• Tensions rise over 2011 exit date for US troops
• Foreign workers to lose immunity from Iraqi law
Martin Chulov in Baghdad The Guardian, Saturday 22 November 2008 Article history
Iraqi Shia protesters yesterday defaced and burned an effigy of President George Bush in a show of contempt for a deal struck between the departing US administration and the Iraqi government which will keep US troops in Iraq for another three years.
The protest, organised by supporters of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, drew thousands of people to the central Baghdad square where a statue of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was torn down and destroyed five years ago by US marines and bystanders.
The demonstration followed a week of tension in the national parliament, stemming from a cabinet decision to approve the deal, which for the first time commits US forces to a departure date in 2011 and gives the central government a more dominant role in Iraqi affairs in the interim. A spate of apparent insults during debates this week led to several bodyguards bringing weapons in to the parliamentary chamber for the first time.
Iraqi officials took a first step to exert their new authority yesterday by warning all 172 foreign security companies operating in the country that from early next year their employees will lose immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit under Iraqi law.
The loss of immunity was a key sticking point for the White House during almost a year of protracted talks and has led several large security groups to consider leaving the country.
Baghdad motorists have long resented being forced to defer to western security convoys, which rule the roost on the capital's choked roads. However a series of shooting incidents over the past four years in which civilians were killed has led some contractors to believe that the new laws will be tailored to target them directly.
A security crackdown across central Baghdad yesterday heightened traffic woes during the three-hour demonstration. US forces were nowhere to be seen, with security solely in the hands of Iraqi soldiers. The Iraqi army is responsible for almost all checkpoints in Baghdad, as well as 14 other provinces.
Supporters of al-Sadr, among them members of the outlawed Mahdi army, provided an extra security ring outside Firdous Square, frisking protesters and scanning the rally from the roofs of nearby buildings. No incidents were reported.
The anti-western cleric was not present, but his supporters read a message he had drafted. "No, no to the agreement of humiliation," the speaker chanted to demonstrators waving green Shia flags and thousands of national banners.
"This crowd shows that opposition to the agreement is not insignificant and parliament will be making a big mistake if it chooses to ignore it."
The statement continued: "The government must know it is the people who help it in the good and bad times. If it throws the occupier out, we will stand by it."
The Mahdi Army has been stood down, but al-Sadr has threatened to mobilise its units if the deal goes ahead.
The Sadrists' opposition to the pact is in defiance of the approval given by a broad Shia bloc, led by prime minister Nour al-Maliki. The US-backed leader's Dawa party and the allied Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council are counting on a decisive win when the deal is put to the 275-seat parliament this week, which they will try to parlay into a strong legislative mandate.
The Shia bloc appears to have the numbers for a robust win. A weak showing would damage its legitimacy in any future deals and influence provincial and general elections due to be held next year.
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
The return of the Baghdad blogger
Two years ago, Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger, was forced to leave the city he loved. But this week he returned from exile ... cautiously optimistic about the future of his country
Original Baghdad Blog
Baghdad Blog (Salem Pax)
Twitter Salem Pax
I have arrived in Baghdad on a magic carpet! Honestly, I have. There was never a more aptly named airline: Magic Carpet Airlines. And it flies daily flights to the Iraqi capital from Beirut, where I've been living for the last three months. As the pilot announced our descent in to Baghdad airport, I prepared myself for the 15-minute stomach-turning downward spiral flights have to make to keep within the secured airspace above the airport. But instead we went for an unhurried, gradual landing: the first and very welcome sign that things have changed.
I have been out of Iraq for almost two years now. The Baghdad I left in 2007 was not the city I had grown up in and loved. She had become so different, so violent, so not herself that I didn't feel I was abandoning her.
I remember the moment when it felt as if leaving wasn't a choice, but a very clear necessity. I was sitting in my pyjamas on the ground in our front garden; my father, mother and aunt crouched beside me, also in their pyjamas. Two American soldiers pointed these absurdly large rifles at us and an unnecessarily aggressive Iraqi translator hissed: "We know you have explosives in this house. It's better for you to tell us where they are than us going through the whole place and finding them."
At the time we were living in an Iraqi-army-protected compound in which many current and previous government officials had been provided "safe" housing. My father's short stint as a minister during Ayad Allawi's interim Governing Council in 2004, as well as his heading of the election campaign for the Iraqi National Accord, gave us the dubious privilege of said housing. The oh-so-many factions who were willing to kill and/or kidnap for money or political reasons, only had to keep an eye on who was going in and out of the gates to the compound. We were fish in a barrel.
But back to that morning in May 2007 as we sat on the ground in our PJs with six humvees at the gate, a dozen American soldiers going through our belongings and an Iraqi translator wearing a balaclava doing his "nobody moves, nobody gets hurt" thing.
None of us were particularly surprised by all this. To be honest, it felt inevitable. Let me count some of the reasons why: the Sunni family name, the tribal connections related to that name, the tide turning against Ayad Allawi and all those associated with his government when a strongly religious Shia government was elected, and last but not least, my father's very vocal opposition to this religious tide taking over. We - the rest of the family - had become pawns in all this.
After about an hour searching our house the US military unit left, having found nothing that could give them an excuse to detain any of us. But what they did find is the money my mother had taken out of the bank in preparation for our trip to Jordan the following day. We all knew the drill by then: after your house has been searched, go through your possessions. I managed to catch the translator before he left to tell him that $2,000 was missing from the house: he told me that he would look into it.
We left home 10 minutes after all the humvees had gone. When being on the street felt dangerous, we had stayed home; now that didn't feel safe either. We felt that as a family we had somehow managed to escape kidnappings and assassinations when they were daily realities around us, and we shouldn't push our luck any further. Most of my extended family had left Iraq by then. We almost had as many acquaintances and family in Jordan and Syria as we had in Iraq.
We left, and so did many, many others. By 2007 the UN High Commission for Refugees estimated that about five million Iraqis had had to leave their homes since the war began in 2003, most moving to other cities within Iraq. When I visited the south of Iraq, early after the start of the war, there were already signs that some Shia Muslim factions were forcing Christians to move to the north. Meanwhile the Kurds in the north were pushing Arabs out of Kurdistan. In Baghdad, not only were districts becoming identified by sect and religion but to curb the violence between them huge concrete walls were being erected demarking Shia and Sunni territories.
I still can't understand why doctors were driven out of the country. They were followed by academics; lists of names of university professors were being circulated, along with businessmen and government officials. They were on hit lists, we were told. Never mind why they were being targeted, were they going to risk it? Of course not: they packed and left. If you didn't fit into the political, ethnic and sectarian compartments created in the postwar chaos, you were out. Baghdad became a city of fear and grief.
And to make sure that the boot was firmly planted on our backsides, one of my uncles who was still in Baghdad got kidnapped from a supposedly protected compound within the ministry of oil. Shia militias walked in, knocked on doors, took high-level officials in the ministry and walked out. It was an ugly, ugly affair. It took months to get him released and no one in the family talks about it much. It left those of my family still in Iraq terrified because they had to deal with the kidnappers who were demanding a ransom. Those of my family already outside washed and dried their hands of the whole country. It felt like a clear message: this is not your country any more, you are not welcome.
Not that there were many places outside Iraq welcoming Iraqis. Governments in neighbouring countries were already grumbling about the number of Iraqi refugees "flooding" their gates and European countries were revising their asylum policies regarding Iraqis. The general argument was: "Your country is now safe, go back." We fled to wherever we could: my mother stayed in Jordan, my father in Lebanon; my brother managed to find a job in the United Arab Emirates, and I travelled to London having been lucky enough to secure a British Council scholarship to do a postgraduate degree in journalism.
So, two years later, after all that, what on earth am I doing back here?
