Salam Pax, the "Baghdadi Blogger," needs a job (Christopher Cox photo from the Telegraph)
"He was starting to censor himself," reports The Australiam re Salam Pax, blogonym of the 31-year-old Iraqi blogger who burst into the blogosphere during the runup to Operation Iraqi Freedom:
His web diary [Where's Raed?] began on a lighter note as a way of keeping in touch with his friend Raed, a Palestinian from Jordan he had met while the two were studying architecture.
There was a time he practically felt he knew the few fellow bloggers reading him. But the site had millions of hits in the ominous build-up to the war, as his blog recorded the hardships of life under Saddam Hussein, with sharp barbs and sly humour. When he went offline, during the war, it was feared he might have been picked up by the Iraqi secret police.
Pax survived. But his blog has succumbed -- not to the authorities but to the terrible weight of becoming the virtual personification of Iraq. "As the world starts looking at your website, you get more and more weighed down with the responsibility of it," he tells Media.
He writes a column, "Baghdad Blog," for the Guardian newspaper but gave up his web diary last month, at least for the time being. "There are almost 30 Iraqi blogs now, all of them started after the war. Blogging as an Iraqi became a political statement. You're supposed to say right at the top of your blog whether you love the Americans or you're a Saddamist.
"People don't realise there are a hundred shades of grey in between," says Pax, who managed to be open-minded from first to last.
[via InstaPundit]
As to Salam Pax's shade of grey, it is definitely on the dark side of "love the Americans," as he reveals in his latest Guardian opinion piece, where he talks about his problem finding a job in the new Iraq:
The problem is, there aren't any any more. We are nearing the handover date, at which point the CPA will become the American embassy and there will not be any representation of the various Iraqi ministries there, so everybody who works in the CPA will be released. My cousin who works in the green zone told me that a couple of the lucky ones have been offered jobs in the new American embassy, for less pay and more hours.
The embassy will, of course, not move out of the presidential palaces that it occupies now -- I guess they just like Saddam's taste in interior decor -- and the Iraqi government will get an ancillary building like the one housing the Iraqi Governing Council. Any questions as to where the "governing" is going to take place? Please stand in line at the entrance of the "embassy": they might be able to help you.
I can start up a bogus company and take subcontracts from the Americans; they pay cartfuls of money and don't really care how the job is done -- viz the school rehabilitation programme.
We sure would like to hear the "other side of the story" here, from the Americans on the ground who are facilitating that school rehab program. The seeds of Salam's future may lie in his suggestion re those Iraqi doctors who keep getting kidnapped for ransom, blogged here yesterday:
Some Iraqis have hit on another idea: kidnap those who have the money and ask for ransom. The kidnapping of Baghdadis has become a real problem, and it seems the kidnappers have a special liking for doctors.
How about establishing a new Doctor Protection Force? We already have the Oil Pipe Protection Force and the Electricity Lines Protection Force, so why not a protection force for people who are being kidnapped, beaten up and sometimes returned dead even when the families pay what the kidnappers want?
A great idea, young man. Get right on it!
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