Settling Scores
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Whewell, just back from Mali, talks of retribution. Every conflict throws up winners and losers. And it's the nomadic Touareg, he tells us, who have become targets for revenge. Arguments over gun control have once again been dominating the headlines in the US and Paul Adams has been reporting on a debate he says is quintessentially American. Darius Bazargan has been in northern Lebanon, where he has been talking to factions allied to different warring groups in Syria. The Swiss train service has an enviable reputation, but Imogen Foulkes has been finding out it has managed to anger its customers. And in South Africa, Hamilton Wende has been out with a group of township teenagers whose extravagance and flamboyance is angering some of their elders.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello from the from our own correspondent studios at Broadcasting House in London. |
| 0:04.4 | You've downloaded the latest edition of the program broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:08.9 | It's introduced by Kate Adi. |
| 0:11.2 | Today time for settling scores in Mali, and it's the Tuareg, once the dashing heroes of the dunes who are now |
| 0:19.2 | targeted for revenge. |
| 0:21.5 | We meet a tearful Lebanese killer tamed by a 12 year old girl. There's |
| 0:26.9 | outcry in South Africa at the township teenagers trashing expensive clothes, and the trains in Switzerland they still run like |
| 0:36.2 | clockwork so why are their passengers so wound up? There are winners and losers |
| 0:42.2 | in every conflict and as the French continue their military operation against the Islamist rebels in Mali, it's looking like the biggest losers could be the Twareg. |
| 0:52.0 | Not so long ago these nomadic pastoralists of the Sahara |
| 0:55.9 | with their colourful veils and haunting desert music enjoyed a swashbuckling romantic image, |
| 1:01.7 | particularly here in the West. Now though, Tim Hule says they find themselves |
| 1:07.0 | increasingly reviled and accused of collaboration with the militants. |
| 1:12.0 | Once upon a time two brothers went hunting together far out in the Malian bush. |
| 1:17.2 | They wandered further and further, but found no game, until eventually they collapsed, |
| 1:22.4 | exhausted under a tree. The younger brother began to complain |
| 1:26.0 | about how hungry he was. So the elder one went off to try to find food. At last he came back |
| 1:31.9 | with some meat which was eagerly cooked over a fire. |
| 1:35.6 | Only when the younger brother had satisfied his hunger did he start to wonder where the |
| 1:39.6 | meat came from. |
| 1:41.3 | And then he noticed a bloody bandage around the other's leg. |
| 1:45.0 | Horrified, he realized that his elder brother had cut off a piece of his own thigh to save him from starvation, and he was overcome with guilt. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.