Abu Kahleel is an Iraqi blogger that I've linked to before. He has another blog which is more political: called Iraqi Letters.

Today, I got an interesting email from him: Friends, As you know, my farm is in one of the most troubled regions in the country. For the past three and a half years I have done my best to fight the forces of decay and darkness in my little corner of the world where people trust me and know that I have their interest at heart. Now, I have lost that battle. Yet, I still want to think ahead to the time when the dust of evil decay settles and the rivers of blood run dry. I also want to be there when that happens, with something useful for those good people – the innocents. I want to make plans for a small, local community project involving a small school, a clinic, an electric generator and a water-treatment unit. And I want to get people outside Iraq involved and to get them to help. I intend to introduce the project on my blog "A Glimpse of Iraq". I have pasted a draft at the end of this message. If you have the time, please read it and tell me what you think. I have tried to make it as brief as I could. I toyed around with the idea of allocating a square foot of the land for every book sold and to give the purchaser a single vote on controlling the project, but my wife thinks this is too close to "gimmickry". So, I have put in two alternatives to have you consider. I intend to write to some Iraqi friends to help I seek their help in designing the various units of the project, in providing cost estimates and in specifying requirements for the smallest possible clinic (with possible expansion into a small hospital in future). I seek your help in telling me if the scheme is worth pursuing. If it is then I would be grateful for any suggestions on finding a reputable, trustworthy organization to manage funds and oversee the project and on means of managing name lists of participants, monitoring, updating, website, etc I would also be most grateful for any practical ideas on how to improve the scheme. Best wishes, Ibrahim / Abu Khaleel He truly seems like an honorable, good hearted man who is looking for a way to help a small portion of his country. Do any of you have any advice which would be helpful for him? (The book he mentions is based on the Glimpse of Iraq blog, and is very interesting. The email went out to those of us who had already bought it, so this isn't a sales pitch. Also, the italic tag is misbehaving.)