But residents have competing memories of the decade since the statue of Saddam Hussein was famously toppled in Firdos Square, among them three men — Hilal al-Dilfi, Qais al-Sharaa and Bassam Hanna — who work just metres apart.

In the years since, tens of thousands have been killed in brutal violence, the American military presence rose to 170,000 troops before the US withdrew completely, and countless Iraqis fled the country, fearing for their lives or in search of better opportunities.

In that time, Dilfi, Sharaa and Hanna have lived very different lives, reflecting competing histories of Iraq as the country marks a decade since the US-led entry into Baghdad.

Sitting at his tiny desk on the square in central Baghdad, Hilal, a small-time money changer, is unequivocal: life now is better than under the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam, who was eventually executed in December 2006.

As a Shiite living in the slum neighbourhood of Sadr City, he can finally worship freely; his three sons have bright futures — two of them with advanced degrees — and his lone daughter is married; he is now living in a bigger home.

“I am living in a good situation,” he said, sitting underneath an umbrella to shield himself from the Baghdad heat. “Under Saddam, it was so difficult, but these past 10 years have been good to me.

“Saddam was crushing us, our freedoms — especially us, the Shiites.”

Dilfi voiced anger at the years-long American military presence in Iraq, which only concluded in December 2011, arguing that US troops were as bad for Iraqis as Saddam had been.

But, he added: “Let’s be honest, without the Americans, Saddam would have been here for 100 years!”

Still, watching Saddam’s statue fall remains an unblemished memory for him.

“People were running, just to hit the statue, some people were clapping, others were crying,” he recalled. “Me, I felt a sense of happiness, of well-being.”

Across the square, Qais al-Sharaa has more mixed emotions.

A paramedic by training, Sharaa set up shop as a hairdresser in 2002, serving the Saddam-era elite, from senior military officers to ministers.

As American troops advanced in Baghdad, he pared down his shop to the bare essentials for fear of looters, before later closing up entirely and watching the statue fall on television.

“I can tell you that we did not want Saddam, he did not help this country,” said Sharaa, sporting thick but greying hair and an immaculately trimmed goatee. “But I felt sad that Iraq was invaded by America.”

Sharaa recalled how American soldiers would regularly visit his salon, but never took off their body armour or let go of their rifles, even as he cut their hair.

“There was no trust,” he said. “They did not like us, and we did not like them.

“They removed Saddam, but they damaged the country. After 10 years now, I can tell you they were here not for the benefit of Iraqis, but for their own benefit. They were not coming for liberation, they were like raiders.”

Overall, Sharaa recalled the past 10 years as bittersweet.

His business has done well — the salon is regularly packed with men looking for a haircut, a shave, or for hair threading services, all willing to pay his relatively high rates, which start at 25,000 Iraqi dinars (about $20).

But much of life in Baghdad disappointed him, principally unfulfilled Western promises of reconstruction, but also a lack of Iraqi participation in rebuilding a country still recovering from decades of conflict.

“April 9 represents a day of sadness for me,” he said. “It was a day of unfulfilled hopes that we all had in our hearts, a day that created hatred between the Iraqi and Western peoples.”

Down Saadun Street, a short walk from Sharaa’s salon, Bassam Hanna had distinctly different recollections of American forces.

Hanna, a Christian who now works in a small grocery store, was a cook for US troops at an Iraqi army training complex southeast of Baghdad for six years.

Somewhat unusually among Iraqis, the 35-year-old openly expressed a fondness for American soldiers, quickly pulling out a certificate of appreciation he was awarded by US forces which he kept under the store’s counter.

“They taught me how to be professional, how to improve my work,” he recalled.

For Hanna, whose arms were covered in tattoos of crosses and the likeness of Jesus Christ, the early years after the invasion were good to him.

But then, violence against Iraq’s Christian minority increased, and he and his relatives received threats from militants, spurring many family members to flee the country.

Now, Hanna is looking to leave, to join the rest of his family in the United States.

“There is nothing for me here,” he said.

NOTE: This article was published by AFP on April 7, 2013. It can be found in full here.

Nuri is lucky: he has a job, albeit a relatively menial one, and a roof over his head. But he barely manages to cover the costs of rent, food and the regular payments for the neighbourhood generator used to meet the vast power shortfall.

“Everything here costs a lot of money — you always have to pay for things,” said the 45-year-old, who pushes heavy items around Bab al-Sharji, one of Baghdad’s oldest neighbourhoods, on a wooden cart.

“Outside Iraq they have services, so if you have a job, life is ok.”

“Where is the oil? We only hear the numbers, but we are not getting anything.”

In the decade since the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s oil industry has been one of the bright spots in a country that has grappled with brutal violence and rampant corruption.

