Ironic...

British believe Bush is more dangerous that Kim Jong-il
(Guardian, 3rd November 2006)

A survey carried out by leading newspapers in Britain, Israel, Mexico and Canada have found that
America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest allies.

In Britain, Bush was seen as more dangerous than the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, Hassan Nasrallah the leader of Hizbullah and the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, although Osama Bin Laden still topped the bill with 87% of people considering him a world threat.

As for the invasion of Iraq, 71% of Brits thought it was unjustified, compared to 89% Mexicans, 73% Canadians and 34% of Israelis, making them the only nation in favour.

Meanwhile...

America fights to take charge of UN peacekeepers around world
(Times, 3rd November 2006)

US are lobbying for an American to be put in charge of UN peacekeeping operations in a move that could give the US an exit strategy for Iraq. This would also place an American in charge of 95,000 UN peacekeepers in trouble spots from Lebanon to Sudan. The move is highly controversial, not only because it will totally remake the UN into a US-led organisation but because the 1990 US led peacekeeping mission in Somalia was such a disaster. The position is at present held by France who are fiercely resisting American lobbying efforts.

An old but classic pic...

Today's market special - hot chicks

Pic 'n' mix

Short of money? Kidnap and ransom a child

BAGHDAD KIDNAPPERS TARGET EASY PREY
By Duraed Salman in Baghdad
Institute of War and Peace Reporting
4th October 2006

Women and children increasingly falling victim to the capital's kidnapping gangs.

When she heard the news, Um Ahmed raced out into Palestine Street, screaming at the top of her voice and hitting herself frenziedly.

"Allahu Akbar (God is Great), I want my girl - she is young and innocent," she cried hysterically, asking every passer-by if they knew anything about the whereabouts of her daughter - a 23-year-old ministry of culture employee, abducted on her way to work.

The abduction of women and children has become a lucrative business for gangs in many parts of Iraq and particularly in Baghdad. Women are so fearful of being kidnapped that they rarely go out alone, and hire taxis to go to work. The victims are normally from wealthy families, but kidnapping is so widespread that even ordinary families cannot feel safe.

Women and children are easy prey because, unlike many men in Iraq these days, they usually do not carry guns; and families respond very quickly to ransom demands for women because they are deeply concerned about their reputation.Shakir Juma'a, 35, a car dealer in Baghdad, immediately paid 30,000 US dollars for his kidnapped teenager daughter who was released unharmed a day later.

Reliable data about the number of women kidnappings is hard to obtain. A source in the ministry of women's affairs, on condition of anonymity, said that they have no figures and that the ministry of interior declined to pass such data on to them.NGOs have come up with figures but they are hard to verify. For instance, Yanar Mohammed, head of the Women's Freedom Organisation, claimed in a press conference last month that about 2,000 women have been kidnapped in Iraq over the last three years.

Some suggest that this is a rather conservative estimate. A police lieutenant colonel, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, said most cases go unreported because families prefer direct negotiation with kidnappers to lessen the risk of their abducted loved ones being harmed.

But families also refrain from contacting law enforcers out of suspicion of links between the latter and the kidnap gangs. Indeed, people who've witnessed abductions speak of victims being taken away by men in police uniforms and driving police cars.

These concerns are further fueled by the fact that few kidnappers are ever caught.

With so many women apparently being abducted, there are worries that some are falling into the hands of sex-traffickers.In a recent police raid on a house in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, officers discovered two kidnapped women together with forged passports - an indication that the abductors were preparing to traffic them abroad, said senior police officer Thair Hamid.

Women have turned into "cheap and exchangeable goods" in Iraq, according to the Women's Freedom organisation.

Children are not safe either. Suad Muhsin, 19, sobs and clings to her mother as she recounts how her brother Sabah, 12, was kidnapped in Baghdad's al-Sha'ab district three months ago, right in front of her eyes.

Muhsin stood on the family's balcony in the afternoon and watched Sabah who was playing down below.A car with three men stopped nearby, one of them, a man of average build in a suit, called her brother by his name. She first thought Sabah had been fighting with some boys and the man was trying to intervene - but then he forced Sabah into the car and drove off.

The kidnappers contacted the Muhsin's by phone, demanding a 12 million Iraqi dinars (8000 US dollars) ransom. A week later they paid, leaving the money in a tissue box on a pavement in the al-Jadeeda district of the capital, as the kidnappers had ordered.

A few hours later, Sabah's body was found in a garbage dump, a stone's throw from his parents' house."Iraq has turned into a jungle where the powerful defeat the weak without fear of God," said Suad angrily. "Saddam has gone and left behind [criminals] to roam freely."

Shortly before the fall of his regime, Saddam issued a general amnesty, under which about 100,000 prisoners were released. Many Iraqis believe the ex-president's parting has significantly contributed to the surge in kidnappings and other crimes in the capital over the last few years.

Musin Ahmed, Sabah's father, who owns property in Baghdad and lets shops and houses, suspects organised crime is behind the kidnappings, "How else would they know who I am, how wealthy I am - and how would they get my phone number and other information?"

Ramadan is great!

So Ramadan is well underway. The shops and cafes are shut most of the day, the Ministries are barely open, staff are working shorter hours, I can't eat or drink in public, and the traffic is a nightmare before and after dusk. But I'm beginning to see the benefits.

Whereas last year the kids setting off bangers with an unrelenting vigour drove me so insane I actually bought the remaining stock of bangers from the corner shop as a preventative measure, this year the neighbours keep knocking on my door and bringing me fresh cooked food at dusk! It's great and I'm wondering if it'll continue throughout Ramadan!

This home delivery service has also meant I've met and spoken with two veiled Kuwaiti women in the last week. Which is rare. For me anyway. Add this to the veiled Kuwaiti woman whose car I jumped started the previous week, and my interactions with veiled Kuwaiti women has increased from 0 to 3!

Right, I'm off to eat my free food!

The Iraq Quagmire

Follow this link to a very alarming fact sheet summarising the mounting costs of the Iraq war...

http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/cow9-06.pdf

Life in Baghdad

A good short photo essay on life in Baghdad...

http://iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henpirr&s=o&o=iraq_photoessay_06.html

"And that's me in the black outside the souk..."

No public snacking allowed...

Non- fasting people should strictly observe the Kuwaiti Law No. 24 for the year 1968 which prohibits public eating, drinking or smoking during Ramadan fasting hours.

Section One: A penalty of not more than one month detention and KD 100 fine (or either of these penalties) will be imposed on:

• Anyone who publicly eats, drinks or smokes during Ramadan fasting hours.
• Anyone who forces, helps or induces such public display, with the possibility of closure of any public store facility used for such purpose for not more than 2 months.

Iraq's Lost Generation

By Sahar Al-Haidery in Baghdad and Mosul
Source: Institute of War and Peace Reporting (16th September 2006)

At first glance, the games occupying Sameer, Salwa, Batul, Taghreed, Yasir and Fawzi seem much like those enjoyed by any children as they play happily in a Baghdad street with friends from school and the neighbourhood.

On closer inspection, however, their games are far from innocent, and offer a brutal reflection of daily life in Iraq. This group of five- to seven-year-olds is re-enacting a beheading, a scene they have most likely seen on television or on one of the many graphic videos circulating in the country.

