Another Day in Paradise (not in the Phil Collins sense...)

Another day in paradise. A finance expert and his security team were kidnapped from the Ministry of Finance this morning. This is the first time a Westerner has been kidnapped from a Ministry as far as I know and the scale of the operation is such that it's looking likely the police themselves were involved. That ought to be news that's more good than bad in the bigger scheme of things, because if the police were involved the outcome will more likely be a peaceful one. If the Sunnis or Al Qaeda are the snatchers, less so. Police involvement would suggest a Shia angle so there is hope that this would be a political move. It should never have happened of course, and there will be obvious questions as to how this happened, but they can be asked and answered after the fate of the man and his PSD is known. As it goes, I know who the guy is and have probably met at least one of the PSD guys that were taken, and hope personally as well as morally that all will work out.

Meanwhile, the US and Iran sat down over a cup of tea for the first time since 1980 to shoot the shit. The only thing on the agenda was Iraq which is a good thing. No bleating about uranium enrichment from the US; no whining about spies possibly operating within its borders from Iran. Whether or not these talks produce anything of substance is of course important, and on track record of late you'd have to be a pessimist. But that these talks are even taking place would have been unimaginable not so long ago. It's clear evidence, if any were needed, that the power of Cheney and Bush is giving way to a more conciliatory train of thought within the US Government. And about time too. There has to be a recognition that, whether or not dialogue with Iran and Syria is likely to produce results, the mere possibility is reason enough to have a crack.

As for me, I've been fine. There's been a fair amount of incoming but not right where I am and not such that I feel threatened. I can't recall whether I ever mentioned it, but I joined/formed a band a while ago and we're having a lot of fun. There may be some people who read this and shake their heads and say "shame on you for partying it up when you're in that environment" and if that's you, you're missing the point entirely. This is a difficult environment to work and live in, so if you can do something that brings a smile to people's faces, it means that people can feel better about being here and trying to help with "The Effort". We played on a villa's roof on Friday and it was great setting up the gear when it was still light, looking to the background and seeing all the date palms and a couple of landmarks. One of the more unique gigs you could ever play, as ours all are.



I've not been so busy with work lately so have been watching a recent US TV series called Deadwood. If you haven't heard about it, it's about a US goldrush town in the 1870s that was lawless and became annexed to the Dakota territory. (To read Wikipedia's entry about the series click here, or about the place itself click here). There are certainly similarities between that place and Baghdad and it was interesting to think about that. Another interesting thing I came across (well I find it interesting anyway) is an article I read today that was written in 1920 by T. E. Lawrence. You can read the text here and again it's amazing the similarities between the circumstances of 87 years ago and those existing now and in the past 4 years. The patterns of colonialism and/or the attempts, by whatever means and with whichever intentions, seem to be fairly constant. Which makes you hope on the one hand if things will eventually work themselves out, but wonder on the other why the fuck we never learn from our mistakes.