might not.  But it is selling.

BR0CKMANN:  I still have a publisher who keeps wanting more books. You know, I cannot write fast enough for my publisher which is really a great place for a freelance writer to be.

MARGOLIS:  Sales in the publishing industry overall are trending down but sales of romance novels held steady last year.  This year, the Canadian romance behemoth, Harlequin, is projecting growth so just who is reading authors like Suz Brockmann?

BROCKMANN:  I would say that my average reader probably is a 35 year old woman who has a pretty good job and who lives in Ohio and is probably married with a couple of kids and a dog.

MARGOLIS:  But Brockmann’s appeal transcends the Midwest.

BROCKMANN:  I’m huge in Japan and not just because I’m tall.  Korea, China, Germany, France, Spain, Mexico, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

MARGOLIS:  Sometimes Brockmann isn’t even sure which country has published her books or which books of hers they’ve published.

BROCKMANN:  Sometimes they have a completely different cover and you’re looking at it in a language that you can’t read and you’re trying to figure out which book is this and you look on the back and you hope to find a character’s name because that’ll give you a clue.

MARGOLIS:  Brockmann isn’t the only American romance novelist who’s found success overseas.  Harlequin sells books in twenty eight languages in a hundred and fourteen international markets.  In fact, half of the 130 million books the company prints annually are sold overseas.  Allison Kelly is the executive director of the Romance Writers of America.  She says American writers are hot.

ALLISON KELLY:  I even had some Japanese women approach me at book expos, specifically asking for Harlequin novels in English.  They wanted to read not the translated version but the American version.

MARGOLIS:  Huh, why do you think that is?

KELLY:  I don’t know.  I think worldwide American women have a very unique level of respect within their culture.  We have probably more power than women in other cultures and I think the world notices that.

MARGOLIS:  Romance novels might also be selling worldwide simply because they’re a good deal.  English literature scholar, Jayashree Kamble studies global readership trends for romance fiction.  She thinks people are turning to romance novels for basic reasons of economics.

JAYASHREE KAMBLE:  I suppose other things might comparatively seem more expensive, where as a book, it has you know, rereading value and may not be as expensive as you know, going out for a meal and a movie or buying your Xbox or whatever other options there are for entertainment.  So I think you come back to the book which will have the ability to be reread and is relatively speaking, cheaper.

MARGOLIS:  But that statement could apply to any genre of book.  So why has romance fiction shown so brightly during the worldwide economic downturn?  Romance novel authority Kamble says she thinks that people all over the world may turn to romance fiction as a temporary escape from hard times.  Author Suz Brockmann is sure of it.

BROCKMANN:  People reach for romance, particularly in times of stress or turmoil because with a romance novel, within the romance genre, a happily ever after ending is required.  That’s something, I mean we have a lot of leeway in what we write but we got to deliver that, that happy ending at the end of the book.  And I think there’s, it fits into so many readers’ comfort zones, particularly when they’re going through times of trouble, whether it’s financial trouble or some sort of personal trouble, that it just brings comfort to be able to read a story where you just know that everything’s going to end up okay.

MARGOLIS:  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.

MARCO WERMAN:  Picture the scene.  There you are, minding your own business in a tiny town in northern Australia and suddenly you find yourself under siege from thousands of marauding camels.  Welcome to the real life situation that confronts the people of Docker River in Australia’s Northern Territory.  Docker River is home to about three hundred fifty humans and now about six thousand camels.  Civic leader Graham Taylor says the result has been chaos.

GRAHAM TAYLOR:  All of the supplies have been broke and damaged.  Sewers underneath the ground are getting trampled and crushed.  The airport is actually virtually unusable.

WERMAN:  And even beyond Docker River, the camel problem is getting worse, so says Adrienne Francis of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

ADRIENNE FRANCIS:  At the moment, the population’s doubling every seven years and we’ve got an estimated population of 1.5 million of these feral camels across northern Australia.

WERMAN:  All those camels are looking for something to drink.  The drought has made water scarce so the thirsty camels head into populated areas, such as Docker River.  But hold on, all this raises kind of an obvious question, what are camels doing in Australia in the first place?  Journalist Adrienne Francis has the answer.

FRANCIS:  They arrived here actually with the pioneering explorers’ broken wheels in the 1860’s and then the pioneering Afghan cameleers, about 3,000 of them, brought the camels to provide transport through this remote, harsh, arid landscape.  They helped lug the overland telegraph polls and also some of the slathers for the railways and since that time, their numbers have just continued to grow and grow.  It is extremely remote country so it’s a little bit out of sight, out of mind.

