Global News Podcast - Syrian rebels take control of second major city

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

The Syrian army says it’s withdrawn from the city of Hama after intense clashes. Also: health workers in Sierra Leone will be among the first to receive an Ebola vaccine, as part of a nationwide campaign.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If Hitler isn't defeated, it's the end of the free world. Purple Heart Warriors, listen now by searching for dramas wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 1400hrs GMT on Thursday the 5th of December, these are our main stories. Rebels in Syria take control of a second major city with the withdrawal of President Bashar al-Assad's troops from Hama.

South Korea's former defence minister is banned from leaving the country after the president's failed attempt to impose martial law. Also in this podcast... The way I saw my sister, I didn't see her get killed, but I saw her dad. And that there is the deed of a monster. Disturbing reports of sexual violence in the illegal mines of Brazil. Last week the conflict in Syria which began back in 2011 flared up dramatically when rebels seized the city of Aleppo, forcing a hasty retreat by the government troops of President Bashar al-Assad.

Now the Syrian army has announced its withdrawal from another key city, Hama, just two days after the rebels began a campaign to seize it. The rebels say they've taken control of the central prison and freed detainees there. For more, here's our Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab, who's in Beirut. It's really a fast-moving operation that within an hour we are hearing reports that the opposition are announcing that they are inside the city have tried to speak to some people inside Hama but most of the internet and communication is cut off people are only communicating through landline so there are reports that they even freed the prison and some inmates are out of the prison. The Syrian government put a statement, the defence ministry put a statement saying that

fearing for the safety of civilians, the army has redeployed and repositioned outside the city of Hama. So this is major development. Al-Julani, the head of Ha'i al-Tahdir al-Sham, the group leading this operation basically also came out to talk to people in Hama referring to the massacre that happened in 1982 against the Muslim Brother and saying that this is the time to go back to the city and liberate it. So a lot of development here and it's hard to reach people on the ground because of the communication but it seems that the rebels are advancing in fact.

So is it your sense that President Assad's forces are really on the back foot? Well if you look at the situation of the Assad forces over the year, they've been exhausted, they're poorly paid, some are really not even sustaining to make ends meet, and just in the past few days, the President Assad raised their salaries by 50%, a sign that he's really trying to appease to the army. We heard report both in Aleppo and now in Hamad that many of the army units have like withdrawn, fearing the battle, but also not having the energy to fight

because they're completely exhausted. So apparently that there is some sort of weakness there, coinciding with also the defeat of Hezbollah in Iran by Israel both in Syria and in Lebanon. So all of the situation shows that there is some weakness that the rebels have taken advantage of but of course it's hard to see them advancing to areas where for Assad they are strategic. Outside Homs, outside Hama, towards Homs, there are many Alawite villages and towns. There is the road that leads, connects the coastal side where

the Russians are based and it's also connecting to Damascus. So it's hard to see them advancing beyond Hama and it's hard to tell if they are going to remain in control of Hama itself or Aleppo. But there are diplomatic moves going on behind the scenes, aren't there? Definitely. The countries that have a stake and a say in Syria, like supporting Assad, Russia and Iran, or Turkey supporting the opposition, they're all meeting in Doha, in Qatar, on the side of the Doha Forum over the weekend.

All have a say on the ground in Syria, little to President Assad's decision basically. But it's really, we will have to wait and see what the agreements will come out to. This advancement has taken everyone by surprise, even President Assad's allies. And so we'll have to wait and see what kind of diplomatic solution will come out of this. Lina Sinjar. South Korea is still reeling from President Yoon's shock decision on Tuesday night to impose martial law. There were angry protests and the decision was quickly overturned by Parliament. The defence minister has now resigned

and is facing an investigation. Kham has returned to the streets as people wait for the outcome of a vote in Parliament to impeach the President, which is due to take place on Saturday. The opposition only needs the support of eight members of Mr Yoon's party to force him from power. Our correspondent, Rupert Wingfield Hayes, reports from Seoul. At the entrance to the National Assembly I meet senior opposition lawmaker Lee Yoon-joo. Her fury at what President Yoon has done is barely contained. This is a violation of the constitutional law and a violation of the, you know, common sense because you saw that every soldier come all over in the National Assembly. Oh, it's shocking things that 2024 in South Korea, not North Korea.

