No clear news yet

The Republica newspaper reports that Sheikh Hassan al Atharii, Muqtada Sadr's spokesman, said he had no information about Enzo, which fits with my conjecture that he was taken by bandits rather than a resistance group. The Republica article also says the Italian Secret Service has heard rumours from some tribal leaders that Enzo is alive. Italian friends have warned me not to put much wieight on these rumours, as the Italian newspapers are publishing any scraps they can without proper sourcing. I've experienced this directly as some of my tentative third hand accounts have been published as fact by papers. Unfortunately the only news we have at the moment is that there is no news.

No one seems to have properly identified and arranged burial for Ghareeb's body, three days after the attack allegedly happened. As I understand a couple of people had planned to go from Baghdad to find his body yesterday but decided not to because of security concerns. Some Iraqi friends living in the area are hopefully going try and idenify his body today.

USEFUL LINKS: (via Google autotranslation into english)

• search Italian media for Enzo
• search english language media for Enzo
• Enzo's blog
• Pino's blog

Goodbye my friend

For the last two days there has been little information and a great deal of confusion about Enzo and Ghareeb. I began to grieve and then started clasping at straws, hoping there had been some mistake in the account I had recieved. However a friend in Baghdad has just told me that the iraqi police have confirmed that Ghareeb was killed in Latyifia, on the road of Mahmoudia.

I only knew him properly for a week (2-10th August 2004, though we met briefly in October 2003) but his self-giving, wisdom and humour have left a deep impression on me which i hope will shape the way i live in the future. I pray that Allah raises up many people of his caliber to give Iraq hope for the future.

little news

I have not heard or read much to verify the account I have written about Ghareeb and Enzo. I keep hoping that this means that maybe my source (who had got the information from the Red Cross yestarday afternoon) was mistaken and they are safety holed up in Kufa (as Daniela's account below implies) or somewhere, but I really have no idea. Many of the reports on blogs or newswires seem to be third hand accounts of my third hand account.

The account I have hear from Daniela (1pm GMT), who manages Enzo's website is: "Enzo and Ghareeb were going to Najaf on Thursday along with a convoy of the Italian Red Cross. Somewhere along the road, the convoy bumped into a mine, which blewed up and shattered the windows of an ambulance and a truck. The iraqi driver of the ambulance (not Ghareeb however) got injured, but not seriously. Are you absolutely SURE it wasn't *that* accident your sources were referring to? No one got killed in that accident anyway: the convoy got safe to Najaf, where they distributed humanitarian goods around. Then, part of the convoy got back to Baghdad right away within the day, and another part stayed in Kufa. Enzo and Ghareeb are reported to have stayed with this convoy in Kufa overnight, and again they decided to stay when even this convoy moved back to Baghdad yesterday."

This from Ass. Press (5.50pm GMT) is a new source"The Italian Red Cross, which is working in Iraq, said Saturday that Shiite sources in the country had also told them Baldoni's interpreter [Ghareeb] was dead. "None of us have seen the corpse," Italian Red Cross spokesman Fabrizio Centofanti stressed. But "they said he was killed by gunfire."

keep praying for Enzo

I have spoken to some of Enzo's friends and family this morning, but no one knows anything more at this stage. My information in the previous post came via a mutual friend who talked with the Iraqi red cross drivers who were in the convoy from Najaf. My working theory is that the people who have taken him are after money and therefore should keep him safe, i hope that's correct. I know that Enzo is a brave and resourceful person, as well as being warm hearted and instantly likeable. If anyone has any news you can reach me on 0044 7813 137171 or email to justin [at] jubileeiraq [dot] org (though i'll be away from my computer a little today). There are two other blogs which might carry news about Enzo in their comments pages. Here are auto-translation links for non-italian speakers (like myself): Enzo's blog, Pino's blog. If you hear any new information, please post it in the comments page of this blog and the other two so other friends will see it.

Seperately Ghareeb's closest friend Ewa Jasiewicz is back in detention in Israel. She was released on bail after an Israeli court found that the state had no evidence against her (it was claiming she was threat to security because she has been involved in the International Solidarity Movement and was an eyewitness to an Israeli killing of a 13yr old Palastinian boy last year), however immediately the Israeli government immediately appealed so she is back in detention (see BBC news). I don't know if she has heard about Ghareeb's death yet, and I can't decide whether to try and contact her and tell her since she has enough to deal with as it is.

Ma'asalama, love, peace and constant prayers.