I wish I could say that it is a wider general trend of Iraqis returning. If you were following the news after the US "surge" and the widely publicised improvement in the security situation since that time, you might have the impression that Iraqis were returning in big numbers. The truth is many of those who did go back left shortly afterwards again, having found their homes occupied by other people, or their neighbourhoods still unsafe. But many of those kept returning, bringing more family members with them: one foot in Iraq and the other holding the door open just in case a quick retreat was needed. That's where my family and I are now.
Since the war started, Baghdad has become for me the sort of place where you can never really judge how it is until you are there. Listening to the news from afar can be confusing and rarely gives you the full picture. When I moved to Beirut three months ago the picture got slightly less blurry. And now I want to see if the situation really has improved.
While in Beirut I found out that the Lebanese design consultancy firm I used to work for while I was writing my blog from Baghdad is back doing work in Iraq, and that the scope of the projects the Iraqi government is planning is amazing. A new general masterplan for greater Baghdad is being formulated, former army barracks are being turned into huge new housing districts and Sadr City should be seeing some impressive developments very soon. All of this has been boosted by gradual improvements in security and profits from high oil prices last year.
Even as we were hearing about a suicide bomber near the Kadhimya shrine just a week ago, the Baghdad municipality website was announcing an open call to architects and urban planners to submit designs for the development of the wider area around that holy shrine. This, just a month after opening bids for the construction of the Baghdad subway project. I didn't even know plans had been submitted for the project, let alone it being ready for construction.
An underground railway in Baghdad? Sounds delightfully crackers, doesn't it? But no less so than the plans for five-star hotels and shopping malls in the city centre, or a UAE property development company planning a $15bn housing project in the north. OK, I know what you're going to do now. You're going to send me a link to that mad "Disneyland in Baghdad" project the Times reported on last April and tell me not to get overexcited.
But what gives me some optimism regarding these projects - not the Disneyland thing, that would be silly - is what I've seen on TV over the last two weeks from the city of Karbala. The city has just been through Ashura, the 10-day commemoration of one of Shia Islam's most revered imams. The event was widely covered with live broadcasts from the city centre, and what I saw was a far cry from the shabby city centre I visited in 2003 when I made a film for Newsnight about the Ashura festivities. What we are betting on, given money and some calm, is that it can be done.
On the politics front, I have never felt as supportive of the current Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki as I was during the negotiations for the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States. For once it felt as if the Iraqi government could stand up for itself and not be a pushover. Yes, the negotiations were messy and the Iraqi parliament acted, in the end, like a bunch of kindergarten kids, but as an executive authority the prime minister and his cabinet mostly played hardball with the US negotiators. It was great to follow, and hopefully a sign of political maturity.
My mother spent about four weeks in Baghdad very recently. She stayed in my flat in the centre of the city, where I am now living. She came back feeling very positive about the situation. She told everyone she talked to about how much she enjoyed herself there. Without telling us about her plans, she travelled to Karbala and Najaf to visit relatives and went on a taxi ride through Baghdad. And all she complained about when she told us about her adventures was the traffic and how incredibly expensive everything was now. But when my aunt decided to go to Baghdad for a trip too, my mother called her to tell her that she hoped she hadn't sounded too enthusiastic and optimistic, it was just that she was so excited about being back.
Now that I am in Baghdad myself I think I should temper my optimism as well. Let's not forget that until recently Christians were being driven out of their homes in Mosul, suicide attacks are still killing hundreds weekly and with provincial elections approaching, things could take a turn for the worse. Services are still more miss than hit - long electricity and water cuts are still the norm.
And I am not sure if the city I left is the city I have arrived back in. Will what it went through have changed it and its people so much that it will feel alien to me? I hope not. I want to feel like a Baghdadi again; I want to get my driver's licence back and drive along the roads I used to love. I want to visit the book market and check out the art galleries. I even hear the Iraqi National Museum is open to the public again. After becoming a source of fear, worry and sadness, I want Baghdad to feel like home again.
The busy and bustling streets from the airport to my flat are a good omen and my aunt's welcoming words, "Good, you're back, you'll like it" make me even more hopeful. So, until my next update from Iraq, keep your fingers crossed that Baghdad gives me as warm a welcome as she did.
by Salem Pax
'He spared neither regime nor invader' (How the Baghdad Blogger became a global media phenomenon)
by Leslie Plommer
In the breathless limbo of early 2003, as Iraqis waited for the American-led assault against the regime of Saddam Hussein, a special voice emerged to tell the world what it was like to be an ordinary person in a city on the approach to war. Writing in wry, idiomatic English under the pseudonym Salam Pax, "the Baghdad Blogger" became an international media phenomenon - his web diary avidly followed around the world, quoted, criticised and admired. And puzzled over: who was he?
On 20 March, the war arrived. The bombing of Baghdad began. By 9 April, a crowd in the capital was pulling down the huge bronze statue of Saddam Hussein under the eyes of newly arrived American troops. Before, during and after this focal period, a young man living somewhere in the Baghdad suburbs transmitted (with just one temporary break in service) his account of his life among family, friends and neighbours. Closely observed, intelligent, sometimes passionate, frequently funny, he spared neither regime nor invader.
Yet masked by his insouciant tone is the fact that what he was doing held great danger as the dying apparatus of the regime lashed out.
Excerpts from his blogpost on 9 March 2003 give a flavour, as he takes aim at a British reporter who has ended his piece from the Mutanabi Friday book market by saying that Iraqis seemed to be putting on an air of normality. "Look," responds Salam, "what are you supposed to do then? Run around in the streets wailing? War is at the door eeeeeeeeeeeee! . . . But in order not to disappoint the BBC, me, Raed and G put on our 'normal' faces and went to buy CDs from Arassat Street in a demonstration of normality ... many thanks to Malaysian bootleggers for providing us with cheap CDs. The Deftones, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Erykah Badu and the Amr Diab have joined the Pax Radio CD racks.
"Other normal stuff we did this week: finished taping all the windows in the house, actually a very relaxing exercise if you forget why you are doing it in the first place. Bought 60 litres of gasoline to run the small electricity generator we have, bought two nifty kerosene cookers and stocked loads of kerosene and dug holes in the garden to bury the stuff so that the house doesn't turn into a bomb. Prepared one room for emergency nasty attacks and bought 'particle masks' - that's what it says on the box.
"Got two rooms in our house ready to welcome our first IDPs (internally displaced persons) - my youngest aunt who is a single mom with three kids because she lives farthest away from the rest of us and another aunt from Karbala in the south. Hotel Pax is officially open for the season, no need to make reservations but you might need to bring a mattress if you come too late."
In the wake of the invasion, a Guardian correspondent set off in search of the blog's author. He proved to be "a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in a Baghdad suburb", Rory McCarthy reported. "In June last year, Salam (this much of his name, at least, is real) was a recently graduated architect, aged 29, living at home with his parents and brother in Baghdad. His best friend was Raed, 25, a Palestinian-Jordanian he had met while studying architecture, who was taking a masters degree in Jordan. Raed was at best an infrequent email correspondent and so Salam started writing up his news from home on a weblog, a site on the internet where he could post his scribblings as often as he liked for his friend to read. He called it: Where is Raed?"
As war approached, that site - www.dear_raed.blogspot.com - became the stage for the Salam Pax phenomenon.
Original Baghdad Blog
Baghdad Blog (Salem Pax)
Twitter Salem Pax
I have arrived in Baghdad on a magic carpet! Honestly, I have. There was never a more aptly named airline: Magic Carpet Airlines. And it flies daily flights to the Iraqi capital from Beirut, where I've been living for the last three months. As the pilot announced our descent in to Baghdad airport, I prepared myself for the 15-minute stomach-turning downward spiral flights have to make to keep within the secured airspace above the airport. But instead we went for an unhurried, gradual landing: the first and very welcome sign that things have changed.
I have been out of Iraq for almost two years now. The Baghdad I left in 2007 was not the city I had grown up in and loved. She had become so different, so violent, so not herself that I didn't feel I was abandoning her.
