May 13, 2008

How to spend your oil billions

Sudan is one of the world's leading oil producers, pumping out half a million barrels of crude each day (some 40 percent of it bound for China). So what does a dictatorship do with that kind of cash?

Today the Sudanese government dramatically raised the bounty for Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim -- to $246 million. As AP reports, this is nearly 10 times what the United States has offered for the capture of its most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

Ibrahim is the alleged mastermind of the surprising events of the weekend, when members of his Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) staged a dramatic -- if short lived -- raid on Omdurman, a city just across the Nile from the heavily fortified capital, Khartoum. After a couple of tense hours of fighting, Sudanese troops drove the rebels out and began arresting political opponents. But it was the first time that the five-year-and-counting war in Darfur made it from the hinterlands to the seat of Sudanese power, and how the rebels made it several hundred miles undetected by security forces is something of a mystery.

Media and expert accounts have described the raid alternately as "daring," "quixotic" and "suicidal." As faraway as Darfur feels for many in the United States, it's just as distant to many in Khartoum, a boomtown where oil money has fueled one of Africa's fastest growing economies -- and insulated it from the crises in the far reaches of the country.

The JEM raid has deeply embarrassed the ruling party, which swiftly cut diplomatic ties with neighboring Chad, which most believe helped bankroll the attack. Those who watch Sudan closely are bracing for a military response that could put more civilian lives at risk in Darfur. The gargantuan bounty on Ibrahim -- who's believed to have fled to remote northern Darfur -- is offensive to some Sudanese, but there's no clearer evidence of how ticked off the government is by this whole episode.

Daring and dramatic, yes, but JEM may have bitten off way more than it can chew.

May 12, 2008

Amman Americana

A final observation from my recent Mideast stint: I challenge anyone to find a more American corner of the world than Terminal 2, Queen Alia International Airport, Amman, Jordan.

There, in the space of a few yards between the duty-free shops and the security check, you find the following outposts of Americana: Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits, Pizza Hut, Cinnabon. (The Starbucks is in the other terminal, a short walk away.) The saturated-fat-to-square-foot ratio may be the highest in the Middle East.

Such an agglomeration wouldn't be surprising most other places in the world, but I found it unusual for the Middle East. True, a lot of Americans pass through Amman. Jordan, with its dazzling sights and American-friendly regime, is sort of like the Middle East for beginners, and the country has made a lot of money by developing itself into a safe, slightly sanitized tourist destination, with all the five-star hotels you could want. Besides that, untold numbers of military contractors pass through on their way in and out of Iraq. Fried chicken is a good business to be in here.

Still, this particular fast-food collection gave me a lot to ponder as I waited for my flight back to Kenya. In Dubai's airport, you find McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts and Round Table Pizza (which I was surprised to learn was still in business). All seem to be doing steady business whenever I visit. The selection in Amman seemed a little more esoteric. Outside of Louisiana and parts of the South, Popeye's is a cult favorite in the United States at best. (A friend living in Santa Monica pointed out irately that he has to drive 30 min. to his nearest Popeye's.)

And, finally, I wouldn't necessarily think that hot, gooey cinnamon rolls would translate across cultures. Sure enough, I didn't see any patrons at Cinnabon.

Thanks for, um, indulging this admittedly less-than-serious post. I'm now back in Nairobi, where there are no such American chains. We get all our transfats from South Africa.

May 07, 2008

Sadr City afternoon

 
The battle for Iraq has shifted to Sadr City, the massive slum in northwest Baghdad that's home to about two and a half million people. For the past six weeks, hardly a day has gone by without a report of Shiite insurgents in Sadr City taking aim at U.S. or Iraqi (mostly U.S.) troops. The entire area is under siege in a way that many other Baghdad neighborhoods have been before in this war -- the difference being that probably no place is as big, or as hard to control, as Sadr City.

The other day, Laith and I set up interviews with Muqtada al Sadr's political organization, and were invited to his offices in Sadr City. After a two and half hour drive from our hotel -- covering a distance of only a few miles in Baghdad's otherworldly traffic -- we arrived at the Sadr office. Sadr's people were very welcoming, perhaps because Laith had told them from the start that I wouldn't be asking about politics. It was only later that I learned that the warm-faced, turbaned sayyid who sat with me for a half-hour interview had pointedly asked Laith what Muslim sect I came from. ("He is from Kenya," Laith replied, truthfully.)

