CAMPBELL: Hello and welcome to Foreign Correspondent. Im Eric Campbell in the Falkland Islands. This remote windswept outpost in the South Atlantic became the focus of world attention in 1982 when Britain and Argentina fought a bitter war for their possession. Twenty four years on, both countries remain locked in stubborn dispute. The people here still fearful of their giant neighbour Argentina.
Is there a solution to this long running conflict? Can the scars from this war ever really heal?
It is a distant archipelago in the shadow of Antarctica but many pray this foreign field will be forever Britain. Gunfire still crackles over the hills most days as British troops fight an imaginary enemy. Theyre part of a thousand man garrison, training constantly to defend the islands.
Most of these soldiers werent even born when Argentina invaded, but while Britain is planning to scale back troops in Iraq, there are no plans to ever leave the Falklands.
SIR ALAN WEST: [First Sea Lord (ret.)] Having had our fingers burnt once, we dont wish that to happen again and we wouldnt like anyone to think that we dont feel the wishes of the people who live here arent important because we do.
CAMPBELL: The Falklands War was one of the strangest conflicts of modern times. Argentinas military dictator, General Leopold Galtieri, tried to shore up his unpopular regime by re-taking islands Britain had occupied for a hundred and fifty years.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent the biggest armada since World War II to seize them back.
PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER: [Archive footage of interview] It is British sovereign territory. An invader must not succeed. International law must be upheld, the Security Council is on our side and many other countries in the world.
CAMPBELL: The war left more than a thousand dead and shattered the lives of countless young men from Britain and Argentina, but neither Britain's crushing victory, nor the downfall of Galtieri, has ended this dispute over islands neither country needs.
Britain and Argentina are now in almost every sense friends and allies. Argentina is a fully-fledged democracy, Britain is one of its major trading partners but the friendship ends on the shores of the Falklands which Argentina continues to claim as its rightful territory and where Britain remains in a constant state of readiness for war.
Across the water in Argentina, memories of defeat still cut deep. Its early morning at an airport in Buenos Aires. A crowd of family and friends has come to farewell Sergio Delgado, a veteran whos going back to the Falklands for the first time since he fought there.
SERGIO DELGADO: I just want to say Im really, really happy because the people who love me are here. Im delighted that my mother and my nieces are here.
CAMPBELL: His travelling companion, Esteban Hubner, was too young to fight but for most of his life hes been obsessed with the islands which Argentines know by their Spanish name, Las Malvinas.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: [Falklands researcher] I suffered of Malvinitis. Malvinitis is a deep obsession that Argentineans have with the Falkland Islands. Its like the Jews with Jerusalem and something impregnated in Argentinean education. The Falklands, Malvinas, Malvinitis, that belongs to Argentina is our pride, is our main foreign concern.
CAMPBELL: One of Sergios veteran friends gives him his shirt to leave on the battleground. Theyve all suffered combat trauma since they were sent to fight as teenage conscripts. Sergio was just nineteen.
SERGIO DELGADO: I had psychological problems. I had to have treatment. I was unwell for a long time, and needed a lot of care. I was in a bad way.
CAMPBELL: His first glimpse of the islands brings back some pain. On the ground, it seems nothing has changed.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Do you remember anything?
SERGIO DELGADO: The mountains look very much like the area I was in.
CAMPBELL: But its soon clear that the Falklands have fared much better than Argentina.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Wow! Look Stanley looks so different!
SERGIO DELGADO: Stanley or Port Argentina what a terrible name.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Is this Argentina? Its not Argentina!
SERGIO DELGADO: Well, it isnt now!
CAMPBELL: This is no longer a community of poor tenant farmers. After the war, Britain gave the Islanders British citizenship and economic control over their land and rich fishing fields. Its now a prosperous, self-governing overseas territory though ultimate power still rests with Her Majestys Governor, Howard Pearce.
HOWARD PEARCE: [Governor, Falkland Islands] The conflict was a catalyst for change, a catalyst for development, a catalyst for investment which has brought many benefits to this society but its tragic that it had to be at such a cost.