I remember the moment when it felt as if leaving wasn't a choice, but a very clear necessity. I was sitting in my pyjamas on the ground in our front garden; my father, mother and aunt crouched beside me, also in their pyjamas. Two American soldiers pointed these absurdly large rifles at us and an unnecessarily aggressive Iraqi translator hissed: "We know you have explosives in this house. It's better for you to tell us where they are than us going through the whole place and finding them."
At the time we were living in an Iraqi-army-protected compound in which many current and previous government officials had been provided "safe" housing. My father's short stint as a minister during Ayad Allawi's interim Governing Council in 2004, as well as his heading of the election campaign for the Iraqi National Accord, gave us the dubious privilege of said housing. The oh-so-many factions who were willing to kill and/or kidnap for money or political reasons, only had to keep an eye on who was going in and out of the gates to the compound. We were fish in a barrel.
But back to that morning in May 2007 as we sat on the ground in our PJs with six humvees at the gate, a dozen American soldiers going through our belongings and an Iraqi translator wearing a balaclava doing his "nobody moves, nobody gets hurt" thing.
None of us were particularly surprised by all this. To be honest, it felt inevitable. Let me count some of the reasons why: the Sunni family name, the tribal connections related to that name, the tide turning against Ayad Allawi and all those associated with his government when a strongly religious Shia government was elected, and last but not least, my father's very vocal opposition to this religious tide taking over. We - the rest of the family - had become pawns in all this.
After about an hour searching our house the US military unit left, having found nothing that could give them an excuse to detain any of us. But what they did find is the money my mother had taken out of the bank in preparation for our trip to Jordan the following day. We all knew the drill by then: after your house has been searched, go through your possessions. I managed to catch the translator before he left to tell him that $2,000 was missing from the house: he told me that he would look into it.
We left home 10 minutes after all the humvees had gone. When being on the street felt dangerous, we had stayed home; now that didn't feel safe either. We felt that as a family we had somehow managed to escape kidnappings and assassinations when they were daily realities around us, and we shouldn't push our luck any further. Most of my extended family had left Iraq by then. We almost had as many acquaintances and family in Jordan and Syria as we had in Iraq.
We left, and so did many, many others. By 2007 the UN High Commission for Refugees estimated that about five million Iraqis had had to leave their homes since the war began in 2003, most moving to other cities within Iraq. When I visited the south of Iraq, early after the start of the war, there were already signs that some Shia Muslim factions were forcing Christians to move to the north. Meanwhile the Kurds in the north were pushing Arabs out of Kurdistan. In Baghdad, not only were districts becoming identified by sect and religion but to curb the violence between them huge concrete walls were being erected demarking Shia and Sunni territories.
I still can't understand why doctors were driven out of the country. They were followed by academics; lists of names of university professors were being circulated, along with businessmen and government officials. They were on hit lists, we were told. Never mind why they were being targeted, were they going to risk it? Of course not: they packed and left. If you didn't fit into the political, ethnic and sectarian compartments created in the postwar chaos, you were out. Baghdad became a city of fear and grief.
And to make sure that the boot was firmly planted on our backsides, one of my uncles who was still in Baghdad got kidnapped from a supposedly protected compound within the ministry of oil. Shia militias walked in, knocked on doors, took high-level officials in the ministry and walked out. It was an ugly, ugly affair. It took months to get him released and no one in the family talks about it much. It left those of my family still in Iraq terrified because they had to deal with the kidnappers who were demanding a ransom. Those of my family already outside washed and dried their hands of the whole country. It felt like a clear message: this is not your country any more, you are not welcome.
Not that there were many places outside Iraq welcoming Iraqis. Governments in neighbouring countries were already grumbling about the number of Iraqi refugees "flooding" their gates and European countries were revising their asylum policies regarding Iraqis. The general argument was: "Your country is now safe, go back." We fled to wherever we could: my mother stayed in Jordan, my father in Lebanon; my brother managed to find a job in the United Arab Emirates, and I travelled to London having been lucky enough to secure a British Council scholarship to do a postgraduate degree in journalism.
So, two years later, after all that, what on earth am I doing back here?
I wish I could say that it is a wider general trend of Iraqis returning. If you were following the news after the US "surge" and the widely publicised improvement in the security situation since that time, you might have the impression that Iraqis were returning in big numbers. The truth is many of those who did go back left shortly afterwards again, having found their homes occupied by other people, or their neighbourhoods still unsafe. But many of those kept returning, bringing more family members with them: one foot in Iraq and the other holding the door open just in case a quick retreat was needed. That's where my family and I are now.
Since the war started, Baghdad has become for me the sort of place where you can never really judge how it is until you are there. Listening to the news from afar can be confusing and rarely gives you the full picture. When I moved to Beirut three months ago the picture got slightly less blurry. And now I want to see if the situation really has improved.
While in Beirut I found out that the Lebanese design consultancy firm I used to work for while I was writing my blog from Baghdad is back doing work in Iraq, and that the scope of the projects the Iraqi government is planning is amazing. A new general masterplan for greater Baghdad is being formulated, former army barracks are being turned into huge new housing districts and Sadr City should be seeing some impressive developments very soon. All of this has been boosted by gradual improvements in security and profits from high oil prices last year.
Even as we were hearing about a suicide bomber near the Kadhimya shrine just a week ago, the Baghdad municipality website was announcing an open call to architects and urban planners to submit designs for the development of the wider area around that holy shrine. This, just a month after opening bids for the construction of the Baghdad subway project. I didn't even know plans had been submitted for the project, let alone it being ready for construction.
An underground railway in Baghdad? Sounds delightfully crackers, doesn't it? But no less so than the plans for five-star hotels and shopping malls in the city centre, or a UAE property development company planning a $15bn housing project in the north. OK, I know what you're going to do now. You're going to send me a link to that mad "Disneyland in Baghdad" project the Times reported on last April and tell me not to get overexcited.
But what gives me some optimism regarding these projects - not the Disneyland thing, that would be silly - is what I've seen on TV over the last two weeks from the city of Karbala. The city has just been through Ashura, the 10-day commemoration of one of Shia Islam's most revered imams. The event was widely covered with live broadcasts from the city centre, and what I saw was a far cry from the shabby city centre I visited in 2003 when I made a film for Newsnight about the Ashura festivities. What we are betting on, given money and some calm, is that it can be done.
On the politics front, I have never felt as supportive of the current Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki as I was during the negotiations for the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States. For once it felt as if the Iraqi government could stand up for itself and not be a pushover. Yes, the negotiations were messy and the Iraqi parliament acted, in the end, like a bunch of kindergarten kids, but as an executive authority the prime minister and his cabinet mostly played hardball with the US negotiators. It was great to follow, and hopefully a sign of political maturity.
My mother spent about four weeks in Baghdad very recently. She stayed in my flat in the centre of the city, where I am now living. She came back feeling very positive about the situation. She told everyone she talked to about how much she enjoyed herself there. Without telling us about her plans, she travelled to Karbala and Najaf to visit relatives and went on a taxi ride through Baghdad. And all she complained about when she told us about her adventures was the traffic and how incredibly expensive everything was now. But when my aunt decided to go to Baghdad for a trip too, my mother called her to tell her that she hoped she hadn't sounded too enthusiastic and optimistic, it was just that she was so excited about being back.
Now that I am in Baghdad myself I think I should temper my optimism as well. Let's not forget that until recently Christians were being driven out of their homes in Mosul, suicide attacks are still killing hundreds weekly and with provincial elections approaching, things could take a turn for the worse. Services are still more miss than hit - long electricity and water cuts are still the norm.
