Armed with rakes and wheelbarrows, a group of Iraqi Scouts and Guides is
clearing a patch of Baghdad woodland. For many it is their first “normal” outing
with friends in more than four years of violence.
The concrete bunker and
taped cordon that guard them from unexploded bombs give this Scout camp a
slightly edgier feel to jamborees in Britain, where a grazed knee or getting
lost represent some of the biggest hazards.
For 13-year-old Fahad Abdul
Sammed, however, it offers a rare chance to leave his house and play with his
friends. “For the last few years I have not had any fun. This is the first time
I have gone away from my family,” Fahad said.
He is one of about 40 Iraqi
boys and girls who teamed up yesterday to clear away dead branches and shrubs
from the unused land in Baghdad’s fortified green zone — the slightly more
secure area of the city that also houses Iraqi government buildings and foreign
embassies.
The clean-up is part of a drive to revive Iraq’s esteemed Scouting past — introduced to the country by the British military in 1921. Participation has risen from zero to approximately 150,000 over the last four years.
“We want to teach the children about team spirit and how to be a good person,”
Abdul Salam, chairman of the Iraqi Scouts, said.
Joining the Scouts provides
an opportunity for children to come together, whatever their ethnic background,
he said, hoping that this would eventually help to ease the sectarian tensions
that have fuelled the chaos in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
“We would
like every boy and girl in Iraq to join the Scouts — whether they are Shia,
Sunni, Christian or Kurd,” Mr Salam added.
At the prospective campsite in Baghdad, the Iraqi girl Scouts clambered out of a
minibus and stood in a line wearing brand-new blue shirts and skirts topped off
with a bright-green necktie and a baseball cap — worn on occasion over a
headscarf.
The boys were less well turned out because there were not enough
new uniforms to go around but once all the children had assembled the Scout
leaders instructed everyone to change into cleaning gear — namely football
shirts.
“We are going to have lots of fun today,” First Lieutenant Sharon
Burns, one of the American military volunteers, shouted through an Iraqi
translator.
“We have rakes and we are going to use them to clean up this
place so we have somewhere to play. This is your camp so let’s make it the best
we can.”
The boys marched off to one corner of the site — which was about
the size of a football pitch — and the girls took their rakes to another. Within
minutes clouds of dust puffed into the air as the children dragged branches,
picked up leaves and raked twigs.
About ten American soldiers also pitched
in with the effort — made particularly tough by the punishing morning sun.
Leaning on her rake, 14-year-old Batoul al-Timimi said that she was glad to
be part of the action. “I decided to join the girl Scouts because I did not want
to stay in my house during the summer,” she said.
Many parents in Baghdad
are afraid to let their children play in the street — even inside the green
zone, where these children live — because of the threat of bombs and kidnapping.
Woroud al-Kanani, another 14-year-old girl, said: “I would prefer for the
camp to be outside the green zone. It would be more dangerous but I think it
would be more fun.
“Unfortunately the other girls are scared because of the
bombs and explosions.”
There are two other Scout campsites in Baghdad, but
they have been “borrowed” by the Ministry of Interior to use as land to train
the Iraqi security forces.
During Saddam Hussein’s time, however, many
Scout camps were used to train boys to use weapons rather than to do a good deed
every day, while girl Scouts were largely neglected.
As a result Iraq was
ejected from the World Organisation of the Scout Movement in 1999.
With
clubs re-forming across the country — holding twice-weekly meetings at schools
and arranging camping trips when possible, depending on the security — Iraq
hopes to regain its full membership to the movement next year. It also plans to
send ten Scouts to England next month to take part in the World Scout Jamboree
in Chelmsford, Essex.
Despite the progress, there are setbacks, as is often
the case in Iraq since the invasion.
By lunchtime there was mutiny among the
boys at the green zone Scout camp.
Instructions about the day’s activities
had been lost in translation and everyone thought that they were supposed to be
on the camping trip for four nights — rather than spending only a morning
clearing up a plot of land to build a campsite next month.
“They are big
liars. This is just a game for them,” Ali Haider, 13, said with tears in his
eyes. He had been left stranded as a result of the mix-up because his entire
family had gone away to Hilla, south of Baghdad, and left him on his own.
Saef Mohammed, 16, vowed never to go on another Scouting trip. “This is very
bad. I will not come back,” he said.
First Lieutenant Burns said that the
boys had unfortunately been misinformed by their Iraqi Scout leader about the
plan but assured them that the site would be up and running in a couple of
weeks.
Crisis resolved, the girl Scouts picked up their rakes again and went
back to work, while the boys decided to have a game of football, using orange
plastic cones as goalposts, until it was time to go home.
credit: The Anchoress