CAMPBELL: The trauma the community suffered in the war has become part of its psyche. Patrick Watts ran the radio station in 1982, broadcasting live as the Argentine military stormed into Stanley. He now makes a living taking tours to the battlefields. Hes often taken out British veterans but Sergio is the first Argentine veteran hes ever met.
PATRICK WATTS: You know it was okay for Galtieri to be telling everybody oh the Malvinas are ours and you boys have got to fight to the death, you know youve got to fight forever and ever but when they got here, no one was there to welcome them, no one wanted them. We didnt speak the same language. I mean they must have wondered what the hell they were doing here!
CAMPBELL: Hes agreed to take Sergio back to his old position where he endured two miserable months.
SERGIO DELGADO: My position, Patrick, my position. It was much deeper and it had stones above it. It was here this was my location. I was here. This is the place where I told you I saw a dead English guy.
CAMPBELL: Sergios company was sent to the top of Mount Longdon with no shelter, no food and no idea why they were there.
SERGIO DELGADO: Cold it was freezing it was unbelievably cold unbearable. It was so uncomfortable thats what I remember most. When I was in there, I could hear the bombs falling around me. I could hear the sound of the shell fragments hitting the ground. The debris was flying everywhere.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: The debris was jumping everywhere.
PATRICK WATTS: Well, because the shells were coming from Stanley up here. Argentine shells were coming here to hit the British.
CAMPBELL: During the final assault Sergio was injured by a shell blast, his friend beside him was bayoneted to death. The same British soldiers saved Sergios life.
SERGIO DELGADO: He was saying, come on come on, and pointed a weapon at my head. And so I said please my legs maybe in poor English, but he understood. Without dropping the weapon he lifted me up by my pants and saw that I was wounded so he put his weapon away. It was an Argentine weapon! He must have said wait here, then he went away and came back with a nurse who spoke some Spanish. He checked me over, gave me morphine and told me that my comrade was dead and that they were getting me out of there.
CAMPBELL: Drawn together by a common obsession, these two men from different sides soon form an unlikely bond.
PATRICK WATTS: [Tour guide] Well its just so interesting for me to hear him tell his side of the story. How did they occupy themselves? You know what was life like for them. We wanted them out of the place as fast as possible and by any means you know? Now Im glad this guys alive. Its great to meet him.
CAMPBELL: But that doesnt mean Patrick Watts feels any differently about Argentina.
PATRICK WATTS: Yes we can forgive what happened in the war but we cant change the attitude of the present day Argentine Government and thats the sad fact of this. All these men were killed and at the end of it all, governmentally between us, nothings really changed at all.
CAMPBELL: The Falkland Islands are less than 500 kilometres from South America but despite twenty-four years of entreaties and pressure from Argentina, the island has remained British to their bootstraps. In an age when the sun has all but set on the empire, they still look to a motherland fourteen thousand kilometres away.
Trudi McPhee comes from one of the Falklands oldest families. Theyve grown wool here for four generations.
TRUDI MCPHEE: My dad, he always says cause our ancestors come from Harris an island off Scotland and he always says silly old blighters they went from one cold windswept island to another. He thought they could have went somewhere a bit warmer.
CAMPBELL: But you wouldnt change it?
TRUDI MCPHEE: Not for the world. I think its wild, its sort of rough and its just a way of life that weve always been use to. Its the freedom and its a good place to live.
CAMPBELL: Like many Falklanders shes still bitter about the time her freedom was taken away, when Argentina occupied the islands for seventy two days and treated them like prisoners.
TRUDI MCPHEE: Oh furious. You know, how dare they come and invade our cabbage patch!
CAMPBELL: She hasnt seen an Argentine since the 1982 invasion, nor does she wish to again.
Youre not going to meet any Argentineans?
TRUDI MCPHEE: No.
CAMPBELL: Nothing to do with them?
TRUDI MCPHEE: No. End of story.
CAMPBELL: Most of those who died were Argentine conscripts, more than six hundred of them, but fewer than twenty veterans are believed to have visited their graves. Argentina discourages official trips so as not to recognise British sovereignty.
