the excitable life of an irish rose

Dahab during Ramadan

2011-08-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

It’s August, its 40 degrees, it’s Ramadan and I’m in Dahab. Everyone else has looked at the first three words of that statement and stayed at home. It’s like a ghost town here and I’m glad. We have huge Bedouin restaurants meant for fifty to ourselves and can walk around relatively unmolested by touts. Days are spent drinking fruit juice on cushions, playing with whatever the collective noun for hundreds of cats is, with long pauses for staring into space or over to Saudi Arabia . It’s so chilled here that I can’t even be bothered to read. Best to avoid people just before they break their fast they can be a little erm....edgy.

I was excited about coming to Egypt, I’ve been living and breathing the Arab Spring, thought I’d get here and experience a new sense of optimism, but instead, what it meant for the people of Dahab is that the tourists have stopped coming, not helped by the bomb attack by Al Qaeda 4 years ago, and for them that means no livelihood. What price democracy? And, what’s democracy worth if you spend 12 hour days working in the sun, during Ramadan not eating not drinking, and have nothing to show for it in the end?

When I have asked the admittedly not very scientific sample of Egyptians here they shrug their shoulders say nothing will change because everything is dictated by the people at the top, this should be a rich country but none of it trickles down. So the 25th January movement means little to them, Cairo’s far away, and all the unrest just stops the tourists who are their bread and butter. Who am I with my comfortable life to lecture them on bourgeois democracy and representation?

Random acts of kindness

2011-06-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

I had a particularly miserable weekend. I think we can definitely say I don't take breakups well, especially if A) I didn't see it coming B) I thought this was it.

On the way back home, I managed to miss my bus by 5 mins, and that could have just intensified my filthy mood. As I stood gloomily at the bus stop a man and a woman in her eighties arrived in she was in tears, she had left her bag on the bus and her medication was in it and she was due to fly to Greece. I didn't hold out much hope but I took her to the office to get them to call ahead. It was a different bus company, but they did volunteer that the buses sometimes parked right at the end of the concourse. Without thinking I left my bag with the couple and sprinted. Now to put it into context, I'm no spring chicken at least half a stone over weight and haven't taken exercise in years. I made the car park no sign but as I made my way back, feeling as if I would expire. I saw a bus had pulled up. The women bus driver opened the door she had driven back from the North terminal in the off chance because she had seen the bag. I thanked her grabbed it and headed back to return it to its owner. She had been ill she told me and this was the final straw, she was so happy. By now I was in tears. But I realised that the best recipe for banishing self pity and misery is to commit a random act of kindness. I thinking I'll try and do some more today.

Broken Britain

2011-05-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

Last night, my dinner was rudely interrupted by a girl running into the restaurant covered in blood. She was only 16 and she was calling for someone to call the police because she had just been punched in the face by her boyfriend. The restaurant staff were embarrassed and just wanted her out and if I hadn’t insisted that they call the police and taken her into the toilets to clean her up, she would have been turfed out on the street. We waited for the police. Nothing and in the end I had to take her to the police station myself, where they knew her well, she’s obviously a bit of a tear away, but didn’t take a statement from her or fill out an incident report.

They did call an ambulance which arrived quickly, but when she was leaving I explained that her boyfriend had kicked her door in and could they make sure that if she was discharged from hospital she was safe, it was nobody’s responsibility, not the police’s because she was now the responsibility of the hospitals and when she was discharged from the hospital they had no responsibility to make sure she was OK. It wasn’t social services responsibility because she was 16, she’d been in care and was now living independently. So who’s responsibility is it to try and make sure that a child because at 16 you are a child, who has already led a disrupted and chaotic life, doesn’t have a future of domestic abuse in front of her? This is the true Broken Britain, not just feral youths torturing pensioners….but a system which judges, writes off and lets down our young people.

