ESCAPING NORTH

March 18, 2008 11:12 AM

We flew up to the Kurdish north of Iraq recently – it is always a welcome release for us to go up north, where security is so much better.  After a day in Erbil, the main city, we drove across to the town of Zakho, close to the Syrian and Turkish borders, and an area which has long had a Christian presence.  Most are Chaldean Christians, who speak Aramaic – the same language as Jesus – and are an Eastern branch of the Catholic Church who still recognize the Pope.

Since 2003 I have been friends with a priest here, Father Mofeed Toma, who has seen Christians in Iraq get pushed out of their livelihoods and homes as religious tolerance has evaporated across much of the country.  First in Basra in the south, and then in Baghdad and Mosul, Christians have been targeted by kidnappers (because they often are relatively wealthy and so presumably good sources of ransom).  They have also had their businesses attacked, particularly those who sold alcohol.  Iraq has always been fairly liberal about alcohol – it has never been illegal, and many Iraqis drink beer and whisky, but the merchandizing has always been left to the Christians.  As more religiously conservative Shiite politicians came to power, many of these liquor stores have been burnt out.  And the Christians have fled to towns like Zakho in the Kurdish north where they are relatively safe.

Fr Mofeed lives in a small house inside a compound that includes his church and a small garden with orange trees.   He has a handyman who digs holes for the sheep’s cheese that they make up here called “jajik” – it is buried in a clay pot under the earth for about 40 days, and when it is disinterred it has a pungent, slightly rotten aroma akin to a ripe gorgonzola – quite delicious.

One night Father Mofeed asked us to come and meet his English class – he teaches English to his parishioners twice a week, and wanted a native speaker to come and enhance his lesson.  I stood up in front of about 40 people, most of them adults, and we had a rudimentary conversation about Iraqi politics.  At one point I asked the class how many people wanted to leave Iraq – and pretty much everyone in the room raised their hands, amidst much laughter.  As if I had asked a silly question.

As we went back to the hotel across the river where we were staying that night, I realized that, almost unnoticed, a significant demographic change was happening in Iraq.  Tens of thousands of Christians are emigrating – it is much easier for Christians in Iraq to get visas to Europe, the US and Australia than it is for Muslims – and their absence is changing the fabric of Iraqi society.  Of all the Arab countries, Iraq has long been one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse – now much of that is being destroyed, probably irrevocably.  There is little to attract Christians back to Iraq as it becomes more strictly Islamic.  Friends in Basra tell me horror stories of women being killed for wearing makeup in public.  A Christian woman I just met told me how she had to smuggle a small bottle of whisky into Basra last December to put into her Christmas cake last year – if she had been discovered by the local militia she said it could have been very dangerous for her.

We had some nice meals with Father Mofeed, ate his smelly jajik cheese and drank his beer.  We laughed a lot, and  left on an upbeat note.  But soon afterwards we heard that his archbishop in Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, had been kidnapped – and subsequently was found dead, buried in a shallow grave outside the city.  The prime minister and others condemned the killing of this wise and respected old man.  But the message was clear – nothing is sacred in the new Iraq.  That is the real tragedy of Archbishop Paulos…and it is the tragedy of Christians in Iraq.  A country that will be poorer off if they all leave.

March 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Franklin in Fallujah

March 11, 2008 6:40 PM

We were walking down the main street of Fallujah the other day -- a fact remarkable in itself, given all that has gone on in that benighted town over the past five years -- when we came across a man sitting on a stool on the sidewalk, sketching. I did a double take. Of all the towns in all the world, this is the last one where I would have expected to see a street artist. 

Fallujah is where soldiers of the 82nd Airborne opened up on a crowd of protesters in April 2003, killing 17 and starting a long cycle of resentment and revenge. In March 2004, four U.S. contractors were killed, burnt and strung from a bridge there. In November of that year, the Marines stormed the city in a long and bitter street battle that cost the lives of 95 U.S. troops and some 1,300 insurgents. But insurgents crept back, and until last year it was one of the nastiest places in Iraq. Much has changed since the Sunni tribes in Anbar decided to go over to the Americans and fight against al Qaeda. But street art?

