As the US is marking its 233rd anniversary of its independence, the BBC’s Kevin Connolly gives his own list of reasons why America should be celebrated.

I have left out such obvious American inventions as electrical light, water-skiing, space travel and the pop-up toaster on the grounds that someone else would probably have come up with those sooner or later.

This is more about the American genius for making daily life more convenient, more entertaining or just more fattening.

First - air conditioning – testament to the American ability to conquer the harshest physical environments and to expand American life towards improbable horizons.

For more than a century now, America has been making machines that blow cold air into hot places – without it Florida, Arizona and southern Texas would be uninhabitable.

Florida’s population has gone up 10-fold since air conditioning became affordable. It caught on as a way of cooling cinemas when hot projection equipment made them unbearable in July and August.

Without aircon, going to the pictures would be as seasonal a pastime as ice-fishing.

Ice cubes, too, reflect the same happy knack for making light of the hostility of circumstance.

Every floor of every motel building in the country has an ice machine; every convenience store sells it by the sackful, and every drink you are served contains lumps of ice big enough to sink a battleship.

All cold drinks in America are served at a temperature which could cryogenically freeze human tissue. I know you find ice cubes elsewhere, too, but in Europe bar staff hoard them as though they were precious stones. In America, they flow in rattling abundance.

Third -valet parking. President Barack Obama says America invented the car, which it did not. But it did invent motoring, and the pinnacle of the American motoring experience is the practice of having someone else park your car when you arrive at a restaurant or hotel.

It makes the list to symbolise the American genius for making money out of simple services done well.

I have paid people to valet my car and then watched mesmerised as they proceeded to park it just a few feet away from me. Somehow, I never feel I am being ripped off.

Item Number Four is aviation. America did invent the aeroplane but it was rather a dull device at first and spent its early years being flown short distances in wobbly straight lines by plucky pioneers.

Before long though, America had invented barnstorming, and intrepid entertainers were performing the Charleston on the wings of bi-planes as they were flown under low bridges. A pointless but brilliant feat.

I put it down to the manner in which the Declaration of Independence promises the right to the pursuit of happiness.

Fifth -chewing gum. One of America’s more enduring gifts to humanity requiring no comment or explanation.

Except, perhaps, to note its surprising antiquity – juicy fruit flavour gum was invented in 1893. Odd to think it would have been a familiar taste already to the Americans who came to Europe to fight in the Great War.

1893, in fact, was a bumper year for people who do not worry too much about their fillings since it also saw the invention of Cracker Jack, a mixture of popcorn and peanut coated in toffee which is the baseball fan’s snack of choice.

It is really on the list representing all processed food since the genius of it lies in a manufacturing process that prevents all the small lumps from sticking together in one big one.

And while we are on the subject of food, achievement number seven is American cheese – an industrially processed foodstuff chiefly valued for its ability to melt evenly on to a hamburger.

Often sold in a shade of orange – also used on motorway workers high-visibility coats – it exhibits a quality which I think is called hyper-plasticity which means once it’s ever been melted it never quite returns to its solid form again.

That is a lot of science behind the cheeseburger.

For anyone travelling through an airport this weekend I thought I should also mention the invention of metal detector in 1881 by Alexander Graham Bell, he of telephone fame.

One of its first deployments was a failed attempt to find a bullet in the body of the assassinated President James Garfield as he lay dying from a gunshot wound. Might have worked too if he had not been lying on an iron-framed bed.

Finally, for this year anyway I give you the space pen – a miracle of engineering which allowed astronauts to write in outer space.

Do not believe the urban myth that says Russians achieved the same effect as the Americans without spending millions of research dollars by sampling using pencils in their spacecraft.

Actually, pencils are dangerous in space because wood is flammable. The Russians use the space pen, too, apparently.

I leave it there because I have run out of time [space] rather than because I have run out of examples of American ingenuity.

Indeed so lavishly have the blessings of providence and the bounty of human ingenuity been bestowed here that by the time America’s 234th birthday rolls around, I might well have compiled an entirely different list.

We will see – but for now, happy Independence Day.

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British forces in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, are paying a high price as the Taliban fight back with ever more deadly explosive devices. Caroline Wyatt, just back from Helmand, says it is a critical time for the coalition forces.

What should have been a simple seven-hour flight to Kandahar took rather longer.

Two days, in fact, after technical problems with our ageing RAF Tristar kept us on the runway at Brize Norton for several hours.

The trooper flight was packed with soldiers, sailors and airmen on their way to Helmand.

There were mutterings of discontent as a new fault diverted us to another base in the Middle East, but they were muted.

