Iraqi Boy Scouts | Outside Online

Outside Magazine October 2004

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Out There
Jamboree Jihad
A former CIA agent is on his strangest mission yet: giving Iraqi kids a scouting chance

By Patrick Graham


	Illustration by Tomer Hanuka

RETIRED NAVY COMMANDER William "Chip" Beck—Cold Warrior, onetime CIA operative, combat artist, and now a tireless booster for the seemingly gonzo idea of starting Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs in Iraq—skirts an old sandbag bunker and walks down to a clump of reeds growing out of the Tigris River in Baghdad, the kind that baby Moses would have drifted into.

Plastic bags and rusted cans bob among the vegetation, washed in by the gray-green current. Like everything else in the city, the water-treatment plants are old and broken, and raw sewage flows into the river's treacherous currents every day.

But Beck—a 58-year-old who seems constitutionally immune to pessimism—sees only good things when he looks at this mess, and at the 50-acre patch of land and five wrecked buildings beside it. Here, in what used to be a training center for Saddam Hussein's secret police, the Mukhabarat, he sees canoe docks, campsites, and a conference center. He envisions what he grandiosely calls the National Iraqi Scout Headquarters.

As improbable as that sounds, it might happen. Over the past eight months, Beck and other scouting proponents have won support from a number of key Iraqi, U.S., and scouting officials, including Abduillah N. al-Jumaili, from the Iraqi Ministry of Education; Ambassador Paul Bremer, up until June 28 the head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional

Donate to the Iraqi Scouting Initiative

To make a donation to the Iraqi Scouting Initiative, featured in "Jihad Jamboree," by Patrick Graham, in Outside's October issue, send your check to:

The World Friendship Fund
Boy Scouts of America
1325 West Walnut Hill Lane
PO Box 152079
Irving, Texas 75015-2079

Make your check out to the "World Friendship Fund." On the notation line at the bottom of your check, please write "for the Iraqi Scouting Initiative." One hundred percent of all donations go to the Iraqi Scouting programs.

Authority (CPA); and Malek Gabr, deputy secretary general of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), scouting's Geneva, Switzerland–based organizing authority. Among the many cultural-reconstruction efforts under way in Iraq, scouting, the leaders agreed, could be an important component.

In keeping with that sentiment, the CPA this spring voted to donate the former police grounds to the Iraqi Scouting Initiative (the project's working name). Soon after, 40 workers from JumpStart International, a New York–based nongovernmental organization that helps clear bomb sites in Iraq, started laboring in 114-degree heat to cart rubble from the camp—again, free of charge.

Other matters haven't been so hassle-free. It will take more than $4 million in private donations to renovate the headquarters and get the program running, according to Beck and Michael Bradle, a 40-year-old Lampasas, Texas, businessman and former Eagle Scout who's in charge of fundraising. There's a long way to go before the knot-tying can start—only about $17,000 has trickled in.

And this place is definitely a money pit. Sometime during "shock and awe," a bomb slammed a corner of the main building, another buckled the roof, and a third destroyed a movie theater at the back. The first time Beck went inside, he says, he felt like he was spelunking. The JumpStart crews have done a lot, but it still looks like an earthquake hit.

Beck, however, sees only what's to come. The rifle range at the far end of the property—where Saddam's agents refined their murder skills—can be used for archery. The riverfront can be an aquatic center, complete with speedboats for water skiing.

"Americans have been asking since 9/11, ‘How do you find common ground with Arabs and people in Islamic and Third World societies?' " Beck says, shifting into evangelical mode. "Scouting has been doing it for 97 years. It crosses religious and national values. It's a belief system in something higher than yourself."

As if on cue, a ten-year-old boy named Abdel Kadr appears and says he can't wait to become a Boy Scout. "Salaam aleykum, Abu Ali," he calls, using Beck's Iraqi nickname. Since school's out, Abdel spends days with his dad, Kadr Jamal Hamza, the on-site foreman at the camp, and with Beck, who's found him a much-beloved bicycle. Beck also gives Abdel odd jobs. Today he's carrying a knapsack that holds Beck's 9mm Beretta pistol, a requirement for self-defense. Every time Beck ventures outside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone—the heavily fortified home of coalition forces—to come here, he's risking his life.

"If we don't try to build bridges, we'll surely lose," Beck continues. "This country has to return to normal!"

Maybe it's the heat, but suddenly I feel like Beck has stopped making sense. In the weeks leading up to my visit, there have been near-daily car bombings and assassinations. More than 70 foreigners have been kidnapped; eight have been beheaded or otherwise executed. The continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq has sparked America-bashing worldwide.

At a time like this, what Iraq really needs is scouting? And even if it does, is a retired spook—an outspoken, crusade-craving adventurer with associations on the far-right fringe of American politics—really the best person to serve as its front man?

Not surprisingly, Beck has plenty of fans and detractors—all of them vocal.

"Chip Beck is an amazing man whose efforts are entirely a humanitarian gesture," says Mark Clayton, spokesman for the WOSM. "Beck's CIA background has absolutely nothing to do with reviving scouting in Iraq. The organization will be entirely homegrown, so Beck will not be a factor."

Beck "absorbs himself in what intelligence professionals refer to as FLABS—Folk Lore and Bull Shit," states retired U.S. Army colonel Joseph Schlatter on his Web site, MIAFacts.org. Schlatter, a former deputy director of the Defense Department's POW-MIA office, takes particular exception to Beck's other pet cause: his belief that, since World War I, thousands of POWs have been abandoned to Soviets and other communist captors, while the U.S. government has done nothing.

Beck can't be bothered with people's opinions. He's thinking about winning this war, now. Whatever you think of his motives, he clearly believes that scouting can help the country.

"This might be one of the only things in Iraq that ends up doing some good," he says, only half kidding. And who knows? He might even be right.

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PATRICK GRAHAM is a freelance writer based in Baghdad.

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