The Politics of Oil

2010-01-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

Robert Gates, secretary for Defence: “ To protect ourselves, we must transcend narrow interests which have historically stood in the way of a coherent oil security strategy

Our reliance on fossil fuels and in particular oil defies any sort of foreign policy rationale. Oil is sourced from one of the most volatile regions, the Middle East, natural Gas from Iran and Russia. None of these are exactly paragons of stability or friends of the West. So it makes real politick sense that the USA, the biggest of the gas guzzling Western nations, should be sabre rattling over Iran; interfering in the internal politics of Venezuela in the form of supporting an anti-Chavez coup.; fighting a proxy cold-war with China and Russia in the Sudan with its massive oil reserves.

However crude anti-Americanism is unhelpful, Russia has a long history of protecting its oil interests, many argue that the refusal to let Chechnya break away as a republic was motivated by oil. Russian attempted to maintain continue control its oil fields and the major pipeline which links Siberia with the Caspian sea and he Black Sea, with the resulting bombing Groznyy into the stone-age. Only last year technocrats in Moscow flexed their muscles by shutting off the Georgian pipeline, restricting fuel during one of the coldest winters on record and ensuring that Georgia stepped swiftly back into line.

China imports 30% of its crude oil and China is giving billions of dollars in interest free loans to Sudan to improve its infrastructure. This will ensure that they maintain complete access to African oil raw material wealth. China has a very poor human rights record itself. but compound this by the fact that it was China and Russia, who both hold permanent seats on the UN security counci with the power of veto, who dragged their feet about condemning the atrocities in Darfur by Sudanese Government sponsored militias.

So to focus on human rights since that is my field , lets look at some of the great guys that we are literally letting get away with murder and torture and all in the interests of keeping the oil flowing.

One of the areas where the west is now focussing in an attempt to circumvent the Middle East are the ex-soviet republics around the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Kyrgistan and Turkmenistan. However this new oil wealth or what has been known as the "devils tears" has led to corruption, political instability and repression, environmental degradation,. Most “petro-states” have appalling human rights records.

Azerbaijan is known locally as "BP country", stability is obviously important for the continuity of oil production and has allegedly led to highly fraudulent elections, which resulted in the previous presidents son, Ilham Aliyev, being elected as the new president. His first act?To brutally crush the opposition arresting hundreds of members an killing others. The US respons…to congratulate him in his strong showings in the elections.

Russia, China, Iran and the West are all jockeying for dominance in the Caspian region for its resources and its pipeline routes. The war on terror has strengthened the US hand in extending hegemony into the Caspian area, setting up military bases in Uzbekistan, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan this has strengthened its geo-strategic leverage.

What are the rewards in that region, possibly 200 billion barrels of crude oil worth aprox 6 trillion. If US companies were to ensure they could dominate control of the production it would mean that by 2015 The US would be no longer dependent on OPEC, who at present are Arab dominated and control the supply and price of oil.

To ensure that the US’s interests have triumphed in the region the US has courted some of the regions nastiest autocrats. The most brutal surely being Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov. Under his rule thousands of political and religious prisoners are in prison and many have been tortured and executed. In the past the US have criticised Karimovs human rights record. But after 2001, when Uzbekistan allowed the US to establish a military base there they have turned blind eye to his human rights record and continue to fund his regime to the tune of 500 million a year. Karimov has been personally thanked for his help in the War on Terror.

The Niger Delta.

Sebastian Junger speculated about whether the current unrest kidnapping and sabotage in the Niger Delta , which is the US’s fifth biggest oil supplier. could bring about a US recession, he reports in Vanity Fair, January 2007, on a meeting in Washington in 2005 called Oil Shock Wave which contained two previous heads of the CIA, the president of the council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They speculated about a scenario where there is such serious unrest in the Niger Delta that international oil companies are forced to pull out just as a cold wave sweeps the west and the result is the cost of oil would go through the roof.

For the person on the street it may affect their behaviour they would drive less or fly less, but the impact that it would have on the US economy, which is heavily reliant on cheap oil. Even more strategically important for the US is that the military literally runs on oil. Potentially threatening its national security. Compound this with any other disruption e.g. a terrorist strike on Saudi Arabia Disaster.

Transport costs rocket so goods rise in price too, there is less money to spend on them, therefore there is an economic slow down, meaning industries layoff workers triggering a recession.