The girls are screaming and feigning terror, pretending they have been kidnapped by a group of militants. One of the boys holds a wooden stick aloft like a sword, ready to decapitate his "hostage".

Almost half of Iraq's population is under 18, and the daily violence they have witnessed - not only on television but on the streets - has had a devastating impact on their lives and well-being.

Three wars since 1980, population displacement, the loss of family members, car bombs, suicide attacks and the constant presence of troops, tanks and guns are taking their toll on the mental welfare of the younger generation.

Though it is hard to obtain exact data on the number of children affected, an April 2003 report by the United Nations children's agency UNICEF estimated that half a million Iraqi children were traumatised by conflict. Considering the extent of hostilities since then, the number must be considerably higher today.

Ayat Salah, six, stopped talking after she found a headless body in front of her house in Baghdad as she set off for school."Ayat had kissed me and her father goodbye in the morning as usual," said her mother. "Then she left the house, and suddenly we heard her scream and saw she had fainted. She hasn't spoken a word since."

Shrooq Mustafa was five years old when she saw militants behead her father in front of her. He worked as a translator for American troops in Baghdad. Her father's blood splashed all over the girl's pink dress, and the armed men left her behind with the dead body of her father, screaming and in a state of shock.

Often children fall victim to the violence themselves. A report issued by Iraq's education ministry earlier this year stated that 64 children had been killed and 57 injured in 417 attacks on schools within a four-month period. More than 47 youngsters were kidnapped on their way to or from school in the same period. The report also noted that 311 teachers and government employees had been killed and another 158 wounded in attacks.According to UNICEF, school attendance rates have fallen to roughly 65 per cent as many parents do not consider it safe enough to send their children to school.

The constant exposure of children to such violence worries aid agencies and human rights monitors. "These are the Iraqi civilians and leaders of tomorrow. They must be allowed to grow up and develop in an environment of care and respect, not constant concern and anxiety," said UNICEF's special representative for Iraq, Roger Wright.

There are few institutions and doctors in Iraq trained to treat the children of war, so parents often have no one to turn to for help if they recognise the symptoms of trauma, which include lack of initiative, anxiety, insomnia, poor concentration and bedwetting. Psychiatrists are rare and none exist at all who specialise in children's mental health.Germany's Wings of Hope group, which started a special clinic for traumatised children in summer 2003, had to flee the capital to northern Iraq in November 2005 after threats against its staff.

The need for such services is great, say those who work with children. "Our children have lost their childhood," said Alaa Omran, a teacher in a primary school in the al-Masareef quarter in Mosul. Every day she hears youngsters exchanging information on bullet types and explosions, or talking about relatives or friends who have been killed, kidnapped or beheaded.

"When they talk about of cars, it is about the model of the car bomb which exploded in their neighborhood. Of course this is going to affect their personality and their psychology," said Omran.

Haitham Hassan Mustafa, a teacher at Mosul University, is afraid that a "lost generation" is growing up with no moral centre, making them easy prey for criminals and insurgents who recruit them as accomplices.

That has already happened to Mufeed Salih, now 18, who is called "the prince" by his friends. On the streets of Baghdad, he makes a living assisting a car theft gang - monitoring the roads and providing information on potential targets.

Asked about his work, Salih said, "Big fish eat smaller ones. We all have to live."

Life and death

I was excited. People could see it. But it seemed to bemuse them. I was leaving behind the Iraq programme, to spend three weeks in Congo, another country ravaged by a civil war. At the same time as the two leading Presidential candidates were engaged in a gun battle in the capital Kinshasa, following the results of the first round of the first 'democratic' elections in Congo’s history, after a conflict that has resulted in 4 million deaths, the plundering of the country's natural resources and the destruction of the little infrastructure there was.

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire. From one depressing conflict to another.” someone said. “It’s okay”, I told them, “The BBC say only 4 people were killed and the Spanish troops have secured the airport and Bemba has been escorted out of Kinshasa”.

I’m not sure how I’d compare the conflict in Congo with that in Iraq, but a week on from arriving in Kinshasa it’s clear that death and civil strife are not the only characteristics of the country.

Just as accosting is the sense of life. Everywhere you look you see life. The streets are full of people. And people interacting, rather than passing each other by. Life is lived outside. Clothes are adorned with rich colours. Smiles greet you. The laughter and voices of children drifts into the office as they play outside on the streets.

Nature encroaches onto the concrete infrastructures that have attempted to take its place. The abandoned, derelict and broken are revived. African mechanics impossibly breathe new life into battered vehicles long ago discarded in the West. People farm plots of land in the middle of the sprawling city.

The vast medical institute and teaching hospital in central Kinshasa that was looted during Kabila's regime. Now the wards house hundreds of families and the grounds are farmed.

Sights, smells and sounds bombard your senses. Fresh insights leave you challenged and perplexed. It’s rich and raw and you breath it all in and it disarms you and fills you with an appetite for more.

Particularly, when you’ve been stuck in Kuwait for a year. A country that has everything but life…

Rules of the Western Media in dealing with the Middle East

Rule 1: In the Middle East, it is always the Arabs that attack first, and it's always Israel who defends itself. This is called "retaliation".

Rule 2: The Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, are not allowed to kill Israelis. This is called "terrorism".

Rule 3: Israel has the right to kill Arab civilians; this is called "self-defense", or these days "collateral damage".

Rule 4: When Israel kills too many civilians. The Western world calls for restraint. This is called the "reaction of the international community".

Rule 5: Palestinians and Lebanese do not have the right to capture Israeli military, not even a limited number, not even 1 or 2.

Rule 6: Israel has the right to capture as many Palestinians as they want(Palestinians: around 10000 to date, 300 of which are children, Lebanese: 1000s to date, being held without trial). There is no limit; there is no need for proof of guilt or trial. All that is needed is the magic word: "terrorism"

Rule 7: When you say "Hezbollah", always be sure to add "supported by Syria and Iran"

Rule 8: When you say "Israel", never say "supported by the USA, the UK and other European countries", for people (God forbid) might believe this is not an equal conflict.

Rule 9: When it comes to Israel, don't mention the words "occupied territories", "UN resolutions", "Geneva conventions". This could distress the audience of Fox.

Rule 10: Israelis speak better English than Arabs. This is why we let them speak out as much as possible, so that they can explain rules 1 through 9. This is called "neutral journalism".

Rule 11: If you don't agree with these rules or if you favor the Arab side over the Israeli side, you must be a very dangerous anti-Semite. You may even have to make a public apology if you express your honest opinion.

Let's put it off for another year

"Happy 30th Birthday!"

My 30th birthday back in March didn't feel very happy. Single for 3 years, due to this nomadic lifestyle of going to and fro (or at least that's what I like to tell myself). Working with children and loving it, but wondering whether my choice of new career would undermine any future attempt to have my own family. Hearing story after story of couples in this sector who have tried to make relationships work and failed. Living in the Middle East and being tormented by the fact I can't approach women without risking being deported for inappropriate behaviour.

So I resolved that my next job would be UK based. I told myself I could deal with the grey skies, rain and lemming-like commute into London so long as I could have a more normal social life again.

Like New Year's resolutions though, this seems to have but put off for another year. Come October I'll be handing the Iraq programme over to someone new and moving into a new job in Northern Uganda.