And I am not sure if the city I left is the city I have arrived back in. Will what it went through have changed it and its people so much that it will feel alien to me? I hope not. I want to feel like a Baghdadi again; I want to get my driver's licence back and drive along the roads I used to love. I want to visit the book market and check out the art galleries. I even hear the Iraqi National Museum is open to the public again. After becoming a source of fear, worry and sadness, I want Baghdad to feel like home again.
The busy and bustling streets from the airport to my flat are a good omen and my aunt's welcoming words, "Good, you're back, you'll like it" make me even more hopeful. So, until my next update from Iraq, keep your fingers crossed that Baghdad gives me as warm a welcome as she did.
by Salem Pax
'He spared neither regime nor invader' (How the Baghdad Blogger became a global media phenomenon)
by Leslie Plommer
In the breathless limbo of early 2003, as Iraqis waited for the American-led assault against the regime of Saddam Hussein, a special voice emerged to tell the world what it was like to be an ordinary person in a city on the approach to war. Writing in wry, idiomatic English under the pseudonym Salam Pax, "the Baghdad Blogger" became an international media phenomenon - his web diary avidly followed around the world, quoted, criticised and admired. And puzzled over: who was he?
On 20 March, the war arrived. The bombing of Baghdad began. By 9 April, a crowd in the capital was pulling down the huge bronze statue of Saddam Hussein under the eyes of newly arrived American troops. Before, during and after this focal period, a young man living somewhere in the Baghdad suburbs transmitted (with just one temporary break in service) his account of his life among family, friends and neighbours. Closely observed, intelligent, sometimes passionate, frequently funny, he spared neither regime nor invader.
Yet masked by his insouciant tone is the fact that what he was doing held great danger as the dying apparatus of the regime lashed out.
Excerpts from his blogpost on 9 March 2003 give a flavour, as he takes aim at a British reporter who has ended his piece from the Mutanabi Friday book market by saying that Iraqis seemed to be putting on an air of normality. "Look," responds Salam, "what are you supposed to do then? Run around in the streets wailing? War is at the door eeeeeeeeeeeee! . . . But in order not to disappoint the BBC, me, Raed and G put on our 'normal' faces and went to buy CDs from Arassat Street in a demonstration of normality ... many thanks to Malaysian bootleggers for providing us with cheap CDs. The Deftones, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Erykah Badu and the Amr Diab have joined the Pax Radio CD racks.
"Other normal stuff we did this week: finished taping all the windows in the house, actually a very relaxing exercise if you forget why you are doing it in the first place. Bought 60 litres of gasoline to run the small electricity generator we have, bought two nifty kerosene cookers and stocked loads of kerosene and dug holes in the garden to bury the stuff so that the house doesn't turn into a bomb. Prepared one room for emergency nasty attacks and bought 'particle masks' - that's what it says on the box.
"Got two rooms in our house ready to welcome our first IDPs (internally displaced persons) - my youngest aunt who is a single mom with three kids because she lives farthest away from the rest of us and another aunt from Karbala in the south. Hotel Pax is officially open for the season, no need to make reservations but you might need to bring a mattress if you come too late."
In the wake of the invasion, a Guardian correspondent set off in search of the blog's author. He proved to be "a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in a Baghdad suburb", Rory McCarthy reported. "In June last year, Salam (this much of his name, at least, is real) was a recently graduated architect, aged 29, living at home with his parents and brother in Baghdad. His best friend was Raed, 25, a Palestinian-Jordanian he had met while studying architecture, who was taking a masters degree in Jordan. Raed was at best an infrequent email correspondent and so Salam started writing up his news from home on a weblog, a site on the internet where he could post his scribblings as often as he liked for his friend to read. He called it: Where is Raed?"
As war approached, that site - www.dear_raed.blogspot.com - became the stage for the Salam Pax phenomenon.
Monday, 12 January 2009
Shoe thrown at George Bush
Guardian link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/dec/15/bush-shoes-iraq
George Bush's engagement with Iraq appeared to end as it began - in chaos and anger - yesterday when a surprise trip to Baghdad to thank his troops and herald a new security pact was disrupted by an Iraqi man calling the US president a "dog" in Arabic and throwing his shoes at him.
The Bush trip, which will also take in Afghanistan where he arrived this morning, was conducted amid deep secrecy. It was intended to round off on a high note the policy that has most defined his presidency.
During a press conference with the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, he said the conflict had been necessary, adding: "The war is not over."
But his comments were clearly not to the liking of one person. "This is the end!" the man shouted, before hurling first one and then his other shoe at the American leader from a distance of about 12 feet.
Bush ducked as the first shoe flew close above his head, hitting the wall behind him. He ducked again to avoid the second shoe, as Iraqi security men pounced on the assailant - reported to be an Iraqi journalist - and dragged him screaming out of the room.
The US president appeared untroubled by the incident and later quipped: "All I can report is it is a size 10." But the disruption was clearly unwelcome on his fourth and final visit to Iraq.
It was also pregnant with symbolism. In the Arab world, throwing shoes at somebody is considered a serious insult, as is even showing them the soles of one's footwear, as demonstrated by jubilant Iraqis towards the statue of Saddam Hussein as it was toppled in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion.
With less than six weeks to go before the end of Bush's presidency, his surprise visit to Iraq aims to highlight the decline in violence in the country and the so-called status of forces agreement, which comes into force next month.
Speaking before the shoe incident, Bush said of the five-and-a-half year occupation: "The work hasn't been easy, but it has been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace ... I'm just so grateful I had the chance to come back to Iraq before my presidency ends."
The security pact, approved by the Iraqi parliament three weeks ago, provides for the removal of US troops from Iraqi cities by the middle of next year and a full withdrawal by 2011. But there are already signs that the agreement is running into problems. Most importantly, its timetable will have to be squared with that of the incoming president.
Barack Obama has said consistently that he will pull US forces out of Iraq within the much tighter timeframe of 16 months, security conditions permitting. He is likely to highlight that ambition early on in his term, which begins on 20 January.
The provision to evacuate US personnel from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 has also been drawn into question. Over the weekend the top US commander in the country, General Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain in several cities beyond next summer, acting in a support role as part of "transition teams".
Doubt has also been cast on the legal basis of the new pact, which leaves the US occupation without the cover of a UN mandate.
Bush landed in Baghdad on Air Force One after an 11-hour flight and began the visit with talks with the president, Jalal Talabani, and his aides. "I've known these men for a long time and I've come to admire them for their courage and their determination to succeed," Bush said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/dec/15/bush-shoes-iraq
George Bush's engagement with Iraq appeared to end as it began - in chaos and anger - yesterday when a surprise trip to Baghdad to thank his troops and herald a new security pact was disrupted by an Iraqi man calling the US president a "dog" in Arabic and throwing his shoes at him.
The Bush trip, which will also take in Afghanistan where he arrived this morning, was conducted amid deep secrecy. It was intended to round off on a high note the policy that has most defined his presidency.
During a press conference with the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, he said the conflict had been necessary, adding: "The war is not over."
But his comments were clearly not to the liking of one person. "This is the end!" the man shouted, before hurling first one and then his other shoe at the American leader from a distance of about 12 feet.
Bush ducked as the first shoe flew close above his head, hitting the wall behind him. He ducked again to avoid the second shoe, as Iraqi security men pounced on the assailant - reported to be an Iraqi journalist - and dragged him screaming out of the room.
The US president appeared untroubled by the incident and later quipped: "All I can report is it is a size 10." But the disruption was clearly unwelcome on his fourth and final visit to Iraq.
It was also pregnant with symbolism. In the Arab world, throwing shoes at somebody is considered a serious insult, as is even showing them the soles of one's footwear, as demonstrated by jubilant Iraqis towards the statue of Saddam Hussein as it was toppled in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion.
With less than six weeks to go before the end of Bush's presidency, his surprise visit to Iraq aims to highlight the decline in violence in the country and the so-called status of forces agreement, which comes into force next month.