As I walked up to this man, I was even more surprised to see the subject of his deft pencil work. There on the back of a cardboard shirt-stiffener were the deep reflective eyes and flowing hair of Benjamin Franklin -- the man responsible above all for the very idea of an American nation. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He was a famous American writer, scientist, ambassador, statesman...an
American icon; and now, apparently, worthy of artistic representation in Fallujah, a town that has more reason than most in Iraq to hate Americans.

As I peered over the artist's shoulder, I saw the source of his inspiration: a $100 bill, clamped to the top of the cardboard sheet, served as a model. The artist, Moayad Mohammed Hamed, seemed unaware of who the man was whom he was so carefully reproducing. When I expressed interest in his work he offered it to me for free. I pressed some dollars into his hand -- now he can work on Andrew Jackson too, if he cares to.

The U.S. lieutenant who was walking next to me stopped and took the man's details from his ID card -- he was less interested in the sketch than in the fact that a man on the street had a freshly minted $100 bill.  Where had that come from? he wondered.

We moved on, with me clutching my new art work under my arm. Benjamin Franklin isn't such a bad model for today's Iraq, I thought. He had some pretty good ideas about how to run a country; he was a moralist who was deeply suspicious of the dogmas of organized religion, and he knew all about visitors overstaying their welcome. Like fish, he said, visitors start going off after three days. Now that things have started to improve in Anbar, the U.S. Marines are acutely sensitive to not overstay their welcome in Fallujah. Franklin would approve.

March 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

THE BATTLE FOR HEARTS

March 04, 2008 4:17 PM

Dr Moayad Hamad used to be a heart surgeon.  In fact in 1996 he was the first doctor to see Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, when he was brought in to hospital after an assassination attempt.  Uday had been shot while driving through Mansour in western Baghdad – when he reached the hospital his blood pressure was zero over 20 – almost bled out.  According to Dr Moayad Uday’s bodyguards were selected among other things to have the same blood type as their boss, so the doctors could take blood straight from them and transfuse into Uday.  On that day it saved his life.  (Uday, along with his brother Qusay, were killed in Mosul by US troops in July 2003).

Dr Moayad was not political, but after the 2003 he lost his job as his hospital, Ibn Sina, was taken over by the US military as its main combat hospital in the Green Zone.  His house is in Dora, a once relatively affluent neighborhood in southern Baghdad that became a haven for Al Qaeda extremists.  He began working as a simple physician in his neighborhood, but as Al Qaeda’s grip tightened it became harder for him to function.  By 2006 Dora was one of the most dangerous areas of the entire city, and people barely dared to go out onto the streets.

One day an IED (improvised explosive device) planted at the side of the road outside his house went off as a US patrol passed by – it injured several Americans and blew in all the windows in his house.  He came home and ran from room to room looking for his wife and three year old daughter.  Fortunately he discovered they had left an hour before the blast to visit his mother’s house, but something snapped in him that day.  He decided to make a stand.  “If I stay at home I will be killed, if I go out on the street I will be killed – so I might as well be killed doing something,” he said.

He went to the US troops who were just beginning to arrive in his area as a result of the surge and offered to help pick up garbage (a favorite hiding place for IED’s), repair the sidewalks and get the sewage system running again.   He got some grants from the US to bring in garbage trucks, and soon the former heart surgeon had become a local contractor for garbage collection and construction.  “I love garbage,” he says – not only did his trucks clean up the streets, but it provided plenty of jobs for young men who might otherwise be tempted into the insurgency.   It was just the first step to cleaning up the neighborhood, but after four years of no garbage collection it was a very welcome initiative for the locals.  As they saw their neighborhood improving, they became better disposed to the US soldiers and began passing on information about where the Al Qaeda fighters were hiding and where the IEDs were being placed.