The feeling of shock and anger is very widespread here. There's also a sense that President Yun must have known his martial law decree wouldn't work. So why did he do it? John Lee is a political risk analyst at Korea Pro in Seoul. It's crossing the Rubicon basically, yes. Did he think that people would be behind him? How did he think he would get away with this? There is this perception, this speculation, that the president has engulfed himself in

a bubble where he believes that he is genuinely has been wronged and that he is genuinely trying to save this Republic. And so he's saying that okay we have this opposition who is using the tyranny of the Parliament, of their overwhelming majority, to block what's badly needed reforms for the benefit of this country and so I think he truly believes that he is working for the benefit of the country rather than for himself. Behind this current crisis is something that feels very familiar. South Korea is now a highly polarised and fragmented society.

The political forces opposing each other are using every means they can, political and legal, to try and attack and destroy each other. The vote to impeach President Yun now looks set for Saturday. It may fail, but if it does, that will not be the end. Mason Ritchie is a career specialist at the Lowy Institute. He says the opposition will then turn to its traditional strength by calling its supporters to the streets. They're going to throw, I think, everything they can at messaging. The martial law decree was not only unconstitutional,

but was also treasonous. From Washington to Tokyo to Brussels, South Korea's allies are looking on in quiet dismay. This country was seen as a bastion of democratic freedoms and a key military ally. Now South Korea looks set for a period of prolonged political turmoil. Robert Wingfield Hayes. Well I've been speaking to our sole correspondent Jean McKenzie about what happens next. First she told me more about the resignation of the defence minister

and the role he seems to have played. It's been reported that the defence minister was the one who really spearheaded this, that he was the one that proposed this idea to President Youn. We don't have the evidence for this, but we do know that the defence minister has resigned today and the president has accepted his resignation. Now what he has come forward and said is that he takes responsibility for the chaos that we've seen over the last couple of days. But he's not saying that he was the one that proposed this to the President. He's not gone quite that far. But the interesting thing about the Defence Minister is that, you know,

this is somebody who was sworn in about three months ago. And when that happened, the opposition party here, they raised alarm bells. He is very conservative. He's very hawkish. He took a very hard-line stance against North Korea. But what the opposition was concerned about was how close he was to the president. So he actually went to school with the president. And the opposition were worried that the president was surrounding himself with these very close allies. And they even touted this idea that he might be doing this in order to bring in martial law. But at the time it was just seen as such a far-fetched idea that most people

dismissed it and even the president's office and the minister himself came out and said it was a conspiracy theory. And what about the president himself? We've still heard no word, have we? We have heard nothing from the president, no, since he made that decision to lift martial law just over six hours after he brought it in. And we don't think we're going to hear from him today. We do now have, though, the impeachment vote scheduled for seven o'clock on Saturday night, it seems. So it looks like what the opposition party is trying to do with this impeachment vote is give themselves enough time really because they still need to get eight members of the ruling party to vote with them on this, to impeach the president. And the ruling party has come out today to say that they are actually going to oppose this vote. They don't want to remove the president from office. Now the

vote's anonymous, so it's quite possible they could convince in this time eight members to sort of cross the floor, defect and vote with them. But I've been speaking to some opposition lawmakers today and yesterday and they're not hopeful they're going to be able to do this. Now, by calling on Saturday night, they're hoping to see big protests here in Seoul because more people tend to protest at the weekend. And they hope that they can use that as some leverage, some pressure on the politicians to say, look, this is what the public wants. And we've actually had some polling today, the first polling since everything kicked off on Tuesday, to show that nearly 75% of the public now support impeaching the president. So even if the politicians don't go for this on Saturday, the question

