Salam Pax
From Wacklepedia - The Free Encyclopedia
Salam Pax (
Arabic and
Latin for "
peace") is a pseudonymous
blogger from
Iraq whose site "Where is Raed?" (see external links) received notable
media attention during (and after) the
2003 invasion of Iraq. Within his blog, Salam discusses the
war, his
homosexuality, his friends, disappearances of people under the
government of
Saddam Hussein, and his work as a
translator for
journalist Peter Maass. Pax's site is titled after Pax's friend Raed, who was working on his
master's in
Jordan: he didn't respond promptly to email, and so Pax set up the weblog for him to read. In May 2003, the U.K.'s
The Guardian tracked the man down and printed a story indicated that the man did indeed live in Iraq, with the
given name Salam, and was a 29-year-old
architect.
First circulating the blogging community, discussion eventually reached the New York Timess, with some pundits speculating that the blogger was secretly a US government agent spreading disinformation about the war. Pax continued to post updates to the site after it was temporarily blocked in Iraq. During the war, he gave accounts of bombings and other attacks from his suburb of Baghdad until his internet access (and the electrical grid) was interrupted. Pax remained offline for weeks, writing entries on paper to type in later. Later entries discuss the chaotic postwar economy and a June 1 ('03) entry appears to celebrate an anarchist effort, centered in Adil, to provide free internet access to all of Iraq. It turns out not to be run by political anarchists, but by Iraqi geeks who ran the prewar Internet cafes in Baghdad for Uruknet, the former government ISP.
Quotes by Salam Pax
- One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.
- There were days when the Red Crescent was begging for volunteers to help in taking the bodies of dead people off the city street and bury them properly. The hospital grounds have been turned to burial grounds...
- You can follow the trail of the foreigners by how much things cost in a certain district.
External links