Now Dr Moayad’s part of Dora is quite peaceful – the US military unit based there haven’t been attacked since last September.  Shops are opening up and people were happy to stop and chat to us in the street, even after dark.  It is quite a long journey from heart surgery to garbage collection.  But as he says, “if you don’t change in life, you won’t get anywhere.”  Now he has got a profitable little contracting company going, his next idea - to open a chain of restaurants in Dora.  And also a private hospital.  He is, after all, a doctor.

March 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

War in the Cold

February 29, 2008 1:48 PM

It is cold in the mountains of Kurdistan at this time of year -- very cold, with deep snow on the slopes. 

We flew up to Erbil and drove to the town of Zakho, which is up near where Iraq meets the borders of Syria and Turkey. This is the territory of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist guerrillas who have been fighting the Turks for 25 years and whom the Turks have chosen to attack, now, in the middle of winter.

On Friday, Feb. 22, the Turkish military announced that it was sending ground troops across the border into Iraq to pursue PKK guerrillas -– the U.S., Baghdad and the regional Kurdish government in Iraq have all called on the Turks to exercise restraint and leave quickly. The U.S. has designated the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Originally founded as a communist group, the PKK are pretty unique amongst resistance fighters in their requirement that all recruits -- and they have women as well as men in their ranks -- take vows of celibacy.

From a distance, during the day, the mountains are spectacularly beautiful. We drove north of Zakho into the countryside, and the jagged peaks stretched across the horizon, the snow tinged orange in the late afternoon sun.  The skies were clear blue, except for the white con-trails of jets looping back and forth along the border – U.S. jets, watching the movements of the Turks and the PKK far below.

Every night the temperature drops way below freezing. (Celibacy can't be much fun in that weather.) Why on earth would the Turkish army choose this time of year to send ground troops into deep snow to attack a well-dug-in guerrilla force who know the territory and can see anyone coming for miles against the background of the white snow?

On the face of it, it seems like they could have waited for the snow to melt. Or maybe not. Domestically the Turkish government, which is now run by an Islamic-leaning party, is coming under fire for a controversial new law which will allow women to wear headscarves in universities. This runs against the long-established secular position in Turkey which banned headscarves, and the law has become very awkward for the government. Could it be a coincidence that the Turkish troop incursion against the PKK was announced the same day last week as the headscarf law was passed?  Was the government trying to distract attention from the headscarves with stories of its soldiers staging daring raids against the unpopular PKK guerrillas?

It has not been easy going for the Turkish army. There are reports that some soldiers have frozen to death, and over the weekend one of their helicopters crashed in the mountains. Turkish TV has been carrying images of coffins carrying dead Turkish soldiers being brought back home, although the Turkish High Command is claiming they are killing many more PKK guerrillas. The PKK gives the opposite story, and the fighting is in such an inaccessible area that it is impossible to get any independent confirmation.

Another war on its borders is the last thing Iraq wants. The country already has problems enough with the other five countries who are its neighbors.  There is Iran, whom it accuses of supporting the Shiite militias, and Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whom it accuses of supporting Sunni militants. And as for Kuwait, well, there is little love lost there after the failed 1991 invasion by Saddam Hussein. An already dangerous neighborhood just got a little bit more dangerous. 

February 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

When Is Safer Safe?

December 13, 2007 9:28 PM

In a city that has been living through outright carnage and mayhem for so long, how do you know when things are getting better?  Or more importantly, how do you know it is safe to go outside?

Well, first off, Baghdad is quieter than it used to be.  Less gunshots, fewer loud bangs from mortars that used to fly overhead and land in the Green Zone, fewer window-rattling booms from car bombs.

Then there are the statistics –- less bodies found, not so many kidnappings, a lower level of admissions to the emergency rooms at the main hospitals.  The papers are full of statistics from the government, eager to boast about how much better it is getting in Baghdad.

People are skeptical about what their government tells them in Baghdad.  What influences behavior more are the everyday experiences people share, the stories they pass on about streets that are newly busy, shops that have reopened, friends who have come over from other neighborhoods for the first time in many months.  It is this informal intelligence network that helps Baghdad residents decide where is safe and where they still need to be very cautious.  So we went out to find out what ordinary people are talking about.

