SYRIA: Questions linger in case of American journos Chmela and Luck

In conversation after conversation, in cocktail parties and sheesha cafes from Lebanon to Syria to Jordan, one question continues to pop up over and over again:

What was up with the two Americans who illegally crossed the Lebanese border into Syria and found themselves suddenly locked up by Syrian authorities?

The two journalists, Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, were writing for the Amman-based English-language Jordan Times. They went missing Oct. 1 during a holiday in Lebanon. They showed up a week later, safe and sound, locked up in a Syrian prison. They were released to American officials in Damascus, and went back to Amman.

But the real story of what happened remains murky.

Were they plucky journalists trying to get a scoop, as the Syrians say?

Or were they a couple of hapless kids suckered into intrigue, as they contended in a lengthy article for their newspaper?

Or were they up to something more nefarious, as some have whispered?

Readers in the U.S. and abroad have been generous with their insights and queries.

EGYPT: The confusing fate of kidnapped tourists

The fate of 11 Europeans and eight Egyptians kidnapped by masked bandits is unfolding amid sharp rocks and painted caves in a Sahara desert that is at once sparsely majestic and disorientating -- much like the information released about the hostages by the Egyptian government.

In a confusing swirl of developments in recent days, the tourists were reported kidnapped, then freed, then not freed. The latest is that the German government is negotiating to release five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians who were snatched Friday near Gilf Al-Kebir in remote southwest Egypt.

“The location of the kidnappers has been pinpointed. It’s a no-man’s land between the Sudan, Libya and Egypt borders,” Boutros Sadiq, Sudan’s undersecretary of foreign affairs told journalists Tuesday. “We are not going to have an operation that harms the tourists.”

IRAQ: Honeymoon in Baghdad?

Coming soon: a romantic island getaway in the heart of Baghdad! That's the hope, at least, of Iraq's Tourism Board, which held a news conference Sunday to announce an ambitious project to lure investors to build up the capital's Jazirat Al A'ras, a slab of land surrounded by water from the Tigris River.

Before a sometimes skeptical crowd of mainly Iraqi journalists, the head of the tourism board, Hamood Yakoubi, said the resort, whose name translates to Wedding Island, would be modeled on the "One Thousand and One Nights" tales. Not that King Shahryar, Scheherezade, Sinbad or Alladin had Ferris wheels, fast-food restaurants or a water park to entertain them. But Yakoubi and Ahmed Ridha, the chairman of the government's National Investment Commission, said the point was to give visitors a feel for ancient Baghdad while providing five-star service and amenities.

Those amenities would include some things not currently seen in Baghdad, such as special villas for handicapped visitors, an 18-hole golf course and a multi-level shopping mall.

Iraq's geographical diversity makes it a natural draw for tourists, said Yakoubi, citing its deserts, mountains, rivers and marshland. These, combined with its archaelogical sites and religious shrines, have the potential to bring in millions of tourist dollars. Ahmed said that, in fact, if handled correctly, the tourism industry could overtake oil as Iraq's No. 1 money-maker.

ISRAEL: A desert drive

It's the height of summer in Israel and hot everywhere, end of story. When the choice is between hot and humid, and really hot and arid, taking to the desert really isn't as stupid as it sounds. And in spite of Eilat turning from a beatnik haven to a sometimes-tacky resort, it is still worth crossing the desert to the Israel's southernmost town.

Some are attracted to the town at the tip of the Red Sea for what it is now; others, for what it used to be.

For older Israelis, Eilat used to be a stop on the way to Sinai. Since the very last bit of it -- the 700 square meters (about 2,300 square feet) of Taba -- was returned to Egypt 20 years ago following a two-year long international arbitration, Eilat is the end of the road.

And it's a long road. More than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Jerusalem. And you either love the drive, or you hate it. 

IRAQ: For some Iraqis, it's first-class flights home

As Americans complain about rising air travel costs, cramped planes and miserably long check-in lines at airports, some Iraqis are enjoying free travel in the prime minister's jet, all part of the Iraqi government's drive to bring people back to their war-torn homeland.

The first of what the Iraqi government says will be regular flights bringing refugees back on the A300 normally used by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki arrived Monday afternoon in Baghdad. The first sign that this was no regular flight was the stairway wheeled out to the airplane door. It had a red carpet.

Returning Iraqis, many clutching bundles of belongings and small children, walked gingerly down the steps, slowed by the large Iraqi flags that they were given that flapped across their faces in the stiff wind.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta Mousawi, an Iraqi government and security spokesman, said Maliki had arranged for such flights to take place each week. Flights will come from Syria and Jordan in addition to Egypt. The three countries host the largest numbers of Iraqis who have fled since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Each trip will carry about 250 people. Government officials are hoping that by offering an easy way home, more Iraqis will be willing to return and help the country recover from five years of war. So far, most have seemed resistant to the idea, not convinced that the relative calm in most of the country will hold.

International organizations say about 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country since 2003. Only a relative handful have returned. A recent report by the International Organization for Migration said about 16% of the 16,848 families that have returned home had come from outside Iraq. The rest were internally displaced.

The United Nations, IOM and similar organizations have warned against bringing people back too soon, before communities are able to receive them. Some of the problems confronting returnees, including those coming home from having fled to other places inside Iraq, include lack of access to basic services, returning to badly damaged homes and finding other people living in their houses.

And though the government insists that most people who return home do so because they feel safe, some returnees say they come back because they have to. It's expensive to live elsewhere, and many are finding it impossible to find jobs or to put their children in school.

"If I had more money, I would have stayed and never gone back," Abu Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite merchant, told the Associated Press while waiting to board Monday's flight at Cairo's airport. "We hear from other returnees that they had regret going back because there is still bombing, kidnapping and killing."

--Tina Susman in Baghdad

 

IRAQ: Trapped in Taqaddum -- I become a local national

By Doug Smith in western Iraq

“Welcome to Taqaddum,” the sign said.

I looked at my Iraqi colleague, Saif Rasheed. He shrugged. The name meant nothing to him except “progress” in Arabic. All we knew was that we were on a base somewhere in Iraq’s western desert.

A mechanical problem had cut short our flight to Ramadi. The crew chief told us, shouting through our earplugs in the dark noisy belly of the helicopter, that another would pick us up at 9.

It was dusk. Not too bad. We’d be back on our way to Ramadi in barely an hour. Or so we thought.

A Ugandan guard in a floppy hat who carried an assault rifle across his beige bush jacket stopped us with a humorless stare.

“Search.”

He looked suspiciously at our cellphones, laptop, tape recorder and video camera.

A sign on the wall said all were prohibited, but we were carrying credentials issued by the U.S. military’s Combined Press Information Center in the Green Zone.

“DOD badge?” he asked.

“We’re press,” I said.

Unimpressed, he ordered us into the hooch, a dim room with four handmade benches and a few cots squeezed in the back. Three Iraqi translators from our flight were already there. Two more Ugandans sat at a desk. I saw our passports tucked into an old ledger book.

“We’ll keep these,” one of the guards said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just for security,” she said.

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.