SERGIO DELGADO: Quintana was in my company he died at Monte Longdon. When I was wounded I saw that he was being taken away by two marines to be buried. Ill leave my rosary for him. [Upset] Its a very emotional moment for me, and I feel very moved. Im paying my respects in my name and in the name of all the veterans. Im totally against all wars theyre good for nothing. They only bring death and hatred between people. And the people have nothing to do with it its the leaders.
CAMPBELL: Esteban, in contrast, once passionately supported the invasion.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: I hated the Falklanders and I hated the British and I felt very, very angry about the situation. I was blind. Like many Argentineans.
CAMPBELL: Esteban first came here in 1999 to pursue his passion for the Malvinas. At the time, Britain still banned Argentines as punishment for the war so he used an Israeli passport hed obtained while studying in Jerusalem.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: I had enough time to discover this place and fell in love in certain ways with this place and to realise that this place was not what I as an Argentinean thought it is. I thought that this place very British in many ways and I discovered that the islanders, they are not monsters. They are very nice people.
CAMPBELL: His passion now is to find a face-saving solution that would settle Argentinas claim. It could certainly be in Britains interest. The cost of the stand off is this military base, strictly off limits to our camera, a sprawling complex of troops, fighter planes and high tech weaponry. Britain spends more than 250 million dollars a year to keep it running.
SIR ALAN WEST: Well I say this is important to us and thats why we keep it. I suppose we are very fortunate we are the fourth wealthiest nation in the world.
CAMPBELL: Sir Alan West was captain of the Ardent during the war and was the last to step off his frigate when it was sunk by Argentine fire. Hes just retired from the post of Admiral commanding the British Navy. Hes come back to commemorate his 22 crewmen who died.
SIR ALAN WEST: It brings back happy memories of a ship that was a wonderful ship and things like that and then very sad memories at their loss but Im very proud of what they achieved down here. I suppose were scared by what happened in the past. I mean they told us effectively they wouldnt be using force then and then they did it.
CAMPBELL: At times you cant help wondering why Britain and Argentina place such importance on these islands. They have little strategic importance, theyre riddled with landmines from the war and the weather is often only good for penguins, but the massive cost of defending the Falklands as an outpost of empire has become part of the accepted order.
Howard Pearce is at the apex, entertaining visiting dignitaries and local worthies at Government House in Stanley.
HOWARD PEARCE: The principle to which Falkland Islanders adhere is that they have the right to determine their own future. As I say many families living here for four, five even six generations. This is their home, its the place where they have all their economic stake and they feel that they have the right to decide where their future should lie.
CAMPBELL: The pomp, grandeur and cost of all this sit oddly with the size of the population. Officially there are 2,900 people here but hundreds of them are guest workers from Chile and the British territory of St Helena, doing cheap work the locals wont. By some estimates Britains expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars a year is to defend a permanent community of less than a few hundred people.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: In my opinion the Falkland Islands became a country club for the rich Falklanders that live around the world during the year and in summertime they come here. In my opinion there are only two hundred Falklanders, really Falklanders here.
HOWARD PEARCE: It is a small community . two and a half thousand, two thousand, one thousand is a small community but that does not mean that those people dont have the same rights as larger communities.
CAMPBELL: Argentina has given up trying to woo the Falklands community. In the past it offered to pay them to relocate. Now its making life more difficult, taking a hardline on the sea and airspace it controls around the islands.
TRUDI MCPHEE: Theyre putting pressure on us every way you move. They interfere with the fisheries, they interfere with the flights. Anything you name, if they can make it awkward for us, you know theyre just like a big bully sitting on your shoulder and whichever way you try and move, you know theyre there.
CAMPBELL: Could you ever see yourself living in a political settlement, whereby
TRUDI MCPHEE: No I definitely could not. That is definitely not on either. If Argies come here, Trudis off.
CAMPBELL: Sergios visit was never about the politics. It was to find his own peace and after the rare chance to face the past, he was feeling reborn.
SERGIO DELGADO: I cant explain I was very scared before I came back. Being back here, when I returned from Mount Longdon I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was finished with the ghosts.
CAMPBELL: Hes now determined to bring back other veterans to experience the same release.
