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radio four here's Kate Aide. Good morning. Afraid even to say they're afraid.

Today, encounters on the streets of Syria.

Also, why none of the women we meet on assignment in Afghanistan wants the Western forces to leave.

There's a further challenge for the world's newest and poorest country,

introducing English as the official language,

and another first for technology, as it breathes new life into the long dead

ghosts of Mont-Parass. The White House last night called on Syria's President

Basha Al-Assad to step down, saying he was taking his country down a dangerous path.

At least 17 people are reported to have been killed yesterday, as thousands of protesters

again took to the streets in a number of cities.

Leise duet's been meeting people there while closely monitored by government minders.

It took a long time to get a visa for Syria and I will remember this trip for a long time and hold on to some keepsakes

Most of all to crumpled bits of paper one scribbled in haste says this,

Thank you, but no one can meet you. The army is in the street. People are afraid of them.

I never met this man. He pressed this piece of paper into my colleagues hand when he saw us

rare foreign journalists in his country outside his mosque on Friday. But he also saw the

soldiers, their guns at the ready and the plain-clothed spies. He was brave, but just brave enough

to let us know he was scared. My second bit of paper was discreetly passed to me by someone

...