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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Showdown in Zambia

The standoff over Zimbabwe's presidential election moves to Zambia over the weekend, where President Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai are both due to attend an emergency summit of southern African leaders to discuss, well, Zimbabwe. While Mugabe aides were busy denying that there was a crisis worth discussing, Amnesty International accused Zimbabwean soldiers and police of orchestrating "widespread violent retribution" against opposition supporters and Human Rights Watch said the Zambia summit was southern Africa's last chance to stave off a possible "human rights disaster."

Should be a busy weekend in Lusaka. Meanwhile, Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said today that he wouldn't participate in a second round vote. Speaking to reporters in South Africa, MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said: "We won the presidential election hands down, without the need for a runoff."

The Zimbabwean electoral commission, appointed by Mugabe, still refuses to release the vote count. Today President Bush added his voice to the chorus demanding that the results be announced.

Finally, a little bit of good news about an American citizen who was detained by security forces in Harare, from his employers at the nonprofit National Democratic Institute in Washington: "Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, a U.S. citizen and senior program officer...was released by Zimbabwean authorities today after being detained illegally for six days. He is now safely out of the country." (Dileepan's blog is getting a lot of hits.) Barry Bearak, the New York Times reporter who was arrested for reporting on the election without accreditation, continues to stand trial.

Not ready for Round 2

With apologies to Samuel Clemens, the reports of Comrade Robert Mugabe's demise apparently have been exaggerated.

Word from Zimbabwe today is that the presidential election will go to a second round with neither Mugabe nor his main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, having garnered a majority in last week's vote. This was the only conclusion one could draw from a report in today's Herald, the state-run newspaper that serves as Mugabe's mouthpiece, which said that "the pattern of results...show(s) that none of the candidates will garner more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing a re-run."

It was as close to an admission of defeat that we've ever heard from a man who has held the country in a headlock for 28 years, the last several of which have been characterized by the worst inflation in modern history.

But few in Zimbabwe are celebrating. Many seem to fear that Mugabe will use the next several weeks to rig the run-off, as it's widely believed that he rigged his re-election in 2002. Mugabe still retains the loyalty of parts of the all-powerful security forces, for whom Tsvangirai, a longtime opposition figure, is an unknown quantity.

When I was in Harare last month, one member of Tsvangirai's party told me, "If we can't win it this time, we should stop trying." In the wake of yet another flawed election, one Zimbabwean blogger asks "What more must we do?"

This is Zimbabwe offers a sardonic preview of life if Mugabe stays in power:

I went to the supermarket today to peruse the empty shelves.  What fun. 

While there, I decided to run an informal survey. 

I asked 9 people what they would do if Bob gets in.

6 answered they would leave the counry; 1 said she would follow me wherever I went; and only 1 said he would march on State house.

I wonder if the 6 who are leaving have already cut their hole in the fence and what area of crime they will be forced to enter in their unwelcome destinations?

Time's up for Mugabe?

One of Africa's longest serving dictators may finally be on his way out.

As I write this from California, where I'm on brief home leave, journalists in Zimbabwe are reporting that Robert Mugabe's government is discussing handing over power to the political opposition in the wake of a terrible showing in elections over the weekend. The New York Times calls this "a stunning turnabout" for a man who has ruled by fear and manipulation, and who is widely believed to have stolen elections in the past.

We reported last month that Mugabe was in danger of losing re-election after dragging his country into an economic abyss, with 200,000 percent inflation and 80-90 percent unemployment. Talks on Mugabe's resignation appear to have begun today, after opposition officials began claiming victory and the government election commission responded with, as the LA Times put it on Monday, "a deafening silence" -- refusing to release results for three days, fueling fears that Mugabe was rigging the vote. This had echoes of what happened in Kenya in December, when election officials delayed announcing election totals for several days before handing a controversial victory to Mwai Kibaki. (When I was in Zimbabwe last month, one civic activist said he was worried that Mugabe "would pull a Kibaki.")

Never count out Mugabe, who may be 84 but campaigned vigorously to extend his rule. The Guardian reports that some Mugabe people are pondering his military options. But Mugabe's party is divided and the reports of his demise at this point seem credible. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, isn't a perfect candidate. But most Zimbabweans I met last month were desperate for a change of any kind. With their vote, they made that message clear.