IRAQ: Tourism takes flight in southern shrine city

The government may be in Baghdad and the oil reserves in Basra, but the smaller city of Najaf, halfway between Iraq’s two centers of power, has a treasure that could be the envy of them both.

"Our oil here is tourism," said Abed Hussein Abtan, the deputy provincial governor in Najaf.

Next to Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, Najaf and its neighbor Karbala hold Islam’s holiest monuments. If they could, Shiite Muslims from around the Middle East would flock to the city to pray at the shrine of Imam Ali, the cousin and companion of Muhammad, and the first caliph of the Shiite branch of Islam.

Decades of repression and war had reduced the pilgrimage to a trickle. But next week, Najaf is taking a giant step toward tapping into its tourism resource when it joins the short list of Iraqi cities with airports capable of handling large commercial jets.

After an $80-million renovation of an abandoned military airfield, Najaf Airport will open to commercial traffic July 20, Abtan said.

IRAQ: Consulates to open in San Diego, Detroit

Coming to California: The consulate of Iraq. Well, a consulate, anyway.

To help expatriates scattered around the United States and to take the strain off the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, the Foreign Ministry has decided to open two consulates in the U.S.

“Yes, there’s quite a big community in Detroit,” Foreign undersecretary Labid Abbawi said.

The other will be in — not Los Angeles or San Francisco -- but San Diego.

“Also we have quite a big number in San Diego as well,” Abbawi said. “There are also in Los Angeles a lot, but we thought San Diego was more suitable.”

According to the 2000 census, there were 3,705 Iraqis in Detroit, 2,039 in Los Angeles and 822 in San Diego.

But there are also Iraqi communities in East San Diego County, particularly Chaldeans, who are Christians. Many small-market owners and professionals are Iraqi. Some estimate that, including second generation, there are 25,000 Iraqis in the county.

Those numbers are sure to increase in the years ahead as the U.S. State Department gears up its postwar refugee program. The Bush administration set a goal of admitting 12,000 Iraqi refugees this year.

ISRAEL: Travel advisories for backpackers

Travel advisories are issued by governments. The U.S., for example, posts travel advisories on the State Deparment website.

General or specific terror alerts usually make their quiet way through discrete pipelines, and current threats such as those reported by intelligence websites to Israeli businessmen, consultants and whatnots in various Arab countries are presumably handled by the relevant bodies. 

But the latest warning issued by Israel's National Security Council was evidently of such urgency that  authorities turned to the agents best at disseminating information and conveying alarm: parents.

Breaking into the middle of Israel Radio's international hour Wednesday afternoon was a reporter announcing that there was an immediate and concrete danger to Israeli tourists in Jammu and Kashmir and that parents of young Israelis visiting the region were asked to call their kids and instruct them to get out -- and now.

Tens of thousands of Israelis backpack through the Far East every year in what has become a rite of passage over the last two decades. The freedom, laid-back culture and vast landscape are a tempting contrast to the small and nervous country with a chronic water problem. Fifteen years ago, a group of Israeli trekkers had been among tourists involved in a terrorism attack in that region. The backpackers, typically just out of the army, jumped the terrorists that had taken them hostage.  One Israeli was killed and Kashmir was off-limits for a long time, but it's since back on the backpacking map.

The latest warning to Israelis in Kashmir is a "very high concrete threat" (in Hebrew), according to the NSC's counter-terrorism bureau.

—Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem.

IRAQ: Walls closing in for Iraqi travelers

By Said Rifai in Baghdad

I grew up abroad and used to take traveling for granted.

From the day I was born, my family and I traveled several times a year. There were summer and winter vacations to exotic islands in the Far East, European road trips, shopping sprees in Hong Kong and the annual trip back to Iraq to visit with family, getting acquainted with the fatherland so to speak.

I traveled so much that I got sick of it at one point and just wanted to settle down. My wish came into being when my father retired and we moved back to Baghdad in 1993 - finally, a place to call home.

ISRAEL: The vacation must go on

Amid dire warnings of impending attacks, up to 50,000 Israeli tourists are expected to flood into the Sinai Peninsula for Passover vacation, which technically starts Sunday but realistically began about two days ago for many Israelis.