For British forces, it seems, this was no rare occurrence.

The air-bridge to and from Helmand Province is under severe strain, as RAF technicians work overtime transporting servicemen and women to and from a battlefield thousands of miles away.

The delay gave me time to glance into the next cabin. Where first class would normally be, was an uncomfortable reminder of the reality that lay ahead for some of the young men and women we were travelling with.

Several rows of seats had been taken out, replaced by stretcher beds and medical equipment, ready to evacuate the most badly injured.

It was a thought that lingered for the rest of the journey, perhaps for them, too.

When the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, few could have imagined that they would still be fighting back eight years on.

Nor that they would have learned so much from the insurgency in Iraq, such as how to build and lay ever more lethal roadside bombs.

Election worry

I was relieved when we took a helicopter to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, avoiding the roads.

"Morale is boosted by squaddie humour, and the letters and parcels that come not just from their families but from strangers across the UK"

Our Chinook sent the familiar choking mix of sand and pebbles flying into the air as we emerged into the 45C heat.

Several Afghan journalists were waiting there to speak to Helmand’s Governor Gulab Mangal who was visiting the British headquarters.

As we watched, Aliyas Daee, a radio journalist from Helmand, told me quietly that he was worried about the presidential elections, and whether voting really could be free and fair.

"Life is very hard here," he said. "We need security, but people are still scared. People want to go and vote in this election, but I know many who won’t because they don’t feel safe enough."

He tells me, though, that the Taliban are not as strong as they once were.

"They fight like musketeers," he says – and I fend off a bizarre mental image of a bearded D’Artagnan in flowing Pashtun robes, before Aliyas goes on to explain. "The Taliban come from nowhere, fire their guns, and then they run and hide."

So what do people in Helmand think of the British and American forces here Nazir, a young translator from Kabul, smiles when I ask.

"People are still hopeful, as they’ve promised us everything. In Helmand, a lot of people are jobless and illiterate.

Those are the things we need help with from the foreigners. We’ve had a lot of war for 30 years, so we always hope for something new – peace. And with more troops, we hope for more peace."

But Aliyas and Nazir are not sure how long the optimism will last unless there is more visible progress.

Difficult conditions

We fly on to a Forward Operating Base overlooking the town of Sangin, a former Taliban stronghold, where the men of the Second Battalion of the Rifles are based in what looks like a crumbling Afghan fortress.

The town I can see from the camouflaged lookout post appears to have changed little since the first or second Afghan war.

"Oh yes, the Afghans tell us about that a lot," says one officer cheerfully. "They tell us ‘my father fought yours’ – it’s as though it only happened yesterday, though what they mean is our great-grandfathers or their fathers."

Life for the soldiers is basic in the extreme, their washing hanging out to dry on lines strung between the sandbags. Socks dangle incongruously next to a machine gun.

Their cramped living quarters are protected by yet more sandbags stuffed into the empty window frames, which do little to keep out the stifling heat.

Patrolling in these temperatures is difficult, in heavy body armour and carrying 80 pounds (36kg) of equipment or more.

"It hasn’t been an easy tour," says Sergeant David Lloyd. "But we didn’t expect it to be."

Several of his platoon were injured and flown back to the UK after a roadside bomb hit their vehicle. Several others from their unit have died.

Almost everyone I meet has seen friends killed or wounded in this campaign.

"But we can’t afford to look back for long," Sergeant Lloyd says. "We talk about it – and then we get on with the job."

He tells me, though, that morale is boosted by squaddie humour, and the letters and parcels that come not just from their families but from strangers across the UK – addressed simply to "A soldier in Helmand".

This week two more soldiers lost their lives in the bloodied sands of Helmand – including a man his comrades called an inspirational leader, the most senior Army officer to die on operations since the Falklands War.

Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and 18-year-old Trooper Joshua Hammond were killed by a roadside bomb and I wondered when I heard of their deaths how many more must die, trying to bring peace to this far away land.</p

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As President Barack Obama heads to Moscow in an attempt to bury the lingering legacy of the Cold War, Rupert Wingfied-Hayes tries to judge the mood of Russia’s leaders behind the Kremlin’s walls.

"While the US put most of its nukes on submarines and hid them in the oceans, Russia hid its massive arsenal in its trackless forests"

Russian horse flies are huge and carnivorous.

I know this from the personal experience of being eaten alive by them while trudging through a forest in western Russia this week.

The real monsters are as big as a cockroach and can bite you through your shirt. It is very unpleasant.

Why was I not better prepared Why had I left the tin of extra strong insect repellent on my desk in Moscow

Good questions. But more important is why I was there in the first place.

