>> this is "bbc "newsnight." funding for this presentation is made possible by the freedomen foundation of norm, stowe, vermont, and honolulu. neumann's own foundation. and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship mansioners work hard to understand the industry you operate in.

working to nurture new ventures and help provide capital for key strategic decisions. we offer expertise and tailored solutions in a wide range of industries. what can we do for you? >> they're the militias to restore peace in mali but will they be out for revenge? >> all are rebels or bandits. when we get to the north they should get out of our way. they are enemies of the state. >> welcome to london airport in istanbul. as competition hots up for u.k. passengers, we head for the gateway to asia. >> underground, your nation -- [inaudible] >> and we look forward on the plastic pollution-killing wildlife across the world. scientists are studying the effects on marine createures.

-- creatures. hello. the french army has made significant gains this week against mali rebels. but the job is far from over. vast sways of northern mali need to be secured in the long-term if peace is to be achieved. our reporter was there earlier in the week to look at the militias being trained by the malian army to restore order and found out whether they'll be out for revenge. >> ready to die for their country. these young men are preparing to go home. called children the -- called the children of the land, they're a militia made up largely of ref i have jis from northern mali. as forces retake the region from islamist and separatist rebels, their job will be to go in behind and deal with the new

threat. the danger now, says a malian soldier instructing them, is infiltration. >> the rebels will hide among the population and we must be prepared for attacks, for suicide bombers. the militia know the territory. they know the people. they know who is who. they can pick out the rebels and deliver them to us. >> for months they've been training in this camp south of the front line. brooding over what happened last year. that's when rebels first twarring a separatist, but then jihaddies, some linked to al qaeda, came to their homes. they tied up the head of the family and then raped his wife in front of him. and then his daughter. i saw it with my own eyes.

i thought my family would be next. so we fled. they raped many women. they took them into the dunes for two or three days and then they came back for more. >> we've heard rebels commit as many rapes. but the militias keen to stress to me there will be no justice. >> you cannot take justice into your own hands. >> this man says he also saw girls taken to be raped. and young men forced to join the rebels. he says now they want revenge. that's the word they're not meant to use. but they're the successors of the previous militia accused of atrocities, particularly against ethnic tuareg and they hope the military will arm them soon. these forces seem well disciplined. they say they're going to abide by the law.

but there's an obvious danger. when they return to their own home regions in the north where they say their families have suffered under the rebels, that there will be a settling of scores. like many malian soldiers, the instructor has had training from the americans. british military advisors will now also be working with men like him. but in his heart, is something they won't approve of. many tuareg are loyal tamale but he wants event general -- to mali but he wants vengeance against a whole ethnic group. >> all tuareg are rebels or bandits. when we get to the north, they should get out of our way. they are enemies of the state. >> the river, a high that unites this vast country and its many peoples, until this war they scratched a living side by side at theport. but now fear has driven away

the tuareg who control the salt trade from the sahara. they fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries. >> i ask what they're afraid of. of guest, he says. of being killed by malian soldiers. it's not just tuareg who are under suspicion now. nearly three weeks ago, just after france intervened in mali, this man saw something he's afraid to speak of openly. the malian military had arrested three students in islamic dress who had no identity papers. >> when i got there, the students had their hands tied behind their back. they were on their knees. i heard one of them say, for the sake of god, don't kill me. i'm not the enemy. i'm just a student of the koran. but one of the military guys

said, don't listen to them. they're infiltraters. they talked amongst themselves and then one said, fire, and they shot all three of them in the chest. then they dragged them by their feet and threw them into a well. >> we went to the place he described. there are reports that as many as 20 or 30 suspected infiltraters may have been executed by malian forces here. >> you can see lines of blood going all the way down. and some of this earth has clearly been pushed down to hide the bodies at the bottom. the malian government said it will investigate what happened. but it's clear several wells hold awful secrets. >> there's a horschel smell coming from down this well and you can see the blood spattered all around. there's no doubt the people were killed here. and there's that's just a few hundred yards from a crowded

