Jamboree Jihad: . . . giving Iraqi kids a Scouting chance

Outside Magazine ^ | October 2004 | Patrick Graham

[Scoutmaster]

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.

...

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.

. . .

"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.

...

[Scoutmaster]

I know this is an older article, but in another Scouting-related article today I was asked about the status of Boy Scouting in Iraq. Iraq had one of the first Scouting programs in the Arab world, but was (belatedly) removed from the World Organization of Scouting in 1999 after Saddam Hussein changed the program for his own purposes (for example, adding the training of hand-to-hand combat as an element).

There is precedent for helping to re-start the Scouting program after a war; after WWII, the BSA helped the Boy Scouts of Nippon (now the Scout Association of Japan) re-establish itself.

To make a donation to the Iraqi Scouting Initiative, featured in this article, 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.

Thanks for your support of Scouting.

[Argus]

a clump of reeds growing out of the Tigris River in Baghdad, the kind that baby Moses would have drifted into

if Baby Moses had drifted down the Nile, out into the Mediterranean, around Africa, through the Strait of Hormuz, across the Persian Gulf, into the Tigris/Euphrates delta and then up the Tigris to the future site of Baghdad.

[11Bush]

LOL. It's possible. The ancient Egyptians were a great seafaring race, at least that is how calypso louie tells it.

[George Smiley]

When they were taking breaks from flying around the pyramids.

[Scoutmaster]

*laughing* Hey, I'm not responsible for the geography checkers at Outside magazine. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they somehow know that the type of reeds in the Tigris are those found in the Nile in Biblical days, and not that they were expecting Baby Moses to be a really great seafarer.

[Tax-chick]

Thanks for posting ... I'll mention this to my Cub Scout who wants to be a missionary to Iraq!

[Argus]

Seriously, this is a great effort and thanks for letting us know how to direct our contributions to the scouts.

[SandRat]

[Tax-chick]

bttt