The answer is that I was looking for a nuclear missile base. Well, actually a disused nuclear missile base.

Scattered through the forests of Russia and Ukraine, and as far away as the Kazakh steppe, is a vast network of ruins, testament to the once huge size of the Soviet war machine.

While the US put most of its nukes on submarines and hid them in the oceans, Russia hid its massive arsenal in its trackless forests.

Now armed only with a grimy satellite image from the internet I was trying to find the place where one part of it was kept.

Eventually after walking for what seemed like hours, exhausted and covered in bites, we found it.

Nuclear arsenal

The reality was rather a disappointment.

A collection of broken concrete buildings, half demolished. Ransacked by locals for window glass and bricks.

It was hard to imagine that this was once a top secret facility, ready to deliver death on a massive scale.

Even the missile silos were a disappointment, stagnant concrete pools with old oil drums floating around in them.

The huge, metre-thick concrete lids had been cast aside like old pieces of rubbish.

"If we’d come here 20 years ago, we’d have been locked up as spies," one of my colleagues quipped.

And of course he was right. It suddenly struck me just how far the world has come since the bad old days of the Cold War.

A huge part of that is because of a treaty called Start I.

By the end of the 1980s Russia and America had amassed nuclear arsenals of an astonishing size – 60,0000 warheads, enough to blow the world up many times over.

But then, in 1991, the two countries signed a truly historic deal that would slash their stockpiles by 80%. The ruins all around me in the forest were the result.

But since then, despite many attempts, no new deal to cut nuclear weapons further has ever been put in to effect. Russia and the United States still have around 23,000 nuclear warheads, still more than enough to destroy the planet.

Challenging task

One reason is a lack of will, but the main one is a lack of trust.

This week, as he prepared to welcome Barack Obama to Moscow, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said relations between the two countries have sunk nearly as low as they were during the Cold War.

This is the hill that President Obama has set himself the task of climbing.

In April, in Prague, the US president set out his vision for a world free of nuclear weapons.

To get there, the two countries that possess 96% of all the nuclear weapons in the world will have to start by cutting their own arsenals.

That will be impossible unless America and Russia can learn to trust each other again.

‘Anti-American’ feelings

I went to a party at the US embassy in Moscow this week.

It was the annual Independence Day bash.

Everyone who is anyone in Moscow society was there, Gary Kasparov the former chess grand master, actors, writers, business leaders, politicians.

But try as I might, I could not spot a single member of the current Kremlin leadership, big or small.

It is a far cry from the days when President Boris Yeltsin used to turn up in person to toast his American friends.

Since the election of Barack Obama there has been a dramatic change, at least in the rhetoric.

In her first meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Hilary Clinton famously pressed a big red button symbolically resetting the relationship.

President Obama’s visit will put the seal on this rapprochement.

But as I stood in the garden of the US ambassador’s palatial mansion, I heard a very different view. It came from a former journalist who has watched US-Russia relations for two decades.

"The current Kremlin leadership is deeply anti-American," he told me.

"For the last eight years they have been able to hide that fact by pretending it is really George W Bush that they did not like.

"Now they have to face an American president who is genuinely popular around the world.

"He terrifies them," he said, "and they still haven’t figured out what they are going to do."

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Pakistan’s education system has suffered decades of neglect and, with a third of under-nines not going to school, the vacuum is being filled by madrassas or religious schools, as Orla Guerin discovered.

"Pakistan spends only 2.5% of its gross domestic product on education. This in a country where half the adult population is illiterate."

Pakistanis are utterly unyielding on one point – hospitality. Since arriving in this country that has become very clear.

"In some regions they’ll pick up a gun and threaten you if you refuse to drink their tea." That warning was delivered – with a smile – by an army officer in the tribal areas along the border. It was accompanied, of course, by a tray of refreshments.

Hospitality is a religion here.

So when I arrived at one of the largest madrassas in Pakistan, Darul Uloom Haqqania, there were cold drinks and hot drinks. And after the tea and biscuits, lunch was offered.

I was made very welcome indeed – up to a point.

As a Western woman, even one wearing a headscarf and traditional conservative clothing, I was not welcome to take a look inside the madrassa, and neither were my male colleagues, also Westerners.

So our Pakistani cameraman filmed the classrooms without us. We were told this was for our own protection, that things were tense and the pupils might become angry.

Famous pupil

The madrassa has 3,000 students, or Talibs, and one particularly well-known past pupil, Mullah Muhammad Omar, supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban. He studied there as a boy.

The madrassa is so proud of him, they gave him an honorary degree.