After a quarter of a century, two democratic allies are no closer to resolving this oddest of quarrels. The Falklands remain forever Britain, forever disputed and never completely at peace.
Is there a solution to this long running conflict? Can the scars from this war ever really heal?
It is a distant archipelago in the shadow of Antarctica but many pray this foreign field will be forever Britain. Gunfire still crackles over the hills most days as British troops fight an imaginary enemy. Theyre part of a thousand man garrison, training constantly to defend the islands.
Most of these soldiers werent even born when Argentina invaded, but while Britain is planning to scale back troops in Iraq, there are no plans to ever leave the Falklands.
SIR ALAN WEST: [First Sea Lord (ret.)] Having had our fingers burnt once, we dont wish that to happen again and we wouldnt like anyone to think that we dont feel the wishes of the people who live here arent important because we do.
CAMPBELL: The Falklands War was one of the strangest conflicts of modern times. Argentinas military dictator, General Leopold Galtieri, tried to shore up his unpopular regime by re-taking islands Britain had occupied for a hundred and fifty years.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent the biggest armada since World War II to seize them back.
PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER: [Archive footage of interview] It is British sovereign territory. An invader must not succeed. International law must be upheld, the Security Council is on our side and many other countries in the world.
CAMPBELL: The war left more than a thousand dead and shattered the lives of countless young men from Britain and Argentina, but neither Britain's crushing victory, nor the downfall of Galtieri, has ended this dispute over islands neither country needs.
Britain and Argentina are now in almost every sense friends and allies. Argentina is a fully-fledged democracy, Britain is one of its major trading partners but the friendship ends on the shores of the Falklands which Argentina continues to claim as its rightful territory and where Britain remains in a constant state of readiness for war.
Across the water in Argentina, memories of defeat still cut deep. Its early morning at an airport in Buenos Aires. A crowd of family and friends has come to farewell Sergio Delgado, a veteran whos going back to the Falklands for the first time since he fought there.
SERGIO DELGADO: I just want to say Im really, really happy because the people who love me are here. Im delighted that my mother and my nieces are here.
CAMPBELL: His travelling companion, Esteban Hubner, was too young to fight but for most of his life hes been obsessed with the islands which Argentines know by their Spanish name, Las Malvinas.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: [Falklands researcher] I suffered of Malvinitis. Malvinitis is a deep obsession that Argentineans have with the Falkland Islands. Its like the Jews with Jerusalem and something impregnated in Argentinean education. The Falklands, Malvinas, Malvinitis, that belongs to Argentina is our pride, is our main foreign concern.
CAMPBELL: One of Sergios veteran friends gives him his shirt to leave on the battleground. Theyve all suffered combat trauma since they were sent to fight as teenage conscripts. Sergio was just nineteen.
SERGIO DELGADO: I had psychological problems. I had to have treatment. I was unwell for a long time, and needed a lot of care. I was in a bad way.
CAMPBELL: His first glimpse of the islands brings back some pain. On the ground, it seems nothing has changed.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Do you remember anything?
SERGIO DELGADO: The mountains look very much like the area I was in.
CAMPBELL: But its soon clear that the Falklands have fared much better than Argentina.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Wow! Look Stanley looks so different!
SERGIO DELGADO: Stanley or Port Argentina what a terrible name.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: Is this Argentina? Its not Argentina!
SERGIO DELGADO: Well, it isnt now!
CAMPBELL: This is no longer a community of poor tenant farmers. After the war, Britain gave the Islanders British citizenship and economic control over their land and rich fishing fields. Its now a prosperous, self-governing overseas territory though ultimate power still rests with Her Majestys Governor, Howard Pearce.
HOWARD PEARCE: [Governor, Falkland Islands] The conflict was a catalyst for change, a catalyst for development, a catalyst for investment which has brought many benefits to this society but its tragic that it had to be at such a cost.
CAMPBELL: The trauma the community suffered in the war has become part of its psyche. Patrick Watts ran the radio station in 1982, broadcasting live as the Argentine military stormed into Stanley. He now makes a living taking tours to the battlefields. Hes often taken out British veterans but Sergio is the first Argentine veteran hes ever met.
