Month: March 2008

Foreign terrorists are the most serious problem, but fraud at border crossings is a border crossing problem in all times and places and routine fraud is a lot more common. The POE at Waleed processes many travelers every day and among the travelers are some dishonest people, some very clever. 

The new director of the passport unit was a real professional.  He showed us a variety of fake visas, each more professionally done than the last.  At first they were easy to detect.  Forgers merely replaced a page or photo shopped in a different picture.   They became more and more professionally done.  Eventually, the only way to tell the fraudulent passports from the real ones was by matching their serial numbers.  Finally it was not even possible to do that.   The director showed us a perfect fake passport.  If it was perfect, how did it come to be detected?  The director was a very intelligent man, but unassuming.  He reminded me of Colombo on the old television series, a little disheveled and diffident.  He explained that his experience made him think something was wrong.  As he asked a few questions, it became clear that the passport holder knew few details about the city where he ostensibly lived.   The director cracked the case the old fashioned way: with experience, persistence and intelligence.  As I said, a real professional.

The director told us that the most common passport besides Iraqi was Syrian. This is not surprise at the Syrian border.  Next most common?  Swedish.  Who’d a thought that?  But it makes sense. Lots of Iraqis have gone to Sweden over the years seeking asylum.  Now they come back, at least temporarily, but it is still good to have that kind of document.

The POE has access to decent equipment, but it is hooked up to a primitive system.  To make the black light machine work properly, the director had to jiggle the plug in the outlet.   Offices left the impression of an abandoned building.  The director told us that he was going to go down to Baghdad and make sure he got some renovations done.  If he is as good at this part of his job as he is at detecting fraud, he will probably succeed.

I always thought it was a joke.  Iraqi men would ask me if I was married.  When I said, “yes”, they would ask me how many wives.  We both laughed a little.  Then a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would play along with the joke and when they told me that they were married, I asked the same question about wives.  To my surprise, it had been a serious question and almost everybody has more than one.  It should not have come as a surprise.  This is a Muslim country and the men I meet are usually well off and so are the kinds of guys who can afford larger families, but somehow it never really occurred to me.

Some of these guys are very active.  One old toothless sheik has a very young son from a very young new wife.  While I suspect it is possible that there might be more men on the job, nobody is particularly surprised by this.  A local mayor mentioned in passing that he had three wives and fourteen kids.  He also said, perfunctorily, that he was getting married next week.  When I pressed him on the fact that he didn’t seem that excited, he explained that he was just marrying his sister in law.  His brother had died and somebody had to take care of her.  He got the job to keep it all in the family. 

The extended family is one of the pillars of the polygamy.  We tend to project the system into the American context of a nuclear family just with a couple additional women.  That is not really how it works here.  It is more of a welfare system married (literally) to a system of tribal or dynastic alliances.  Tribal affiliation is the key to success for individuals.  You can be born into a tribe or you can marry into a tribe and if you are particularly clever you can marry into up to four tribes.   This both complicates and simplifies genealogy because after a few generations there are lots of overlaps, so you have fewer family lines but a lot more permutations among them.

If you assume that there is rough gender parity for 18-25 year-olds, polygamy means that if some guys get two or three wives, others don’t get any at all, or at least they have to pick up the older women from the age groups where women come to outnumber men.  I suppose in a culture where a lot of men died in warfare, such a system works out well.  I recall reading about the Blackfoot Indians of Montana.  They were a particularly warlike people and sometimes as many as 2/3 of the male population was killed in the low-level but perpetual warfare they favored.  No matter.  The remaining men did triple duty and each generation was as big as the one previous.   

I don’t think this is the way it is working in Iraq.  It is just the traditional Muslim practice and seems fairly routine & uncontroversial at least among the men of western Al Anbar. 

Angelina Jolie has been here, but this time it was only us.  I don’t know how many Palestinians are stranded in the camp.  The numbers evidently vary as people come and go.  My guess is that there were around 1200 people in the camp, but I am not very good at these sort of estimates.  I have heard estimates ranging from around 900-2000.  These people had come from Baghdad around three years ago.  During the bad days a couple years ago, various groups could not agree on much, but they often agreed that they did not like Palestinians.  We really didn’t have a plan or any reason to go to the camp; we only wanted to see it because we are often asked about such things.  It was not what I thought, not the picture I had in mind.

Actually the PICTURE was what I expected, the UNHCR tents, squalor and crowds of people hanging around w/o much to do.  What was different from my mental model was what was going on and the people themselves.  The people were friendly, but not particularly interesting in us.  A few kids came around; some people gawked a bit, but most just went around their business, such as it was. 

I stopped at a tent where they were selling fruit and vegetables.  The bananas looked fresh and better than those we get in the chow hall.  Tomatoes looked wholesome, but were imperfect, i.e. lots of bruises and nicks.  Only the cauliflower didn’t look acceptable.  It was past prime and browning.  It was probably suitable only for soup.  All the fruits and vegetables were well presented and the shopping area was neat.  The shopkeeper told me that his wares came from Rutbah; most originated in Syria, but still came through Rutbah.  I thought that was a little odd that things coming from Syria would pass right by the camp, go all the way to Rutbah and then come back, but the guy insisted that was the case.  The grocery tent also sold rice and flour. I noticed that it said “product of Syria” in English on the bags.  He didn’t have much rice on hand.

In nearby tents you could buy the other necessities of life such as cigarettes (Galois was the only brand I saw on offer) and various types of soft drinks.  I didn’t see any contraband such as alcohol, but I didn’t look very hard.  One shop featured as small number of canned good and there were some small consumer electrical products. 

Just having a market surprised me but it makes sense.  People naturally organize themselves around markets if they get the chance.  The refugees get a food ration, so these foodstuffs are just supplements.

I didn’t see any fresh meat in the shops, but I did see fresh meat being produced.  We were greeted by the sights, sounds and smells of butchering as we walked into the camp.  I was not impressed by the sanitary conditions.   We didn’t actually see the sheep slaughtered, but when we came in the blood was still flowing, running downhill and soaking into the sand.  They had cut the head clean off and set it near the carcass.  By the time we had finished our visit; they had largely skinned the beast and killed another.  We did not see ourselves but were told that the butchers just toss the waste products near the highway overpass.  We did see tuffs of hair blowing in the wind.

The camp featured a recreation hall and a school.  We didn’t want to go into the school because we didn’t want to disrupt the classes.  The recreation hall was decent sized.  There was a fine pool table with some guys were playing pool.   They evidently had no cue ball, but that did not deter them.   There was also a few guys playing checkers and the television was on, tuned to Al Jazeera news. 

The camp was an unpleasant place, but nobody looked undernourished or even very poorly dressed.  This time of the year life is probably not very uncomfortable, but in the colder times of the winter and especially during the oppressive heat of summer conditions must be almost unbearable.  At any time of the year, boredom must be a factor.