In 2002 President George Bush’s state dept claimed that that Nigerian Oil was so vital to the US economy that they might be willing to take military action to protect their interests there. So a worst case scenario could there be an Iraq 2?

But what is life like for the people who live and work in the Niger Delta?

There are poor schools, little health care, social services or clean drinking water, few paying jobs; people scrape a living while oil companies pump billions of dollars of oil out of the land. This is not even addressing the environmental devastation caused. Ten years ago Shell oil was accused of financing government troops who arrested environmental campaigners from the

The oil companies actually arm some militias to protect their oil interests, playing the tribal card and playing the tribes off against each other.

And in terms of the big business of pipelines, Amnesty undertook research into the development of two pipelines; Chad/Cameroon and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project. In both cases the pipelines were vital to the economies of extremely poor countries and the oil companies tried to write into the small print that any disruption of supply, this is called "ring fenced liabity" which means thatwere to countries to introduce new environmental or human rights legislation in the future the coutries would be liable for millions of dollars worth of compensation, this would encourage countries to attempt to circumvent international human rights legislation.

From Hell to Heaven and back again: a week in the DRC

2010-01-21T06:23:00.000-08:00

I think that it will take time to reflect on my time in the DRC and this blog will probably be edited time and time again as I try to work out how I feel. And I think that feelings are a good place to start, I have run the full gamete of emotions, anger, fear, compassion, exasperation ( lots of that), frustration, hopelessness, inspiration; no list could ever do justice to the full range.

I know the party line I have read books on the politics and I have to say that meeting the people and hearing their stories challenged a lot of my assumptions. The East of the DRC has been racked by war since 2002 and since then aproximately 5 400 000 people have died ( yes I am going to stick with the IRC figure) both directly and indirectly as a consequence, it is Africa's own holocaust and it is almost completely ignored by the west. Why is this? Is it because they is black? No I don't think so because it is so much easier to motivate people to engage with Sudan. More likely that there are few geopolitical advantages. or in the view of a nurse I met at Pansy hosiptal she cynically thought that multinational interests in the Coltan, gold and minerals meant it was to theses companies benefit to keep fuelling the conflict, because while the country is in chaos, they can continue to rape the country of its resources, I don't use that word lightly because rape and sexual violence has reached epidemic levels.

Goma, is a bleak volcanic black, hellish landscape of boulders and bad roads, filth and poverty. It is truly hell on earth. A town of terror and fear, which has seen numerous evacuations in the last few years of refugees fleeing various militias in terror. However this armageddon is set on the banks of beautiful lake Kivu and amongst the greenest fertile landscape of banana groves and beauty I have ever seen, this truly is a land of jarring juxtapositions.

When I arrive, we are in the middle of a peace process which was established in 2009, just after Laurence Nkunda's militia, the CNDP, arrived at the edge of Goma, raping and pillaging as they went. Since then most of the militias have been integrated into the army but with little additional training, and no accountability. Known human rights abusers, wanted for war crimes, still head their own batallions within the Congolese army. And one of them who is wanted by the ICC, has even been known to drink in the same bar as the UN peacekeepers!

The Interhamwe, the genocidaire who murdered millions of Rwandad Tutsi's during the genocide still lurk in Congolese villages and countryside, attacking local people and causing massive human rights abuses. It was these rebels who were the subject of a recent joint military offensive led by the Congolese army and Rwanda, but supported the UN both politically and militarily. During the first 9 months of this offensive over 1000 civilians were killed, 7000 women raped and 6000 people burnt out of their houses. To put it into context, for every member of the FDLR rebel militia disarmed 7 women were raped, 1 person was killed. This doesn't seem like the most effective policy to me if its causing more civilian hardship not less. Shockingly much of this violence was being committed by the army.

I met many people from all walks of life but the one thing that they all had in common was they were all scared scared of militias, scared of their own army, there is no rule of law and what there is corrupt. This became most apparent when we were challenged aggressively by drunk man about filming, before we knew it we were surrounded by a mob and it genuinely felt that not only anything could happen but that if it did there was precisely nowhere we could turn. We were able to talk our way out that time but it really shook me up and I lost much of my confidence for the rest of the trip.