Abu Hani is a taxi driver. He said he is now driving right across the city with his fares because he feels it is safe to do so, whereas before he stayed within his own neighborhood.  The day before we met him, he had stayed out picking up customers on the streets until 8.30 pm, about three hours after dark, something he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing six months ago –- when there was an 8 p.m. curfew anyway, forcing everyone to go home early.  Abu Hani is happy. He said that he is now bringing home two to three times as much money as he could earn in the bad days.

At the Karkh primary school, the teachers told us that their classrooms are filling up again. Parents who used to either be scared of sending their children to school or who had temporarily fled the country for Syria are now back and feel secure enough to let their children outside during school hours.

We walked down the main shopping street in Karadah, and it was crowded with people shopping for Eid, a Muslim festival that this year just happens to fall around the same time as Christmas.  When I tried to do a piece to camera, I had to weave around people on the sidewalk to keep a line of sight with the camera.  And in the north of the city in the big market in Kadhimiyah, which is a staunch Shiite area, we came across a Sunni woman from the neighboring Adhamiyah district who was shopping for children’s clothes.  Only months ago, Shiite militias were shooting mortars into Adhamiyah. Now she feels it safe enough to come into the Shiite area.  The choice of goods, she said, was much better than in her own area.

There are still plenty of no-go areas –- Mansur and Ameriyah in the west of Baghdad are very dicey, and few people who are not from the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in the east will venture in there.  But the word is out: Much of the center of Baghdad is now open for business.  Nobody knows how long it will stay that way.  But for the time being they are happy to go out shopping, eating, even staying out in coffee shops smoking water pipes until late at night.  And telling their friends all about it.

December 13, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

TWO ROADS DIVERGE

December 10, 2007 4:57 PM

We flew to Jordan last week from Baghdad to see another face of the US in the Middle East – and how young Arabs’ lives can go in such totally different directions, depending on what they are exposed to in their teens.

In Iraq 160,000 US troops are engaged in a lethal battle with insurgents, militias and criminal gangs for control of a blood-smeared battlespace.   Across the border in Jordan, 45 minutes south of Amman in the newly opened King’s Academy boarding school US education principles are engaged in bringing young Arab boys and girls to adulthood with a good chance of getting into a top US university and a broadly tolerant and benign view of the world.  It is two very different faces of the same coin.

The King’s Academy is the pet project of King Abdullah of Jordan, who was sent by his father, then King Hussein, to Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in the 1980’s.  The young prince had the time of his life with the other prep school boys (it turned co-ed some years after he left) playing sports, studying literature and interacting with a relatively liberal faculty in the pastoral New England countryside. 

After he took over from his father, King Abdullah decided to modernize Jordan’s education system, and in addition to revamping public schools, he decided to recreate Deerfield – in the desert.  600 students from around the Middle East, boys and girls mixed (that in itself is revolutionary – there are no other mixed boarding schools anywhere in this region), studying an American curriculum with teachers who were half local, half from the US. 

Some in the region thought it could not get off the ground – but in September the King’s Academy opened with its first 100 students, half in 9th and half in 10th grade, including girls.  They came from Saudi, Dubai, Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus and Jordan.  As I walked around the campus, barely an hour’s flight from the war in Iraq, I couldn’t stop thinking of the irony of it all: these 14 and 15 year olds, along with their parents, were buying in to America by attending this school.  Most that I talked to wanted to move on to a US university, become doctors, engineers, people with something to offer to their society.  Across the border young men their age were still being recruited for a couple of hundred dollars to plant roadside bombs, to shoot at American or Iraqi government soldiers, or to strap explosives to their bodies and walk into a crowded market to cause maximum carnage.   Same kids, same culture, different role of the dice.

