Shifting Sands
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2012
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pauline Davies in the desert where nothing lives: the Atacama in Chile. But once thousands of miners lived here. Today ghost towns are all that remain. Andrew Harding on how the fears of those living in the Malian city of Timbuktu came to be realised when Islamist militants came to town and started to destroy their historic monuments. Could France be about to issue an apology to Algeria for the brutal events which led up to Algerian independence fifty years ago? Philip Sweeney wonders who exactly owes whom the apology? Of all the postings a correspondent might expect, one in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa was never going to be dull! Thomas Hubert looks back on his three and a half years there. And the dangers from Chernobyl have not come to an end yet. Patrick Evans says there's a real fear the summer heat could trigger radioactive wildfires with consequences which could be felt all over Europe.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello this is the from our own correspondent office at Bush House in London. |
| 0:04.0 | You can check out what we're up to by signing up to our Twitter feed. |
| 0:07.5 | But here's a download of our latest program on BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:11.0 | introduced, as ever, by Kate Adi. |
| 0:14.0 | Today the outside world talks about sending in the troops as the new guardians of Timbuktu |
| 0:18.9 | destroy its famous monuments. |
| 0:21.8 | There's another danger from Chernobyl. A summer heat wave could trigger a |
| 0:25.5 | radioactive fire threatening farmland across Europe. It's 50 years since Algeria won independence |
| 0:32.4 | from France. Today there's speculation the French might |
| 0:35.7 | be about to apologize. And once they were thriving mining communities in Chile's Atacama Desert, now they're ghost towns. Nothing lives there. No birds, no plants, not even insects. |
| 0:48.0 | A crime against history. That's UNESCO's verdict after militant Islamists destroyed |
| 0:55.2 | ancient Muslim sites in the Malian city of Timbuktu, only days after it was |
| 1:00.3 | proclaimed a world heritage site. |
| 1:03.0 | France says it's determined to stop the establishment of what it calls international terrorist bases in Mali. |
| 1:09.0 | The Prime Minister Jean-Marc Airo believes groups like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic |
| 1:14.2 | Makreb are threatening the peace and security of the whole region. Our |
| 1:18.7 | Africa correspondent Andrew Harding says neighboring countries are considering sending in troops to help the authorities |
| 1:25.1 | in Mali reclaim their territory. |
| 1:27.6 | I was alone and ambling through the cheerfully shambolic market in Timbuktu, swerving |
| 1:32.3 | to avoid the donkeys and stopping to chat to some of the traders. |
| 1:35.0 | For the past week, everyone from the governor to the imam, to my guide and translator, |
| 1:40.0 | Halis, had been earnestly assuring me that Timbuktu was safe. The threats of al-Qaeda and of kidnapping |
... |
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