Rwanda and its relationship with its neighbours and the west

2010-01-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

Rwanda is beautiful. Lush and green, fecund volcanoes covered with tea and coffee plantations.

Rwanda is a country still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the 1994 genocide when 800 000 Tutisis were murdered, while the international community sat on its hands and did nothing. This was despite multiple warnings about the impending tragedy, and happened as UN Peacekeepers looked on. Rwanda is right to be angry with the west, we let them down badly.

Fifteen years later, Rwanda looks like it could become the success story of East Africa, its PTSD reveals itself by being a country which is almost pathologically organised and bound by rules. Its certainly the cleanest country I have been to in Africa, plastic bags are banned, smoking outlawed, everyone must purchase health insurance. There is also an attempt at land reform to ensure food security. You mark my words, in ten years time tiny Rwanda will be a regional economic power-house. But at what cost? Freedom of speech is restricted, human rights defenders harassed and Rwanda is playing a poisonous role in regional geo-politics. In a country which is already over-populated and where the population is predicted to double in ten year, there will increasingly be pressure on land and resources and there is a real danger that this will leade to conflict with its neighbours but especially the DRC.

All the time Western guilt about their inaction during the genocide means that not only does it stay silent on the increasing restrictions on personal freedom and civil society, but fails to act on the proxy war fought in the Kivus through the CNDP, a pro-Rwandan militia,, who have now been absorbed into the Congolese army. There is little accountability for war crimes; for recruiting child soldiers, raping and pillaging. Larence Nkunda, their delusional leader, may have been arrested (surprisingly) but he’s under house arrest in Kigali, and practically free to come and go as he likes.

So will Rwanda become the Singapore of East Africa? Will there be land grabs in the Kivus to support an expanding population and will Kagame relinquish power in 2017 and Rwanda will be a fully functioning participative democracy? Only time will tell.

Woken up 2.10am march 26th

2007-03-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Ok GWAGdom hasn't beckoned yet..... But you know no great loss. I bet those Georian paparazzi are lethal. However I have had a very interesting week. Best described as a cunning coalescing of terror and footaball. And of course we had peace in our time yesterday Adams and Paisley spoke to each other for the first time. Of course no one here is holding our breath. There have been too many false starts and its difficult to see how two tradiions that loath each other can govern together. Anyway

Spent Friday night with the Tipton three. Or rather Tipton Two, ( 0ne missed his plane) a nice couple of lads but no Moazaam Begg. I think that Gerry Conlan would be a good analogy, 25 years was a long time to serve for a couple of lines of speed and a year in Guantanamo is a bit over the top for lack of judgement.

The Tipton Three are an interesting case, its the closest that the British governement have got to admitting that Gunatanamo wasn't just a holdiong centre for enemy combatants. These three lads seem like they were a bit of a bad lot in Titpton. petty thieves no qualifiactaions not going anywhere fast so it looks like their families thought a bit of time in Pakistan might be a good idea to straighen them out. One was to get married so the other two and a fourth but he is missing presumed killed, went outr to Karachi to join them. There was a bit of time to spare before the wedding so although war was looming they thought it was a good idea to go to Afghanistan to "see what it was really like". So they set off but before they knew it the allies were bombing and they tried to get back to Karachi. However they couldn't speak Pashtun and got on the wrong taxi bus out, which took them further into Afghanistan where they were captured by the Northern Alliance and ultimately sold to the Americans for a bounty. After being held in Baghram Airbase for 3 months they were " renditioned" to Guantamao. Where they spent a year being tortured and interrogated.; Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time! `and I reallyt believe thats all that it was i don't think they are in any way related to the War on terror for example I can't really imagine OB telling me that the hotel he stayed in in Paris was a real classy joint with cum-stains all over the carpet.