A Sadr staffer escorted us through the neighborhood. We drove down a nearly abandoned thoroughfare lined with blast walls and criss-crossed with spindly power lines that had long ago ceased working. We turned down a side road and into a block of two- and three-story concrete tenements. There were a few shops still open -- a welder's, and what looked like an engine-repair place.

There were badly damaged buildings, but it was impossible for me to tell whether they had been felled by bombs or mere neglect. The only apparent sign of the war was a hand-painted sign on a black sheet that hung from one concrete wall. Laith translated it to me as a death notice for a local man, Ali Ateya, whose family we had come to visit (Ateya's story will be published in the coming days). Later I would notice those stark signs -- white Arabic characters on a black background -- were all over the neighborhood.

Next we toured Sadr City's general hospital, which a day earlier had been damaged by a U.S. military strike. It had been hard to gauge the extent of the damage in phone interviews, and the U.S. military said it had not struck the building directly. But it looked to us that day like the hospital was in trouble.

The first thing you saw was a series of craters outside the hospital and a big pool of water, which resulted when the U.S. missile struck the building's main water supply. Here's how we reported it:

Sadr Hospital, one of two main hospitals serving the massive Shiite Muslim slum, is operating on a backup water supply that wasn't expected to last longer than 48 hours. On Sunday afternoon, a main street outside the hospital was flooded as workmen tried to repair a series of underground pipes that ruptured when the missiles targeted what U.S. military officials described as a militia outpost a few yards from the hospital.

"If there are no more attacks, we might be able to fix it. We don't know," said a hospital security official who gave his name as Abu Sajjad. "Otherwise, in two days we will run out of water and the hospital can't go on."

While we were at the hospital, the Sadr rep who'd accompanied us through the neighborhood called Laith to say they were hearing clashes nearby, and urged us to leave Sadr City. So we didn't dawdle, stopping in to see a couple of patients who'd been injured earlier that week and hear their stories, and then we took off. I don't know whether it was the searing heat or real fatigue or something else, but I dozed off in the backseat of the car as we drove back to the office. The ride home only took an hour -- "a Baghdad miracle," Laith would later call it.

May 02, 2008

Gardenia season

With violence in Baghdad creeping back up, I find myself spending more time in the office than I'd like. The air-conditioning, artificial light, drone of TV news and steady hum of the generator gets to be too much after awhile. So I'm grateful for any respite.

Reporter Laith has been trying to inject a bit of color by bringing in gardenias from his garden at home. He puts a few pale, fragrant flowers in a little bit of water in a coffee cup and proudly sets it atop his desk, amid a tangle of computer cables, notepads and cellphones. Every so often he comes around and thrusts the petals into your face, saying, "Smell!"

I'm not generally much for flowers, but I have to say that the fragrance is lovely. (Anything to get the persistent hint of sand out of the air is welcome.)

Not surprisingly, few people keep gardens in Baghdad these days. Laith planted his gardenia bushes about three years ago, after the war had begun. He nurtured the soil with iron shavings from the local blacksmith and sheep's blood from the local butcher. In the springtime sun, the plant is doing well, but the flowers he brought in a few days ago were among his last. Gardenia season in Baghdad is nearly over.

April 29, 2008

Sand in the air

It's sandstorm season in Baghdad. The thick, gritty blanket that blew into the city Sunday hung around well into Monday, providing Iraqi militants with cover and emboldening many to target American forces. When U.S. troops struck back, it produced some of the deadliest fighting here in weeks.

This is what the view looked like at dusk on Sunday from my balcony in central Baghdad:

The storm grounded U.S. military aircraft for several hours and wreaked havoc at Baghdad's airport, where our colleague Hammad waited about 12 hours Monday for his flight to Jordan to depart.

Being indoors in our air-conditioned hotel wasn't protection enough. Sand seeped through the windows Sunday evening and shrouded the hallways, and as I walked around our offices I felt I was living in a dream sequence. The staff sent down for some paper masks, but the stores nearby were all out. Breathing wasn't really a problem, but the sand settled on our keyboards, cellphones, even our pillows and blankets, so that when I lay down last night I could still feel the grit beneath my head.

It was uncomfortable, no doubt. But it made me think of all the people in Baghdad living without electricity, without air-conditioning and oscillating fans for circulation, who often sleep on their rooftops to escape the heat but in a sandstorm must remain indoors. "Discomfort" probably doesn't begin to describe it.

April 27, 2008

Walk in the park

Laith, one of the Iraqi reporters, had been telling me about the growing crowds at Zawra Park, the vast public park in central Baghdad. Families and young couples were taking advantage of the relative improvements in security to visit the park, a showpiece during the Saddam era that has been decaying during the war.