Anyone interested?

Recruiting people is always insightful. Flooding in come little windows into the lives of people from every far flung corner of the world. Windows into career paths, personalities and motivations... It's particularly interesting you're recruiting your replacement. Whenever you interview for a job, you never really learn what calibre or type of people you're competing against.

It's also entertaining. From the 17 page CVs, the CVs submitted in a foreign language, and the covering letters addressed to the wrong organisation, to the hopelessly optimistic applications from people who have overlooked every person specific requirement.

And the random emails that come in response to your email being put out into the public domain. Like the daughters of Africa's unseated dictators who want your help to free up $15m.

"You're young. You should go spend 3 months in Sudan, 3 months in Afghanistan..."

This was a friend's recommendation. 3 months? Now, in this work often you can be exposed to, learn, and do a lot in 3 months but equally, it's hard to see how 3 months is enough to learn about a new context and actually achieve something significant. It's over in a blink. This is indicative of the turnover in this sector though - it's horrendous and seems to be accepted.

You wonder how this can be in the best interests of the beneficiaries. It undermines the need for continuity, for people to see things through from start to finish, to build and retain learning, for people to be around long enough to see the impact and be held accountable, to develop effective relationships, to avoid wasting time and energy inducting new person after new person... Clearly most right minded people don't want to live in miserable conflict zones for long, but the sector really needs to find an effective way of mitigating the impact of this turnover or reducing the turnover altogether.

I tell myself I've done okay. I've stayed here for over a year and I'm continuing to work for the same organisation.

"I've had enough of Kuwait"

I feel awful trying to explain some of my motivations for leaving to my Iraqi colleagues. It seems so disrespectful to say "I've had enough of Kuwait". Enough of the constant electricity, clean water, sanitation, nice car, nicer accommodation, security and safety, shops full of everything I need, no floods, landscape sea fronts and beaches... This only frustrates me further and leaves me question why I can't tolerate it for longer, enjoy it for what it is, get some perspective?

And the answer seems simple. I don't have to. I am another of the nomadic INGO workers, born in the West and blessed with opportunity, mobility and choice.

Sorry, we're leaving now, something else has come up

This parallels the relationship between international NGOs and local NGOs. Volumes of manuals, reports and journals discuss capacity building of LNGOs, building their legitimacy, expertise etc. This we're told is the key to their sustainability.

I wonder though whether this overlooks some key distinguishing characteristics between INGOs and LNGOs. INGOs have had a reputation for being fairly incompetent so it can't be about expertise. And they're outsiders - they have limited local knowledge and grassroots legitimacy. It's more likely INGOs survive because:

• They're international and mobile - they can follow the money and crises;
• The political and donor institutions trust them because they're both western; and
• They're based in the west and can tap into the affluence of the local community

Of course some will survive. The ones that are dynamic and effective and build relationships with western political and donor institutions, maintain relationships with INGOs and tap into diaspora communities. Independent sustainability seems a long way off though in Iraq. For now our relationships with them need to both build their capacity and sustain them financially. The funding situation is dire and political and donor institutions are very cautious, concerned that they can't monitor and evaluate activities in a conventional way, put off by the billions that have been filtered off by corrupt individuals and organisations, and wary of the huge number of LNGOs that were set up after 2003 as fronts for contractors, religious organisations and self interested individuals looking for personal enrichment.

Not a promising precedent...

Follow this link to review the 70 UN Resolutions regarding Israeli aggression... Their compliance doesn't bode well for Lebanon.

http://www.theuncampaign.org/un-resolutions.html

Walking protest...

http://www.theuncampaign.org/download-free-artwork.html

Patriotism and censorship gone mad

I was listening to 99.7 FM Kuwait Radio today, an American radio station broadcast here, whilst driving this morning. Green Day's song 'American Idiot' was playing. Kuwait Radio though has edited out every reference to 'American'. The song lyrics are now 'I don't wanna be an idiot'...

And so it goes on

I've written before about the complications of organising meetings, our lifeline in a remote management situation. Negotiating with families for female members of staff to travel, ensuring females are accompanied by male relatives or by another woman and an acceptable man, applying for passports and visas, arranging travel and security planning, ensuring staff don't bring anything through the border (documents, CDs etc) that will get them into trouble...etc.

Now, we have two more to add to the list. One of our researchers has been blacklisted by the Kuwaiti authorities, for reasons unknown. We can't ask questions of the Ministry because it creates more problems - we just have to keep reapplying. So he can't travel for now. And our translator has just had to pull out of this week's meeting after three of his uncles walked into a field of land mines over the weekend. Two were hospitalised, one is dead.

Parrots, pigeons and pit bulls

Apart from spending money and whinging that the government doesn't give them enough money, there are few things Kuwaitis seem to be passionate about. Even when the Mohammed cartoons sparked up riots across the Muslim world, the Kuwaiti protest march was peaceful and conducted largely by an Egyptian rent-a-mob rather than Kuwaitis. Kuwaitis preferred to just ban all the products, leave the shelf space empty as a statement, and put boycott protest stickers on their cars.

But they do seem to have a passion for birds and poultry. Pigeons, birds of prey, parrots and chickens. Go down to the market and you'll see thousands, look on people's roofs, balconies and you'll see aviaries. I've even seen them taken to the beach, which in some cases make them more privileged than the women. One family - well the father and his sons and occasionally the female maid - comes to the beach to swim, parks their car at the water's edge, sticks a perch in the sand, and then put their huge parrot on the perch from where it watches them swim.

So it's birds rather than dogs that appear to be the Kuwaiti man's best friend. As an English man though I fostered a dog in Kuwait, from a shelter for strays. Since then I've learnt the following:

• When you pack up and leave Kuwait for the summer, it's common to just stick the dog outside. The compassionate will perhaps leave a pile of food and bowl of water, clearly hoping the dog will ration this out until their owner returns home.
• Seeing a dog is like going to the zoo / circus - dogs seem like novelties and you expect them to perform for you. Every week drivers honk at the dog, children make incessant barking noises and gesture, and cars take detours, stop or swerve over the road and wind down the window to take a closer look.
• Taking on a dog is easy. Sometimes, drivers will just stop beside the road and ask me how much I want for the dog. Simple as that.
• Islam isn't too fond of dogs. Dogs saliva is bad, and things that comes into contact with should be washed 7 times, including once with sand.
• Dogs are for security. My dog is very lovable and sedate. My landlord laughs at it though. That's not a dog he says. The dogs banned in the UK because they attack and maul people - they're dogs. He has videos of dog fights on his phone.

• For women, an exception is made for anything fluffy and small enough to fit in your Gucci handbag. Where it hides from your husband's pit bull.
• You don't walk the dog. Your house workers do.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" - Mahatma Gandhi

Local news

Provocative headline of the day is: "Israel on baby-killing spree". The death toll has risen to 1,000 Lebanese and 101 Israeli. The majority of the Lebanese casulties are children... Bizarrely though, there are no references to babies or children in the text of the article, just lots of gruesome provocative images...