Speaking before the shoe incident, Bush said of the five-and-a-half year occupation: "The work hasn't been easy, but it has been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace ... I'm just so grateful I had the chance to come back to Iraq before my presidency ends."
The security pact, approved by the Iraqi parliament three weeks ago, provides for the removal of US troops from Iraqi cities by the middle of next year and a full withdrawal by 2011. But there are already signs that the agreement is running into problems. Most importantly, its timetable will have to be squared with that of the incoming president.
Barack Obama has said consistently that he will pull US forces out of Iraq within the much tighter timeframe of 16 months, security conditions permitting. He is likely to highlight that ambition early on in his term, which begins on 20 January.
The provision to evacuate US personnel from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 has also been drawn into question. Over the weekend the top US commander in the country, General Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain in several cities beyond next summer, acting in a support role as part of "transition teams".
Doubt has also been cast on the legal basis of the new pact, which leaves the US occupation without the cover of a UN mandate.
Bush landed in Baghdad on Air Force One after an 11-hour flight and began the visit with talks with the president, Jalal Talabani, and his aides. "I've known these men for a long time and I've come to admire them for their courage and their determination to succeed," Bush said.
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
The day fox news called
One day shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hassan Ali answered the door to his family home in Baghdad. Some strange men were standing on the doorstep. "I'd never seen anything like these huge armed men in flak jackets. They were scary. My father was worried they were going to kill us." The men turned out to be bodyguards for a Fox News crew, come to interview Ali and the other four members of his band UTN1.
Fox News weren't the first or last western journalists to visit. During 2003, wave after wave of advancing media troops from Britain and the US fell on UTN1, each one withdrawing in triumph with the same putatively sweet story. In the middle of the unremitting bleakness of war, here was comforting, upbeat news about five cute guys who, inspired by Boyzone and Westlife, had firmed their abs, modulated their harmonies and followed a career path comprehensible to us in the west: they had formed a boy band.
It was an irresistible story. UTN1 wore singlets - like Take That! They pouted broodingly for the cameras - like Ronan Keating! They sang in English and wore Converse! They crooned about peace, rather than detonating themselves at army checkpoints!
Better yet, somehow these plucky guys had managed to imbibe western popular culture (meaning the Spice Girls, Boys to Men and, just possibly, Blue). They were a multicultural melange of Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shias - thus pointing the way to the fine democratic future that Bush and Blair said Iraq would enjoy as soon as the west had won. In a marvellous piece of cultural imperialism, the west wrote up these five men - Shant Garabedian (30), Akhlad Raof (28), Artin Haroutiounian (31), Hassan Ali (26) and Nadeem Hamid (26) - as Iraq's only boy band, and a symbol of the country's bright post-war future.
The story suggested Iraqis wanted to be like us; and, more, that our invasion was to liberate people like us from people - devils, really - who weren't.
Iraqi culture thus apparently consisted of citadels of western-facing music and art in an otherwise toxic wasteland. Iraq had one boy band. It also had just one heavy metal band, we learned, called Acrassicauda, who had a similar tale of battling Saddam's censorship to hear the inspirational tones of Metallica and Napalm Death. If only western journalists had dug deeper, they might have found Eminem's spiritual brother in Mosul, Iraq's answer to Tracey Emin in Basra and an underground network of Harry Potter nuts extending from Kurdistan to the Gulf.
Only one problem with UTN1's story as it appeared in the west. It wasn't true. "We weren't a boy band," says Hassan, who is UTN1's guitarist and singer. "That was just a handle for the western media."
"We formed just before the millennium," recalls keyboardist Haroutiounian. "We wanted to do something unique in the Arab-speaking world: writing and performing our own songs in English." Their ambitions were written into the band's name: UTN1 stands for Unknown to No One. "We were very influenced by Boyzone and Westlife. I was fascinated by the Spice Girls."
Why, for the love of Mel C, why? " We liked the harmonies of singing together in these groups. Each singer had a different line," says Garabedian. "In Arabic music there is no such harmonising group singing; it's usually just one vocalist. We really wanted to do what they did, but with our twist. Yes, we were inspired by western pop music, but that was never all we were."
How did UTN1 feel about being made into poster boys for the liberation of Iraq? "The media interest was an opportunity for us at the precise moment when there were no other opportunities for us as musicians and the future for musicians in Baghdad looked - as it has indeed proved to be - very bleak," says Hamid. "We didn't see ourselves as poster boys: we saw ourselves as musicians struggling to carry on our careers in very difficult circumstances."
But the band had previous in pursuing dubious-seeming opportunities. They once wrote a song celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday; it was commissioned by a radio station run by his son Uday. It's not entirely clear to me whether they were exploiting or exploited. "Let me explain how that happened," says Artin Haroutiounian with a grin. "We wanted to be the next U2, and we thought it was possible if we sang in English." So the band wrote a love song that they wanted broadcast on the Voice of Youth, an English-language radio station in Baghdad.
VoY agreed to play the song, but on one condition: UTN1 would have to write another commemorating the birthday of Saddam.
"We wrote the song in three days!" says Raof. All five chuckle over this memory as if it were just one of those crazy things one has to do in showbiz, like Take That wearing nipple-gaping tops to titillate pre-pubescent girls in the early 1990s. Didn't you have qualms? "We wanted our record played," says Haroutiounian, staring me down. Their song included the following lines: "All bells let them ring/ As we all will sing/ Long live dear Saddam." "They told us we had to use the word 'Saddam'. Otherwise we probably wouldn't," Haroutiounian says. VoY played it incessantly, but only spun their love song once.
UTN1 went on to make an album of songs in English, funded by Alan's Melody, the only shop selling imported CDs in the Iraqi capital. Ali says: "In Saddam's Iraq there was no satellite TV, no internet, not much access to the outside world, so [the shop's] influence was vital."
They sent copies of their CD to record companies in London, says Haroutiounian. "It is a capital of the musical world and we wanted to go there." But it wasn't to be. It was now late 2003 and the dictator whose birthday UTN1 had been obliged to celebrate in song had been swept from power and their homeland was being razed. "None of us had passports and getting new ones in wartime was impossible. It would have taken a year and a half."
As a result, the boys contemplated giving up music. Handily, while working for an import-export company, Garabedian met an American businessman called Larry Underwood whose Laudes Corporation was operating in post-Saddam Iraq. After hearing the CD, Underwood, who saw commercial possibilities of Iraq's first ever international pop group, decided to invest in them and so arranged for his new charges to go to Jordan. Once in Amman, the members of UTN1 successfully applied for a UK visa at the British embassy. As a result, they spent seven months in London in 2005 and 2006, learning to dance, sing and finesse the buffing of their six packs in the manner deemed requisite by UK style gurus. "It is a great city and we want to go back there sometime," says Haroutiounian. "Yes," agrees Raof, "we never did go on the London Eye."
Seemingly UTN1, funded by an American and groomed by Brits, was being moulded to became even more western than before. Ali, who not only plays guitar, but also oud on some UTN1 tracks, denies this: "Yes, we perfected that kind of boy-band style, but our Iraqi identity is clearly in the music." The band also uses the joza, a violin-like instrument which Hassan describes as having "its own special scale of sadness". You can hear it on their first single called While We Can. In the song's video (available on YouTube), children carry wooden guns which they symbolically drop at the end. "It is about stopping war," says Haroutiounian. "That is what we believe in."
Once their UK visas ran out, UTN1 settled in Beirut. Why the Lebanese capital? "It is impossible to make music in Baghdad. We are musicians, so we are in Beirut," says Hamid. "If we were freedom fighters, we would be in Baghdad."
Only one problem: they moved to Beirut in 2006, shortly before the Israeli-Lebanon war broke out. "War seems to follow us," says Haroutiounian. UTN1 withdrew to Amman, returning to Beirut only after hostilities ceased.