On Saturday afternoon, I decided to visit Zawra with Laith, Sahar and two of the office drivers. It was a quiet day news-wise, and I needed a breather having spent all of Friday inside the hotel. We also thought there might be a story to be done about the crowds at the park.

Of course, a walk in a park in Baghdad isn't quite like any other walk in a park. A foreigner going anywhere in the city is a potential target for kidnapping or worse, so we needed to keep a low profile. That required planning my afternoon jaunt during the morning news meeting with the staff. Kevin, our security adviser, asked of me: "Does he have to go?" Laith and Sahar were adamant that it was safe.

I wanted to know whether it would be possible to talk to residents, and to take some pictures. Laith told me to write down a couple of questions for him, and he would do all the talking. Kevin began to look a little concerned.

"You don't do any talking," he said to me.

Sahar agreed. With my complexion I could pass for a local, as long as I didn't open my mouth. Sahar then rattled off some instructions: Walk slowly, with the rest of the group. Don't look too closely at others. Don't speak in English. Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself. Just. Blend. In.

I dressed in drab-colored clothes and left anything that I felt would mark me as a foreigner or journalist in my room. As we prepared to head down to the cars, Kevin caught me and pointed to the pair of Ray-Bans perched atop my head. Would sunglasses identify me as a foreigner? Do Iraqis wear sunglasses for a walk in the park? (It was a cloudless, 95-degree day; I hoped they did.) Sahar said no problem, I could wear them. But on second thought, I dumped the shades in the office before we headed out the door.

After a short drive and then a rudimentary security check at the park entrance, which was fringed with concertina wire, we were in. We spent longer in the park than Kevin would have liked -- nearly an hour. There were dozens of families there, picnicking, kicking soccer balls around and even going for rides in a tiny amusement park.

As we gauged that no one was looking at us, I spoke softly to Sahar and Laith, suggesting people to interview and making cracks about the young couples we spotted hiding under trees off the main path through the park.

Except for the occasional buzz of U.S. military helicopters over the ferris wheel, it felt like a Sunday afternoon anywhere else in the world.

April 24, 2008

Back in Baghdad, comparing religious gear

Bless the folks at Royal Jordanian Airlines; they really try to make a slow corkscrew landing into Baghdad sound like the most normal thing in the world. As I prepared to walk off of RJ Flight 810 and onto the scorching tarmac yesterday, the flight attendant said: "We wish you a pleasant stay in Iraq. Thank you." None of the cabinful of Iraqis and military contractors looked up from their cell phones.

My first 24 hours back in Baghdad have coincided with a temporary lull in news. Everyone seems to be waiting on the powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who just declared "open war" on occupation forces, to make his next move. Will his Iranian-armed Mahdi Army square off with the U.S.-backed Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who's finally been flexing some muscle against Sadr? Or will Sadr back down and live to fight another day? Everyone in our office has a theory.

This morning I went into the Green Zone to renew my press badge at the U.S. military's media center. The entrance to the fortified complex is a few blocks from our compound, and at about 10 a.m. I set off in our armored Mercedes with Kevin, our security adviser, and a driver. Three hours later -- much of the time spent behind long lines at checkpoints inside the Green Zone -- we returned to the office with my press badge. It was lunchtime. Half the day went in that simple task, but that's often the pace of things in Baghdad.

It's been a relatively quiet afternoon, apart from reports of fresh clashes in the Mahdi-controlled Sadr City slum of northeast Baghdad. The Iraqi reporters are updating the staff blog and monitoring the news. Another American reporter, Raviya, is burning a stick of incense in the main office, leaving a small trail of smoke in the hallway. "Car bomb," joked Laith, one of the staffers.

Another staffer, Jinan, noticed two cloth bracelets on my right wrist. I explained that they were from Hindu religious ceremonies - one tied by a cousin as part of an annual rite between sisters and brothers, another tied by a priest who performed a prayer ceremony at my parents' home in California last month. Jinan said that Shiites have something similar -- a green strip of cloth known as aleg, obtained at religious sites or after traditional Shiite ceremonies.

She is wearing one now -- but not on her wrist as she might have done several years ago, for that would mark her unmistakably as a Shiite in a city riven by sectarian hatred. But she won't go without it. She wears it around her neck, concealed by layers of clothing.

April 22, 2008

You're going to Baghdad, right?