Chocolates end hunger strike. A box of chocolates brought one prisoner's hunger strike to abrupt end. The hunger strike started when a police officer was not summoned to testify in a case about another officer stealing the prisoner's personal belongings. The prison director found out that the man's favourite food was chocolate, so he sent the prisoner a box of premium chocolates. Shortly thereafter the prisoner ended his three-day hunger strike.

Open your eyes

Lebanon War Question and Answer

Great article by Stephen Shalom covering the different sides of the debate...
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=10721&sectionID=107


Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong

Another great article, this one by George Monbiot
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=10726&sectionID=107


Meanwhile...

Israel is pressuring the world to stop broadcasting Arab TV channels. India has just banned them in response to this pressure. Whatever happened to freedom of press and what exactly are Israel trying to hide?

http://www.arabnews.com/services/print/print.asp?artid=75907&d=6&m=8&y=2006&hl=India%20Bans%20Arab%20TV%20Channels%20Under%20Pressure%20From%20Israel

Looking for love

And in the Classifieds today:

Proposal invited for Christian believer (born again) boy 30-35 years, from sister of girls who work in Kuwait. Well qualified, God fearing and good looking girls email: ....

Jacobite parents invite proposals for their daughter, 27 years / 165cm, fair complexion, good looking, God-fearing, understanding, working as staff nruse in Kuwait-MOH, from parents of God-fearing, smart and professionally qualified employed boys. Interested parents mail full biodata to: ...

There are plenty more to choose from but anyone interested needs to act fast as they all say they're going on holiday (back home) next month, which I'm interpreting as "I'd like to get married next month".

The obscene and the ridiculous

US Soldiers gang-raped Iraqi girl: GIs drank whiskey, hit golf balls, then grilled chicken. An Army investigator testified yesterday that American soldiers took turns raping a 14 year old girl, before one of them put a bullet through her head after killing her parents and 5 year old sister.

Palestinian PM gets 'toxic' mail. Palestinians launched an investigation yesterday after seven people were hospitalised when one of them opened a suspicious envelope addressed to Palestinian Prime Minister ISmail Haniyeh, officials said.

Prisoner makes 'great escape' from Sulaibiya police station. A security source revealed that Jahra police detained a man wanted for an 11 year prison sentence. Sources said he initially gave police a false name but then heard the policemen whispering to each other that he was a fugitive and had given them false information. Though the man was handcuffed, he still managed to jump from a window in Sulaibiya police station, where he was taken after his arrest. He then escaped in a police car, which had been parked outside with the engine running. The man managed to escape and the police car was later found abandoned in Sulaibiya.

Peanuts you pay, monkeys you get

'Living it up, part 2' incensed one of my friends who also works in this field. She wrote an impassioned and spirited defence, from which these are extracts:

"Back to your friend who asks why we are getting paid so much, allow me to try my luck on this one.... Do I believe that to deal with poverty you yourself have to be suffering from poverty as well? So now a doctor has to be sick to be able to treat patients more efficiently?"

"If you compare our salaries with anyone who has our background but works in any other sector other than international development you will find that our salaries are not that obscene! Take someone who works, say, in the field of business, has two Master’s degrees, has 12 years of experience, how much would this person be making? Well I just described myself, and as you very well know I’m probably making 50% of my counterparts in other professional fields. Besides we need to make a living as well."

"We can also approach it from the beneficiaries’ point of view. Do they have the capacity and the capability to manage bigger funds than what we actually give them?... And we are not a substitute bank! ... Are we expected to give these beneficiaries more money, AND build their capacity to manage these funds, AND be flexible in terms of collateral and re-payment?"

"Of course that is in addition to all the points you mention about International Development becoming so huge now that it needs professionals and not just my mom and yours who volunteer their time in church! We have multi million dollar budgets, tens of staff per program, governmental relationships to maintain, amongst other major responsibilities so we’ve earned it! Tell your friend “peanuts you pay, monkeys you get”!!! If that’s who should be managing issues of poverty, then maybe she has a point, I just don’t see it…"

"At the end of the day we chose this line of work because we love it, enjoy it, and I can’t think of myself doing anything else! We sacrifice our time, effort, comfort, and often safety in order to give others a chance in life to achieve their potential and their rights! If we make a bit of money (not much, but some) in the process I think that’s ok, don’t you?"

Living it up, part 2

A visitor to Kuwait challenged me the other evening. She questionned why we (INGO workers) were paid thousands of dollars, yet the beneficiaries we were working for only received two or three hundred dollar income generation grants. Didn't I think we were paid too much? Wasn't it obscene?

In any given circumstance, this would have put a lump in my throat and guilt in my conscience. But she had clearly timed this challenge to have maximum impact. We were sat in The Chocolate Cafe in a leafy coastal suburb of Kuwait, and I was in the process of demolishing an extortionately priced chocolate desert. Ruthless, calculating woman. I would like to report that I immediately lost my appetite and couldn't finish my desert. Unfortunately I didn't - it was too good and too expensive.

Now, being accused of earning too much wasn't something I expected when I entered this sector. Not least because I'd come from a legal and private sector management background where salaries were far higher. My friends who are lawyers and managers still look at me like I'm nuts for working for what I do.

But it was a fair and unsettling challenge so I gave it some thought and we talked more. We discussed various possible justifications: the inability to staff the entire sector with volunteers; professionalising the sector not being feasible without professionals paid a reasonable salary; that it is linked to the budget and responsibility levels; and the need to compensate people for living in difficult conditions detached from friends, family and the familiar. And finally the assertion that actually they're not high at all.

I'm still struggling though to convince myself of the justifications. Pay levels are high relative to the beneficiary population because we're international staff. Which raises the question, why international staff. I'm still wrestling with that question. In the mean time, here's the pay structure for international staff in the relief and development sector. Roughly speaking, and from a positive of some ignorance, it seems to have 7 pay bands as far as I can see.

Level 1: Volunteers. Cheap free labour secured on the promise of a possible job and perhaps enough money to buy a travel card and Meal Deal at Boots for lunch.

Level 2: The army. Seems a strange inclusion but increasingly the military are implementing relief and development projects, to broaden their mandate and income and / or to 'win the hearts and minds' of the country they've invaded, destroyed and occupied. Becoming relief and development workers was probably the least likely expectation of these guys when they signed up and it shows.

Level 3: Continental Europe based INGO workers. For some reason a lot of the Italian and French INGOs seem to pay their workers relatively low salaries.

Level 4: UK based INGO workers. The volunteers who stayed long enough. Their pay is not far off the public sector and civil service. It's reasonable and it's possible to save quite a bit whilst overseas, and whilst single. Otherwise, it isn't a lot.

Level 5: Large US based, USAID funded, INGOs workers. These guys and gals are laughing all the way to the bank and heaven with a burgeoning bank balance and a light conscience.

Level 6: Private contractors. For a long time, relief and development was the domain of non-governmental organisations. The principles of 'not for profit', 'neutrality' and 'benevolence' was fundamental. Nowadays though we're increasingly seeing private contractors joining the fray, particularly in countries like Iraq. These guys charge as much as my lawyer friends.

Level 7: The UN workers. The UN gets a lot of criticism but it always seems to be focused on its inaction and inability to do anything without US endorsement. Someone though really needs to scrutinise the salary and benefit packages as well. The package is so 'good', particularly after you've been in the system for 5-7 years, that it buys the loyalty, subservience and compliance of the best of people. The result? The inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy is reinforced because no one wants to rock the boat and put their prosperous early retirement at risk.