The first thing I noticed on meeti ng them was how differnt they were from each other one was really chatty and confident the other very shy. They chose quite understandably not to watch the film which I would imagine would simply retraumatise them but we went for dinner afterwards. its in te anecdotes that it esaier to get the mettle of someone. The shy one openned up and was quite articulate but what was funniest was watching them eyeing up all the girls on the way past! One of them told us a story about the only one of them who had been brave enough to be interviewed by fox news was asked as an opennig question " whats its like to be an accomplice of a known terrorist" eg OB. Again like Moazaam its amazing to see how mentally stable they are. I know that some of the detainees like Australian David Hicks have completely cracked up by now. Just very ordinary lads from Tipton.

i've also broken a big story with the IFA this week. Been hastily engaged in some media management trying to play down George Bests wife beating credentials. Had to ask my dad for advice. The same week that NIreland beat Leichenstein 4-1 and this eveing I went to see a film about an Argentinian Goal keeper who was kidnapped and tortured by the Junta. all in the same week I "pull" an star striker.You see.....Torture and football.

N Ireland play Sweden tomorrow. I dreamt that they won. It would mean the first time that they qualified for a major tournament in 14 years.

New Year in Marrakesh

2007-01-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

So we spent a couple of days in essouira the surfing capital of Morocco, I think that my passion for surfers may have been the incentive there. It was beautiful and sleepy and much more laid back than Marrakesh and a hell of a lot cheaper as as well.

Initally we have booked a hostel "the cave" on line at only £5 per night what a bargain. Now I have learnt a salutary lesson from this. That is you get what you pay for. we were lead through the windin g streets of the medina to a blue door with no sign and once in were hot by the smell of damp and mildew. The place was filthy and cold. There was a few wet suits hanging up to dry and a few surf boards up top, but alas no surfers.

I took one look at it and knew I couldn't stay there. I suppose that thats the biggest difference between being in your mid thirties and mid twenties is that you know that you don't have to put up with shit anymore. So off we were to find another pad. Which we did easily for the princely sum of a tenner!

So we mosied around Essouira and lay on the beach and read books ( Winter in Madrid, starts with promise but disappointing ending, but I got all my revolutionary zeal back, think I'll stick to Homage to Catalonia) had a few nice dinners. The food really is great here. And ended up at Taros a sort of roof terrace bar with a live band, all wearing those red tommy cooper hats and playing discordianty on key boards. I wasn't impressed. We had a six o'clock start the next morning so it was an early night.

So what is new year like in an apparentry "dry" country. Hmmmmm expensive. We saw new year in a highsociety bar called "Africa and Chic". It should have been sued for breaking the trade descriptions act. It was neither African nor Chic. We had considered going to Pacha Marrakesh but I was insistent we should have an authentic Moroccan new year.

The nod to Africa was to show a french documentary on africa which seemedto consist of lots of shots of hyenas eating zebras. Nice. The drinks were extortionate 160 dirhams or £11 for a round of a beer and a rum. the night was very quiet until we were asked to join a table of four lads from London. So very Morocccan hey? they were great craic and my travelling companion got her new year kiss so she was happy.

So my time in Morocco drew to a close it was great but I wouldn't hurray back. Marrakesh is beautiful but small. A perfect place for a weekend I think. The people are a strange mixture between extreme generosity and a bit fly. I was ripped off in bars , resteraunts, taxis just about everwhere right up to the taxi to the airport, while it is a poor country it leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth and eventually just winds you up!

2007-01-03T05:18:00.000-08:00

What a culture shock, we’ve arrived in Morocco at fiesta time except it’s the sort of fiesta where sheep are sacrificed, one for each of the three days. There’s sheep everywhere on the front of motor bikes, in boots of cars, pass an artisan shop in the souks and there’s bleating coming out. A block of flats had baaing coming out of every flat. Just like a flock of sheep!

This also meant that everything shuts down for three days and there was a very real danger we weren’t going to be able to get back to Marrakesh for my flight home. We spent our first two nights in a beautiful Riad, complete with court yard and tiles an amazing garden, and a pool. It’s about twenty degrees here and sunny; we were a bit freaked out at first cos when the advert on the net said 25 mins outside Marrakesh; we thought that meant walking. It was actually in the middle of some Berber villages framed by the Atlas mountains: Muy tranquilo. So off we bundled to the local bus stop to stand with veiled women and Berber men with their pointy hooded cloaks, very Obi Wan Kenobi, I can see what inspired George Lucas!