A true martyr

I don't know why I'm blogging, perhaps because I can't think what else to do. I'm sitting numb at my computer having emailed and called and recalled and rerecalled everyone I can think of in Iraq. I heard a few hours ago that one of my closest friends in Iraq has just been killed returning from Najaf with a Red Cross convoy which he had arranged to provide desperately needed medical supplies.

Ghareeb is (I can't yet face saying "was") one of the most selfless people I have ever met. For the past 18 months he has been travelling up and down the country helping anyone and everyone, from paying for an injured girl to be airlifted abroad to recieve a prosthetic limb to helping secure funding for an independent newspaper, to chaperoning around a naive British visitor (me).

Aparently a roadside bomb damaged his car and then gunmen shot him and carried away our mutual friend and blogger Enzo Balduni. I think it must have been gangsters, since none of the genuine Resistance would have attacked a Red Cross convoy or killed Gharib who was well known across Iraq. Please could anyone reading this blog pray for Enzo's safety, that he may be released unharmed soon, and also for Ghareebs friends and family who will all be heartbroken.

A photo of Ghareeb taken by Enzo a few days ago.

Najaf nonviolence

As things get hotter and hotter in Najaf I am finding it very difficult to settle back down to my day job in Britain, ever 5 minutes i find myself contemplating flying back to Iraq. I've just heard some shocking news from a friend out there that the Americans are taking hostage the families of Al-Mahdi army fighters in order to force them to submit - this is a shocking development which I doubt will be reported in any the mainstream media, particularly as journalists have been expelled from Najaf by the Interim Iraqi government. Apparently one of the women taken hostage is pregnant and due to deliver in the next week.

One positive thing are the signs of nonviolent resistance, with thousands of civilians forming a human shield around the imam Ali Mosque. I'm excited to see this happening, and I pray that it will be successful in deterring the Americans from launching further assaults and will encourage Iraqis across the country to start practicing nonviolent resistance in the model of Martin Luther King and Badshah Khan (the incredible, though little known, muslim counterpart to Ghandi in the Indian independence struggle).

separately my friend Ewa Jasiewicz has been arrested at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, entering Palastine/Israel. The Israelis are attempting to deport her, as part of their policy of censoring news about human rights abuses and opposition to the occupation. (see Reuters, Jerusalem Post).

Ma'asalama Iraq

So already my trip is over. I was plotting my return even as the mini-plane began it's spiral combat assent from Baghdad Airport which, in passing, is much flashier than when I was there last October. There's even a sovernier shop where you can buy geeky baseball caps saying "Welcome to the FREE Iraq" along with dusty old cases of coins from the days when Dinars came in a metal format and fractional denominations which were still worth more than a dollar. I bought an Iraqi flag and crate-loads of dates (iraq used to export 90% of the world's supply back in the good old days before oil ruined the economy and everything else).

One theme of the last few days has been blogger meetups. A few days ago I hung with Abu Khaleel's son in Baghdad, then yesterday Majid and Khalid Jarrar introduced me to the wonders of Iraqi icecream (some Riverbend had described to me last year in mouthwatering detail and I was worth the wait), then I searched the city for a decent juice bar with Enzo and today in Amman I munched salad with the most glamourous middle eastern blogging duo, Niki and Raed. It's wonderful realising that typing occassional waffles onto the net draws you into a vast network of some of the most interesting people on the planet. I'm typing this in Books@Cafe, a famous hang-out for Jordanian anglophiles. It's been refurbished since I was last here and really is a splendid venue to eat and email (the connection is much faster now), though the book selection is still as dreadful as ever (the seem to specialise in bulk shipments of just volume three's of obscure trilogies!). I'm killing time now since my flight back to London is tomorrow morning.

It's a hard time to be leaving, with the Marines about to storm Najaf. I'm clearly no Sadrist, but its horrific that the US is happy to slaughter so many Iraqi civilians in order to try and wipe out practically the only person likely to get a significant number of votes in an election. Maybe I should have quit my job and stayed out there, trying to help out in Najaf as Jo Wilding and others did in Falluja. I'm probably not savvy or brave enough to have emulated her, but as always I'm torn apart, unsure what I can do to best help Iraq while balancing my responsibilities in Britain.

An Englishman in Baghdad

The last 5 days in Iraq have been tough and on the few occasions where I've had 15mins to blog I've felt overwhelmed and therefore wimped out. Apologies to friends who've been worried by the silence...