Living it up

"It's like Hawaii. There are landscaped lawns, palm trees, a swimming pool, bars serving alcohol, restaurants, plasma screens TVs everywhere, and Americans driving around in golf carts."

That's how a friend described the Basra palace compound. Several other friends concurred.

Once a playground for Saddam, the palace is now the home of the occupying governments and the opportunistic private contractors. They've restored it and added their own luxuries so they can enjoy a world apart from the Iraqi people on the other side of the compound walls. Compound walls they rarely if ever go beyond. Compound walls that rather bizarrely are guarded by privately contracted Peruvian military apparently.

It seems times are changing though. As the attacks on the compound and the death threats against locals visiting the compound increase, the locals employed in the compound are staying away. The locals who clean the toilets, check the chlorine levels in the pool, serve in the bars and restaurants, mow the lawns, implement the projects… The ramifications of this must have come as a bit of a shock to the internationals holed up in their little Hawaii. When they agreed to be posted to the Basra palace they didn't expect to have to clean their own toilets or wash their own clothes.

To be fair, there are some legitimate reasons for the international community to be there. They can meet far more frequently with the local authorities and organizations. So long as they hold enough planning and coordination meetings with the local authorities and organizations, and perhaps produce a couple more strategic plans, they can all justify their existence.

Unfortunately though, just as the local employees are staying away for fear of being targeted, so too are the local authorities and organizations. So the internationals are left staring at each other across an otherwise empty conference room, with nothing left to do but kick their feet, fight over the biscuits and ponder whether they are relevant any longer.

Sadly there was never any legitimate reason for the international community to construct a little Hawaii in the middle of a city torn apart by conflict and in desperate need of basic medicines, professionals, water, sanitation, electricity and law and order. As much as such luxuries must go some way to easing the sense of insecurity, frustration and isolation, it does still seem a little inappropriate and unnecessary...

Drama on my doorstep

Cafe attacked

KUWAIT: In response the Israeli attack on Qana, which killed nearly 60 Lebanese civilians, a number of Rumaithiya residents assaulted a local Starbucks, asking for the coffee shop to be shut down. Hawally police arrived on scene and managed to disburse the crowd with minimal incident. Security forces will increase their presence in areas with large populations of foreigners.

More scandal and crime capers

Maid gets pregnant: A Kuwaiti man reported to Taima police that his maid got pregnant following a relationship with an Indian expatriate working in a grocery shop. Police filed a case and referred the maid and the expat to the authorities.

Press best police: A source revealed that four policemen were chasing a wanted man on foot, when the man passed in front of the house of a Kuwaiti journalist. The journalist then joined the chase as the police seemed tired. The journalist eventually caught the man and detained him until the police caught up and arrested the man.

Insult to injury: A female employee at the Ministry of Information reported to Shuwaikh police that a colleague insulted her after a dispute over a procedural matter with a member of the public. A case was filed.

Corrupt cops handle rape case: After reports surfaced that Hawally police had beaten a Bahraini rape victim in an effort to force her to change her statement, attorneys intervened to stop such treatment. The victim says the three detectives beat her in front of witnesses... The detectives also threatened to frame the victim and send her to jail for 15 years for possession of drugs.

Lady sponsor bites, beats her maids as punishment: Elsa's face and Normina's arm were still seriously bleeding when they arrived at the Philippine Embassy on Saturday afternoon. Now the embassy is supporting the women's claim that their employer bit them as punishment for leaving the main gate open. Upon finding the gate open, the woman in charge of the maids called them to her room one by one to bite and beat them. Normina resisted her sponsor and in the struggle the sponsor chomped her arm several times before twisting it behind her back and breaking it. The sponsor then broke a wooden chair over Normina. When contacted by the embassy to get the employer's side of the story, the embassy interpreter said, "The employer has already filed a case against Else and Normina for illegally allowing their boyfriends to visit their residence." The two maids rejected their sponsor's claim. "The house is surrounded with cameras. If anybody enters the house they will see them. They have cameras everywhere, even in our rooms. How could we allow our boyfriends to enter the house", explained Elsa.

For anyone experiencing similar funding crises...

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts." Steven Wright

For anyone else depressed by Iraq...

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Gandhi

"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all." Martin Lurther King Jr.

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." Dale Carnegie

Finding hope

"Vietnam". That's the response most people give me when I ask them where they see hope in the world. Predictably, no one mentions anywhere in the Middle East.

Nearly a year has passed by since I arrived in Kuwait and started working on the Iraq programme. For the past few months, asking people this question has become a preoccupation for me. In my mind, hope comes from believing you can effect change. Sadly Iraq leaves you feeling powerless.

It's perhaps strange that I should feel this way. We operate in an area of relative security and stability and we've achieved a lot over the past year: we've provided hundreds of returnees with legal assistance to get children family protection, legal status, food rations and school registration; we've restored livelihoods for hundreds of families returning to the marshes; we've built bridges and levelled roads so children can get to school; we've built the capacities of local organisations; we've built drop in centres for street children; we've lobbied, with mixed success, for the Iraqi constitution to reflect the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and we've implemented a range of child protection projects. This is all overwhelmingly positive. We make a difference. It matters that we're here. We would be missed.

But sight of this impact gets blurred. While you're busy with the day to day nitty gritty of implementation, you're bombarded by the reports of unrelenting and ever worsening bombings, shootings, kidnapping, corruption and exploitation, and failed attempts to secure peace. This is what sticks in your mind until those periodic opportunities to step back and reflect. Especially when you're stuck in another world and detached from the beneficiaries.

Every day our Administrator compiles a news update on Iraq and the fields we work in so we're all up to date with developments. Sadly, it was so depressing some staff would discard it without even a glance - it was too much. So recently she was set a challenge: to compile a news update of stories of hope. She failed. Humour was as close as we got to hope.

So, this week I've recruited an Iraqi journalist and photographer to find these stories. To search for the hope in people's lives and document it.

It does exist. The people who are working for organisations like ours while their friends and families flee for safe refuge in the rural areas or outside Iraq. The woman who broke the silence and cultural acceptance of early and forced marriage in her village by opening up and sharing her long kept secrets about her own early and forced marriage and it's impact on her. The poverty stricken villagers who collected enough money to rent a building to function as a school for their children because the Department of Education couldn't build them one until 2007. The women who used livelihood grants to set up as hairdressers and beauticians. This is all hope. It's just it rarely gets reported.

In need of therapy

Remote management is something I'll never miss. Aside from the obvious frustrations of being detached from the reality of the beneficiaries and the projects, remotely managing a team is challenging to say the least.



The local team and I have just spent two days barely touching the surface of a whole host of concerns. Everything from toilets not being clean enough and drivers not turning on the air-conditioning for certain members to staff, to personality clashes and issues of non-compliance.

Working through such concerns is challenging in a normal context. But this is magnified when you add a cultural and linguistic divide and you take into account that pretty much all I have to go on are individuals' testimonies and my instinct. It's painstakingly protracted and riddled with potential for misunderstanding.