Sinai, which was occupied by Israel from 1967 to 1982, remains close to the hearts of many Israelis, who still frequent the many tranquil huts-on-the-beach campsites and scuba diving hot spots along the western Sinai coast. Depending on how a customer looks, shop owners in Sinai resort towns like Dahab will occasionally bust out some Hebrew, especially during peak Israeli vacation times like this.

The Israeli fondness for Sinai has withstood not only generally hostile feelings toward them on the part of many Egyptians but a series of terrorist attacks in Sinai towns like Sharm El Sheikh and Taba. Even when all the American and European tourists were scared away from Egypt for months at a time, a certain percentage of the Israelis kept on coming.

Which is why the current crop of Sinai  attack warnings probably won't derail many Israelis' Sinai vacation plans. Egyptian officials say they are searching for several carloads of armed militants seeking to attack tourists, and Israel issued a travel advisory warning of an "imminent" attack threat on Sinai tourists. Knowing that many people simply won't heed the warnings, some Israeli politicians have even suggested simply sealing the Taba border crossing into  Egypt.

—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Sinai's many pristine beach continue to draw Israelis even when their government is warning  them to stay away. Credit: Public domain

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Six Flags to Dubai

Six Flags on Tuesday announced a plan to develop an amusement park in the glittery Persian Gulf city-kingdom of Dubai, which is the flashiest of seven kingdoms in the United Arab Emirates.

Reports Kimi Yoshino of The Times' business desk:

The Six Flags park is the latest addition to Dubailand, a 3-billion-square-foot project that will include restaurants, hotels, Universal Studios Dubailand and DreamWorks Animation Park. Groundbreaking on the Six Flags portion is expected to begin in 2009.

A press release distributed by Tatweer, the Emirati partner in the deal, described it as "the first Six Flags project to be developed outside of North America."

That may well be. But will it encourage North American and European travelers to take their families on vacations to the oil-rich Persian Gulf?

— A Times Staff Writer

Photo: Dubai's Sheik Zayed Road. Credit: Charles Crowell / Bloomberg News

ISRAEL: The cold snap continues

For the third time this year, Israelis and Palestinians are coping with winter storms. An unusually harsh winter has brought snow, heavy winds and freezing rain. Weather forecasters had been predicting the incoming cold front for several days, so Israeli officials had plenty of time to prepare. Snow plows deployed in Jerusalem and officials in several school districts around the country either cancelled or delayed classes.

Meteorologists said the current winter is the worst in 15 years, but it still doesn’t compare to the winter of 1991-92, when it snowed 10 times in Jerusalem.

Steady rains throughout the day Tuesday quickly turned the snow into frozen slush. But the miserable weather wasn’t enough to dampen spirits among fans of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club. As night fell, thousands of fans in yellow and black scarves and sweaters streamed towards Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium for Beitar’s match against Maccabi Haifa.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Snow covers a US -made Sherman M50 tank from the 1967 war at a memorial west of Jerusalem. Credit: Ashraf Khalil

Winter weather in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, etc.

For once, it isn't just terrorist attacks and political intrigue making headlines in the Middle East, but a subject everybody can relate to: the weather. The whole area seems to be more at the mercy of a rare snowstorm than any political crisis.

In Jerusalem, the snowy weather almost overshadowed a government report on Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon. Large parts of the Holy City were covered in white, causing schools and stores to shut and children to engage in snowball fights. Public transportation was grounded.

In Amman, even adults gave in to the rare pleasure of pelting each other with snowballs after almost a foot of snow blanketed the city. Here, too, vital business also came to a standstill. News reports said that flights were grounded for a few hours Thursday at the Jordanian capital's international airport, where de-icing machines worked frantically to clear planes for takeoff.

Lebanon's central areas were cut off from its coastal cities. Snow blocked roads leading to the Bekaa Valley and covered most of the country's mountain villages. The snowstorm crippled an already poorly performing power system, increasing the long hours of electricity outtages in many areas.

The mountains surrounding Damascus were also blanketed in snow and many roads in Syria's rural areas were blocked.

— Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: A Syrian family enjoys the snowfall in the capital, Damascus. A wave of cold weather and snow storms is hitting the Middle East, closing mountain roads and hindering traffic in some regions in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. Credit: LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images

MAURITANIA: Racing against Al Qaida

Mauritanians were  bummed  when organizers canceled the famous Lisbon-Dakar Rally because of fears of a terrorist attack after militants killed four French tourists in December. Al Qaida of North Africa took the credit for the attack and warned that it would also target the annual off-road rally as an "infidel" event.

