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From Our Own Correspondent: Iraq and Italy

15/01/2014

Iraq and Italy

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Iraq and Italy

Rugged lives of the PKK's women fighters; the decadent luxury of Rome at Hadrian's Villa

Hannah Lucinda Smith on the rugged lives of the PKK's female commanders in the Qandil mountains; Alan Johnston sees the class divisions of  Ancient Rome on show at Hadrian's Villa

Two correspondents' insights into a very contrasting pair of places. In the Qandil mountains along the Iraqi-Turkish border, Hannah Lucinda Smith meets some of the female commanders in the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) movement and learns more of their highly-disciplined, spartan and rugged existence. Why did they choose to fight - and now that the PKK has a truce with the Turkish government and the balance of power shifts in Iraq and Turkey, what are the wider hopes for the region's Kurds? In Rome, Alan Johnston's on a spot which once housed the decadence and the dizzying riches of Ancient Rome: the complex known as Hadrian's Villa. But he's not as interested in architecture as in social structures - and in particular, what an entire underground system of tracks and paths for the slaves who kept everything running here reveals about the very different lives of those born to power and those without it.

Introduced by Pascale Harter. Producer: Polly Hope. 
Photo: Female members of the PKK in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk on May 13, 2013. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

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