WERMAN:  Well, in Docker River at least, camels are neither out of sight, nor out of mind and state government’s spokesman Rob Knight says authorities have authorized a cull of the animals.

ROB KNIGHT:  We’ll be pushing them out 15 kilometers and shooting them and letting them decay into the desert.

WERMAN:  Animal rights campaigners say using helicopters to round up the camels and shooting them by the thousands is barbaric.  Still, Docker River’s human residents say they are determined to get their town back.

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MARCO WERMAN:  We want to update you on another story we’ve been covering this week.  It concerns a massacre that took place in the Philippines on Monday.  More than 50 people were killed.   Their bodies were dumped in shallow graves.  Most of the victims were supporters and relatives of a local politician who is running to unseat a mayor.  Today, that mayor, Andal Ampatuan, Jr. was charged with murder.  But the case might not go to trial for any number of reasons.  The editor in chief of the Manila Daily Tribune Newspaper, Ninez Cacho Olivarez, offers one possible scenario.

NINEZ CACHO OLIVAREZ:  Right now there are four witnesses and they have filed their affidavit complaint but within a period of time, they may just change their tune because here in the Philippines, it’s known all over that witnesses recant out of fear, out of monetary consideration or something but they do recant and if they recant, then the case falls.

WERMAN:  Ninez Cacho Olivarez says that this is just the most extreme example of a series of political killings in the Philippines.  Rarely is anyone charged, let alone prosecuted.  This case she says is just too big for the Philippine government to ignore.

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• Lizzie Martin’s blog
• Bridge Year Program at Princeton University

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MARCO WERMAN:  We’d like you to meet a Princeton University student who won’t have to worry about any quizzes for a while.  That’s because Lizzie Martin is delaying her freshman year while she undertakes a year of social service abroad and she’s doing it on Princeton’s dime.  Martin is part of the university’s new Bridge Year program. The program has placed five students in each of four countries and it’s paying the students’ core expenses.  Lizzie Martin is in India and it’s been quite a change.

LIZZIE MARTIN:  I’m from Louisville, North Carolina, which is a pretty small town and in India, right now I’m living in Varanasi which is one of the holiest Hindu cities in India.  It’s also a very large city.  I have never been in a traffic jam that’s just people before and now I have.  And I have never had to take a different route to work or school because there are cows in the alley but now I have.  But Varanasi is just a beautiful place and it’s such an old place and to live in a place with so much history and you’re you know, walking around or drinking your coffee or whatever here, it’s just incredible.  We also have done a little bit of traveling around India.  We spent a month in the mountains.  We helped a man build a house so that was exciting.

WERMAN:  I imagine Varanasi is quite different from Louisville, North Carolina.  What’s been the toughest part about your experience so far?

MARTIN:  Hm, I think the thing about India is that their idea of space is very different.  In America, we like to have a certain amount of distance from a lot of things, whether that’s you know, animals or insects or illness and hardship and poverty.  And in India you’re forced to be very close to things like that, maybe it’s walking past a cow on your way to work or a herd of water buffalo.   Maybe it’s the beggars and the little children who are you know, tugging on your clothing [INDISCERNIBLE] so where everyday we’re brought really close to these situations that are hard for me to deal with because in America I have a distance and so things that seem really frightening because of the distance that we keep them at, are suddenly not so terrifying and we can find ways to deal with them.

WERMAN:  You write about that distance between people in your blog, which by the way, is just wonderfully written, especially your little comments on meditation and just how hard it is to do.  Now Princeton is picking up basically the entire tab for the five of you in the Bridge Year Program over there in India.  Do you think that there are many people your age who’d want to do this?

MARTIN:  I’m not sure how many kids my age would want to do this but I think that those who would say that they don’t want to do it, would want to do it if they knew how incredible it is.  We really, we live in a global culture now where it’s important for us to understand people from different countries and I think there’s no better way to understand another culture than to really become a part of it and so that’s what we’re doing and I think it’s incredibly powerful and it’s incredibly empowering.  We’ve done things that you know, four months ago, if you told me I was going to do these things, I would say no way, I can’t possibly organize a rickshaw trip from a train station to a hotel.

WERMAN:  Sure you can.

MARTIN:  I can’t possibly build a house out of stones at the top of a mountain.  I don’t know.  We’ve done all these things that are just very empowering, really exciting for me.

WERMAN:  Well just remember that when you’re meditating, don’t think about what you’re going to be doing when you grow up.

MARTIN:  Yeah.

WERMAN:  Lizzie Martin in Varanasi is spending a year in India as part of Princeton’s new International Bridge Year Program.  We’ve got a link to her blog at TheWorld.org.  Lizzie, thank you very much for speaking with us.

MARTIN:  Thank you so much.

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.