Iraq currently produces more than 3.15 million barrels of oil per day (bpd), exporting around 2.5 million bpd, according to oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad. It has proven reserves of 143.1 billion barrels, among the most in the world.

Baghdad is widely expected to dramatically increase its export figures in the near future — the International Energy Agency says Iraq stands to reap around $5 trillion from oil exports through to 2035, and it will be the biggest single contributor to global oil output growth in the coming years.

But Nuri’s complaint is a common one among ordinary Iraqis, a quarter of whom are reckoned to live in poverty and as many as a third are thought to be unemployed or underemployed, based on unofficial estimates.

Their frustration is tied to the fact that oil, responsible for the lion’s share of economic output, does not employ many people — just one percent of the working-age population, according to the United Nations.

And so many residents are forced to look for jobs either in the public sector, which is riven with nepotism, or the private sector, which remains tiny.

“I am struggling,” admitted Abboud Hassan, 48, who was an air force engineer but now sells remote controls at a roadside stall. “I have nothing.”

“I just want to make some money in a decent way,” he said, referring to widespread reports of political patronage in the civil service and corruption in private business.

Hassan earns about 820,000 dinars ($680) a month from his air force pension and the remote control sales, which is barely enough for his wife and five children to survive.

According to a UN report last month on the oil and gas sector, “the size of Iraq’s oil revenue inhibits efforts to diversify Iraq’s economy” because of a strengthening of the currency that make exports less competitive and imports more attractive.

“Expansion of more labour-intensive non-oil sectors is therefore inhibited, limiting the ability of the Iraqi economy to create sustainable jobs and reduce poverty,” the UN report said.

“This problem… is set to increase as Iraq’s oil sector expands faster than non-oil sectors over the coming years.”

Thus far, Iraq’s government has looked to spend the vast income from energy revenues on landmark projects — a huge housing community near Baghdad, a football stadium in Basra and an airport near Najaf.

And though Hassan and Nuri are among those struggling, the Iraqi capital has also seen a rapid build-up of a consumer culture — new restaurants, malls and shops selling flatscreen TVs and brand new expensive cars are all opening across Baghdad.

Among those doing well is Azad Haddad, who returned to his native Iraq, having grown up overseas, after the invasion.

Haddad recently opened two fast-food restaurants adjacent to each other in Baghdad’s wealthy Jadriyah neighbourhood, and they have been packed in the evenings with young Iraqis and their families.

“You have to be resilient,” he admitted, referring to the difficulties of doing business in Iraq.

“It’s challenging, but that’s the beauty of it.”

Note: This article was published by AFP on March 20, 2013. It can be found in full here.

Launched a decade ago with the stated goal of wiping out Saddam’s stores of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found, the focus of the divisive war quickly shifted to solidifying Iraq as a Western ally in an unstable region.

But the removal of Saddam gave Iraq’s non-Arab neighbour Iran the opportunity to dramatically increase its sway in the country, with ambiguous motives, according to Western diplomats.

And since the departure of American forces at the end of 2011, Washington has often struggled to exert influence over Baghdad.

“There were the superficial arguments — the weapons of mass destruction, the links with Al-Qaeda, the present risks to the security of the United States,” said Crispin Hawes, London-based Middle East and North Africa director for the Eurasia Group consultancy.

“These things look farcical now.”

And there was “the underlying argument… that Iraq would be not only a US ally, but the rapid recovery of the Iraqi economy would provide an engine of growth not just for Iraq but for the rest of the region, and provide a sort of exemplar for the region,” he added.

“These things look horribly ironic now.”

Though the war itself was relatively brief — it began on Mar.19, 2003, Baghdad fell on Apr.9, and then-US president George W. Bush infamously declared the mission accomplished on May 1 — its aftermath was violent and bloody.

Insurgents carried out increasingly frequent bombings and shootings, and Iraq erupted into sectarian bloodshed that left tens of thousands dead following a Feb.22, 2006 attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

A mostly American coalition, albeit with significant long-term contributions from Britain in particular, regularly battled Sunni and Shiite insurgents nationwide, from the Sunni bastions of Fallujah and Mosul to the Shiite cities of Najaf and Basra.

Since the invasion, at least 110,000 Iraqi civilians, several thousand more policemen and soldiers, and 4,800 foreign troops — the vast majority of them American — have died in the carnage.

Violence, which remains high by international standards, was only brought under some measure of control from 2008 onwards, as the American troop “surge” coincided with Sunni tribal militias deciding to side with US forces.

But political reconciliation, the strategic goal of the surge, was never fully achieved.

From territorial disputes in the north to questions over the apportioning of the country’s vast energy revenues, a number of high-level problems remain unresolved, while Iraqis still grapple with daily struggles ranging from poor provision of basic services to high levels of unemployment.

