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Outside Magazine October 2004
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Out There
Jamboree Jihad (cont.)

IT IS JULY, two weeks since my last visit to the future scout camp, and Nima Motashar accompanies me back. Everything and nothing has changed.

The U.S. has handed over power to an Iraqi government, though 150,000 foreign troops, almost all of them American, remain. Beck has left Baghdad; his Defense Department stint ended and, though he's applied for a State Department post as a civic-activities director in the Green Zone, the job isn't guaranteed. He's still working for the scout initiative and trying to raise money. "But scouting is in the hands of Iraqis now," he says.

At the headquarters gate, new guards wear scout badges stitched to their uniforms. Hanging at the camp entrance is a 12-foot banner that advertises support for the project from the U.S.-led coalition. To some Iraqis, that translates as "Bomb here."

In Iraq today, almost anything can become a target of violence. Since the June 28 changeover, an increasing wave of car bombings and other attacks have killed dozens of people across the country; on August 1, five Christian churches were bombed, killing 11 worshippers, two of them children.

Abdel, the ten-year-old boy, brings us some cold soda. I ask if he will get a lifetime membership in the scout program.

"Of course!" says Motashar. "He helped build it!"

Iraqi kids, I'm reminded, have had very little chance of escape—particularly the poorer ones, like Abdel. The Mehdi Army—led by hardcore Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the most zealous foes of the U.S. Army occupation—is made up of kids who live in the sewage-filled streets of Sadr City, a Baghdad slum. I was embedded with the U.S. Army's First Cavalry during some of the worst fighting last May, and as we drove around Sadr City in an armored Bradley, I saw a few dozen teenage fighters blown apart by explosive rounds.

Maybe if scouting was available, some Kurds might meet some Sunnis and realize they aren't all genocidal maniacs. Some Shiites might meet some Christians, too. At least 5,000 scout wannabes have signed up with the Ministry of Education, and thousands more will join when the program actually starts, Beck says. If Iraq could just manage to survive the violence—if it could overcome the hostilities between its ethnic and religious groups, if it could put aside fears about Beck's past, if it could recover from the shellshock of the U.S. invasion . . . if it could manage to do all those things, well, then scouting could actually work.

In the meantime, the laborers are still blowtorching rebar in the tattered buildings. The inside walls still bear the old police slogans: SADDAM IS WITH ME and WORK MUCH, TALK LITTLE.

The major cleanup should be finished by August; after that, they'll be rebuilding, Motashar says. All they need is the money from Beck.

I ask what will happen if the money doesn't come. Motashar just shakes his head. The scouts, like Iraq, still expect a lot from Americans.

"I don't think that way—he has to bring the money," Motashar says. "It will be a disaster if he doesn't."
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