PATRICK WATTS: You know it was okay for Galtieri to be telling everybody oh the Malvinas are ours and you boys have got to fight to the death, you know youve got to fight forever and ever but when they got here, no one was there to welcome them, no one wanted them. We didnt speak the same language. I mean they must have wondered what the hell they were doing here!
CAMPBELL: Hes agreed to take Sergio back to his old position where he endured two miserable months.
SERGIO DELGADO: My position, Patrick, my position. It was much deeper and it had stones above it. It was here this was my location. I was here. This is the place where I told you I saw a dead English guy.
CAMPBELL: Sergios company was sent to the top of Mount Longdon with no shelter, no food and no idea why they were there.
SERGIO DELGADO: Cold it was freezing it was unbelievably cold unbearable. It was so uncomfortable thats what I remember most. When I was in there, I could hear the bombs falling around me. I could hear the sound of the shell fragments hitting the ground. The debris was flying everywhere.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: The debris was jumping everywhere.
PATRICK WATTS: Well, because the shells were coming from Stanley up here. Argentine shells were coming here to hit the British.
CAMPBELL: During the final assault Sergio was injured by a shell blast, his friend beside him was bayoneted to death. The same British soldiers saved Sergios life.
SERGIO DELGADO: He was saying, come on come on, and pointed a weapon at my head. And so I said please my legs maybe in poor English, but he understood. Without dropping the weapon he lifted me up by my pants and saw that I was wounded so he put his weapon away. It was an Argentine weapon! He must have said wait here, then he went away and came back with a nurse who spoke some Spanish. He checked me over, gave me morphine and told me that my comrade was dead and that they were getting me out of there.
CAMPBELL: Drawn together by a common obsession, these two men from different sides soon form an unlikely bond.
PATRICK WATTS: [Tour guide] Well its just so interesting for me to hear him tell his side of the story. How did they occupy themselves? You know what was life like for them. We wanted them out of the place as fast as possible and by any means you know? Now Im glad this guys alive. Its great to meet him.
CAMPBELL: But that doesnt mean Patrick Watts feels any differently about Argentina.
PATRICK WATTS: Yes we can forgive what happened in the war but we cant change the attitude of the present day Argentine Government and thats the sad fact of this. All these men were killed and at the end of it all, governmentally between us, nothings really changed at all.
CAMPBELL: The Falkland Islands are less than 500 kilometres from South America but despite twenty-four years of entreaties and pressure from Argentina, the island has remained British to their bootstraps. In an age when the sun has all but set on the empire, they still look to a motherland fourteen thousand kilometres away.
Trudi McPhee comes from one of the Falklands oldest families. Theyve grown wool here for four generations.
TRUDI MCPHEE: My dad, he always says cause our ancestors come from Harris an island off Scotland and he always says silly old blighters they went from one cold windswept island to another. He thought they could have went somewhere a bit warmer.
CAMPBELL: But you wouldnt change it?
TRUDI MCPHEE: Not for the world. I think its wild, its sort of rough and its just a way of life that weve always been use to. Its the freedom and its a good place to live.
CAMPBELL: Like many Falklanders shes still bitter about the time her freedom was taken away, when Argentina occupied the islands for seventy two days and treated them like prisoners.
TRUDI MCPHEE: Oh furious. You know, how dare they come and invade our cabbage patch!
CAMPBELL: She hasnt seen an Argentine since the 1982 invasion, nor does she wish to again.
Youre not going to meet any Argentineans?
TRUDI MCPHEE: No.
CAMPBELL: Nothing to do with them?
TRUDI MCPHEE: No. End of story.
CAMPBELL: Most of those who died were Argentine conscripts, more than six hundred of them, but fewer than twenty veterans are believed to have visited their graves. Argentina discourages official trips so as not to recognise British sovereignty.
SERGIO DELGADO: Quintana was in my company he died at Monte Longdon. When I was wounded I saw that he was being taken away by two marines to be buried. Ill leave my rosary for him. [Upset] Its a very emotional moment for me, and I feel very moved. Im paying my respects in my name and in the name of all the veterans. Im totally against all wars theyre good for nothing. They only bring death and hatred between people. And the people have nothing to do with it its the leaders.