I had come to the madrassa to discuss the issue of reform, something Pakistan has been discussing for years.

"Some parents are attracted by the religious education the madrassas provide, others by the free board and lodging given to students"

But the cleric in charge, Maulana Sami Ul Haq, insisted there would not be any reform in his school – whatever President Asif Ali Zardari may say.

"This dream has never come true for anyone," he said. "Many leaders took this to their grave and Zardari will take it to his."

The madrassa denies it is preparing a new generation for jihad (holy war). But Maulana Ul Haq says it is up to the students themselves to decide what they do when they leave the school.

Pakistan’s government can barely count the madrassas, much less control them. The last official figure dates from 2006, when the tally was 13,000. But there may be double that number, according to another estimate.

Some parents are attracted by the religious education they provide, others by the free board and lodgings.

Government schools

Still the bigger threat to Pakistan may be the teaching, or lack of it, in the government’s own schools.

On the outskirts of Islamabad, I met a group of children who had been driven from their homes in the Swat Valley.

"I want to get an education and when I finish school, I want to join the army so that I can fight for my country"

Mohammed, aged 9

There were boys and girls, up to the age of 10. I asked if they had a favourite song or poem, in which they could all join in. They fell silent.

I put it down to shyness, but an uncle of three of the girls came to his own angry conclusion.

"They’ve been at school for years," he said, "but they have learnt nothing."

Pakistan spends only 2.5% of its gross domestic product on education. This in a country where half the adult population is illiterate.

‘Ghost school’

At a government school perched on a hillside in Punjab, we got a lesson in subtraction.

Boys and girls lined up neatly for morning assembly, in their blue uniforms. They prayed and sang the national anthem before filing into classrooms that were clean and bright, and half empty.

There used to be 180 pupils here, but the number has dropped by half, because there are not enough teachers.

"It’s very painful, and I feel extremely sad," said Rukhsana Kausar, the young head teacher, glancing around at the empty seats.

"Our students are very creative, but we don’t have facilities like computers and science labs. If we get more teachers, and better teachers, these benches will be occupied."

But there are pupils here with a great hunger for learning, like Mohammed, a nine-year-old who was too thin for his uniform.

"I want to get an education," he said. "I don’t want to be illiterate. And when I finish school, I want to join the army so that I can fight for my country. I’d like to fight these Taliban who are harming this country."

The boys-only primary school next door was all but deserted, just one temporary teacher presiding over a class of three pupils.

The permanent teacher left in December.

It is what Pakistanis call a "ghost school". Education is a key battleground, or it could be, but it seems the government of Pakistan has not learnt that lesson.

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In the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, Stephen Gibbs finds out what people think of last weekend’s coup, which exiled President Manuel Zelaya.

Fashions from the 1970s are much in evidence in Central America.

Go into any shopping mall from San Salvador to Panama City and you will see tie dye T-shirts and flower-print trousers, even sunglasses of the type last seen on Jackie Onassis.

And this week, it seemed another vogue from that decade, the military coup, was back.

Journalists who were working in those heady years and have not succumbed to alcoholism or corporate cutbacks, can still bore colleagues with tales of long-forgotten takeovers in one or other of the seven Central American states.

So it did feel like a bit of a throwback as I approached the border between El Salvador and Honduras the day the then relatively unknown President, Manuel Zelaya, had been woken at dawn by soldiers and told he was out of a job.

Relaxed atmosphere

I had decided to travel with the correspondent from the New York Times by car.

In the hours following the coup, the airport in the capital Tegucigalpa had been closed. It was a few minutes before nine in the evening when we arrived at the frontier.

I was not convinced that we would be able to cross.

We had heard that a curfew would soon be imposed across the whole country. And El Salvador had just weeks ago elected a left-wing government.

I suspected that relations with the soldiers who had just thrown out Honduras’s leftist leader would be tense. How wrong I was.

Two affable men from El Salvador’s immigration, and their female Honduran counterpart, came out of their apparently shared office, all smiles, to check our passports.

"You might be better not driving at night," said the Honduran. "Apparently there is a curfew".

The "apparently" struck me as odd. I thought the whole point of military rule was that everyone knew the rules.

Lack of information

We crossed the border and looked for somewhere to stay.

MANUEL ZELAYA

• Won the Honduran presidential election for the Liberal Party in November 2005, beating the ruling National Party’s candidate
• Has moved Honduras away from its traditional ally the US
• Enjoys the support of Venezuela’s leftist President, Hugo Chavez
• A civil engineer and rancher by profession

There was only one option: The Mandarin Hotel, an unpretentious truckers’ hostel with nylon sheets and cold beer.