Today's cultural blunders included:

• Using a hand gesture to encourage an animated speaker to lower the volume of his voice, which was likened to gesturing an animal and therefore very disrespectful.
• Inadvertently sitting ahead of someone who was at the flip chart while I'd pulled my chair up to the conference table, which indicated that I did not respect him.

And those are just the ones someone's pointed out; There were probably more. Were I living in Iraq I'd be making such cultural blunders day in day out I'm sure so I guess I should be grateful that remote management means these are confined to once or twice a month.

It leaves you feeling woefully inept and powerless. Anyway, we stumble on...

Dangerous precedent

No women aid workers in Pakistan quake area: Clerics
Reuters, 26th July 2006

Muslim clerics in Pakistan's conservative North West Frontier Province want local authorities to expel all women working for international relief agencies in earthquake affected areas by the end of this month.

The clerics accuse the women, including Pakistanis employed by foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of dressing inappropriately, mixing with men and drinking alcohol, which is banned in Islamic Pakistan.

"We are not against the NGOs, but we are against them spreading obscenity in society and trying to weaken our faith by corrupting our women," Moazzam Ali Shah, head of the Movement to Cleanse Society, told Reuters in Mansehra town.

The clerics have not said what action they might take if the women aid workers are not asked to leave.

More than 50 international NGOs are based in Mansehra carrying out relief and rehabilitation projects for the victims of a massive earthquake that killed over 73,000 people and rendered millions homeless in Pakistan's Kashmir and Frontier province last October.

Cooking...

It's 9pm and I've just returned from walking the dog. The sun was down and there was no hot wind burning your eye balls like a hairdryer would if you turned it on yourself, so that was good. However, two hours after the sun set it was still 44 degrees. Bring on winter...

Life has just stopped. No more weekend mornings sat reading a book on the seafront. No more playing football. No more lying in my hammock. No more running along the beach with the dog. Even the Kuwaitis flee the summer. Apparently 700,000 leave for cooler climates during the 3 month long summer holidays.

I shouldn't moan though. Air conditioning isn't so prevalent in neighbouring Iraq and other hot spots like Sudan and Chad. An interesting story emerged from our research into the mass displacement of people due to the sectarian violence. It turned out that one of the reasons why the camps established by the Ministry to house IDPs weren't being settled was because the IDPs were demanding electricity and ceiling fans in every tent...

Given the circumstances of IDPs in Darfur and refugees in Chad, this sounds a little ridiculous. It's indicative of a deep rooted culture of dependency and expectancy in Iraq which confronts you in everything you do.

It must be tormenting though to live next door to a country like Kuwait with it's kept people and enormous wealth, knowing that your country has ten times Kuwait's natural resources and yet is desperately backward economically.

Children and conflict news

Bombings Hit Children Hardest
About 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years of age or less, hospital records show. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34075

600 children die each day in legacy of war
Nearly a decade of conflict has created a humanitarian crisis that kills the youngest and most vulnerable - through hunger and disease as well as violence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,1828038,00.html

UN turns spotlight on children caught in armed conflicts
The violations being monitored include killing or maiming, recruiting or using child soldiers, rape or sexual violence, abducting children or denying them humanitarian access and attacking schools or hospitals.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/221040/1/.html

Meanwhile, down at the Kuwaiti market…

At just £80, the Afghan rugs depicting the country's military hardware and conflicts with the USSR make a great talking point for anyone planning a (somber) dinner party. Granted perhaps not everyone would want to have AK47s, tanks and people dying on their wall on a permanent basis, however well crafted the rug is, but it's guaranteed to make an impression.

Alternatively, you can pick up everything from live peacocks and plastic flowers, to tortoises and tat from China.

Note in this picture I've blotted myself out in the same way the Kuwaitis go through every magazine and put marker pen over any image of a woman in her bikini or underwear, or a couple kissing. Not that my face is that offensive of course...

When a marker pen just isn't enough, the pages are ripped out altogether. And this in a country which has porn channels on the mainstream satellite TV in most people's homes… It's a funny old world.

And the bidding starts at $5,000...

…do I have $6,000, come on he's a good young lad, a little malnourished and traumatised I accept, but nonetheless worth at least $30,000, do I have any offers?

In the chaos, law and order vacuum, and desperation of Iraq, children are being kidnapped and / or sold for $5,000 - $60,000…

Interior Ministry officials said they had also received numerous complaints from local families about missing children. “It’s a very complicated situation,” said Fatah Hussein, a senior ministry official. “False documents are being used, and we know that many families who cannot have children look to Iraq and Afghanistan for children because it’s cheaper. Some children are sold for US$5,000, others for 10 times this.”

In some instances, families voluntarily sell their children because they need the money. “Sometimes we receive claims from relatives or friends that children have been sold by their own fathers,” said Hussein. “We can’t do anything in such cases, because it was their decision.”One Baghdad family interviewed by IRIN said that unemployment and poverty had pushed them to sell their child in order to support the rest of the family. “It’s hard to watch your children without anything to eat,” said Abu Karam, a father of nine who sold one of his children for US$60,000. “We sold our child to a foreign family because they paid very well, and he’ll have a good life there. In the meantime, the other children will have some thing to eat.”

Extract from IRIN News

In the news today

More Clueso Crime Reporting

Man flirts with in-law: A bedoon man made romantic overtures towards his sister-in-law after his Kuwaiti wife left the house. The man's Kuwaiti wife later returned home and saw her sister crying. When the wife learned what had transpired she informed Ahmadi police and a case was filed.

KD 200 for all Kuwaitis

The one million citizens of Kuwait, where the government financial assets have topped $166 billion, are to receive a grant of KD 200 dinars ($690) each, the Cabinet announced yesterday.

Banks are fun!? (Instalment 2)

So today I revisited the bank, again with the optimistic hope I could withdraw some money from our new bank account. And again it was fun! This time there was no ice cream but they made me laugh. I went to the teller to cash a cheque and guess what, they didn't have enough money! The National Bank of Kuwait didn't have enough money for me to draw a cheque. Hopefully, tomorrow it'll be third time lucky...

And I thought the American intelligence and security services were inept

The department of homeland security last week announced that Indiana was the most target rich locations in the States, with 8,591 potential sites of terrorist attack compared with 5,687 in New York.

The targets include a petting zoo, a popcorn manufacturer, a cheque-cashing outlet, a bean festival, and a doughnut shop.

Urm... no comment.

Amusing and insightful quote of the week

When asked whether or not a local partner was working with and through local religious leaders on an early and forced marriage sensitisation campaign, the team responded that "Of course - the villagers will not listen to anyone who comes from the city and is dressed in trousers and shirt."

This tells it all

Death Toll (July 13-17th)
The Guardian Weekly

Lebanese army: 34
Lebanese civilians: 210
Wounded: 289

Israeli military: 12
Israeli civilians: 12
Wounded: 109

Hizbullah: 1

So, we can see that Israel is effectively targeting Hizbollah and limiting civilian casualties. Clearly this terrorist organisation is on the back foot now.

Friend or foe?

This was a news announcement, reported in the Riverbend blog and elsewhere a while back:

وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة

The translation:“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

Why? Because the insurgents, sectarianists and criminal gangs often either impersonate security forces or actually are the security forces, just infiltrators.

I'm sure the Iraqis were delighted to have this clarified.