Would you believe I only managed to write that first paragraph when there were five heavy explosions so I quickly quit the hotel internet cafe (to avoid flying glass if a mortar rounds lands outside, and more importantly to avoid all the excited journalists scurrying around with a hungry look on their faces) and headed up to my room. It's quieted down now, so I'm going to have another go!

Iraq, as you may guess, is hot and chaotic. Until last night I was staying in a cheap hotel without air-conditioning (and often without any electricity most of the night) which meant I got no sleep but did get a little understanding of how exhausting and frustrating it is just trying to live a few nights in Baghdad at the moment - quite a few people have suggested that I'm brave coming here but I reply that what takes real courage is to live out here permanently and remain as friendly and self-giving as so many Iraqis are.

However the situation has changed considerably from my last trip in October 2003 when I used to travel alone around the city by foot and taxi, chatting with so many people along the way. Baghdadis whose opinions I respect have insisted that I can no longer do this. It is heartbreaking not to be able to interact so freely now, and my schedule is difficult to juggle as I am dependent on friends to pick me up and drive me around Baghdad's gridlocked streets. One change for the better is a reasonably functioning mobile network, although that results in another variable to juggle - keeping one's phone charged is not easy when the electricity supply is so hit and miss, and the stakes are much higher if the battery suddenly dies (as mine did yesterday evening when I was trying to arrange a pick up at night in a dodgy area).

But anyway, life here still goes on of course. And not just the daily chores and tasks. Love is in the air. I kid you not. One insightful friend pointed out that most of the foreigners who've spent more than a few months here have ended up getting hitched, either to each other or more often to locals. I don't gossip so I won't mention any names, but I've heard of almost a dozen examples. If I was staying much longer than the 9 days of this trip the chances are I'd likely be kidnapped, not by Al-Qaeda but by Abu Jamila or someone who'd walk me up the aisle (or mosque equivalent) with his daughter!

Actually I do have a kidnapping story: I was almost the first person kidnapped in Iraq. Last October one friend approached me with a proposition - he and some friends would dress up in mujahadeen clothes, hold a gun to my head and video my pleas for release. I would then head home to the UK and they would sell the tape to Al-Jazeria or someone, and split the profits with me. When the world media started probing and found me safe and sound I could explain how the whole affair was a big joke. Ha Ha. Needless to say, though to my Iraqi friend's deep surprise, I didn't agree and missed out on my 5 minutes of fame/infamy.

My main task out here has been to find someone to run Jubilee Iraq on the ground here. It's been hard going and I've had so many gloomy assessments from Iraqi friends that it will be impossible to find a good trustworthy person with the appropriate skills and in the short time I have available. I'm not so pessimistic, as I have a higher opinion of Iraqis than I think many do themselves. Of course its a tough situation, unemployment is so high that people will do and say anything to get work, and the long years of dictatorship have meant that most well qualified people had either been coopted or fled into exile. My other task here has been to investigate Iraqi NGOs and it has been depressing to hear how many of them are shams just after donor money - but at the same time I have found some which are decent, and I refuse to reject the grain just because there is so much chaff.

I've had some fun times here as well. Long hours chatting with a fiery Palastinian friend who is known across the country for going the extra mile to help anyone in need. Listening to an Italian and an Arab argue over which race has contributed most to the development of coffee. An evening with a former minister who encouraged me to embrace Islam (one of his interesting proofs was that if you take a scan of someone's lungs and turn it on its side, then within the network of tubes - I think they're called bronchi - you can read (in Arabic script) the Kalimath At-thawheedh "La Ilaha Illallah" which means "There is no god but Allah" - does anyone have any pictures to demonstrate this?). He also told me of the occassion his daughter innocently asked him "in what way is Saddam related to God" - an understandable question in a society forced to submit to a personality cult in which a list was even drawn up of the 99 names of Saddam. A guilty debate with a vegan activist who correctly guessed that I'm a veggie in the UK but lapse when I'm here in Iraq. Joking with iraqi friends about the tastleless formless green statue which has replaced the one of Saddam at the end of Saadoon Street. Crusing at night around "TeaTime" and other favorite haunts of the Iraqi upper class youth with a junior doctor who explained how he'd boldly demanded, and eventually received, an apology from an American soldier who had randomly and mistakenly arrested him while he was waiting in a fuel queue... Everyone one meets in Iraq has a story to tell, and most of them are worth hearing.