One thing that was very interesting was how the boys and girls interacted at King’s Academy.  In traditional societies in the Middle East – particularly in Saudi Arabia – boys and girls are kept strictly apart by religious police and other arbiters of conservative social custom.  In the King’s Academy, where the only overseers are open-minded teachers, the male and female students were pleasantly liberated – to be themselves.  There are firm regulations about keeping dormitories separate, and public displays of affection like hand-holding and kissing are banned, but apart from that the boys and girls ate together, studied together, chatted in mixed groups in the courtyards.  After spending an entire day on the campus it became clear to me precisely how visionary the school is.  These boys and girls, many of whom will go on to become leaders in their own countries, will bring with them an open-minded attitude and a network of friends from different countries in the region that is the direct opposite to the closed-mind extremism of the young men crossing into Iraq to blow themselves up as suicide bombers.  And I dare say that is one of the goals the King of Jordan has in mind with his school.

December 10, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Statistics Never Lie-- Do They?

November 30, 2007 10:41 PM

The statistics keep coming in, with the same message – violence continues to drop in Iraq. 37 US troops killed so far this month in Iraq – that is over one a day, but a big drop from the 126 who died in May this year - a 71% drop.

Iraqi casualties are plummeting too – according to an Iraqi government official with access to the government’s figures, 98 civilians were killed in Baghdad in November, compared to 495 in April – an 80% drop.

There were 38 car bombs in April, just 15 in November.

Sure, this is not Switzerland. But it is certainly a lot calmer in Baghdad now than it was at the beginning of the year.

Which is all very fine, but the really interesting question is what is behind these statistics? Why the sudden fall in violence now?

The surge of US troops is part of it, but not all of it. 30,000 extra American soldiers were never going to stop 25 million Iraqis from killing each other if they were determined to go ahead with a fully fledged civil war.

At the same time as the surge there has been a huge swing in Iraqi public opinion – first on the Sunni side, and now increasingly on the Shiite side.

Iraq, it seems to me, is beginning to self-correct.

Starting in Anbar and then spreading to Baghdad and surrounding provinces, the Sunnis began to say – we don’t want to live in fear from Al Qaeda. We don’t like extremists telling us we cannot smoke, cannot listen to music and must allow them to marry our daughters off to whomever they decided. This so-called Sunni awakening has been encouraged by the US, and large sums of money have been paid to Sunni tribes to keep them on board. But the initial impetus came from the Iraqis.

A similar phenomenon is beginning to spread amongst Shiites, who are tired of Mahdi Army gangsters who had been going around Baghdad kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians – most but not all Sunni.

Iraq had long been one of the most secular of all the Arab countries. The war skewed everything and engendered extremism, but now Iraqis are reverting to type. And that type would much prefer to spend the afternoon in a coffee shop than shooting at imagined enemies. The next big question – when the US starts drawing down its troops, can the extremists creep back in and inflame people enough to start the fighting again? I have great fears.

November 30, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Baghdad's Montagues and Capulets

November 27, 2007 5:27 PM

We spent some time yesterday with Luay Rudha, a 31 year-old plumber, and his new bride, Eman Jabbar, 30.  I am not given to sappy metaphors, but their story seemed uncannily like an Iraqi version of Romeo and Juliet.

Luay is Shiite, Eman is Sunni.  They both lived in Amil district in western Baghdad, a mixed neighborhood which became one of the most dangerous parts of the city when the militias from both sides started killing civilians in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign.

Eman is a teacher, and Luay used to see her every morning when she walked to school.  It took him some months to even find out what her name was.  He tried to send her notes and even call her, but for almost a year she resisted.  But when he refused to give up she began talking to him on the phone, then let him drive her to and from work – a 5 minute drive – and ultimately would go out on dates with him to the local coffee shop.

Her family is very conservative, and they were dead set against the couple marrying.  Eman was careful to say that the initial resistance was not so much because Luay was Shiite, but because he was a stranger to them, and they had intended her to marry a man from their extended clan.  But then Baghdad’s noxious sectarianism further complicated their lives, when Eman’s brother was killed by Shiite militiamen.  That set her entire family against her marrying a Shiite. 

With violence out of control in their neighborhood, the US military put up concrete walls separating the Sunni and Shiite areas – it seemed like everything was conspiring against them.