"There’s been no information at all," said the owner of the hostel, as he looked at the television above us. "They’ve put on children’s cartoons instead of the news".

"But I think the president’s gone," he murmured.

He looked at the floor. He had nothing more to say.

Presumably he, like millions of other Hondurans, had been told four years ago how important their vote was, how whoever won that presidential election would change their lives. And now there had been a change of government and all he was offered was Tom and Jerry.

The curfew was lifted at six the next morning and we headed for the capital.

"It will take around two hours," our good humoured taxi driver said.

I assumed that was optimistic and that we would come across several military checkpoints. President Zelaya – who had been flown in his pyjamas to Costa Rica – had already hinted that he would return.

We saw no checkpoints, and not a single soldier. By eight in the morning we were joining the morning rush hour into Tegucigalpa.

Extraordinary events

At the hotel reception there, I was offered a view of either the capital’s largest shopping mall, or the presidential palace. Both gave something away about what had happened the night before.

It was business as usual at the mall, as many Hondurans continued to shop – appearing untroubled – even unaware of their change of government.

But outside the forbidding grey-stoned presidential palace, there was proof of the extraordinary events that were taking place.

Perhaps a thousand soldiers, looking like Roman legionnaires behind their rows of riot shields, were stationed in front of the building.

The road that runs alongside the palace had been occupied by masked protesters. They had been there all night, and were now jeering at the soldiers.

As I walked towards the building, a man – his face obscured by a mask – with a metal bar in his hand, approached me.

"Are you an American" he shouted. It sounded like a threat.

I wondered whether telling him I was British would make matters better or worse.

"I am not American," I replied. He waved me on.

And there in front of me was the palace.

No more blind eyes

Looking at it made me think that some things really have not changed since the heyday of Latin American coups in the 1970s and 1980s.

You really can take over a country by seizing control of a few key buildings. If the soldiers are on your side, or if you are the army, it is relatively easy.

But something has changed, which is going to make the ousting of President Zelaya difficult to sustain.

A global consensus has been reached, that military coups of any form are unacceptable.

Forty years ago, plenty of blind eyes would be turned in the White House, when the telex arrived announcing that another Central American leader had been forced from power. Those days it seems, are over.

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Although Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be heading for a second term after the disputed election and street protests have diminished, this may not yet be the end of a crisis that has exposed splits in the leadership, the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen in Tehran writes.

One Friday in the 1990s I went to the weekly prayer session in Tehran. The bearded man in the pulpit made a fierce speech.

Men were punching the air and chanting God is great. Afterwards battalions of women covered by chadors, surged down the road in a black, death to America cloud.

If you wanted to find an Iranian stereotype it was a good place to be.

This Friday in Tehran I went for a walk in the park, partly because of the new rules here restricting the movements of reporters.

And with the British reinstalled in their old position as Iran’s official number one enemy, the BBC has been accused of being the centre of psychological warfare, orchestrating the street protests.

One newspaper has accused me, I would say incorrectly, of being ever present at illegal demonstrations and broadcasting inciting commentaries about the events on the streets.

So perhaps spinelessly, I thought a low profile might be a good idea, especially since it would be almost impossible to get on the news the morning after Michael Jackson’s death.

Pockets of peace

I didn’t see any chanting, fist-pumpers in the park. I didn’t expect to. Instead there were families picnicking on blankets under the shade of the trees, and girls with loose headscarves playing badminton.

Admittedly the park was in well-off north Tehran. Plenty of the people here are rich. The building I’m in now, and the narrow street it stands on, could be in Zurich.

Some of the elegant ladies round here spend a lot of time finding a trendy, even a sexy way of almost breaking the rules on what to wear.

In the park there were even a few sweethearts sitting on benches, looking to my western eyes rather innocent.

It is not surprising by the way to find pockets of peace and quiet in a city that is going through a lot of trouble.

Dramatic, violent moments tend to happen in short bursts in a limited area, and Tehran is vast.

‘Waging war on God’

I’ve been doing quite a bit of walking this week.

Until they were pulled back from most of the squares and the street corners in the city centre a couple of days ago, there were long lines of riot police, revolutionary guards and ‘basijis’ – militia men mainly armed with thick wooden clubs.

They were there to send a very sharp message from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

He has ruled that the election was fair, that the result will stand, and that anyone who is unhappy enough with it to try to demonstrate will learn a very sharp lesson at the hands of his men.

One hardline cleric has called for people who take their protests to the streets to be charged with waging war on God, an offence that in Iran carried the death penalty.