bus station just over there. at the bus station everyone's heard of the killings but it's hard to find anyone who will admit to having seen it. people are afraid of the consensuses of speaking out. -- sequences of speaking out. in this town they've heard too and they're worried. this is a home to the a people with a reputation for piety but it's hard to find the usually islamic students on the street. we find some at least, studying inside. they say they don't dare going out anymore because so many like them have been arrested. they have no sympathy, they say, for the jihaddies. but they can guess why others joined the rebellion. >> i have the conviction to fight for god and really have good islamization in the country. but some people also say to people, if you go with them,

you can have -- they will give you 100,000, 150,000 a month. so that's why some people go. because they have nothing. >> how could this happen in mali? for centuries there were strong centralized states here. its peoples have usually lived in harmony. for most of the last 20 years, it had a functioning democracy. but one of the president's closest advisors says that was a facade that's now cracked. >> mali, although it was showcased as a strong democracy in africa, was from the start, i mean, a feigned state. we -- a lot of corruption, no discipline in the army, in a country which is one of the poorest in the world. >> he's grateful now to the french and other forces but victory over the rebels won't be enough.

>> if they are defeated in the north, i mean, are you not solving the main issue. the main issue is how to use the most efficiently possible -- the meager resources of the country. >> the talk today thanks largely to the french is of liberation. but it will take months or years to see whether mali has really been reunited. that will be the true test of the western intervention. >> it's one of the busiest airports in the world and the busiest in europe. heathrow serves 70 million passengers a year. many of them using it as a hub, en route to the rest of the globe. but rifle airports across europe aren't standing still and their growth threatens heathrow's status as a global airport. >> long before sky bridges or duty-free were even words

london's airport was in the south of the city. these pictures were shot in 1920 and these are the earliest ever air passengers who flew between amsterdam and croiden which is where most of the battle of britain was coordinated. in fact, king george vi trained here as a pilot. now it's a museum in the middle of an industrial estate. but the alfewer to adapt, it was literally grass fields, meant a close after the war to be replaced by an r.e.f. facility in west london called heathrow. other large airports also developed around the capital, notably gadwick, but they aren't hubs because all passengers using those airports start or end their sunny journey there. heathrow, like it or loath it, is britain's only true hub airport where travelers can connect with flights to almost anywhere in the world. but as most people will agree, heathrow's now full and its

owners are screaming out for permission to build another runway. so the fifth major review since the 1960's into airport capacity in the southeast is now under way. although it won't report until late 2015, it could sut expanding at heathrow or gad wick or even building a completely new hub airport. so while london dithers i wanted to find out what airports in other cities are doing. first stop, birmingham. 10 million people live within an hour of birmingham airport which has a gleaming new terminal, plenty of spare capacity and is well served by road and rail. but being just over an hour away from london is one of the problems. british airways pulled out a few years ago to focus on heathrow and now birmingham is a bit like a beautiful bride waiting for its souter.

-- suitor. i join the 2.3 million people who fly from regional british airports on k.l.m. into amsterdam. in fact, people outside london are as likely to use skip-all to get to their final global democrat destination as they are to use heathrow. >> skip-all is a large airport in a small country. which means in order to expand it needs to lure customers from other countries and britain is the number one target. currently k.l.m. flies from 14 regional airports in britain and why britain has delayed about capacity enhancement, they have six full-length, full-use runways. 70% of all people who use here are transfer passengers. they have no intention of getting out in amsterdam. the equivalent for heathrow is around 30%. so, they've built their entire airport around passengers

changing planes. something that might not make sense in london. >> we have the one terminal concept which makes it very easy for passengers that come in to connect to their flights. it's not huge distances that they have to travel. >> and of course our airport capacity is also built on making connections, facilitating with a lot of gates in order to make sure that passengers can connect efficiently to their new flights and then they can go out quickly again. >> but even though amsterdam is growing, like many of europe's older hubs, it faces stiff new competition from the near east. 10 years ago heathrow was europe's busiest aviation hub with 63 million passengers. skip jall had 40 million and istanbul's airport had only 10 million. last year a heavily clogged up heathrow squeezed an extra 11% out of its two runways to nearly 69 million. while skipall is up to 50 million passengers.

