To Iran!
So! We're off early tomorrow. We got our visas yesterday, and our tickets today. We have tickets to Teheran for tomorrow and shall then somehow find a flight to Mashhad where our conference ("Islam and Democracy") starts on Wednesday morning. The whole trip will be incredibly rushed-- we might have to leave Mashhad on Thurs. evening to catch our flight back here, Friday... Oh well, it should be interesting.
I haven't been to Iran since the 1978-79 revolution. A whole generation has grown up there since then...
Btw, I was just surfing the BBC website. They have a new, experimental, "hosted" blog-type thing there, with contributors from Iraq. It went up on their site today and will run in the first instance for two weeks.
So far, the contributors (all of whom have been invited to contribute by the Beeb, I think) include five Iraqis, one British contractor and one US army lieutenant.
It struck me as a little stilted. Certainly it lacks the intimacy, verve, and passion of Faiza's blog, and those run by her sons, etc. The US army guy, Bryan Suites, comes across as incredibly Chief Wiggles-y, and the British contractor tells us only that he works, "for an international company in the International or Green Zone in Baghdad." So what is his business, exaactly? The Iraqi contributors all tell us what they do. Even Suites does. But not "Stuart Ritchie". Whoever he is.
A quick glance at what's up there so far revealed a few interesting descriptions of things. But I think I'll stick with the real blogs by Iraqis that I've been reading up till now.
Zeyad, over at Healing Iraq, had an interesting post up on November 20. (Actually, it's the most recent one he has up there, as of now.) He was describing, in very vivid and factual terms, how the rash of attacks that plagued Baghdad around then felt to him and his family.
At the end, he noted:
- One can't help but notice that the clerics who usually incite holy wars in Iraq against the US occupation on the expense of Iraqis are based in countries allied to the US such as Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. On the other hand, you have Sheikh Salah Al-Din Kuftaro, son of Sheikh Ahmed Kuftaro, the late Grand Mufti of Syria, publicly denouncing the behaviour of Iraqi insurgents yesterday during Friday prayers at the Kuftaro mosque in Damascus. He described them as the "present day Kharijites" and their actions as "unislamic".
Kuftaro was the Sheikh we went to visit in Damascus last week, as described in the second half of this JWN post.
I agree with the US allied countries observation. Yesterday I bought and read in one day "A Mighty Heart", Mariane Pearl's book about the kidnapping of Danny Pearl. The ambivalence, hostility, fanatism and corruption in Pakistan stink up to heaven. All the way to Musharaf, who clearly had one of the perpetrators and timed his "capture" to coincide with his first visit to the US, but made sure he would claim Dany Pearl was alive for the duration of Musharaf's trip.
Sad story. Sad allies.
Gonzalo
"Present-day Kharijites" is a powerful idea that we could hear more about.
Interesting observation.. popular dissatisfaction at ruling regimes' close relationships with the U.S. presumably has a lot to do with the fact that popular opinion is more unsympathetic than in non-US-backed regimes?