Luay was still not deterred – and by now Eman, who was convinced of Luay’s devotion, was equally determined to overcome her family’s opposition.  In August of this year, as violence finally seemed to be decreasing, the “star cross’d lovers announced their engagement.  To their delight and surprise, her family and neighbors were all supportive – the Sunni-Shiite marriage seemed to suggest that the terrible rift that had opened up in Iraqi society was finally on the mend.  Sure enough the killings continued to go down.

Their wedding was on October 18th. 

As it happens, the US military is now taking down the walls they put up earlier this year.  Luay says it is no coincidence.  “We proved that Shiite are still marrying Sunnis and Sunnis are still marrying Shiites.  This has broken the walls between the two sects in our neighborhood.”

November 27, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Golf in China

October 26, 2007 8:00 AM

As we walked out to the first tee of the Palm Beach golf course in Fengxian, 20 miles outside Shanghai, one of the businessmen I was playing with said casually that he was - as usual - offering 50,000 renminbi, $6,500, in cash, to anyone who got a hole in one.  That was on top of all the other gambling and side bets that these men were wagering on 18 holes on a pleasant weekday afternoon in the new China.

When I lived in China seven years ago, nobody had even heard of golf.  Now it is almost an obligatory sign of status for ambitious executives to have at least one golf club membership and to entertain clients on the course over weekends.  It does not come cheap.  Enrolling as a member can cost $50,000 or more, there are annual fees and even then you have to pay green fees of about $100 every time you play.  This in a country where average per capita income is about $2,000. 

I had a very nice caddy - Ming Xinxin, who found my errant drives in all sorts of rough ground - she told me she earned $180 a month at the club.  As we walked down the fairways there were a number of new houses being built to overlook the course - they were selling for over $1 million. 

Fact is, China has an income gap between rich and poor thart is just staggering.  The businessmen I was playing with, mostly from shipping companies, turned up in expensive new SUVs and talked about sending their children to school overseas.  They had a lifestyle unimaginable to Ming Xinxin.  China has 108 billionaires, more than any other country except the US.  But China also has 150 million people living below the poverty line on less than $1 a day.

I asked my golfing companions whether this imbance in wealth worried them.  Most shrugged as if they hadn't even thought about it.  "This is China," said one.  "Anyone can get rich if they try hard enough."  I am not sure Ming the caddy would see things the same way.

October 26, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

Future Dragons

October 25, 2007 7:41 AM

He is four months old, 16 pounds and he smiles a lot. And Feng Shilong - nicknamed Long-long, "dragon dragon" - was probably born at the best time yet for a Chinese baby. His mother, Hong Lei, works for an Internet company, his father, Jack Von, works for an advertising agency.

Long-long was born in China's richest city, where for 50 renminbi ($6) a year the state will give him health insurance, where the public schools will give him a free education that will teach him math, English and how to use computers in elementary school, and where his parents will be able to earn enough to buy him what he needs as he grows up.

When he grows up, he will find himself in a vibrant city with a modern infrastructure of subways, freeways, and airports that will be China's major financial and trading center. He will speak the world's two main languages of commerce, English and Chinese.

And, says his mother, he will have opportunities that she could never have imagined as she grew up. Hong Lei, 28, took four months off work for Long-long's birth - her job is guaranteed that long in Shanghai. She says she will miss her son when she goes back to work next week, but she couldn't imagine being a stay-at-home mom - China is developing so quickly she could't bear to miss out on it, particularly as her field is the internet.

We spent several hours with mom and baby today, and what was most striking to me was the sense of optimism Hong has for her son's future. As a child growing up in the '80's, Hong can only remember tha days when China started to open up.

The bad days of the Cultural Revolution I that her parents lived through - mean nothing to her generation. It has only been getting better since she was born, and she has no reason to believe things will not keep improving for Long-long as he gets older.

After spending so much time recently in Iraq, the contrasts with how parents see the future there for their children is very striking. Iraqis do not trust in the future. Long-long's parents do. And they see their son playing a big role in the future, which is why they nicknamed him the dragon.

October 25, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)