A diplomat said to me this week that it looks as if the regime has won this round. It is hard to disagree. Just over a week ago tens of thousands of people were marching through Tehran against an election they believed was fraudulent.

Now President Ahmedinejad seems to be heading for a second term. In the last few days there have only been a few small demonstrations, so small the protestors were outnumbered by the security forces, who dispersed them with decisive and brutal energy.

At least that is what we think, based on reports from witnesses and hurriedly filmed mobile phone video posted on web sites. Because of the rules restricting reporting, I couldn’t go into the city centre to check out what was happening as I would normally do.

Public argument

A round may have been won. But even if the opposition can’t get the election overturned, this does not look like the end of the fight..

The crisis has split the top leadership of Iran in a way that has never happened before in the 30 years of the Islamic republic.

They’ve disagreed among themselves many times, but now they’re arguing in public. Ayatollah Khamenei no longer presents himself as the nation’s arbiter, above politics.

Instead he’s plunged in to support President Ahmedinejad’s re-election. And Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man who thinks he’s the rightful president, has crossed the reddest of Iranian red lines.

He has defied the authority of the supreme leader and criticised him, very severely, from his website.

A swathe of Iran’s people want change, more freedom and more chances, even within the Islamic system.

They are influenced and affected by what’s happening in the rest of the world. A country can’t be cut off any more, once it has modern ways to communicate.

This week, as the power of the state has pressed down on the opposition, I’ve heard the same phrase about the future from a number of Iranians.

It may look quieter now, they say, but under the ashes there is a fire.

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With US troops about to withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities, there has been an upsurge in bomb attacks – but is this a sign of worse to come, asks Jim Muir, or a last throw of the dice from the militants

In the baking heat of an Iraqi mid-summer’s day, there was a bustle of activity at what is left of Joint Security Station (JSS) Comanche.

It is one of the military bases set up by the Americans, along with Iraqi army forces in the spring of last year, to bring Baghdad and other areas under government control.

JSS Comanche is right on the edge of Sadr City, the huge Shia suburb which we could see stretching away into the heat haze.

Until last year, it was a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia, the followers of the militant young Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, but after a lot of fighting, it was tamed, and the militia melted away.

Now, under the withdrawal agreement, the Americans were busy packing up and moving on. Huge cranes were busy hoisting sections of concrete blast-walls onto flat-bed lorries to be trucked away in swirling clouds of dust.

Gloomy outlook

The troopers from the US 1st Cavalry’s Ironhorse Brigade had packed their kitbags and were clambering into armoured vehicles and being driven off.

Two days before the end-of-the-month deadline, this position, now just a wasteland, and its command building, were to be handed back to the Iraqis.

And not to the Iraqi army, whose units had already redeployed elsewhere but to the Ministry of Agriculture, the original owners of the command building, which was their research station.

The military base was simply disappearing, swords being turned to ploughshares. Incidentally, I met some Agriculture Ministry officials who had come to inspect their old premises before getting them back.

They were not very happy. Their records and equipment had all gone, years of work lost, they said.

And they were not too optimistic about the outlook either.

As though to underline their anxieties, at sunset, just a few hours after our visit to JSS Comanche, Sadr City was shaken by a massive explosion.

A bomb had gone off in one of its busy street markets, which spring alive at dusk, as the searing daytime temperature starts to drop.

Scores of people were killed, maybe 80 or 90 by the time some of the badly wounded have died.

There was an outburst of spontaneous anger from the survivors. "Why isn’t the Iraqi Army protecting us" they shouted, throwing rocks at the security forces.

This underlined the big fear haunting Iraq, as American forces stand down and the violence appears to escalate dramatically.

Sectarian upsurge

Again and again, Shia areas, markets, mosques, busy streets, are being hit by huge bomb attacks, just as happened in the bad old days two or three years ago.

That is why the Shia militias emerged then, their raison d’etre (some would say pretext) was to protect their embattled communities, and to exact revenge – which they did, terribly – abducting, torturing and killing hundreds, indeed thousands, of Sunnis.

If, in the coming weeks, the bombs go on, and get worse, and the Iraqi forces are incapable of stopping it, surely the pressures will grow, for the Shia militias to make a comeback.

And then, of course, there would be a real danger of the deadly cycle of sectarian revenge starting up once again.

The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, went on television to reassure people that the Iraqi forces were capable of keeping them safe. He urged them not to respond to provocations, and to help the security forces by reporting anything suspicious.

The American withdrawal from the cities, he said, was historic, a huge triumph for Iraq.

In fact, the withdrawal that we are talking about is more apparent than real. It is not as though the Americans are suddenly whipping away the tablecloth from under the crockery on 30 June.