Rwandan roadtrip

Rwanda is called the country of a thousand hills ("les milles collins") and the description is spot on. I drove across about half the length of the country yesterday from Kigali to Kibuye never once touching a straight stretch of road longer than 20 meters, just endless broad meanders around the hills. The countryside is very green, fertile and every square inch is cultivated - it has to be to feed 6 million people crammed into an area about the size of Wales. I love contours, and so the landscape is right up my street. The views can be spectacular as you crest one of the larger hills and gaze out over the endless fractal progression; this time of the year is quite hazy, so the more distant hilltops are blurred by vapour, giving the scene a kind of dreamlike quality.

Driving in Rwanda seems to involve jamming the wheel hard to the right around one bend, hard to the left around the next, and so on until you reach your destination, all the while tooting the horn to warn the hordes of pedestrians, cyclists, cows and goats about your approach. The density of population is obvious from the dozens of people who lined almost every stretch of the two and a half hour journey.

Lake Kivu is, to look at, a paradise location with crystal clean water surrounded by those milles collins. It's a perilous place, however, as it contains pockets of methane gas which periodically bubble up and can suffocate anyone swimming or fishing in the vicinity. Three years ago (to cap Africa's bloodiest civil war) the Volcano overlooking Goma on the Congo side of lake Kivu erupted and cut a lava path through the city centre. Apparently the lava solidified about 70m into lake Kivu, however if it had penetrated another 100m it would have ignited the methane, leading to an unimaginably vast explosion. That is one horror at least that the long suffering people around Lake Kivu have been been spared.

Here's a random observation: I've been known to start my sentences with an conteplative hum "Mmmm" but Rwandans seem to take this to extreme, beginning every word with the letter M. Okay, so this isn't strictly true, but certainly the four survival words of Kinyarwanda I've learnt so far all fit the pattern:

murakoze = thank you
mwaramutse = good morning
mwirwe = good afternoon/evening
murarakye = good night

Weddings and loose ends

I'm writing this from Kigali, Rwanda, where I've just arrived to assess HIV/AIDS projects for my charity NPC. I'm here until Saturday then driving down to Burundi (avoiding interahamwe and other rebels on route) for another six days research. This trip is hectically sandwiched between two weddings in England. I arrive back in London at 6am on the 24th and head straight to the wedding of my oldest friends Anne Westmacott, and the evening before I flew out here was the wedding of an Iraqi friend Hussein.

Hussein and Ghida's wedding reception was the most oppulant I've ever attended, or am likely to attend! It was in the Royal Counts of Justice in London, in a giant hall seating at least 500 people. All the great and the good of anglo-iraqi society were there, and at one point I even found myself bopping on the dance floor to an Amr Diab song alongside the lawyer who is organisings Saddam's criminal tribunal. It was wonderful meeting Hussein's friends from school and university, as I've only seen a small section of his life in the year we've known each other. One of them commented, and this is spot on, that H manages to make everyone in the room feel special, and that was demonstrated as he floated around arm in arm with Ghida greeting everyone. Brides are traditionally radiant, but Ghida really took it to a new level - the photos I have of them dancing together look like the must be scenes from a Hollywood film. I also had the surprise of bumping into another Iraqi friend who, unbeknown to me, had also got married that same day.

I'll post of some more in a few days about my impressions of Burundi and Rwanda. Before I sign off I better tie up a few loose ends, having not posted for quite a while. I mentioned, regarding my trip to the Congo a couple of months ago, that I'd been asked to carry over a "package" from the Ambassador in Britain the Foreign Minister. Various concerned friends had emailed to ask about my smuggling activities, and I have to admit that the package turned out to be a perfectly boring (but very heavy!) box of A3 paper and envelopes - clearly in short supply over in Kinshasa. So I'm not on the run from Interpol... yet. I should have really posted more about Kinshasa, but it took time to digest and I was really busy in May and June (excuses excuses). But grab me sometime and I'd be delighted to chat with you about the disco dancing funeral processions, the brightly coloured shops with names like "The Love and Blessing of God Grocery", canoing on the mightly Congo river, the sharp division of society into two rival groups - those who drink Skol and those who drink Primus beer - and many other things.

The other bit of news from the last month is that Jubilee Iraq has recived a grant from George Soros' Open Society Insitute, which will enable us to hire an Iraqi out in Baghdad to take the campaign forward there over the next few critical months. I'd hoped to go out there in June to recruit someone, but planning for this Africa trip meant I wasn't able to take of any holiday time from my day job, but I'm hoping to get over in August. It's been far too long, almost a year, since i was last out there and my heart strings get jerked with the news each day. Inshallah (providing NPC can get funding for this) I'll be over there for an extended period towards the end of this year, begining of next, catalysing support and funding for Iraqi civil society.