The Kurdistan Tapes
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
People in the news: it's a hundred years since the signing of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement under which the British and French agreed to divide up the Middle East, and now the President of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, says it's time for outright independence for the Iraqi Kurds. Jim Muir considers the Kurds' flight from Saddam Hussein 25-years ago and what has happened to some of the people he encountered back then. Bethany Bell is in Austria where voting could result in the country getting Europe's first far right president. The French leader Francois Hollande's again said he wants the new nuclear plant in the English county of Somerset to go ahead. It's to be built by the French. David Shukman's been to a construction site in Finland where the French are building a similar reactor - amid some controversy. Have you had a 'camelccino' yet? Hannah McNeish in Kenya tells us camel milk could be the next big thing and that could mean huge benefits for the country's economy, and its camel herders. And vitriol from the presidential campaign might have given people reasons to be discouraged about America, but Robert Hodierne tells a story which he says illustrates the basic goodness of folks in that country
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello from Broadcasting House in London where we've been putting together the latest edition of BBC |
| 0:05.3 | radios from our own correspondent. |
| 0:08.1 | It's the program broadcast on Radio 4 on May 21st, 2016. |
| 0:12.8 | Introducing it is Kate Adi. |
| 0:15.2 | Hello, don't ask about the delay. |
| 0:18.1 | In this program, the nuclear reactor, the French |
| 0:20.8 | were hoping would be a showcase. It's nine years late. Costs have more than doubled. |
| 0:26.4 | The far right picks a flower with a past in Austria. Looks like they're about to vote in Europe's |
| 0:31.4 | first far right head of state as well. |
| 0:35.0 | Suddenly everyone wants camel milk and the herders in Kenya are wearing Rolex's. |
| 0:40.6 | And Americans do care. |
| 0:42.3 | We're out in the Midwest with the people who look after special needs chickens. |
| 0:47.0 | But first, Masoud Bazani, the president of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, |
| 0:54.0 | this week said it was now time for outright independence for the Iraqi Kurds. |
| 0:58.0 | They've come a long way since the dark days of the spring of 1991, when they rose up against Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War, |
| 1:06.2 | only to flee into the mountains where many died after he turned on them. |
| 1:10.4 | Our correspondent Jim Muir was there at the time and spent nearly six weeks with the Kurds as they went through those upheaval's. |
| 1:18.0 | To mark the 25th anniversary of the events, he's been putting together a radio program based on the recordings he made then. |
| 1:24.8 | They've never been heard before because as he now explains there was at the time no way |
| 1:29.8 | to get the material out. |
| 1:31.6 | I arrived in the Iraqi Kurdistan in the third week of March 1991, crossing the swollen |
| 1:37.8 | border river in a tiny boat armed with the technology of the day. two notebooks, a tape recorder and four cassettes. |
... |
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