AAM DISPATCH

This slideshow was created by Shivan Sito, a 27-year old reporter living in Erbil.

AAM is pleased to partner with The Tiziano Project over the next three months in an effort to bring the work of young journalists in Erbil, Iraq before a larger audience. The Tiziano Project provides community members in conflict, post-conflict and underreported regions with the equipment, training and affiliations necessary to report their stories and improve their lives.

Rabat is probably one of the sleepiest cities in the Middle East/North Africa region. It’s certainly the quietest capital city that I’ve visited. It’s clean, relatively well developed and easy to navigate. But, there’s not a lot of character or energy to the city.

Probably the most character (or more appropriately, characters) I have experienced so far was at lunch today. I sat down at City VIPs, one of the many small street-front restaurants this afternoon. It is basically a fast food place with a few Moroccan dishes. I was the only American there, and the only person eating a Moroccan dish (I had a chicken tagine) rather than a burger or pizza or pasta.

Within minutes of sitting down, an odd assortment of street vendors and beggars passed by my table to offer their wares or solicit handouts. First was a shoeshine guy. I’ve noticed more shoeshine guy in this city than I can remember seeing anywhere else. (more…)

A wedding procession through the streets of the old city in Casablanca.

Weddings aren’t cheap. I have friends who used to be in the floral business and they told stories of customers spending nearly $20,000 just on flowers – and these were not even top-tier weddings. At the higher end of the spectrum, families can easily drop a college tuition’s worth on the big day.

Yet, despite the potential cost, it’s rare to hear an American man claim that he can’t marry the woman he loves because he doesn’t have the money. Yes, it does happen, and sometimes a family will prevent a woman from marrying a man they don’t approve of (not always for financial reasons), but for the most part, people can get married when they want, and buy the best wedding they can afford.

I personally don’t know of anyone who was unable to marry the object of his or her desire for financial reasons, and I never heard someone complain that he or she had to wait to build a nest egg first before getting married.

In fact, it’s common in the west for a couple to get married and live modestly as they work together to build their life, family, and fortune together. No so in the Middle East. (more…)

“Remembering” is part of an ongoing series, with young Iraqi reporters asking members of their community to reflect on important moments in their lives. This story was written by Ashna Shareff, a 21-year old reporter living in Erbil.

The day Bero Abdullah left Erbil she was sure she wouldn’t come back. The city was almost empty. Everyone had fled to surrounding villages because they feared an attack by the Iraqi Army.

The residents of Erbil – known in Kurdish as Hawler – remember the start of the second Iraq invasion in April 2003 because of their constant fear that Saddam Hussein would carry out attacks with chemical weapons as he had done in the town of Halabja in 1988.

“I was coming back home and, on the way, my friends and I were writing memories for each other because we were sure that we wouldn’t see each other again,” Bero said.

Bero, 21, is from Rawandz but now lives with her family in Erbil and attends Salahaddin University.

Just before the second Iraq war started, Bero’s family shared a house, food and even clothing among 11 people. There were five from her family and six people from her uncle’s family all living together. At the time, Bero was 15 years old.

She came home one day and all the family’s things were packed. Her father insisted that they go to their hometown of Rawandz.

“He was sure that Rawandz was the best place to keep us safe from Saddam’s threat,” Bero said.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meeting with Vietnamese leaders Thursday in Hanoi, expressed concern about the status of human rights in the country. She met with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem and made comments on the jailing of democracy activists, attacks on religious groups and curbing Internet social network sites. From The New York Times:

“Vietnam, with its extraordinary dynamic population, is on the path to becoming a great nation, with unlimited potential,” Mrs. Clinton said in her opening statement at a news conference, as Mr. Khiem stood stone-faced next to her. “That is among the reasons we expressed concern.”

Four years after the U.S. removed Vietnam from the CPC (Countries of Particular Concern) list, Vietnam has made small but important strides when it comes to religious freedom. The Vietnamese government’s recent passage of religious freedom laws provides basic protection to sanctioned religious organizations and is considered a small diplomatic miracle.

America Abroad‘s Matt Ozug traveled to Vietnam for the radio program, The First Freedom, Promoting International Religious Liberty, to look at what U.S. diplomatic pressure has yielded for Vietnam’s faithful. Listen >

In 2003 violence erupted in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, after African rebel groups attacked government targets in Khartoum. African tribes charged the government in Khartoum with trampling the rights of African ethnic groups while favoring the mostly nomadic Arab tribes concerning land and grazing rights. Since 2003, the United Nations estimates that over 300,000 people have died and more than 2.7 million have been displaced. The ongoing conflict in Darfur has attracted attention from the international community, and been a major focus for many humanitarian groups and advocacy communities, but the violence persists.

Omar al-Bashir has largely been condemned by the international community and is accused of lending support to the Janjaweed Militia, an Arab rebel group responsible for much of the much of the violence. Andrew Natsios, former U.S. Envoy to Sudan, has called it a “horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing.”

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AAM is pleased to partner with The Tiziano Project over the next three months in an effort to bring the work of young journalists in Erbil, Iraq before a larger audience. The Tiziano Project provides community members in conflict, post-conflict and underreported regions with the equipment, training and affiliations necessary to report their stories and improve their lives.

We’ll publish dispatches and slideshows examining daily life in Erbil, Iraq twice each week. Five Questions will be an ongoing series, with a new slideshow from a different Tiziano reporter each week.

One of AAMTV’s favorite days of the year took place this past weekend: the thirteenth annual Afghan Cup, an event organized by the Afghan Sports Federation that brings Afghan-Americans from all across the country to compete in a weekend of soccer, ping pong, basketball and volleyball tournaments.

The contests always culminate on a Sunday, with a championship soccer game, trophy ceremony and a concert featuring a popular Afghan singer. This year, Najim Nawabi –an Afghan singer famous for his song Kabul Jaan (Kabul Beloved) – played to a packed house of athletes and spectators.

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An American charter plane, right, and a Russian aircraft at Vienna International Airport 09 July 2010. (Patrick Radosta, Austria Wings, EPA / July 9, 2010)

The largest spy-swap since the end of the Cold War between the US and Russia took place on the tarmac of the airport in Vienna. In the groundbreaking deal, the US transferred ten Russian agents for four people convicted in Russia for spying for the US.

The ten suspects were arrested on June 27th in the US, and one in Cyprus. They were accused of being undercover spies who attempted to penetrate the top levels of US policy-making. The arrests followed a decade-long investigation by US authorities and accuse suspects of attempting to acquire intelligence on nuclear weapons, the global gold market, the CIA, and US foreign and security policy.

AAM talks with several experts to discuss the Russian spy case and its implications. Bios at end of post.

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In the past two days, sentences have been handed down in two homegrown terror cases – the five men from Alexandria, Va. who traveled to Pakistan with the presumed intent of carrying out attacks and Faisal Shahzad, the failed Pakistani-American Times Square bomber.

After a year-long inquiry into American Islam, spanning 75 cities and more than a 100 mosques across the United States, Professor Akbar Ahmed is curious about the point of failure in these mens’ lives.

At a Brookings Institution event launching his new book “Journey into America; The Challenge of Islam,” Ahmed wondered what would make these homegrown terrorists want to blow people up instead of helping them.

“We need to know these answers. I’m not prepared to accept the answer that Islam is provoking this….[the answer is, the young man] is failing, his Imam is failing, his community is failing, his parents are failing. It’s not easy to grow up as a Muslim in post-9/11 America.”

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