Main content

Taking Back Control

Stories of war and faith, God and gold - from Yemen's battered cities, the Amazon basin, The Gambia and the fortress stronghold of a living Sufi saint in Pakistan

Rebecca Kesby introduces tales of war, faith, greed and power from around the world.

Orla Guerin reports from Yemen on the terrible toll its three-year-old civil war is taking on the country's youth. In the port city of Hodeida there are heartbreaking numbers of young children dying of malnourishment and disease as the battles rage on - while in Aden, President Hadi insists that his Saudi-backed alliance is doing all it can to avoid civilian suffering.

Colin Freeman talks to Reed Brody - an American attorney who's made a career of hunting down former African dictators. He helped to bring the former Chadian leader Hissene Habre to trial in Senegal for crimes against humanity- and now he's on the trail of Yahya Jammeh, who led The Gambia for over two decades but has taken refuge in Equatorial Guinea since being thrown out of power. Is there any chance of bringing him back to Banjul?

Chloe Farand takes an epic journey through the Amazonian jungle in French Guiana - taking in canoe rides on the river, mud-pits on the rough roads, and a long hike through the forest - to reach the site of a unique protest meeting. Indigenous communities from across national borders, and from many different language groups, got together to discuss how best to resist plans for a new open-cast gold mine.

And Isambard Wilkinson recounts some extraordinary tales from a site saturated with history - religious, colonial and post-colonial: the walled stronghold of the Pir Pagara or "turbaned saint", a Sufi dignitary who wields great temporal as well as spiritual power in Pakistan.

Photo: Aziza, a Yemeni woman widowed by the civil war, with two of her younger children, in their tent in a displaced people's camp near Hodeida, July 2018. (c) Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Available now

23 minutes

Last on

Sun 22 Jul 2018 08:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Sat 21 Jul 2018 02:06GMT
  • Sat 21 Jul 2018 21:06GMT
  • Sat 21 Jul 2018 23:06GMT
  • Sun 22 Jul 2018 02:06GMT
  • Sun 22 Jul 2018 08:06GMT