They remain exiles in Lebanon. Do you want to go home? "We go back to Baghdad occasionally," says Hamid, "and we would like to play a concert there, but it is not clear whether that would be too risky. As for living there - yes, perhaps, sometime, though who knows when?"
What do your families make of your chosen careers? "When we started some of them thought it was crazy for us to try to make our livelihoods in music. It just didn't happen. But now we're successful, we hear less of this," says Ali. All five prefer not to discuss their families who still live in Baghdad.
"One day," says Raof, "we hope to return to Baghdad. We want to set up a music school there, or a music store, or do something for our homeland. Iraq has too little music these days. We have been away for too long and we have so much to give back."
We're sitting in the new offices of UTN1's management company in central Beirut. From the fourth floor window one can see not just the Mediterranean, but also gridlock reportedly caused by a Hezbollah rally. Outside a muezzin is vying with the jackhammers and construction cranes as he summons the faithful to prayer at the Al-Omari Mosque. Beirut's city centre is being rebuilt. Only in Shanghai have I been more overwhelmed by the omnipresent sound of construction. This, I say, to UTN1, is what Baghdad will sound like in a happier time. All five giggle obligingly but none comments.
Instead, they tell me about their latest career move. Last year they decided to start singing in Arabic, recording a single called Jamila, which means beautiful. "It was number one across the Middle East," says Haroutiounian proudly. Why was it a success? "Because we sang Arabic but with western-style harmonies. There is nothing like it in the world. It blew people's minds." It did too: if you consult UTN1's MySpace page, you'll find encomia from around the world.
Hassan Ali tells me they have already recorded an album of six English and six Arabic songs and their management is waiting for the right time to release it. "Our hope is to heal the wounds between east and west, to spread a message of reconciliation."
Are you a political band? All five shake their heads. "We always wanted to show that something good can come out of Iraq," says Haroutiounian. "We are three Muslims and two Christians. We show how things are changing in Iraq." I notice that on the band's MySpace page, Nadeem cites Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East as one of his favourite books. "I will remove that reference. I am not sure that I trust his politics, having now finished the book."
Are you happy the British are leaving? "We're glad that the withdrawal shows that Iraqi police and soldiers can now look after their own country," says Hamid.
What would you be doing if you weren't successful in music? "I have a qualification in agriculture so I would be a farmer," says Garabedian. "I have a degree in chemistry, so I would be working for a corporation," says Ali. "I would be a porn star," says Haroutiounian who, I think, isn't taking my question seriously. "I would be his assistant," says Raof. "I studied biology," says Hamid, "but I don't see myself in a lab coat."
It's all smiles until Hamid adds: "Actually your question is impossible. None of us can imagine what we would have done. It's hard enough to know what you'll be doing in two weeks' time if you're an Iraqi. It's too dangerous to imagine the future. Hassan couldn't have been an industrial chemist because for him to step outside his house in Baghdad would have been suicide. Shant couldn't farm - it would have been too dangerous. And Art is Armenian so he would have been abducted by some sect. Normal dreams weren't available to us."
Fox News weren't the first or last western journalists to visit. During 2003, wave after wave of advancing media troops from Britain and the US fell on UTN1, each one withdrawing in triumph with the same putatively sweet story. In the middle of the unremitting bleakness of war, here was comforting, upbeat news about five cute guys who, inspired by Boyzone and Westlife, had firmed their abs, modulated their harmonies and followed a career path comprehensible to us in the west: they had formed a boy band.
It was an irresistible story. UTN1 wore singlets - like Take That! They pouted broodingly for the cameras - like Ronan Keating! They sang in English and wore Converse! They crooned about peace, rather than detonating themselves at army checkpoints!
Better yet, somehow these plucky guys had managed to imbibe western popular culture (meaning the Spice Girls, Boys to Men and, just possibly, Blue). They were a multicultural melange of Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shias - thus pointing the way to the fine democratic future that Bush and Blair said Iraq would enjoy as soon as the west had won. In a marvellous piece of cultural imperialism, the west wrote up these five men - Shant Garabedian (30), Akhlad Raof (28), Artin Haroutiounian (31), Hassan Ali (26) and Nadeem Hamid (26) - as Iraq's only boy band, and a symbol of the country's bright post-war future.
The story suggested Iraqis wanted to be like us; and, more, that our invasion was to liberate people like us from people - devils, really - who weren't.
Iraqi culture thus apparently consisted of citadels of western-facing music and art in an otherwise toxic wasteland. Iraq had one boy band. It also had just one heavy metal band, we learned, called Acrassicauda, who had a similar tale of battling Saddam's censorship to hear the inspirational tones of Metallica and Napalm Death. If only western journalists had dug deeper, they might have found Eminem's spiritual brother in Mosul, Iraq's answer to Tracey Emin in Basra and an underground network of Harry Potter nuts extending from Kurdistan to the Gulf.
Only one problem with UTN1's story as it appeared in the west. It wasn't true. "We weren't a boy band," says Hassan, who is UTN1's guitarist and singer. "That was just a handle for the western media."
"We formed just before the millennium," recalls keyboardist Haroutiounian. "We wanted to do something unique in the Arab-speaking world: writing and performing our own songs in English." Their ambitions were written into the band's name: UTN1 stands for Unknown to No One. "We were very influenced by Boyzone and Westlife. I was fascinated by the Spice Girls."
Why, for the love of Mel C, why? " We liked the harmonies of singing together in these groups. Each singer had a different line," says Garabedian. "In Arabic music there is no such harmonising group singing; it's usually just one vocalist. We really wanted to do what they did, but with our twist. Yes, we were inspired by western pop music, but that was never all we were."
How did UTN1 feel about being made into poster boys for the liberation of Iraq? "The media interest was an opportunity for us at the precise moment when there were no other opportunities for us as musicians and the future for musicians in Baghdad looked - as it has indeed proved to be - very bleak," says Hamid. "We didn't see ourselves as poster boys: we saw ourselves as musicians struggling to carry on our careers in very difficult circumstances."
But the band had previous in pursuing dubious-seeming opportunities. They once wrote a song celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday; it was commissioned by a radio station run by his son Uday. It's not entirely clear to me whether they were exploiting or exploited. "Let me explain how that happened," says Artin Haroutiounian with a grin. "We wanted to be the next U2, and we thought it was possible if we sang in English." So the band wrote a love song that they wanted broadcast on the Voice of Youth, an English-language radio station in Baghdad.
VoY agreed to play the song, but on one condition: UTN1 would have to write another commemorating the birthday of Saddam.
"We wrote the song in three days!" says Raof. All five chuckle over this memory as if it were just one of those crazy things one has to do in showbiz, like Take That wearing nipple-gaping tops to titillate pre-pubescent girls in the early 1990s. Didn't you have qualms? "We wanted our record played," says Haroutiounian, staring me down. Their song included the following lines: "All bells let them ring/ As we all will sing/ Long live dear Saddam." "They told us we had to use the word 'Saddam'. Otherwise we probably wouldn't," Haroutiounian says. VoY played it incessantly, but only spun their love song once.
UTN1 went on to make an album of songs in English, funded by Alan's Melody, the only shop selling imported CDs in the Iraqi capital. Ali says: "In Saddam's Iraq there was no satellite TV, no internet, not much access to the outside world, so [the shop's] influence was vital."
They sent copies of their CD to record companies in London, says Haroutiounian. "It is a capital of the musical world and we wanted to go there." But it wasn't to be. It was now late 2003 and the dictator whose birthday UTN1 had been obliged to celebrate in song had been swept from power and their homeland was being razed. "None of us had passports and getting new ones in wartime was impossible. It would have taken a year and a half."
