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Iraqi Weblog - the view from the ground.

14:11 / 21.03.03

Salam Pax writes the "Where is Raed?" weblog from his home in Baghdad.

He is, as you might guess, bouncing between loathing for Saddam and fear of the US military.

Read it.

One excerpt:

THe sounds of the anti-aircarft artillery is still louder than the booms and bangs which means that they are still far from where we live, but the images we saw on Al Arabia news channel showed a building burning near one of my aunts house, hotel pax was a good idea. we have two safe rooms one with "international media" and the other with the Iraqi TV on. every body is waitingwaitingwaiting. phones are still ok, we called around the city a moment ago to check on friends. Information is what they need. Iraqi TV says nothing, shows nothing. what good are patriotic songs when bombs are dropping
around 6:30 my uncle went out to get bread, he said that all the streets going to the main arterial roads are controlled by Ba'ath people. not curfew but you have to have a reason to leave your neighborhood, and the bakeries are, by instruction of the Party, seeling only a limited amount of bread to each customer. he also says that near the main roads all the yet unfinished houses have been taken by party or army people.

Another excerpt:

Do support democracy in Iraq. But don’t equate it with war. What will happen is something that could/should have been avoided. Don’t expect me to wear a [I heart bush] t-shirt. Support democracy in Iraq not by bombing us to hell and then trying to build it up again (well that is going to happen any way) not by sending human shields (let’s be real the war is going to happen and Saddam will use you as hostages), but by keeping an eye on what will happen after the war.

15:44 / 21.03.03

I've been reading it for about a week, and it's kind of horrifying. Normally, you read someone's weblog, feel some sympathy for them, drop the a note, but what good is that going to do here?

It made me a little suspicious at first, because we've been informed by even sympathetic sources -- at least the ones I've seen -- that the Iraqis are technologically backward and so ruthlessly oppressed that they don't dare express any dissatisfaction with their government, so where does this well-spoken (-written?) kid with regular internet access come from? Apparently I'm not the only one who thought so. This New Yorker has apparently been corresponding with him for months, and here's her take on it. Also, one weblogger on the ground would be a pretty lame propoganda tool if the intent was to derail warmakers.

I think it's worth disseminating this to show people the human cost firsthand, and it's pretty incredible to get an inside account from a "hostile" national. It does a lot for one's preconceptions to see him posting images from a villagephotos account and talking about how much he likes Bowie, Massive Attack, and Leonard Cohen (that's in the archives). God, I hope he's all right.

I would like Salam to know that the "human shields" sent themselves, just like the US military is sending itself, and "we" couldn't stop them. They were on TV for weeks, looking like complete lunatics, and I suspect that's why they weren't stopped.

15:54 / 21.03.03

yeah, i have been reading this for a while, ever since i found it with the random blogger button.

it is a refreshing change to read a real account of the country, more so now.

15:56 / 21.03.03

See also this old post where he responds the idea that he's a front.

14:54 / 24.03.03

When Salam ceased to post overafter Friday evening's "shock and awe" strike many, including The Guardian, had to consider the worst. Fortunatly it seems that Salam, whoever he or she is, is still alive and well.

16:20 / 24.03.03

Iraq's not a "technologically backwards" country. It's quite modern.

17:16 / 24.03.03

Yeah, somebody turned me on the site too. In the one comments page, i posted that if he can ever get to Amsterdam he's welcome to stay awhile. He's another Iraqi who doesn't appear especially shocked or awed. By the way, Dutch ISP XS4all.nl, founded by former hackers, offers free streaming of BBC-World, Deutsche-Welle, CNBC-Europe, Chinese TV and Iraqi TV. It's free, but only within Dutch IP space. maybe it's reachable via a Dutch proxy server. It's about what you'd expect. War news, Hussein speeches, martial pop videos. There's one chubby singer who seems to be everywhere. He reminds me of that fat weasel who was the PR flack ("...the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!...") for the villain in The Road Warrior. But there's also a cute singer in military green, who looks like Monica Lewinsky.

18:34 / 24.03.03

Lionheart, I was talking about the impression created by journalists, even in sympathetic pieces, not the place as it is. I don't even think they do it with disinformation in mind -- emphasizing "local color" is a way of selling your story.

17:33 / 25.03.03

Salam and Diane are written up in this week's New Yorker magazine.

14:14 / 03.06.03

Salam Pax is not only real... he's a Philip K. Dick fan.

Slate's Peter Maass missed out on most of the Salam Pax controversy because he was in Iraq as a correspondent. Only after he got home was he able to read about the celebrity Iraqi blogger... and reach a surprising conclusion:

His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker. I laughed out loud. He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he had been reading—mine. Poolside at the Hamra—with me. The 24 pizzas—we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing about.

My inner journalist tells me to draw back at this moment and write about the larger significance of my encounter with Salam Pax. That working alongside—no, employing—a star of the World Wide Web and being blissfully unaware of it is a lesson about the murkiness of today's Iraq, ....

(It's also a lesson about the murkiness of internet/IRL relations.)

...I needed a new interpreter to fill the gap for two weeks or so, and the colleague mentioned that he had just met a smart and friendly guy named Salam. I quickly traced Salam to the Sheraton Hotel. Salam—this is his real first name—was sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. I knew, at that moment, that I would hire him.

...He never mentioned his blogging, though if I had paid more attention I might have figured out he was up to something. I was spending a lot of time writing my final story from Iraq, so there were occasions when I stayed in my room and let Salam loose for several hours. He usually drifted off to one of the few Internet cafes in town. I assumed he was just writing e-mails to friends, though he often complained about the high cost of downloading and uploading. This struck me as odd, because sending and receiving e-mail shouldn't require a lot of bandwidth—unless, of course, you are posting photos to your blog and receiving more e-mail than Bill Gates.

It's a fun article. Check it out.

01:21 / 04.06.03

Well here's hoping he gets something out of this--at least escape from people who want to use him for this, that or the other, or squeeze him for info. And, of course, he should join this board.

08:28 / 04.06.03

Well - the Guardian have signed him up for a column - first one here.

05:13 / 21.04.04

I wanted to bump this because I've been asked to introduce him at the Next Wave festival in Melbourne. So...

Does anyone have a question they'd want to ask him?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:37 / 21.04.04

Based on his appearences on Newsnight I'd like to ask him if he's ever entered a Joel Silver lookalike competition.

Does he pay much attention to the American warbloggers who criticise him?

Is the situation in Iraq as bad as he was expecting before the Americans invaded, or is it better or worse?

12:24 / 21.04.04

Hey, I'll be in Melbourne for the art fair in September!

He *does* look "cherubic."

OK, here goes:

Have any of the occupying armies and/or contractors been especially effective in patching things up? Which one(s)?

Can you see any way to keep Iraq in one piece?

Can you see any way to protect the rights of women or gays in the new Iraq?

Does Sheikh al-Sistani only want a democratic plebiscite because he thinks the Shi'ites will win? Wouldn't democratic socialism have been a better idea than US-style democracy?

16:49 / 21.04.04

I'm curious if he's had an offer for a book deal, and what he thinks about blogs being made into books in general.

I'd also want to know if he's ever considered becoming an expatriate.