From Brownsea to Baghdad

Illustration by Tomer Hanuka, Outside Magazine, October 2004

When I put the Scout uniform back on in the summer of 2004, after a hiatus of over thirty years, one of the first guys I met was an ex-CIA man named Chip Beck. He was working in the "Green Zone" in Baghdad, I don't remember for whom. An article in Outside magazine gives his story, but to make a long one short, Beck was a key player in the revival of Scouting in Iraq.

Earlier this week, I had a chance to pass along this video clip to my local colleagues in Scouting, including Beck, of Iraqi Scouts preparing for an upcoming Jamboree. There's also an interesting story about them, in light of the current troubles there. Many countries have separate Scout associations along ethnic or sectarian lines. (Israel, for example, has a national scout federation with eight separate associations; one for Jewish scouts, one for Arab Christians, one for Druze scouts, and so on.) I once asked Beck if the Sunnis and Shi'ites wanted to do the same. He said no, they wanted to work together as one.

It all adds new meaning to the phrase, "Boys will be boys." Someday, these boys will be men. Should they become the future leaders of Iraq, they will carry with them the lessons first taught by Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell, on Brownsea Island off the English coast, one hundred years ago this August.

We can only hope.