Subterfuge

Anonymous contacts. Secret meetings. Men in raincoats. Gabriel Gatehouse reveals what it can take to bring a story on collusion to light. In Bulgaria, Colin Freeman assesses the economic importance of the Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle. More than 150 years after slavery officially ended in the US, Juliet Rix has a chance encounter in South Carolina that suggests the past is remarkably present. In the wetlands of southern Iraq Leon McCarron meets some of the people known as the Marsh Arabs. In the 1980s their homeland was a frontline in the Iran-Iraq war; in the 1990s Saddam Hussein unleashed fighter jets to destroy their settlements. Now they face another threat - there's still not enough clean water. And in Italy, Dany Mitzman tries to make the best of a dreaded family day out...at a football match.