then becomes, you know, what do the public want? Are the public going to accept him to remain in office? And certainly there are enough people on the streets now saying they're going to stay on the streets until he resigns. Jean Mackenzie. One consequence of Donald Trump's election victory last month was a surge in the value of Bitcoin because of hopes that he'll adopt policies which support cryptocurrencies. Now fans of Bitcoin are celebrating after its price passed $100,000 for the first time. I heard more from our cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy. A hundred K per coin has been a bit of a holy grail now for cryptocurrency fans for many years.

Lots of people in this sort of industry thought they could get there. Other people were saying that it will never get there. And there's been even bets taking place. People have been watching live streams of the price fluctuating and just sort of bubbling below 100k to celebrate the moment that it passed it. And now there's lots and lots of happy people out there who have potentially got quite rich because of course Bitcoin used to be worth pennies and then it was worth a few thousand. And now we hit the 100k mark. And as you say, a lot of it's come down to the fact that Trump during his election campaign said that he wanted to make the US a crypto capital of the world.

And he said that he was going to accept cryptocurrency as donations, which he did and raised lots of money and even started his family started a company in cryptocurrency as well. And he has now said he was going to name as the next SEC, which is Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, and that'd be Paul Atkinskins who seems to be far more crypto friendly than the current SEC chair who is Gary Gensler who in the crypto world has become a bit of an enemy to the fans of crypto because he's held back in their view some of the policies that would have let crypto flourish. It's digital currency of course and it goes down as well as up. I mean can this rapid rise in the value of Bitcoin be sustained, do you think?

Who knows? It would be rich if you knew, I suppose. Well, exactly. Yes. I'm looking now at the line of value that everyone in the crypto world sort of worships, this green line of going up and down. And if I look back to March 2020, a coin was worth $6,200. And then it went right their way up to 60,000 in 2021. And the start of this year, it was about 20,000. So look at it now. It's crazy. It's 103. Who knows? As you say, there's no backing from a financial regulator here. Cryptocurrency is decentralized. So it all depends on what individual retail investors and also giant hedge fund investors,

what they're going to want to do. sometimes you see the value drop very, very rapidly because people take profits and other times it goes up. It's very hard to say, extremely volatile. Joe Teide. Women who trade sex for gold at illegal mines deep in the Brazilian Amazon have described to the BBC the violence they face. Areas occupied by gold mining in Brazil have more than doubled in the last decade, with much of the gold ending up in the EU, North America and other countries around the world. It's a trade that draws thousands of women to mines across the rainforest in search of a better income. But the UN says the expansion of gold mining in

the Brazilian Amazon is exposing women to violence, sexual exploitation and trafficking. BBC 100 Women gained rare access to some of the victims who describe the dangers they face as sex workers at the mines. Thais Carranza reports. Deep into the Amazon forest, illegal gold mining is a booming business with tens of thousands of people rushing to try their luck. The life of a miner is suffering, Roque tells me. He shows me around the improvised check he calls home, just on the edge of a crude open pit. He doesn't own much.

Here in the forest it's a hard, lonely life, he says. We only relax when we find some gold, then we go to a brothel, find a girl, get a drink. It's the only fun we get in the solitary life of a miner. On the sandy banks of the Tapajós River, the town of Itaituba is known to locals as the Gold Nugget City. People's livelihood here mostly depends on illegal mining. Dayane has seven children to support at home. And for the last 16 years, she has been traveling periodically to the mines to work as a cook,

a washerwoman, a barmaid and a sex worker. I did sex work when I was 17 because I had a bill to pay and I had no money for it. I'm not proud of it, but I did it. The last time I went to the mine was three months ago. I spent two months working at a bar and it was all on me. Serving drinks, sex work, I did it all. Sex work is common here, and women can command much higher prices if they choose to live and work on site in illegal mining camps.