istanbul though has soared fourfold to 45 million passengers in that time. ♪ come fly with me let's fly let's fly away ♪ >> the only way to fly. ♪ if you can use some exotic booze there's a bar come fly with me let's fly let's fly away ♪ >> >> some prawns. one or two of these peppers here. >> great choice, sir. >> ♪ come fly with me let's float down to peru ♪ >> all this was alas on the ground. at a facility where turkish airlines have chefs serve air in the -- food in the air that they've prepared on the ground. it's now the fastest growing

airline in the world. taking advantage of its key geographical location where asia meets europe. the boss of turkish airlines says the cost of building a new runway is roughly the same as what he spends on a new jumbo jet. so his success in the air is only possible if it's matched by expansion investment on the ground. >> i spend millions and millions of dollars on the ground because you want ground. and make the passengers happy. when checking and boarding, spend money on the ground and your country, your nation will become a big player in the airline business. >> while london hasn't built new new runways in decades, istanbul will have five new runways by 2017. as for my first go on a boeing 777, i think i might stick to journalism. so will all this recent growth eventually run out of road? >> there will be a situation point which we know.

[inaudible] from europe to the other parts of the world. there's no any other economical activity which can replace this economy. even the internet. otherwise you wouldn't be here. then the location of istanbul is another advantage of us because istanbul is the meeting point of two continents. and istanbul is in the world's economical market nearly for 3,000 years. istanbul was the capital of three empires. it's roman, bison tine and automan empire and now it's the commercial capital of turkish republican. >> so back to the airport at the center of this debate. where the home of the industrial revolution seems to find it so tough to build more runways, when the demand from passengers at least is there.

>> you may have seen dramatic images of plastic debris left over from modern life and washed into the oceans. only to end up thousands of miles from where people live. we know this plot sam, the stuff we can see, can affect wildlife across the world. but what can science tell us about the possible impact of waste plastic that we can't see? tiny fragments called microparticles. our science editor reports. >> albatross spend most of their time at sea, only ventures on land to raise their young. -- only venturing on land to raise their young. these legendary beneficiaries populate the remote hawaiian islands of the north pacific but they face a threat. plastic washed into the oceans from people living thousands of miles away. is killing them. we can see with our own eyes

the effects that plastic is having here on the albatross. but there's new evidence that as it breaks down, the plastic in our oceans could be having an impact that's much more far-reaching. a team from the bbc's natural history unit filmed here last summer for a series to be broadcast next year. they found turtles nesting in amongst plastic bottles, cigarette lighters and toys. and they found dead and dying birds. albatross parents unwittingly killing their young by feeding their chicks plastic carried in as they forage for food in the sea. some chicks die when sharp plastic punctures their bodies. others from starvation as their stomachs fill with plastic they can't digest. and you saw caracases when you were there too, right? >> yeah. what we found was every day we'd go down to the island filming and every day there would be more and more caracases on the beach.

obviously we can't tell ourselves what it was that killed them. but what we do know from american scientists is that they've autopsied a lot of these birds and what they found is plastic in virtually every single stomach of the dead bitter -- of the dead bird. >> some of the plastics been illegally tipped at sea or isly ther from finishing. most comes from the land from poorly-run landfill sites, industrial waste, even the finers from washing machines. but how does it get here? floating debris and plastic is carried to the hawaiian archipelago by giant ocean systems partly driven by air currents. hawaii fits in the midst known as the north pacific subtropical high made up of four large clockwise rotating currents. the north pacific, california, north he can with aer toial and another. the north pacific is one of five gigantic interconnected