Election test

They have already greatly scaled down their presence and visibility in most urban areas.

And the troops they are pulling out of positions like JSS Comanche are not going far. They are re-locating to bases just outside the city limits, and they will be ready to step in and help the Iraqi forces whenever asked.

US troops are not yet leaving the country, apart from those brought in earlier for the "surge."

The real test will come later, probably after next January’s general elections, when the Americans start disappearing in numbers.

Are the Iraqis forces really ready, and will they stick together, in conditions of sectarian provocation and stress

Has the government done enough to draw the Sunnis on board, especially the Sunni militias, now known as Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq, who used to be with the insurgents

Do people really feel attached to the Iraqi nation, or, are they just waiting for the Americans to go, so they can get on with pursuing the interest of their own sect, clan or tribe

The truth is, nobody really knows, but a lot more needs to be done in the meantime, if people are to feel confident.

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As Delhi prepares for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, former BBC South Asia correspondent Sam Miller finds how the ancient city is changing at breathtaking speed.

The inhabitants of India’s other great cities, Mumbai (Bombay) and Calcutta, used to sneer at Delhi with its much smaller population, and its supposed lack of sophistication.

"It’s a collection of villages," they would say. "A fossil, a reminder of past empires. Not a real city."

They would joke: "Delhi has got no culture… just agriculture." They would say it was boring and sleepy.

But Delhi has begun to emerge from the shadow of Mumbai and Calcutta, and even provokes a certain amount of jealousy.

It is now – depending on how you calculate such things – one of the five most populous cities in the world, with a cultural life that equals or surpasses that of its Indian rivals.

Delhi attracts migrants from all over India (as well as some like me, from the rest of world) and is now the most cosmopolitan and fastest-growing of India’s large cities.

It has one of the world’s best metro railway systems, with more than 50 stations being added to the network over the next 15 months.

It is also visibly preparing for its next moment of anxiously anticipated glory, the Commonwealth Games of 2010.

Unsurprisingly, then, there are construction sites all over the city. But despite this extraordinary speed of development, Delhi remains both the leafiest and most archaeologically impressive of the world’s megacities.

Magnificent ruins

Most evenings, just before sunset, I walk or run in a huge secret park in the heart of modern Delhi.

It is really a jungle with footpaths, known only to those who live close by.

And peeking out of the jungle are the ruins of one of Delhi’s earlier incarnations, known as Siri Fort, the capital of the Khilji dynasty built in the early 14th Century.

These ruins include one magnificent cathedral-like building – three stories high – that always seems destined to topple over in the next storm. It is popular with peacocks, but I have never seen another human there.

Delhi is littered with such ancient ruins, so many indeed that the ones in my park are not even included by the Archaeological Survey of India in a list of more than 1,000 heritage buildings in the city.

Anywhere else in the world these ruins would be a major tourist attraction.

Parts of the walls of Siri were recently excavated and restored and the workmen told me why they were doing it.

"It’s for the Commonwealth Games," they said.

Except of course it is not. These ancient walls have absolutely nothing to do with the Games, which have become kind of Delhi shorthand for any piece of urban development that the authorities want to be completed by 2010.

Hidden heritage

Two summers ago, back in my local jungle park, I found another ruin, in an area of wilderness so thick with undergrowth that I had to beat my way through it with a stick.

There, long-forgotten, was half a mosque, a tree growing out of one of its walls, but the perfect rosettes and squinches created by artisans 700 years ago still intact.

I tried to interest my friends and fellow journalists in my discovery of an unlisted ancient mosque in the heart of modern Delhi.

I told people about it at Delhi parties and they yawned. I telephoned a leading historian of the medieval Sultanate period, who promised he would get back to me.

A guide book writer did come to see and she told me it will be mentioned in the next edition. But I failed to get anyone else half as excited as me.

‘Treasure hunt’

I tried the internet, joining a "treasure hunt" website called geocaching.com

I hid my treasure – a few coloured paper clips in a plastic jar – inside the mosque, and posted the map co-ordinates on the website. I waited for eager treasure hunters to track down the mosque.

I went away on holiday and an irate American traveller posted a note on the website to say the co-ordinates were wrong and that he had been chased away by an angry pig.

On my return I went back to the mosque and discovered that my co-ordinates were correct. The American had not gone to the wrong place. The mosque had gone.

It had been bulldozed and there was no sign it had ever existed.

The wilderness had become a building site and squash and badminton courts were being built for – yes – the Commonwealth Games.

No-one made a fuss and I have found it hard to make the case that this archaeologically super-rich city is much poorer without one old tumbledown mosque.