That however, comes with risks. I was sleeping in my bedroom and a guy jumped through the window and put a gun to my head. If they pay, they want to own the women. There are no official statistics showing how many women work around the mines, but it is likely to be thousands. The UN says they are exposed to roots in physical and sexual violence. The Brazilian government says it is committed to combat human trafficking and has taken action to stop the spread of illegal mining. But high gold prices continue to make the activity profitable.

26-year-old Raelle da Silva Santos was one woman who lived that life. The mother of two had moved to an illegal mining camp for work. These are some of the last messages she left to her cousin. Police say she was killed after a man solicited her for sex and she refused. A suspect was arrested but the case has not gone to trial yet. He denies all charges and his lawyers decline to offer a comment to the BBC. Hael's children are now being looked after by her family. Her sister, Haelani, is still haunted by how her body was found, savagely beaten to death.

She fought so hard for her life, so much that her blood was all over the wall. The way I saw my sister, I didn't see her get killed, but I saw her dad. And that there is the deed of a monster. Jelene says she regrets allowing her sister to go to work near the mines. But in her words, there is also a sad sense of resignation. A lot of people who died here in the mining area are women. My sister isn't the first and I'm sure she won't be the last either. Jeleni, ending that report by Thais Carranza.

Still to come on this podcast. It literally took my breath away. It just didn't look real. A container ship the size of three football fields had slammed into the key bridge and took this bridge down almost instantaneously. Eight months on from the Baltimore disaster in the US, how can bridges be made safer? An Afghan media rights group says the Taliban authorities have raided the office of a private television channel in Kabul in another example of the group's crackdown on the media. The country's ministry of vice and virtue says it shut down Arezzo for broadcasting content that was inconsistent with Islamic principles. As our Deja Regional Editor Anbar Hassan Ehterajan told us more.

The Taliban authorities, they sent a team of guards who entered this television channel building in Kabul. They confiscated the mobile phones of the employees. According to the Afghan media watchdog, these employees were interrogated for hours and then they had taken into custody seven of the employees. Now the Taliban, they have come out with a statement, the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, they say, for the development of the Islamic society, it is necessary that the media has freedom of expression and Islamic morals and principles. Some people were taking advantage of the name of Arzo TV to carry out actions in conflict with Islamic values and national traditions. What they did not specifically say why this raid was carried out,

but what the Afghan journalists are saying is that, you know, it was also broadcasting Islamic themed Turkish dramas, some of the serials. But there is also suspicion that because it is having links with others outside Afghanistan, other media outlets, which are critical of the Taliban administration from here. So we are not very clear what specific reason why the Taliban wanted to raid this office. But there are suspicions that it could be because of the links with medias outside the country. I mean, this is not the first time, is it, that the Taliban have shut down a TV channel?

Since they took over in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed several restrictions on broadcasters and media outlets. Now the rights groups say more than 50% of broadcasters, you know, private channels have been shut down and many journalists, 50% of the journalists had lost their jobs. In fact, the Committee to Protect Journalists last month strongly criticised the latest Taliban directive in September, for example, about they should choose the guests for the political shows from the list sent by the Taliban. Number one, there should not be any more live broadcast of the political shows. It should be prerecorded.

If you're going to have anyone from the outside the list sent by the Taliban, that has to be granted approval by the Taliban. So these are many restrictions against these journalists and broadcasting agencies and that is putting real danger of freedom of expression in Afghanistan. And Barisan Ehterajan. Ten years ago in West Africa, an outbreak of the deadly viral infection Ebola claimed the lives of thousands of people. Now the government of Sierra Leone is beginning a rollout of the world's first ever nationwide vaccination campaign against the disease.

