Whatever happened to Salam Pax, the Blogger from Baghdad?

Factual Questions
1

Quoting from the March 24 issue of the British newspaper the Guardian,

“A 29-year-old, middle-class man somewhere in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital has become one of the most intriguing stories on the internet. Known simply as Salam Pax, his online diary has fascinated the web’s myriad users with its sharp observations of a tumultuous six months for the beleaguered Iraqi nation … His diary, mysteriously titled Where is Raed?.. has become the most linked-to web diary on the internet.”

For reference, the full article is here

Question : whatever happened to this guy? I can’t even get to his diary any more (dearraed.blogspot.com), though that may be the fault of my browser rather than anything else.

2

Most likely he’s without electricity, or an Internet connection, or both.

3

I questioned whether he was real or not in a thread not long ago.
Most likely he is sitting on a beach somewhere for spring break.

Although, (to be fair) there is the slim possibilty that he does indeed exist.

4

Although this blogger has an unusual theory. Who knows? Probably we will never know the truth.

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/WheresRaed.shtml

5

Thanks, bandit! It’s certainly the most plausible theory I’ve heard so far. So people don’t have to follow the link up, here’s the relevant extract …

The site “Where is Raed?” was last updated on March 24.

On March 25, Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge was arrested in New York and has been held by US authorities ever since:

A former Iraqi diplomat’s son accused of aiding Iraqi spies was actually helping the United States and plans to seek asylum, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The lawyer, Thomas H. Nooter, spoke on behalf of Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, 28, after the son of Iraq’s former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors appeared briefly in federal court.

Al-Anbuge was charged Monday with illegally aiding Iraqi government agents, but Nooter said most of the information in the criminal complaint came from his client as he cooperated with the FBI during the last two years. …

Al-Anbuge, who first came to the United States on Nov. 7, 1997, has been held since March 25 on immigration charges because he overstayed his visa after his father left the country, authorities said.

Think there’s a chance that the pseudonymous Salam Pax is actually Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, and that his entire blog was a hoax, based on his memories of Iraq and what he was seeing on network news plus inspired guesses and a vivid imagination and maybe information gotten from friends back home? If so, it would explain why he seemed willing to take such a terrible risk, posting comments critical of the regime, and revealing information about himself to a stranger in America. Since he would not have actually been in Baghdad to face the potential hell of arrest by Saddam’s secret police, the risk would have actually been negligible.

6

Paul Boutin’s comment from off the same link is interesting as well. As he states, Raed is a common name, but the theory can’t be disproved. His detail as to the email headers, though, is intriguing.

7

He’s back.

8

Crikey, I’ve not noticed this for nearly a week. Glad he’s back! I’d contacted the Guardian reporter who wrote the article I posted previously, and told him about the Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge theory.

When he emailed me back (7 May), he didn’t have further info on Raed. He remained confident that the real Raed was genuine, and in noted that Baghdad had yet to have its internet connection reactivated by then. Things look to have changed since then.

I guess this thread can now be considered dead.

9

Well, here’s some new news:

The Ottawa Citizen is floating a story that Salam Pax is a Ba’athist, and a subsersive who is intentionally undermining the U.S.

10

That’s not a story, that’s a string of assertions by a columnist Sam. I am sure… more or less … you know the difference between news and opinion columns.

I also note that the columnist’s assertions are hooked together in some bizarre hand waving consipiracy theory.

No wonder you have such bizarre ideas about the region if you find this to be reporting.

11

Finally, finally, finally – we know the truth about Salam Pax!

He really is a 29 year old architect in Baghdad, and he has my sincerest apologies for having doubted him. And my congratulations to him for being a great blogger. I look forward to seeing the Baghdad Diaries in book form.

Here’s a clip from the article linked to above :

"In fact, his experience of the west dates back to two long periods of his childhood spent living in Vienna, where his father worked as a businessman. He lived there alone for eight years as a student, returning reluctantly to Baghdad in 1996 because his parents called him back. He regarded the doubters as culturally arrogant, unable to accept that an Iraqi in Baghdad could share their interests and write on them eloquently and with humour. “I am this little no one who actually is a kind of a foreigner in his own culture. I don’t listen to Arabic music a lot, I don’t read that much, I think every single Arabic newspaper is a tool to whatever government. It was making me angry, it was annoying me, I didn’t see why I had to take all this shit.”

Much of the criticism came from Americans who favoured the war and were riled by Salam’s dismissive criticism of US ambitions in Iraq. He argued endlessly with Raed and Ghaith about whether the war was justified. He was reluctant to cheer the US invasion in his writings but, like most Iraqis, says only a foreign invasion could have overthrown Saddam and so accomplished what most of the population longed for."