But organizers of another rambling desert car race went ahead this week, undaunted by the threat.

The Budapest-Bamako race, which begins in Central Europe and winds its way down into North and West Africa, today completed its Mauritania leg, apparently without a hitch.

IRAQ: Trying to fly the not-so-friendly skies

Complaints about holiday travel headaches in the United States ring hollow in Iraq where not even Kid Rock, Robin Williams, Miss America and comedian Lewis Black can make the helicopters fly if the wind, sand, and security don't cooperate.

The four were part of a United Service Organizations' Iraq tour and were due to perform Dec. 19 at a military base on the edge of Baghdad. The day got off to an auspicious start. The skies were clear, albeit colder than normal — perhaps in the low 50s, with a brisk breeze. Hours before the show, troops lined up outside gymnasium. The show was first-come, first-served, and there was room for only a few hundred. Chief Warrant Officer Eli Martinez was one of the first in line. "It's a piece of back home," Martinez explained when asked what possessed him to stand outside for hours in the cold.

ISRAEL: At the Old City, breathing it in

Jerusalem’s Old City offers a feast of iconic sights (the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall, for example) and evocative sounds (the pealing church bells and chanting calls to Muslim prayer). But the cramped stone alleys are also rich for how they smell--for the variety of scents, from burning incense to ground cardamom, that tell you a lot about the Old City’s many roles as holy spot, tourist destination and ordinary residential neighborhood.

Just step inside Jaffa Gate, past the row of taxis, where a pushcart is loaded with oblong rings of a sesame-topped bread, known in Hebrew as beigale and Arabic as ka’ak, that smell fresh-baked. Follow the slippery stone walk as it slopes gently past souvenir shops tight on both sides, the fresh-leather scent of sandals for sale disappearing behind a vendor’s cigarette smoke.

EGYPT: Save the Sphinx

Stark and red, the letters bleed through the website as if promoting a horror film from the 1930s: "Save The Sphinx." But there are no desert villains, no howling sandstorms, no lurking, murderous mummies. Bassam El Shammaa, an Egyptologist who types in breathless passion punctuated by CAPITAL letters and !!!!!!!, reports on his website www.sossphinx.bassam.itgo.com that underground water levels among other things are endangering the Sphinx.

"While I was walking around the Sphinx area on Saturday, September, 22nd, 2007," he writes, "I was shocked by what I saw there! As you can see below in the pictures I took, the UNDERGROUND WATER, ELECTRICITY CABLES, LOUDSPEAKERS, SALTY STAGNANT WATER, CABLES, HUMAN FEET SHACKING THE MONUMENTS, GARBAGE and finally OLD AGE all definitely lead to destruction!!   

The Egyptian press reported that the water problem is being studied but that it is not as alarming as Shammaa's capital letters suggest. It could be a change in the groundwater table, or overflow from irrigation. Shammaa would rather be BOLD now than sorry later. He told the Daily News Egypt: "I am driven by a sense of responsibility."

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo   

ISRAEL: Border crossings, Part 2

My departure from Israel went quite smoothly, with only minor hassles and a short Q&A. As mentioned previously here, Israelis seem to be feeling pretty relaxed these days.

One curious point: I noticed that pre-flight security measures at Ben Gurion Airport were actually a lot mellower and less invasive than at any American airport I've been to in the last few years.

I didn't have to take off my shoes or my belt when going through the X-ray machine. The lady in front of me came through carrying a bottle of water.

So here's the question I'll put forth for discussion: Are Israeli security standards lax? Or is much of the stuff we're put through by the TSA just unnecessary fluff designed to demonstrate vigilance? 

— Ashraf Khalil in Chicago

ISRAEL: Border crossings

Entering and leaving the state of Israel has always been an adventure for me. As an Arab American, the usual security routine always seems to be jacked up an extra 10%. And flashing the journalist ID sometimes makes matters worse.

In 2001, I crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt to cover the Palestinian reaction to Ariel Sharon’s election as Israel's prime minister. Several days later, when I was ready to leave, the Israelis had indefinitely closed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

I was working freelance at the time and paying all my own expenses, so hanging around in Gaza running up hotel bills while waiting for Rafah to reopen wasn’t an option. My only choice was to cross into Israel and make my way overland to Taba, then into Egypt.

The problem: I had been issued a Gaza-only visa.