CAMPBELL: Esteban, in contrast, once passionately supported the invasion.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: I hated the Falklanders and I hated the British and I felt very, very angry about the situation. I was blind. Like many Argentineans.
CAMPBELL: Esteban first came here in 1999 to pursue his passion for the Malvinas. At the time, Britain still banned Argentines as punishment for the war so he used an Israeli passport hed obtained while studying in Jerusalem.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: I had enough time to discover this place and fell in love in certain ways with this place and to realise that this place was not what I as an Argentinean thought it is. I thought that this place very British in many ways and I discovered that the islanders, they are not monsters. They are very nice people.
CAMPBELL: His passion now is to find a face-saving solution that would settle Argentinas claim. It could certainly be in Britains interest. The cost of the stand off is this military base, strictly off limits to our camera, a sprawling complex of troops, fighter planes and high tech weaponry. Britain spends more than 250 million dollars a year to keep it running.
SIR ALAN WEST: Well I say this is important to us and thats why we keep it. I suppose we are very fortunate we are the fourth wealthiest nation in the world.
CAMPBELL: Sir Alan West was captain of the Ardent during the war and was the last to step off his frigate when it was sunk by Argentine fire. Hes just retired from the post of Admiral commanding the British Navy. Hes come back to commemorate his 22 crewmen who died.
SIR ALAN WEST: It brings back happy memories of a ship that was a wonderful ship and things like that and then very sad memories at their loss but Im very proud of what they achieved down here. I suppose were scared by what happened in the past. I mean they told us effectively they wouldnt be using force then and then they did it.
CAMPBELL: At times you cant help wondering why Britain and Argentina place such importance on these islands. They have little strategic importance, theyre riddled with landmines from the war and the weather is often only good for penguins, but the massive cost of defending the Falklands as an outpost of empire has become part of the accepted order.
Howard Pearce is at the apex, entertaining visiting dignitaries and local worthies at Government House in Stanley.
HOWARD PEARCE: The principle to which Falkland Islanders adhere is that they have the right to determine their own future. As I say many families living here for four, five even six generations. This is their home, its the place where they have all their economic stake and they feel that they have the right to decide where their future should lie.
CAMPBELL: The pomp, grandeur and cost of all this sit oddly with the size of the population. Officially there are 2,900 people here but hundreds of them are guest workers from Chile and the British territory of St Helena, doing cheap work the locals wont. By some estimates Britains expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars a year is to defend a permanent community of less than a few hundred people.
ESTEBAN HUBNER: In my opinion the Falkland Islands became a country club for the rich Falklanders that live around the world during the year and in summertime they come here. In my opinion there are only two hundred Falklanders, really Falklanders here.
HOWARD PEARCE: It is a small community . two and a half thousand, two thousand, one thousand is a small community but that does not mean that those people dont have the same rights as larger communities.
CAMPBELL: Argentina has given up trying to woo the Falklands community. In the past it offered to pay them to relocate. Now its making life more difficult, taking a hardline on the sea and airspace it controls around the islands.
TRUDI MCPHEE: Theyre putting pressure on us every way you move. They interfere with the fisheries, they interfere with the flights. Anything you name, if they can make it awkward for us, you know theyre just like a big bully sitting on your shoulder and whichever way you try and move, you know theyre there.
CAMPBELL: Could you ever see yourself living in a political settlement, whereby
TRUDI MCPHEE: No I definitely could not. That is definitely not on either. If Argies come here, Trudis off.
CAMPBELL: Sergios visit was never about the politics. It was to find his own peace and after the rare chance to face the past, he was feeling reborn.
SERGIO DELGADO: I cant explain I was very scared before I came back. Being back here, when I returned from Mount Longdon I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was finished with the ghosts.
CAMPBELL: Hes now determined to bring back other veterans to experience the same release.
After a quarter of a century, two democratic allies are no closer to resolving this oddest of quarrels. The Falklands remain forever Britain, forever disputed and never completely at peace.