The American capacity building of a neutral Iraqi Security Force is evidently making great progress.

Turn off the TV

For real insights into life in Baghdad, read this Iraqi woman's blog. It's really powerful and eloquent writing on the day to day realities for Iraqis in the 'hot spot' areas of Iraq...

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

This week in the news

In Saudi Arabia 'marriage-lite' or 'misyar' are on the rise. Misyar are Sunnis alternative to Shias' temporary marriages. (That's right, temporary marriages, typically amounting to legal prostitution). Misyar basically allow the couple to set their own conditions and terms of the marriage. And apparently this often involves couples living separately but getting together regularly, sometimes just for sex. Urm, reconcile that with the conservatism of Saudi Arabia...

In the States, Condalezza Rice showed her infinite wisdom and intellect by avoid condemning Israel and stating that (paraphrased) "A ceasefire will not bring peace to the Middle East".

The Kuwait Times carried the following award winning reporting of dastardly and dubious criminal acts:

• "Man found with maid. A Kuwait man reported to Mubarak Al Abdullah police that he found a Pakistani expatriate alone with his Asian maid. Police moved to the scene and referred the maid and the expat to the authorities."
• "Groper arrested. Capital police arrested an Iranian expatriate in connection with groping a number of women in Salmiya market. Moreover, the expat was under the influence of alcohol."
• "Woman's voice. A source revealed that a Kuwait man immitating the voice of a woman asked several Asian expatriates to visit his flat in Omariya. When one expat arrived at the flat, the man talked to the expat through the window and asked to use their mobile phone. The citizen then stole the mobile phone and closed the window and fled the flat. During interrogation, police discovered the man had stolen a number of mobile phones from a number of expatriates."
• "Fugitive identified. A source revealed that the Kuwaiti man who stole a police car two days ago is wanted for a 15 year prison sentence for drug dealing. The Kuwaiti man stole the care after a policeman asked him to pull over because he was speeding. The man got out of his car and stole the police care. Police filed a case and started an investigation to arrest the man."

Meanwhile, over the border:

• A series of car bombings including an exceptionally deadly one in Kufa that killed 53+ people, sparked a lot of towns and cities to be sealed off from traffic as security forces search for more cars rigged with bombs.
• The politicians made more naively optimistic calls to disarm the militias.
• The perpetual dieter Saddam Hussein went on yet another hunger strike.
• Old man Al Sistani made another call for unity, but how long will his calming influence last.
• There were more reports of a huge demand for fake passports and identity cards as Iraqis take up multiple identities to survive the sectarian kidnappings and executions.

And in Israel, this image of the children signing bombs directed at Lebanon was taken, stirring up quite a debtate.

Follow this link for more on the background to the image and the debate about it: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/07/20/lies_damn_lies_and_war_pictures.html#more
Last, but not least, next door bought a *$%?!@ irritating cockrell that crows incessantly.

Meanwhile back in Kuwait...

It has been an 'interesting' week. Interpret, a week of paracetamol and sleepless nights.

The challenges of trying to remotely manage a team of people under a great deal of stress, continue. International staff receive R&R every few months (rest and recuperation) but the local staff need it too... With the exception of periodically being driven temporarily insane by being couped up inside, having limited social interaction, living in an strict Islamic country, and being miles from the reality of our beneficiaries and team, life in Kuwait is very comfortable and safe. You can't really say this about life in Iraq. Two hours drive away, life is very different...

So hopefully next week, after the long saga of trying to secure passports for some of the team, we're holding a meeting in Kuwait for as many of the team as possible. An opportunity for the team to shop, have a break, visit the country Saddam tried to annex, see relatives who live here, share their concerns with me, and enjoy round the clock electricity and water. And an opportunity for me to try to work through breakdowns in communication and address the tensions and fractions that inevitably occur within a team in this context.

Sadly though we will not be going on a outdoor team build to learn how to work together and value each other by falling backwards into the arms of another, jumping off 20ft high sawn off tree trunks, shooting each other with paintball guns, and drinking into the early hours of the morning. No, that excitement hasn't quite caught on out here in the desert and Arab world. But you may catch me jumping off a 100ft apartment building if the meeting isn't fruitful.

AWOL

My instructions were: don't identify the organisation, its staff or beneficiaries for security reasons, and don't make political statements. Herein lies the reason why I have not posted anything for the past week.

But it's hard not to make political statements on some events. Aggressive, disproportionate and unconstructive Israeli foreign policy for instance. The Arab world is enraged by what is happening in Lebanon and Gaza. If there was ever a time for Arab unity, this is it. Meanwhile, the reluctance to condemn Israeli actions and call for a ceasefire, essentially makes the US and UK complicit in the onslaught.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are fleeing, Israeli jets are striking routes in and out of the country, bombs and missiles have destroyed ports, services and buildings all over Beirut and other towns... Hundreds are dead and it's going to take years to rebuild Beirut. Sure Hezbollah are attacking military on the border and firing rockets into northern cities, but the casualties, destruction and humanitarian crisis pales in comparison.

Now who is the aggressor here and who is bearing the brunt of this war? And what's the real Israeli agenda in this. If Iraq tells you anything, its that this approach to dealing with terrorist groups is flawed.

Perhaps the news should feature a tally each day comparing the casualty figures and the damage to infrastructure etc of each side. Then we can make a more informed judgement...

Thank God Kofi Annan finally mustered up some strong condemnation for the disproportionate response. Not that it'll achieve a lot with the UK and US controlling the Security Council...

Selected news - Islam, conflict and recreation

Excerpts from:

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=54500%26SelectRegion=Middle_East%26SelectCountry=IRAQ

Bedi’a Mahmoud, 20, does not have any options for entertainment other than going to the cinema every week. “Cinemas are very bad places, and some people go there to find prostitutes,” said Mahmoud. “But even this is better than staying at home listening to the same political and religious arguments.”

According to health experts, the lack of entertainment is one of the biggest problems afflicting Iraqi youth. “Iraqis have to be careful in whatever they do,” said Maruan Abdullah, a spokesman for the Association of Psychologists of Iraq. “They’re often afraid that doing this or that might be against religious laws.”

Mahmoud recalled a recent incident in which he and his friends were berated by a group of Islamic extremists for sitting with girls in a restaurant. “When my friend tried to explain that we were just college friends, they shot him dead and warned us that we would be the next if we didn’t change our ways,” Mahmoud said.

Today’s Iraq has very few places available to the public for diversion. The capital boasts about ten cinemas that screen old movies and two dilapidated public parks, while restaurants generally close at 8:00pm. There are also two night clubs, but these are about to be shut down after having received threats from religious extremists. While there are two theatrical troupes working with children in Baghdad, both have received threats from extremists.

Children, meanwhile, express exasperation. “I need to go out, I need to have fresh air, I need to play,” said Barak Muhammad, 13. “I prefer to be killed having fun than die in my home between these four walls.”

Selected news - The 10 worst places to be a child

Following is a rundown of the 10 worst places to be a child according to a Reuters poll of humanitarian experts released on Tuesday. The countries are listed according to how many votes they received.

DARFUR, SUDAN: An estimated 1.75 million children are living in and around camps. Girls risk being raped when they go to search for firewood. Boys are recruited to fight in armed groups. One aid agency found 15 percent of children in camps had "physical or emotional disability" due to atrocities they had experienced and more than a third of children were working.

