The Jarrar Family (Khalid, Raed, Faiza)

To those who are new to the blogsphere, particularly those new to the Iraqi blogsphere, you will not know who Khalid & Raed are.

Their family started a 'wardiary' years ago, featuring Faiza(mother), Raed (oldest son), Khalid (middle son) and Majid (teenage son). Majid has since moved internationally, and Raed now lives in neighbouring Jordan, where it is much safer to work and live.

Raed's blog is one of the more popular Iraqi blogs, with over 1.1million page-hits, you could say it close to being the center of the Iraqi (english)blogsphere. The center, in my opinion for English Iraqi blogs, the biggest attraction would be Iraq Blog Count which can be found at http://iraqblogcount.blogspot.com

Raed is anti-occupation and anti-violence. He does not support terrorists, he does not support the current Iraqi administration, or the occupying force. He has witnessed many of the tragedies now facing Iraq, and many of those from the past. Raed is an architecht by proffession and has very fluent english.

I give this blog a 7/10 and here is a link: http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

Recently, Khalid was abducted and wrongfully detained by the Iraqi Mukhabarat (Secret Police). The full story about his abduction can be found on his blog. Khalid is not related to violence in any way, is a religious and reasonable man who is against the oppression of any human being. When Khalid was detained, a major campaign was launched by bloggers from all over the world, this campaign infact was the beginning of a friendship for me[olivebranch] and Mike the other contributor to this blog.

After thousands of people wrote emails and signed petitions, said prayers to their own gods and to Khalids, he was finally released free of charge 13 days after his abduction. The story of his abduction should not be the defining factor for Khalid though, his open and inquisitive personality and free-style of writing makes his blog an extremely enjoyable read, and allows for his emotions to flow freely into his writing, increasing your reading pleasure!

I give his blog an 8/10! here is the link http://secretsinbaghdad.blogspot.com/

Faiza, the mother is a feiry and intelligent woman. An Engineer from a prominent Shia family in Baghdad, she writes with passion and shows contempt for terrorists and the occupying force for making Iraqi's endure such suffering. She recently travelled to the USA for a 'peace building' course. Faiza's blog is written in Arabic and then translated into English by a friend. This blog is very moving, written from both a proffessional view and from a mothers view, it often shows how situations can shape a persons perspective.

Faiza and Family are the kind of people that is required for the rebuilding process to be successfull in Iraq. Kind hearted, hard working and intelligent people who are unfortunately becoming alienated about the whole rebuilding proccess, because so much negativity has come from the occupation.

I expect them to play their role with their entire hearts and every ounce of energy or penny they have, because thats the kind of family they are. Faiza's blog gets also an 8/10 bordering 9/10 sometimes. Check it out for yourself and read back to the contributions made by Raed and Khalid years ago.

http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com/

Watch for the next update about 17 year old Moslawi girl Najma and her sister HNK.

Will add more blogs to this list later, and give reviews on them also! The purpose of this blog will be to effectively act as a 'link page' of blogs that both myself and Mike find worthy of note. So far our favourite blogs come almost entirely from Iraq, though not exclusively.