And though violent sectarian conflict is largely a thing of the past, minority Sunnis, empowered during Saddam’s rule, have for months held regular mass rallies against the alleged targeting of their community by the Shiite-dominated authorities.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki‘s erstwhile government partners, meanwhile, have charged him with consolidating power over the bureaucracy and security forces, and little in the way of landmark legislation has been passed in recent years.

The two factors have collided with Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi, a top Sunni leader and member of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, announcing his resignation at an anti-government protest, while the demonstrations have entered their third month.

Key laws regulating the lucrative energy sector, the funding of political parties, a proposed amnesty for non-violent criminals, and others have all languished for months and, in some cases, years.

Through it all, however, a major bright spot has been Iraq’s booming oil sector, which has boosted the government’s coffers and is projected to expand still further.

The International Energy Agency estimates Iraq will make by far the biggest contribution to oil production increases in the coming decades.

Authorities have voiced ambitious plans to use the funds on a variety of projects — a massive housing project on Baghdad’s outskirts, a new airport near Najaf, and a world-class football stadium in the southern port city of Basra.

But the rising revenues, which have already pushed Iraq’s budget to greater than that of Egypt, a country with more than twice the population, have yet to result in visibly higher living standards, due largely, analysts say, to bureaucratic incompetence and rampant corruption.

Note: This story was published by AFP on March 12, 2013. It can be found in full here.

Slippers lie outside an orphanage in Yangon, Myanmar. (© Alexa Sharples)

Life Garden Home is an orphanage for some 25 children in the suburbs of Yangon. Lots of great things are happening in Myanmar, but as a side-effect, property prices are rising quickly, and LGH is finding it harder and harder to pay its rent. We want to raise enough money to buy a plot of land and build a house for them so they can continue to do great work for great kids. We’re in the process of figuring out exactly how much this is going to cost, but our early estimate is about £70,000. To the two of us, that’s a massive amount.

• Web design – we’re both pretty limited in our web design skills. Any aspiring designer want to contribute some time to putting together a fundraising website? We would give you all the credit, and it can be listed in your portfolio! Failing that, are there any good guides to putting together a more complex websites than this one?
• Finance management – any ‘accountants-without-borders’ that might happy to oversee and monitor donations and finances? It’s critically important that we’re as transparent as possible, help keep our donors up to date and minimise any costs associated with fundraising, saving and transferring cash.
• Everything else – have you got advice/expertise you think we could use? A contact who might be able to help us raise funds? Are you willing to pitch in on grant writing? Or something else?

Let us know in the comments!

BAGHDAD (AFP) – At the peak of Iraq’s sectarian war, officials in Baghdad accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime of allowing Islamist militants to cross the two countries’ border to sow chaos.

Now, Damascus may be feeling the consequences of “playing with fire” as the uprising against Assad’s rule enters its 23rd month and regime forces fight the Al-Nusra Front — a formidable group that has been linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

At its peak, the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq was a key concern of the US military. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in the wake of deadly Baghdad bombings in August 2009 that “90 percent of terrorists” entered Iraq via Syria.

“They (Syria) contributed to forming a radical generation to fight the Americans in Iraq, but after the withdrawal, those fighters started thinking about working in Syria,” Iraq’s deputy interior minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP, referring to the December 2011 pullout of US forces from Iraq.

Assadi’s remarks echo the complaints of Iraqi security officials who for several years argued that Assad’s regime was responsible for actively allowing militants into their country.

In a December 2009 interview, then acting National Security Adviser Safa Hussein, referring to fighters crossing the 600-kilometre (375-mile) frontier, told AFP that Syrian officials “are at the door — sometimes they open it fully, sometimes they leave it half-open.”

“They can make life very difficult for Al-Qaeda to come to Iraq … I am talking about Damascus airport — there are more Syrian intelligence agents at this airport than travellers, and they’re able to control it pretty well.”

A trove of documents discovered by American forces near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar — long a hub for foreign militants entering via Syria — which were released in 2007, indicate that from August 2006 to August 2007, nearly 700 foreign fighters entered Iraq.

The fighters were using decades-old smuggling routes that became popular during an embargo imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, when many commodities had to be illicitly transported into the country.

After the 2003 US-led invasion, analysts and officials say Damascus looked the other way as those same routes became conduits for Al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

Now many are headed back into Syria to fight for jihadist groups, the best-known of which is the Al-Nusra Front.

“Like a corporation, it makes more sense to build on what you already have than reinvent the wheel,” Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst who followed Al-Qaeda in Iraq, told AFP.

Al-Nusra Front first gained notoriety for its suicide bombings in Syria but has evolved into a formidable fighting force leading attacks on battlefronts throughout the country.

Its suspected affiliation to Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq led to it being labelled a “terrorist” organisation by Washington in December.