systems of ocean currents. each spirals around a central point. drawing material inward which is what carries the plastic to hawaii. these spirals can also inject material out toward the arctic and antarctic, spreading material across the globe over time. >> these are all connected which means that the problem occurs in the pacific, it eventually goes to the atlantic and the indian ocean. >> just how far does the problem of plastic in the oceans extend? i went to southampton to see if can can be found in the coastal waters of britain. sometime frnt national ocean center took us out to do a bit of sampling. >> so we drag this net through the water. the water can escape through the net holes. but all the particles and the plankton are trapped within the net. and they eventually come into

this bottle at the end. well, we're going to leave it out for about 10 minutes. that will allow us to filter through around about 400 tons of water. there's been a lot of research in the united states looking at how the plastic gets into the food chain. and certainly it's been shown that it gets into the muscles in the oysters of the sea bed and it does have an effect on them. they accumulate, they filter the water. much the same as we're filtering water now. so they concentrate plastics. and that dunne does have an effect. it returns some of those into her -- hermaphrodites. it's still the early days to find out how far up the food chain these plastic particles go. there we go. >> the idea that these plastics can cause disturbing sex changes might sound bad enough. but another worrying effect is

beginning to emerge. >> that basically is the fill tration of 400 tons of water -- fill tration of 400 tons of water. >> we'll go to the microscope to see what we've got. >> we've got some plankton, some zoo plankton. animals and plants. you can see very distinctive the plastic particles. >> sharper edges. >> with the sharper edge, yeah. then down here there's some zoo plankton tucked in amongst the rubbish and so on. you can see their heads and tails. we know that big plastic has an effect on wildlife. whether it's bags or bottles. eventually that plastic breaks down to smaller and smaller particles and the question is, does that have an impact as well? some years ago it was assumed that that was like roughage and it didn't have a major impact but we know, first of all, that

those are very small plastic particles, they can mimic certain things likeest general and we know that has -- he is trow general and we know that has an impact. these plastic particles are like magnets for other contaminants. >> plastic are in our oceans. and it appears to be having an effect on creatures in some parts of the world. but there's new evidence about our own food chain. i went to plymouth to find out more. at the marine biology and ecology center of plymouth university, they study the impact of pollution on our oceans and rivers. and the creatures that live in them. marine scientist richard thompson was the first to describe the tiny fragments of broken plastics as microplastics back in 2004.

>> this -- there's two concerns. there's shoot that plastics absorb and concentrate chemicals from sea water and the second is about can chemicals that have been introduced into plastics from the time of manufacture in order to achieve specific qualities of the plastic. its flexibility or flame retar dent. we've now got plastic not as whole but as small fragments in the area. >> we don't know the answer to that question yet. but what his team is discovering is as in hawaii plastic is making its way into keytures in the wild. he looked as finish in the english channel. 500 or so across 10 species, including mackerel and whiting and he found it. in small quantities, one or two particles per finish. >> it's showing that microplastics are quite widespread in the environment.

not just in the water column and beaches but actually in the creatures that live in some of those environments. so then the next step really is to take information like that from finish and from other creatures to understand, well, ok, how much plastic, what are the chemicals that might be of concern, what are the concentrations those of chemicals, what are the quantity to plastic and how does that vary from species to species? in order to understand which particular combinations might create the greatest potential for hazard. because that's what our work is trying to establish at the moment. what potential is there for these microplastics to cause harm in the real world. >> we know that the plastic we can see is affecting wildlife in places like hawaii in front of our eyes. we know that tiny fragments are being found all over the world. and we know it's causing disturbing sex changes in some creatures. it's vital now that more work is done to find out about the true impact of plastics in the wild. and what that means potentially

for all of us. >> and that's all for this week. from all of us. good buy. -- good-bye. funding of this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu, newman's own foundation, and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship managers work hard to know your business, offering

specialized solutions and capital to help you meet your growth objectives. we offer expertise and tailored solutions for small businesses and major corporations. what can we do for you? >> bbc "newsnight" was