As a result, the boys contemplated giving up music. Handily, while working for an import-export company, Garabedian met an American businessman called Larry Underwood whose Laudes Corporation was operating in post-Saddam Iraq. After hearing the CD, Underwood, who saw commercial possibilities of Iraq's first ever international pop group, decided to invest in them and so arranged for his new charges to go to Jordan. Once in Amman, the members of UTN1 successfully applied for a UK visa at the British embassy. As a result, they spent seven months in London in 2005 and 2006, learning to dance, sing and finesse the buffing of their six packs in the manner deemed requisite by UK style gurus. "It is a great city and we want to go back there sometime," says Haroutiounian. "Yes," agrees Raof, "we never did go on the London Eye."
Seemingly UTN1, funded by an American and groomed by Brits, was being moulded to became even more western than before. Ali, who not only plays guitar, but also oud on some UTN1 tracks, denies this: "Yes, we perfected that kind of boy-band style, but our Iraqi identity is clearly in the music." The band also uses the joza, a violin-like instrument which Hassan describes as having "its own special scale of sadness". You can hear it on their first single called While We Can. In the song's video (available on YouTube), children carry wooden guns which they symbolically drop at the end. "It is about stopping war," says Haroutiounian. "That is what we believe in."
Once their UK visas ran out, UTN1 settled in Beirut. Why the Lebanese capital? "It is impossible to make music in Baghdad. We are musicians, so we are in Beirut," says Hamid. "If we were freedom fighters, we would be in Baghdad."
Only one problem: they moved to Beirut in 2006, shortly before the Israeli-Lebanon war broke out. "War seems to follow us," says Haroutiounian. UTN1 withdrew to Amman, returning to Beirut only after hostilities ceased.
They remain exiles in Lebanon. Do you want to go home? "We go back to Baghdad occasionally," says Hamid, "and we would like to play a concert there, but it is not clear whether that would be too risky. As for living there - yes, perhaps, sometime, though who knows when?"
What do your families make of your chosen careers? "When we started some of them thought it was crazy for us to try to make our livelihoods in music. It just didn't happen. But now we're successful, we hear less of this," says Ali. All five prefer not to discuss their families who still live in Baghdad.
"One day," says Raof, "we hope to return to Baghdad. We want to set up a music school there, or a music store, or do something for our homeland. Iraq has too little music these days. We have been away for too long and we have so much to give back."
We're sitting in the new offices of UTN1's management company in central Beirut. From the fourth floor window one can see not just the Mediterranean, but also gridlock reportedly caused by a Hezbollah rally. Outside a muezzin is vying with the jackhammers and construction cranes as he summons the faithful to prayer at the Al-Omari Mosque. Beirut's city centre is being rebuilt. Only in Shanghai have I been more overwhelmed by the omnipresent sound of construction. This, I say, to UTN1, is what Baghdad will sound like in a happier time. All five giggle obligingly but none comments.
Instead, they tell me about their latest career move. Last year they decided to start singing in Arabic, recording a single called Jamila, which means beautiful. "It was number one across the Middle East," says Haroutiounian proudly. Why was it a success? "Because we sang Arabic but with western-style harmonies. There is nothing like it in the world. It blew people's minds." It did too: if you consult UTN1's MySpace page, you'll find encomia from around the world.
Hassan Ali tells me they have already recorded an album of six English and six Arabic songs and their management is waiting for the right time to release it. "Our hope is to heal the wounds between east and west, to spread a message of reconciliation."
Are you a political band? All five shake their heads. "We always wanted to show that something good can come out of Iraq," says Haroutiounian. "We are three Muslims and two Christians. We show how things are changing in Iraq." I notice that on the band's MySpace page, Nadeem cites Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East as one of his favourite books. "I will remove that reference. I am not sure that I trust his politics, having now finished the book."
Are you happy the British are leaving? "We're glad that the withdrawal shows that Iraqi police and soldiers can now look after their own country," says Hamid.
What would you be doing if you weren't successful in music? "I have a qualification in agriculture so I would be a farmer," says Garabedian. "I have a degree in chemistry, so I would be working for a corporation," says Ali. "I would be a porn star," says Haroutiounian who, I think, isn't taking my question seriously. "I would be his assistant," says Raof. "I studied biology," says Hamid, "but I don't see myself in a lab coat."
It's all smiles until Hamid adds: "Actually your question is impossible. None of us can imagine what we would have done. It's hard enough to know what you'll be doing in two weeks' time if you're an Iraqi. It's too dangerous to imagine the future. Hassan couldn't have been an industrial chemist because for him to step outside his house in Baghdad would have been suicide. Shant couldn't farm - it would have been too dangerous. And Art is Armenian so he would have been abducted by some sect. Normal dreams weren't available to us."
Rosy rewriting of the Iraq debacle will fuel worse disaster in Afghanistan
An inquest into Blair's support for the invasion could fit on a postcard. Eager inquirers should turn their gaze to Kabul
Now they want to bolt the stable door. With British troops at last due to leave Iraq next spring, everyone is for a public inquiry. That is fine. But what about an inquiry into where they are going, straight from the frying pan into the fire, from Iraq to Afghanistan? In Basra the British army had at least a tattered remnant of a war plan. In Helmand the only plan is to be target practice for the Taliban.
The Iraq inquest can be written on a postcard. A British force was sent on the false claim by Tony Blair that Iraq was a threat to Britain. How this made sense was never explained, despite the efforts of Alastair Campbell and his colleagues. It has since emerged that Blair simply could not bring himself to desert the American president, George Bush. That in a nutshell is why 178 British servicemen and women have died in Iraq.
The conduct of the war saw British troops at their professional best. They did not bomb villages, wear lavish armour, or smash their way into women's bedrooms as did the Americans. They were good at hearts and minds. But as months stretched into years, they proved unable to build local leadership and were handicapped by the incompetence and corruption of the Pentagon's provisional executive in Baghdad.
By 2005 they had all but lost control of Basra to local militias. When these started feuding, the British retreated to the airport, leaving Iraqi units (with American help) to achieve an exhausted peace. After five years, Britain has not reconstructed Basra or given it prosperity and stable government as promised. As for finding Blair's weapons of mass destruction, forget it.
The British army commander, General Sir Mike Jackson, said two years ago that the army's best hope in Basra was "withdrawal with honour". That realistic assessment has just about been realised, but it was refreshing yesterday to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury apply one simple word to the Iraq war: "wrong".
The greatest honour Britain could pay the dead of Iraq is to inquire into why any more should die in Afghanistan. Why wait for the same number of soldiers to be killed (already 134)? Why wait for the same multiple of civilian deaths, the same villages bombed, the same infrastructure destroyed? Why wait for the same bombast to die down and truth-telling and realism to gain the upper hand? Why tip another billion pounds into this craziness, billions that we can ill afford?
British diplomats and military experts returning from Kabul have three performance modes. In public they declare Afghanistan to be tough but winnable. In private they admit it is getting worse not better, but might turn round in a decade if only the Afghans were less corrupt. In totally secret mode, their eyes turn to the sky and they declare the whole business a "total effing disaster".
Which mode is ever communicated to Gordon Brown? He has recently returned from Helmand, where he won plaudits for bravely standing without body armour in a British fort. Nobody asked why it should be brave to stand where Britain has supposedly won hearts and minds for two years - if not seven - and why he could not go anywhere by road. Brown is to be commended for supporting the professionalism and courage of British soldiers, but he owes them more than words. He owes them brutal honesty in reviewing the political and strategic purpose that is now so costly of that courage.
Unless he is enveloped in sycophants, Brown must be hearing the same intelligence as the rest of us hear and read. Hapless spin doctors can point to schools built here, poppies eradicated there, soldiers "trained" somewhere else. But Kabul is ever more insecure and journeys out of the capital are confined to armoured cars or helicopters.
Monday's remarkable report from inside the Taliban by the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad showed his hosts clearly able to roam free through 70% of populated Afghanistan, collecting tribute and dispensing favours and rough justice. Taliban units appear to control the Khyber Pass, forcing all supplies into costly convoys. It can only be a matter of time before they acquire the ground-to-air missiles that enabled them to drive out the Russians in the 1980s. British soldiers dying by the week within miles of their Helmand base indicate the failure of a military campaign launched with such bravado two years ago.