Dr. Rina Doshi is the Emergencies Immunisation Officer at the WHO Regional Office for Africa and she's booked to Rob Young about the campaign. They're going to be doing it in two phases, so rolling out vaccination in the first eight high risk districts and then moving on to the next. Why now? Why not nine years ago after the last outbreak? Things have changed quite a bit. You know, due to supply constraints, the vaccine was previously limited to use during outbreaks. There's actually a global stockpile of vaccine,

500,000 doses that was started in 2021. But now countries actually have the opportunity to apply for Ebola vaccine, given we don't have these supply constraints anymore. Previously, this vaccine was used as a treatment, is that right? But it's now being repurposed as a preventative measure. So no, it wasn't used as a treatment. It was used for outbreak response. So a little bit different. It was used in a ring vaccination strategy, just targeting those really high-risk individuals, people who were exposed or would have been exposed.

It takes about 10 days for the vaccine to work. It's actually quite quick. Because we couldn't predict exactly who was at the highest risk, we use that ring vaccination approach where we vaccinate all of the contacts of cases and then their contacts of contacts. Now it does also, it has been shown to protect against severe disease as well, which is why vaccinating those high-risk contacts who might have been exposed can be really helpful. Will people who don't work in some of those frontline professions also be vaccinated? No, it's a really good question and it's really a matter of risk. And the general public

is generally at low risk of Ebola virus disease. And that's given that the disease is quite rare and it's unpredictable. Also, when you think about those early signs of EVD, Ebola virus disease, there's really similar to other more common diseases that we see, such as malaria or typhoid. So it's frequently misdiagnosed in the early stages before we realize that it's actually Ebola. For example, someone may come in with fever, fatigue, muscle aches, body aches, which are all common signs of all these diseases.

And then the person may go to a health facility, get treated, not get better, then go to another health facility and continue to deteriorate because they're not getting better and not getting the right treatment. And this is really common during Ebola outbreaks. And then during the symptomatic phase, you can infect the health care workers that are taking care of you. So these health care workers can expose others. So these health care workers are really our first line of defense to protect the general public.

Dr. Rina Doshi. Today is the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees, which turned out to be worthless. While Ukraine's allies discuss how to guarantee the country's present-day security, our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams has been to one of the country's former nuclear missile bases. At the end of a long tunnel under the frozen ground of central Ukraine, a one-ton door opens. Suddenly, we're back in the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War. We're inside one of Ukraine's old nuclear missile bases, taking a trip down memory lane,

deep down. So, this is the very cramped lift that is now going to take us down deep underground, more than 30 meters inside the command bunker. And right at the bottom is the place where they were able to launch the missiles. Sitting at the controls, Olexandr takes us through the drill. The launch of a nuclear weapon. Attention! The button, in case you're wondering, is not red, it's grey.

Attention! Countdown! Start! We were being prepared for this. There was propaganda. But we were taught that we would not use nuclear weapons first, so that we would not be tormented by conscience and would be able to press the button. And was it a good idea for Ukraine to give all this up?

Looking at what's happening now in Ukraine personally, I think it was a mistake to destroy all the nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine. But look, it was a political issue. The top leadership made the decision and we carried out the orders. Ladies and gentlemen, President Clinton of the United States of America. 30 years ago today at a ceremony in Budapest, Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear weapons to Russia following the example of two other former Soviet republics, Belarus and Kazakhstan, President Clinton among those offering guarantees of security. The pledges on security assurances that Prime Minister Major President Yeltsin and I have

given these three nations, they underscore our commitment to the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of these states. At the time, it all seemed to make perfect sense. No one imagined Russia would start to attack Ukraine within 20 years. But the anniversary of that fateful agreement is now being used by Ukraine to make a point. When he attended a NATO meeting in Brussels this week, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Sebiha brandished a copy of the memorandum in a green leather folder. This document, this paper, failed to secure Ukrainian security and transatlantic security. So we must avoid to repeat such mistakes.