And though I have been able to immortalise it in photos and text in a book I wrote about my adoptive city, I am also aware that it is just one of dozens of minor ruins that have disappeared in recent years.

And more will almost certainly go as the pace of development continues to accelerate.

Delhi is a city that is more proud of its future than its past.

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Kenya’s ethnic divisions have become so entrenched, since a disputed election 18 months ago, that even student politics have been tainted by tribal rivalry as Will Ross discovered.

I stumbled across this story on my way to lunch.

Heading for a downtown cafe, I took a shortcut through the Nairobi University campus, passing the neatly trimmed lawns and the signboards announcing "Corruption free zone".

I was bombarded by immaculately dressed, wide-smiling, young Kenyans. Many were in sharp suits and had a look of "trust me" in their eyes.

These were the unbelievably glossy campaign posters for the student union elections.

"Where on earth would students get the money for such a glitzy campaign" I wondered.

I later found David – one of the two men vying for the top position of chair of the union – and with the election just hours away, it was hard to tear him away from T-shirt clad campaigners and his phone.

"I know one day I’ll be president of Kenya," he declared and then led me to his election poster which I suggested looked a little like a gospel singer’s album cover.

"Well I am a gospel singer and I’ve made an album," he replied. "Cynics said I was too moral to be a leader, too straight to head this organisation which is so corrupt, but we want to prove them wrong."

Financial incentives

While digesting this claim to virtue, I quickly learnt that there was an ugly side to this election. Tribal divisions.

David is from the Luo tribe and he was up against a Kikuyu.

It was a similar face-off 18 months ago, during Kenya’s disputed presidential elections.

Goaded on by some of the power hungry politicians, Kenya’s deep-rooted tribal divisions erupted and more than 1,000 people were killed.

"It’s worrying. Many students would only vote for somebody from their own tribe and the top politicians have encouraged this," a student called Isaac told me.

Seeing as Isaac was studying economics, I wondered what he made of the election funding.

He said ministers and MPs had backed their favourites with cash and lamented, that for a small fee, a candidate could hire some men known as "goons" to sabotage a rival’s campaign.

On her way to a lecture, another student, Maureen, told me she had just returned from a trip around town shouting and singing for several candidates, not because she supported their ideas but because she had been promised some money.

Access to influence

At another campus I started chatting to a young man in a baseball cap.

"There’s going to be violence. I’m telling you there’s so much at stake," he said.

He introduced himself as Patrick, but quickly added that his street name was "the virus".

I chose to call him Patrick. He said he had sponsored a candidate running for a junior position, giving him the equivalent of £250 ($160).

"Kenyan MP’s are among the best paid in the world with a package equivalent to at least £80,000 a year"

"I know he’ll win and then he’ll pay me back several times over and let me run one of the campus tuck shops," he predicted.

The election, it seemed, was about power and access to resources and when tens of thousands of students pay their subs to the union, the kitty gets quite fat.

There are parallels with the clamber to support parliamentary candidates during the last election.

The hope for many then was: "If we can get our man or our woman into power then we’ll be within arms length of the money."

And there is plenty of it. Kenyan MPs are among the best paid in the world with a package equivalent to at least £80,000 a year, most of which is untaxed.

Ignoring the past

A few hackles may have been raised in Britain, as news leaked of MP’s moats being cleaned and duck houses being built, but you should hear the "mwananchi" or "man on the street" in Nairobi getting worked up over the somewhat unaccountable politicians here.

Inside one of the fairly dilapidated halls of residence, mini-rallies were under way in several bedsits.

Fuelled by alcohol, bought incidentally by the candidates, young men were competing with rap music as they shouted slurred slogans which usually included the words "comrades" and "power".

"Worryingly the next generation of well educated Kenyans seems to have learnt few lessons from the country’s violent, tribal implosion 18 months ago"

The next day, after the results, students were dotted around the campus in huddles.

"This was the fairest election ever held at Nairobi University," young Valentine told me before quietly adding that he had just secured a position in the Union.

Patrick, aka "the virus", was nursing a few cuts to the head after fighting with a supporter from a rival camp.

A disgruntled student proclaimed: "How could this black man possibly have been voted in" referring to the fact that the new Union chair was darker than his choice of candidate.

Worryingly, the next generation of well-educated Kenyans seems to have learnt few lessons from the country’s violent, tribal implosion 18 months ago.

I later received a text message from Maureen. It seems the candidates did not cough up after hiring her cheering voice for the rallies.

The message read: "Politicians being sick individuals with no purpose – they haven’t given me squat. I’m as dry as a city council fire engine."

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