We fought our way onto the bus where we were very much the main attraction; curious stares kept us company the whole way to the city. It was once we were off the bus that the frustrations really started. I haven’t travelled for a while and I’d forgotten just how hard simple things like crossing the road can be. Don’t be taken in by the appearance of a zebra crossing, the trick is just to walk and hope. Catchin,g a taxi takes perseverance and aggression, then try explaining where you want to go with minimal French and less Arabic when the taxi driver can’t read:

Marrakehsh and Placca Jemma el Fna is like walking back a few centuries or straight into the middle of Indiana Jones the square is huge surrounded by resteraunts where you can get a Tajine or cous cous for 30 dirham/2 pounds and the centre is full of food stalls and story tellers and snake charmers and every sort of curiosity . Women wearing the full niqba paint henna on hands. Behind the medina or the old town with mile upon mile of souk. Smelling of spices and chickens and piss and a dizzying kaleidoscope of colours; ‘ladee ladee you want to see my stall’.

Yet contrary to their reputation I have found the hawkers polite qnd not too pushy. I have also suffered no unwanted attention. Is it because I wear a head scarf? Or am I just too old now! I like to think its just because the west suffers from an orientalist view of Arab men portraying them as over sexed and a threat to their white women. Is there really so much difference between thuis idea and the colonial attitudes or are we still all stuck in the Marabar caves?

However today, Friday has been a day which showed a dark side to the place, both Eastern and Western. Anxious to get to the bus station on time to leave for Essouira we jumped into a cab on the square. I could tell it was a religious man who picked us up because of his dress and his beard. In the cab he was listening to a sermon which was being shreiked by a guy, I’m no Arabic speaker but I understood Haditha, Kabul, Iraq and Jihad. It was a little unsettling to say the least!

Contrast that with sitting at a café in Essouira, there where young children selling packets of tissues always a depressing sight, but beside us was a fifty something year old French bloke sitting with a young Moroccan boy of maybe 12 or 13:. Occasionally the man would spek to the boy who looked bored and fiddled with the man’s video camera: I don’t think I am jumping the gun to think I was witnessing sex tourism in action. I felt sick and angry, I wanted to do something, to say something, but realised that there was little I could do. Poverty means people will sell their children for a few pounds.

2006-11-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

I spent saturday with Moazaam Begg, Guantanamo detainee. there's not many a girl that can say that. I had spent the Friday night before fretting and making sure that I didn't get pissed and breathe alcohloic fumes over him the next day, that wouldn't have been very professional. I was nervous at the prospect of spending a whole day with someone I didn't know. The fact that he is regarded by the US state department as the most dangerous man in the world added that extra edge.

When I met him off the plane the firt thing I noticed is that he's really small. I mean really! so a pint sized threat to freedom then I thought. He met me quite affably and and I took him to a local school which was hosting a model united nations. As we entered the hall, the 'pakistani' member of the "security committee" was reporting back and advocating wiping Israeloff the map with the novel method of stoning. If the ground could have openned up and swallowed me I would have wished it too......great, to walk in on an islmophobic sterotype. To to his credit Moazaam laughed. He was fascinated by the engagement of the young people and when he made his speech at the end it was very powerful. He pointed out the simlarities between the policies of the British Govt in the 1970s in N. Ireland and the policies of the war against terror in rejecting the rule of law and removing peoples human rights and showed how counter-productive these were. He also made the salient point that at the same time that the people of Northern Ireland weren't allowed to hear the voice of Gerry Adams in the media, he was the very person that the British govt were talking too. He pointed out that no conflict has ever been resolved by refusing to speak to the participants and that the governements would eventaully talk to them anyway as they did the IRA.

It was almost ironic to hear this man who apparently is an al- qaeda matermind speak about reconcilliation and forgiveness. And more so to see him present awards to school children! Anyway after that he was keen to go on a tour of Belfast, but since shamefully I have rarely been outside Esat or South Belfast. I dragged him on the open-tiop bus tour and we froze! He was particularly taken with the republican and loyalist iconograpghy of the Shankill and the Falls, the two but especially the Shakill didlook particualarly bleak on Saturday.....very sort of mid sixties depravation....but of course with the added bonus of loyalist hate murals.