At the time, the US State Department described it as a “new alias” for Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and said it was “an attempt by AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes.”

According to the US, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq “is in control of both AQI and Al-Nusra” and reports on Internet forums used by jihadists indicate several hundred militants have made the trip from Iraq into Syria to fight Assad’s regime.

Despite the designation, however, the group has been spearheading the anti-Assad rebellion as the main rebel Free Syrian Army struggles to overcome divisions in its ranks.

“It’s definitely fair to say that this is blowback for the policy that they (Syria) pursued in Iraq,” said Will McCants, a former counter-terrorism adviser at the State Department and now an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses.

“They were allowing jihadis to go across their border and fight for Al-Qaeda without giving a thought to, hey, when this war in Iraq dies down, where are these guys going to go next?” added McCants, who also writes for the popular Jihadica blog.

A Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted, “It was a mistake to let these guys pass through Syria to go to Iraq — now they are spitting on us, and fighting us.”

“You can never compromise with them,” he said.

One analyst pointed to American experiences of supporting Islamist fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which many say planted the seeds for what would eventually become Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

“When you empower fundamentally ideological fighters, they will come back potentially to bite you,” said Brian Fishman, a former research director at the Combating Terrorism Center.

“The Syrian government played with fire for a long time.”

NOTE: This article was originally published by AFP on January 29, 2013. It can be found in full here.

Apple’s device has its flaws — you are locked into iTunes, you cannot use all file types, and the range of services is limited outside the US.

However, at the relatively inexpensive price of $99, it’s a neat piece of equipment that could be useful to make presentations a little more interactive. I originally bought the ATV originally just to mirror my MacBook Pro onto TV screens in hotel rooms where I was travelling, or places I was staying, essentially as an entertainment device. It’s small and light enough that it does not make much of a dent in my suitcase, so I can avoid checking in luggage at airports, and one key feature makes it worthwhile for presentations (particularly, in my case, for journalism training): AirPlay Mirroring.

AirPlay Mirroring is the software that replicates an iPod, iPhone, iPad or Mac screen onto a television via an Apple TV. The mirroring happens in real-time with virtually no lag (assuming you’re on a good wifi connection — see below).

So, at several points, instead of showing screenshots of techniques for taking photos and video on smartphones, I just mirrored my iPhone’s screen onto the projector screen (via an ATV connected to a projector). Because it is just mirroring the iPhone, I could show various mobile-only apps like Camera+ and Instagram in real time. An iPad running presentation software would do the trick as well.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Apple TV needs a decent wifi connection to really be useful. Ad hoc connections are not ideal, because they mean you cannot actually connect your device to the internet, meaning you are just mirroring a device without being able to actually show the useful stuff (i.e. mobile social networks). Performance really suffered when I used the main wifi network, which all the trainees and trainers were on, but improved considerably when I switched to a secondary network set up by the hotel technician that only I was on.
• Hotel wifi networks are not a problem, at least when it comes to presentations and mirroring. Our training sessions were taking place at the InterContinental in Amman, which has an open wifi network that requires log-in details to be input on a sign-up page. The Apple TV does not have an in-built browser, but it doesn’t need to access the actual internet for AirPlay Mirroring, so you don’t need to log-in to the hotel wifi. It just needs to be on the same wifi network as your mirrored device (i.e. your iPod, iPhone or iPad).

So there you have it — I’d be interested in your thoughts on other useful, and ideally inexpensive, tools to enhance journalism training. Let me know in the comments!

In any case, go to Kerala! It’s beautiful. Hopefully my photos do some justice to it.

Hundreds back Maliki amid calls for Iraq PM to quit
By Prashant Rao
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Hundreds of demonstrators rallied in central Baghdad backing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday as the latest in weeks of anti-government rallies in Sunni areas of Iraq called for him to quit.
Read the full story

I went along to Sadr City, a poor neighbourhood in northeast Baghdad, to take a look at the impacts of rainfall in Baghdad. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Earlier in December, I spent some time covering the conflict in Syria for AFP — much of it was spent in Turkey, but here are a collection of photographs I took and stories I wrote from my assignment.

Hunger sharpens misery in Syria’s Aleppo
ALEPPO, Syria (AFP) — Residents of Aleppo have suffered through months of brutal urban warfare and now face a humanitarian crisis with a lack of food and fuel as the Syrian winter sets in.

School opens for displaced Syrians at Turkey border
KILIS, Turkey (AFP) — In a Turkish town across the border from Syria, a few dozen exiled schoolteachers have established a makeshift school for children displaced by their native country’s brutal civil war.

Tactical victory bittersweet for Syria rebels
MUSLIMIYEH, Syria (AFP) — A key tactical victory for rebels in northern Syria proved bittersweet when a well-respected commander was killed, with fighters recalling a father figure with a sharp military mind.