Brown's repeated thesis that the occupation of Helmand is vital "to keep terror from the streets of Britain" is nonsense. It fuels an insurgency that sucks guns, money and recruits into this benighted region. Arrested terrorists in Britain may be lying when they invariably cite the war as their rallying cry, but cite it they do. Brown cannot plausibly cite the antithesis, that they are being deterred by the war in Helmand.
As for blaming Pakistan, its regime has been thoroughly corrupted by American aid for a decade and its border with Afghanistan is beyond policing. Earlier this week, Brown registered his "disgust and horror" at the Taliban insurgency using suicide bombers against British troops. This outrage is hardly novel. Child bombers have been used by insurgents since the Vietcong in Vietnam.
What Brown failed to acknowledge, and what is used by Britain's enemies in Pakistan and elsewhere, is Nato's use of cluster bombs and aerial missiles, knowing that they kill civilians, including children, "collaterally". The coalition has almost certainly killed more children in Afghanistan by its reckless use of tactical air strikes than have died at the hands of the Taliban. War is no place for such hypocrisy.
Nato forces in Kabul are now devoid of strategy. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is proving adept at the old Afghan game of shuffling warlords and druglords. It is common knowledge that lines of contact are opening on every front with commanders of the "new Taliban", whose role in governing a future Afghanistan is beyond dispute. This leaves Nato's leaders - other than America and Britain - justifiably refusing to throw good troops after dead ones. Afghanistan is proving a classic of sunk cost fallacy, with commanders unwilling to change policy for fear of admitting that the existing one has been a colossal failure.
Frankness continues to be the greatest casualty of these wars. Those who cheered on Iraq and Afghanistan - from left as well as right - dare not admit they might have been wrong. Now a rewriting of the Iraq epilogue as a mission well accomplished is acting as a lethal magnet, drawing British policy to similar disaster and British troops to their deaths in Helmand.
The essence of moral judgment is universality. Eager inquirers should now be turning their gaze to the dusty heights of Kabul. Brown may be relying on the army's spirit of "their's not to reason why; their's but to do or die". That is a soldier's duty, but it is not the duty of a democrat. His duty is precisely to reason why.
simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk
Now they want to bolt the stable door. With British troops at last due to leave Iraq next spring, everyone is for a public inquiry. That is fine. But what about an inquiry into where they are going, straight from the frying pan into the fire, from Iraq to Afghanistan? In Basra the British army had at least a tattered remnant of a war plan. In Helmand the only plan is to be target practice for the Taliban.
The Iraq inquest can be written on a postcard. A British force was sent on the false claim by Tony Blair that Iraq was a threat to Britain. How this made sense was never explained, despite the efforts of Alastair Campbell and his colleagues. It has since emerged that Blair simply could not bring himself to desert the American president, George Bush. That in a nutshell is why 178 British servicemen and women have died in Iraq.
The conduct of the war saw British troops at their professional best. They did not bomb villages, wear lavish armour, or smash their way into women's bedrooms as did the Americans. They were good at hearts and minds. But as months stretched into years, they proved unable to build local leadership and were handicapped by the incompetence and corruption of the Pentagon's provisional executive in Baghdad.
By 2005 they had all but lost control of Basra to local militias. When these started feuding, the British retreated to the airport, leaving Iraqi units (with American help) to achieve an exhausted peace. After five years, Britain has not reconstructed Basra or given it prosperity and stable government as promised. As for finding Blair's weapons of mass destruction, forget it.
The British army commander, General Sir Mike Jackson, said two years ago that the army's best hope in Basra was "withdrawal with honour". That realistic assessment has just about been realised, but it was refreshing yesterday to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury apply one simple word to the Iraq war: "wrong".
The greatest honour Britain could pay the dead of Iraq is to inquire into why any more should die in Afghanistan. Why wait for the same number of soldiers to be killed (already 134)? Why wait for the same multiple of civilian deaths, the same villages bombed, the same infrastructure destroyed? Why wait for the same bombast to die down and truth-telling and realism to gain the upper hand? Why tip another billion pounds into this craziness, billions that we can ill afford?
British diplomats and military experts returning from Kabul have three performance modes. In public they declare Afghanistan to be tough but winnable. In private they admit it is getting worse not better, but might turn round in a decade if only the Afghans were less corrupt. In totally secret mode, their eyes turn to the sky and they declare the whole business a "total effing disaster".
Which mode is ever communicated to Gordon Brown? He has recently returned from Helmand, where he won plaudits for bravely standing without body armour in a British fort. Nobody asked why it should be brave to stand where Britain has supposedly won hearts and minds for two years - if not seven - and why he could not go anywhere by road. Brown is to be commended for supporting the professionalism and courage of British soldiers, but he owes them more than words. He owes them brutal honesty in reviewing the political and strategic purpose that is now so costly of that courage.
Unless he is enveloped in sycophants, Brown must be hearing the same intelligence as the rest of us hear and read. Hapless spin doctors can point to schools built here, poppies eradicated there, soldiers "trained" somewhere else. But Kabul is ever more insecure and journeys out of the capital are confined to armoured cars or helicopters.
Monday's remarkable report from inside the Taliban by the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad showed his hosts clearly able to roam free through 70% of populated Afghanistan, collecting tribute and dispensing favours and rough justice. Taliban units appear to control the Khyber Pass, forcing all supplies into costly convoys. It can only be a matter of time before they acquire the ground-to-air missiles that enabled them to drive out the Russians in the 1980s. British soldiers dying by the week within miles of their Helmand base indicate the failure of a military campaign launched with such bravado two years ago.
Brown's repeated thesis that the occupation of Helmand is vital "to keep terror from the streets of Britain" is nonsense. It fuels an insurgency that sucks guns, money and recruits into this benighted region. Arrested terrorists in Britain may be lying when they invariably cite the war as their rallying cry, but cite it they do. Brown cannot plausibly cite the antithesis, that they are being deterred by the war in Helmand.
As for blaming Pakistan, its regime has been thoroughly corrupted by American aid for a decade and its border with Afghanistan is beyond policing. Earlier this week, Brown registered his "disgust and horror" at the Taliban insurgency using suicide bombers against British troops. This outrage is hardly novel. Child bombers have been used by insurgents since the Vietcong in Vietnam.
What Brown failed to acknowledge, and what is used by Britain's enemies in Pakistan and elsewhere, is Nato's use of cluster bombs and aerial missiles, knowing that they kill civilians, including children, "collaterally". The coalition has almost certainly killed more children in Afghanistan by its reckless use of tactical air strikes than have died at the hands of the Taliban. War is no place for such hypocrisy.
Nato forces in Kabul are now devoid of strategy. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is proving adept at the old Afghan game of shuffling warlords and druglords. It is common knowledge that lines of contact are opening on every front with commanders of the "new Taliban", whose role in governing a future Afghanistan is beyond dispute. This leaves Nato's leaders - other than America and Britain - justifiably refusing to throw good troops after dead ones. Afghanistan is proving a classic of sunk cost fallacy, with commanders unwilling to change policy for fear of admitting that the existing one has been a colossal failure.
Frankness continues to be the greatest casualty of these wars. Those who cheered on Iraq and Afghanistan - from left as well as right - dare not admit they might have been wrong. Now a rewriting of the Iraq epilogue as a mission well accomplished is acting as a lethal magnet, drawing British policy to similar disaster and British troops to their deaths in Helmand.
The essence of moral judgment is universality. Eager inquirers should now be turning their gaze to the dusty heights of Kabul. Brown may be relying on the army's spirit of "their's not to reason why; their's but to do or die". That is a soldier's duty, but it is not the duty of a democrat. His duty is precisely to reason why.
simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk
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