After the bus tour we went for a coffee before the lecture when he told a little about his ordeal. the crashing boredom, the lack of hope at times, the pressure his wife was under trying to hold the family together.

For those of you who don't know Moazaam Begg moved from Birmingham to Pakistan in 2001 with his family. He had become radicalised when he had vsited Bosnia on aid mission and seen the aftermath of Srebrenica and the Serbs persecution of the Muslims in Bosnia as a whole. It changed his perspective on the world and he started to identify with the suffering which he pecived that Muslims were experiencing thoughout the world. Surely one of the most distinct differences between western culture as it stands in the 21st century and Islamic culture is this bond with the Ummah or the great brotherhood of Muslims throughout the world. Western secular culture has become so focussed on the individual that we find it impossible to understand why a young muslim man might fell compelled to go and fight for his "brothers" in a different country. However I think it is most helpful to draw parallels with the internationalism displayed by socialist and communists in the early 20th century. The international brigades in Spain for example were made up of many idealistic young men and women from throughout the world willing to fight for the republivcc and thus their ideals. Indeed the vast majhority of the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are there because they really believe that they are up holding freedo.

Therefore I see Mozaam as just another in a long tradition of idealistic young men, who may be naive, but who genuinely want to fight injustice. I am not defending violence of any type which is always abhorrent and I firmly believe that you can't bomb your way to peace but rather tha demonising the "other" it might be better to understand him or her because at least that is a place that dialogue can start.

Anyway I am off the point, Moazaam was kidnapped by the CIA in Islamobad and taken to Baghram airbase in Afghanstan were he was kept for nearly a year in one of the CIAsblack prisons, (he ones which are not supposed to exist) His family didn't know where he was, and while he was there is was subject to "rigourous interrigation methods" ie. sleep depravation, beatings, shackled night and day, hearing a women screaming in the next room and led to believe that it was his wife. He witnessed a prisoner being beaten to death by guards and that was before he was flown to Guantanamo. He states nclearly that Guantamo while dehumanising and arduous was nothing compared to Baghram.

Yet it was his compassion that I was most touched by and his resilience. He told me that while he didn't believe in fate he felt that his experiences had changed him for the better, and that he found a new vocation, he was able to articulate the suffering and injustice that many suffered by few could comminicate. He also humanised the guards and spkoke of the anomaly between his own realationship with a guard, who was later discharged for abusing prisoners, who had actually been a friend to him. It forced me and others to look into our souls, onloy by recognising that we are all capable of cruelty can we challenge that impulse.

In an earlier conversatain we had touched on religion and the dangers of when a leader or indeed anyone thinks that god is speking directly and only to him. In Mozaams words even the Dalia Lama doesn't think that! I shared with him my experience of seeing the Dalai Lama speak and him saying that "it is silence and mediation that all religions can communicate" He seemed taken with this and mentioned it later in his lecture.

The lecture was sold out, 350 people came to see him speak. In the questioning afterwards he was grilled about all the mis-information that is being generated about him bythe the US ministry of misinformation. That he had an arsenal of weapons, that he had known al-quaedas no.2, even that he had been charged with benefit fraud ( although the charges were dropped)> all accusations he was easily able to counter. All aid workers were issued with flap jackets in Bosnia it was dangerous work. He migh thave been in Bosnia at the same time as the al-quaeda no.2 but Bosnia is a big place. It would be like accusing me of being involved in the UDA because my family come from East belfast. And benefit fraud or not, surely only the Daily Mail could advocate three years of torture, humilation and human rights abuses for alledgedly fiddling the dole.

Instead of my day with Moazaam being arduous it was a delight and I witnessed such humility and genrosity of spirit that it made me reflect that i had a great deal of spirtitual growth to do myself. Ultimately it was clear that we all despite our differences have more in common than we have differences.

I think I will add my article which I wrote previously about my time in Israel to this blog but be warned its very long.