Salam Pax

"Peace be with you" (Arabic)

Salam Pax ( Arabic and Latin for peace ) is the pseudonym of a blogger from Baghdad ( Iraq ) whose site Where is Raed? Aroused considerable media coverage during (and after) the 2003 invasion of Iraq .

In his blog, Salam reported on the war , his homosexuality , his friends, the disappearance of people under Saddam Hussein's regime and his work as a translator for the journalist Peter Maass . Salam's site is named after his friend Raed, who was working on his master’s degree in Jordan : Raed had not responded to emails, which is why Salam started the weblog.

After the blog had been circulating in the blogging community for a while, the discussion eventually reached the New York Times . Some experts speculated that the blogger might be a United States agent trying to spread disinformation about the war. In May 2003, the British daily The Guardian was finally able to find the real originator: It was a 29-year-old Iraqi architect who actually lived in Baghdad and reported from there.

As a result, Salam Pax wrote several columns for The Guardian and published the book Let's get bombed - Greetings from Baghdad , which contains entries from his weblog from the period 2002/2003. He is also the author of a number of short documentary films on Iraq.

The first weblog where_is_raed.blogspot.com (from September 7, 2002) was continued from December 17, 2002 at dear_raed.blogspot.com . This was followed in August 2004, Shut up you fat whiner ( justzipit.blogspot.com , until July 2006). The collected entries from the two older weblogs together with some newer ones since July 2008 can be found under The Baghdad Blogger ( salampax.wordpress.com ).

literature

• Salam Pax: Let's get bombed - Greetings from Baghdad. Econ 2003, ISBN 3-430-17432-5 . Original edition: The Baghdad Blog. Atlantic, New York 2003, ISBN 1-84354-262-5 . Entries from September 7, 2002 to June 28, 2003

Web links

• Salam Pax 'Weblog Where is Raed? - Entries from December 17, 2002 to August 18, 2004
• Salam Pax 'new blog Shut up you fat whiner - entries from August 9, 2004 to July 18, 2006
• Salam Pax - The Baghdad Blogger - collected blogs since December 17th, 2002
• Blog from Baghdad - Column in the online magazine ZiB21.com.
• Short films by Salam Pax (partly as streaming video)