This blog will be spending the next few weeks in Iraq, pitching in temporarily in McClatchy's Baghdad bureau while Bureau Chief Leila Fadel is in the U.S. to accept the Polk Award for foreign reporting. It's been a year since my previous stint in Iraq, and I'm curious to see what's changed, what hasn't, and to work again with our warm, talented and courageous corps of Iraqi journalists.

I'm in Amman, Jordan, the main waystation into Iraq. Based on the reception I get here, you'd think that no one visits Amman apart from journalists, aid workers and contractors on their way to Baghdad. There were a few wealthy-looking tourists milling about the hotel this afternoon, but I clearly didn't look the part. The bellman said: "You're going to Baghdad, right? Um...good luck."

One thing that's certainly changed is the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, where I went to retrieve my visa. Last year the waiting room was cramped and crowded, with a few employees working behind a dingy window and little space for people to sit. In the past 12 months the embassy has been overhauled, and when I walked in this morning -- straight from the airport, a little groggy from having flown overnight from Nairobi -- I could have sworn I was in the wrong place.

There were clean stone countertops and crystal-clear plate-glass windows. Iraqis sat on cushioned chairs in a spacious and overly air-conditioned waiting area, where a flat-screen TV played Arabic music videos. Everyone smiled at me. One silver-haired man wearing a striped tie and Tom Selleck moustache told me he recognized me and half-shouted in English, "Welcome back. You are always welcome in Iraq!"

Hussein, a driver who accompanied me to the embassy, was amused by this. His 24-year-old nephew has spent the past year working as a translator for a Marine unit stationed inside the Green Zone, one of hundreds of Jordanians doing such work. It's not a bad job. Hussein said the kid earns 4,000 Jordanian dinars a month -- about $5,700, very good money here -- and although he's still single, he's saving to buy a house in Amman when he's done.

He just signed on for another year, Hussein went on, which has his mother going nuts. "As long as he remains inside the Green Zone," he said, but he quickly acknowledged that even that walled city-within-a-city isn't safe. The day of Condi Rice's recent visit, mortar shells struck inside the Green Zone and Rice had to wait for a military all-clear to leave.

"It's a job for a young man," Hussein said finally. "Not someplace you should go if you have a family."

April 21, 2008

Ready to run

Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya completed a remarkable feat today, winning the Boston Marathon for the fourth time, something only three other runners have accomplished. In the past 17 years, Kenyans have won America's most storied -- and lucrative -- long-distance race an astonishing 15 times. Cheruiyot's win also caps a pretty good week for Kenyan runners, who won marathons in London, Rotterdam and Turin last Sunday.

Despite producing a steady crop of world-class distance runners, Kenya has yet to win an Olympic gold medal in the marathon. This year's Olympic team isn't even set yet. Critics blame mismanagement by Athletics Kenya, the country's main sporting body. In an editorial today, the Daily Nation urges the group "not to tinker with the selection of the team as it has done in the past. Selection must be on merit and issues of picking allies as has happened in the past must be discarded."

Corruption and mismanagement in sports in Kenya is nothing new. The national soccer team has been suspended from FIFA since 2004 for failing to comply with international rules. You'd think the Olympics would be a source of pride and not politics for a country with a strong athletic tradition and, after the events of earlier this year, badly in need of a facelift. So far, no such luck.

April 11, 2008

Kenyan protest

(Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

More bad PR for China's star-crossed running of the Olympic torch: Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has pulled out of the symbolic torch relay in Tanzania this weekend. The L.A. Times reported today that Maathai "had notified organizers of the torch run that she would give up her spot in the relay Sunday, joining in the growing international protest against China."

Much of the furor surrounding the torch relay this week has concerned China's support for Sudan and alleged abuses of human rights abuses in Tibet and elsewhere. Maathai has another beef: massive Chinese investment in countries like Congo is fueling environmental destruction, particularly from rapacious logging and strip-mining for valuable minerals. China likes to say that its investment in Africa is one developing country helping others. But as a growing player in Africa, Maathai says China should use its economic influence to push for better environmental practices.

"As a country that is so powerful, China can afford to push for the protection of the forests," the Times quoted her as saying yesterday. "China has a moral and ethical duty to protect some of these countries that are unable to protect their forests from illegal logging."

Some of my colleagues have criticized Maathai for not playing a greater role in solving Kenya's political crisis. I happen to believe that this woman -- a former member of the Kenyan parliament who lost her party's support due to her brave stances against tribalism, among other odious characteristics of Kenyan politics -- has been one of the more outspoken voices on a continent that needs more like her. Her stance on the torch relay should add another important and too often overlooked element to the growing debate about China's controversial role in Africa.