NORTHERN UGANDA: Some 935,000 children are living in camps, uprooted by 20 years of civil war. Lord's Resistance Army rebels have kidnapped an estimated 25,000 children to use as soldiers and sex slaves. Thousands of child "night commuters" walk miles each evening to avoid being abducted while they sleep.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Although the country's war officially ended in 2003, hundreds of children die daily from hunger, disease and violence. The government estimates a 10th of fighters are children. United Nations peacekeepers stand accused of sexually exploiting children, giving them food for sex.

IRAQ: Shootings and bombings have killed, injured and orphaned thousands of children. The biggest cause of death is illness transmitted through unclean water. Nine percent of young children are acutely malnourished, more than double the number at the end of Saddam Hussein's rule.

SOMALIA: Fifteen years of conflict has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people. The worst drought in a decade has left around 1.7 million people in need of help. Nearly a quarter of children die before their fifth birthday. Clan militias enlist boys to fight. Female genital mutilation is widespread.

INDIA: It is being hailed as a future economic powerhouse, yet 1.2 million children under five die from malnutrition every year. Child labour is outlawed, but rights groups estimate up to 115 million children are forced to work.

AFGHANISTAN: One in four children don't see their fifth birthday. Children are at risk from insurgent and military operations, but disease is the main killer -- an estimated 600 under-fives die each day, mostly from preventable illnesses. In 11 provinces 80 to 99 percent of girls do not go to school. A fifth of primary school children do some form of work.

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: More than 700 children have been killed in the uprising. Nearly a third of families have a child suffering symptoms of psychosocial distress. Many teenagers in overcrowded rundown cities and refugee camps see few better opportunities than joining an armed faction. Some 285 children were in Israeli detention as of September 2005.

MYANMAR: Up to 70,000 children make up a fifth of Myanmar's army, according to rights activists who say many boy soldiers are forced to commit atrocities against ethnic minorities. Rebel groups are accused of using child fighters. A government campaign against ethnic minorities has left thousands of children displaced in the jungle and refugee camps.

CHECHNYA: Some 99 percent of Chechens live below the official Russian poverty line. Around 95,000 internally displaced people live in camps. Thousands of children have died or lost limbs after stepping on mines or touching unexploded ordinance.

(Sources: UNICEF, WFP, Human Rights Watch, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, Christian Children's Fund)

Building communities

This image was taken earlier this year. But it could have been taken in the 1970s. It looks much the same.

A lot has happened in the interim though. For starters the previous regime destroyed their villages with aerial bombardment and bulldozers, killing and displacing thousands. Hundreds were taken away to Northern Iraq and executed according to Human Rights Watch. The marshes were drained and desertification ensued. Thousands became refugees, predominantly in Saudi and Iran.

Since 2003, swathes of the marshes have been reflooded (albeit in an uncoordinated way and with polluted water) and thousands of Marsh Arabs have returned. Despite a slow ecological recovery there's been an attempt to restore old livelihoods and ways of life. Magnificent meeting houses are built out of reeds, homes are still built on mounds of mud and reeds, and people still depend on fishing, reed crafts and water buffalo for their livelihoods. Most communities lack water, sanitation, electricity, health clinics and schools. In many respects it's a very different world to that images of violence and destruction in urban areas. It's not a great place to grow up as a child. Conservative values and tribal loyalities pervade which on the one hand creates protection and increases resiliency to social and family breakdown, and on the other hand promotes inter-tribal conflict and harmful practices like early and forced marriage.

But there are encouraging stories.

In one of the communities we work with, parents had pooled together their savings to rent a reed house to serve as a school for their children. Sadly, the landlord has just terminated the tenancy but it showed that parents were thinking about their children's future, willing them to have a childhood and the foundations for the a life before their subsistence living and state dependency.

In another, we've just set up a cement brick making community project for $5,000 which is proving a great success. In just a couple of weeks they've produced over 4,000 cement bricks which are being used to build school rooms and construct homes. They're sold to the community at cost and to outsiders for profit, with the profit going into a fund for vulnerable families in a similar way to a zakat payment. And it's creating employment... Much better and cost effective in my mind than a multi million dollar construction programme that brings in external contractors to build new homes that cost $20,000 each due to government standards.

Kuwaiti politics

Following Kuwaiti politics perhaps isn't on the top of your agenda, but it is interesting.

The elections are over. Everything is back to normal. The roads that were literally littered with an unrelenting bombardment of billboards with 6 ft faces of the candidates are now clear. The huge evening meets that took place on the roadsides in huge airconditioned tents every evening for weeks are over. The bribes are paid and collected. Women voted (well 35% of them anyway) but to the relief of the men they respectfully followed the men's lead and voted men in and failed to coordinate themselves (the two strongest female candidates only got 1,000 or so votes, well short of the winning post, and both were in the same voting district; some only got one or two votes). The 'new Cabinet' is by and large the old Cabinet - only three of the Cabinet are new. And guess what, here's a novelty - the Cabinet only includes one elected MP! Go democracy!

In journalism speak, 'a local source who didn't wish to be named' told me last night over shisha and kebabs in the old souk that the Parliament might actually be dissolved in the not too distant future because there were guaranteed to be a lot of antagonism between. And the MPs are probably feeling a little glum since the Cabinet was announced. They'd campaigned against one individual, I think the nephew of the Emir, from continuing as a minister. The Emir, being a reasonable and objective man, evidently took this on board and did not name him as minister. Apparently though he appointed him as head of internal security! Ooops, that back fired.

But the new MPs do have a reason to be happy. Today they get their huge salary, cars, drivers etc. In fact this package of official and unofficial perks is so huge some people running for election apparently spent in excess of 1 million KD (2 million pounds) on their campaigns and bribes.

Banks are fun!?

Picture your bank - frustrating, somber, stoic. Generally banks aren't a lot fun. But the Kuwaitis seem to take a different view. Last night, whilst making a futile (and obviously naive) attempt to withdraw money from a bank account that has taken 6 months of banking bureaucracy to open, I was served Baskin and Robbins ice cream and glasses of water by waiters in pin stripe waistcoats. Now that's customer service. Even though I left with no money because of yet more banking bureaucracy headaches, and just 2 KD in my pocket, I was happy.

The Kuwaitis also like to have fun by keeping private foreign banks on their toes. Apparently, it was only in 2005 that private banks returned to Kuwait, after the Kuwaiti Government had renationalised the banking sector and sent the foreign banks packing with their tails between their legs. Another example of how Kuwaitis are a law unto themselves.

Grim day

Our major donor has a funding crisis - they signed a contract with us on the basis of promises of money from governments who have reneged on their promises - and today we've had to close one of our projects and lay off 3 staff despite our best efforts to avert the crisis. The same happened to Save the Children USA earlier this year when the Danish Government turned around mid-way through their project and asked for the money back. They closed altogether...at least we're still here I guess...

Words of wisdom from the good, the bad and the ugly

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
Noam Chomsky

"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood."
Mahatma Gandhi

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."
Albert Camus

"Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
George W. Bush

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
George W. Bush

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."
Donald Rumsfeld

"There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact."
Donald Rumsfeld