Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi

Berglund Authority Level 3

by Jeffrey Barlow <barlowj@pacificu.edu>

Salam Pax. Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi. New York: Grove Press, 2003.

One of our constant interests at the Berglund Center is the impact of the Internet on political interactions. This book, Salam Pax, is a fascinating example of how the Internet sometimes works to bring ordinary people into sudden prominence and influence. Salam Pax is the pseudonym of an "ordinary" Iraqi who "blogged" from Baghad before, during, and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was long a mystery figure, and given the intensely political use of electronic communications in the context of that war, many saw him as less a person than as a political role. To many, he was a CIA fiction intended to sow disinformation; to others, a propaganda construct of the Hussein regime. In some senses, the truth of his identify is more complex than either (or both?) of these extremes.

Judging from this book, we must see Salam Pax as a highly educated and urban Iraqi with a fierce personal commitment to his Arab identity, an identity that includes no more than an amused commitment to Islam. From Salam we learn that the usual stereotypes of many regarding Iraq and Iraqis just won't fly. He seems by hints dropped throughout the book to belong very much to the urban demimonde of a highly modern Iraqi culture. If he despises Sadaam Hussein, neither does he support the American attack on Iraq. As he puts it, "No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said "war", not "a change of regime". (p. 119) He continually reminds Americans that the situation in Iraq had a great many critical variable in addition to the repressive violence of the Hussein regime, particularly important was previous U.S. policy which Salam credits with creating many of the conditions that the U.S. then invaded to rectify. To say that he is suspicious of U.S. motives would be a massive understatement.

But politics aside, the book gives fascinating insight into an increasingly important segment of the global community: intellectuals with modern values which we might loosely typify as "human rights" who have been in large part created by the Internet itself, and depend on it for their continuing identity. A repeated theme of the book is simply Salam's struggle to stay "online" while a city he greatly loves is being bombed and shelled.

Another important aspect of the work is what it tells us about the impact of "blogging". [1] Blogging is a sort of collective diary where individuals utilize web protocols to post their thoughts, usually permitting others to add to the discourse, which may be done by
adding text into the site or linking to it from external sites. These ruminations thus become vastly extended distributed written pieces, intensely personal, sometimes maddeningly irrelevant, but at critical moments like the war in Iraq, they have the potential to mobilize the attention of millions, as did Salam Pax himself.

This book is, like a blog itself, seemingly a work in progress. Salam is self-referential in the extreme, quoting himself from his blogging, and quoting others reaction to him, meanwhile replying in the book itself. While he is aware of his growing celebrity, he is also very critical of it, continually reminding us that he is no expert.

Salam Pax is not for everybody; it required a certain amount of curiosity to follow Salam through his extremely personal preoccupations to learn not only about him, but about his country, and more importantly, the impact of the Internet. If these are topics that might interest you, then Salam Pax is worthwhile.

As I write this review in an Internet Café in Bejing, where my two dollar lunch buys me an hour of free Internet browsing, I am surrounded by people, mostly teens and 20-somethings, much like Salam himself. Some are playing games, some are doing e-mail and many are blogging. And also like Salam himself, they have at any moment the possibility of becoming influential political or cultural actors, due to the impact of the Internet.

Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface.

NOTES:

[1] Sullvian, Andrew. "The Blogging Revolution " Wired Magazine. Issue 10.05
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/mustread.html?pg=2

For some sites related to Salam Pax, see:

Maass, Peter "Salam Pax Is Real" June 2, 2003, http://www.slate.com/id/2083847/
"The Baghdad Blog" http://www.thebaghdadblog.com/home/

"Salam's story" May 30, 2003 The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,966819,00.html

Jarvis, Jeff. BuzzMachine,
http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_05.html

Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi

December 2003

Volume 3, Issue 9

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