The question now for Ukraine and its allies is how to find some other way to guarantee the country's security. For President Vladimir Zelensky, the answer has long been obvious. The best security guarantees for us are NATO. No matter what future diplomatic ways to end the war would be, for us, NATO and the EU are non-negotiable. But NATO members are divided, several, including the US and Germany, say now is not the time. And so we're hearing lots of talk instead about peace through strength and promises from the United States, Germany and others to speed up the delivery of military equipment, to make sure that if negotiations do finally take place next year, possibly

overseen by Donald Trump, Ukraine goes into them with the strongest possible hand. Back at the nuclear base, the vast aging hulks of missiles sit out in the open as the snow begins to fall and the temperatures plummet. But not everything here is from the past. So down here in the field between the bunkers, there's a collection of destroyed Russian military equipment, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, all of which has been captured during the full-scale invasion during the last two or three years. None of this, Alexander says, none of this would be here if Ukraine had held on to nuclear weapons.

Paul Adams. Earlier this year, a container ship the length of three football pitches crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the US city of Baltimore. Six highway workers lost their lives and thousands of people lost their jobs overnight. A BBC documentary has been given exclusive access to the salvage operation and spoke to the team's task with piecing together what went wrong and how bridges can be made safer. Our transport correspondent, Sean Dilley, sent us this report. A police officer witnesses the moment the Baltimore skyline changed forever. Key Bridge is down, several vehicles in the water. On the 26th of March, a colossal container ship ploughed into the iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It was destroyed in a matter of seconds. One highway worker was saved, but six others lost their lives. It literally took my breath away. It just didn't look real. This is the governor of Maryland, Wes Moore. A container ship, literally the size of three football fields, had slammed into the Key Bridge and took this bridge down almost instantaneously. We knew that one of the most tragic moments in our state's history had just occurred.

A new BBC documentary has been given exclusive access to the $100 million operation to recover the bodies and clear the shipping channel, and it's also seen new footage of the Dali container ship the day before it struck the Key Bridge. Investigators say that a power outage caused the ship to lose control. Their report found that it experienced two other blackouts the day before. This is going to be a hell of a clean up. The salvage team was faced with mapping the debris, freeing the ship and lifting 45,000

tonnes of steel and concrete before they could fully reopen the port. We can't make any plans on how to raise this wreckage out of the water until we know what it looks like under the water. This is assistant salvage master Robin Bianchi. You want to really meticulously guide them through. All right, when you have your hand on this section, we're going to call this section J. You have the hanger, go back to the hanger part. So I'd have them mark it with a little underwater marker and that correlated to section J on this specific

engineering plan. It looks still connected to it. It was very dangerous for divers because you turn left and you went underneath something like a piece of rebar that's sticking out. You have to remember that that's where you have to come back out otherwise you could become trapped. The mission led up to a dramatic but carefully sequenced controlled demolition, where explosives were placed into a series of holes placed in the wreckage to free the ship.

We were telling people it wasn't going to be, as you see in the movies, a big explosion, but at the end of the day it turned out to be a pretty big explosion. As for the Dali, a number of lawsuits allege that poor maintenance and cost cutting caused it to lose power. Its owners reject these allegations. Eight months on and work will soon begin to replace the fallen bridge. Protective structures will be installed to prevent another disaster. Meeting notes seen by the BBC show that the Baltimore Harbor Safety Committee had wanted to install underwater bollards for years. These bollards help absorb the impact of collisions,

but this measure was never implemented. Safety experts stress that improving pier protection on existing bridges is an urgent priority. The cost of bridge protection is peanuts when you come to think about the cost of replacing the bridge... Here's structural engineer Dr Abiy Agayre. We can't let our old bridges be sitting docks. We can't just leave them unprotected. Structural peer protection. Having tugboats, lay the ships, but doing something, not just sitting and waiting and hoping that nothing happens.

This is a message that will surely resonate around the US where an estimated 1,500 bridges are believed to be at risk. And that report by Sean Dilley is from a new BBC documentary Why Bridges Collapse, the Baltimore disaster. Find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroy-Tajimska, and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson.

Until next time, bye-bye. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands, where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green

technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.