Category: Life in Iraq

Yesterday the sky was blood red.  I never saw anything like it.  I thought of taking a picture, but I figured the camera couldn’t capture it.  I would just look like I shot a picture through some kind of red filter.  The red dust comes all the way from Syria.  A person who knew enough about dust could probably tell you exactly where every storm started.

I cleaned out my can yesterday.  In anticipation of my imminent departure from Iraq, I swept out the whole place and mopped the floor with Pine Sol.   The red dust storm negated all that effort.  You can shut the door and all the windows and you still cannot keep it out.  This would have bothered me a couple of months ago, but no more.  I have gotten used to it and now that I will not have to experience it much longer, the various textures and types of dust merely amuse me. 

A few days ago we had a real wrath of God storm.  Columns of dust blew toward us, accompanied by a fantastic show of lighting bolts that walked across the sky in all directions.  When the storm arrived it rained mud for around ten minutes.  Then it passed and rumbled away in the other direction.

The day before yesterday was a non-dusty nice day.  I got up early in the morning and went out to run about 0600.  It is already around 80 degrees at that hour. It feels like a warm October afternoon in Virginia; you just have to time shift.   As I walked to the starting point and looked out over the low dirt bluffs, I appreciated the beauty of the sun and shadows on the different shades of khaki.   I was seeing beauty in the dirt that I had not seen before. 

That, of course, is from the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”  for no defensible reason, I once made the effort to memorize it.  These lines have some application to the subject at hand.  The Mariner for the first time can see beauty even of the ghastly water snakes.

Looking is a physical process, but seeing is an act of mental interpretation.   I don’t think that I could see these colors and contrasts before.   I still think that this is an unpleasant place, but the brown desert of Al Anbar is not completely devoid of attractions and splendor of its own.  I wonder if I might have been here long enough.   I guess I have seen the elephant.

I spoke to merchants and pedestrians along the main street in Hit.  It was encouraging to hear their stories too.  Many of the businesses were new.  The proprietors told me that they had been in business a few months or that they had closed down and reopened recently.  Their complaints were no longer about security, as they had been only a short time before.  Now they had the usual prosaic problems such as traffic congestion, lack of electricity and general difficulty doing business around the dilapidated infrastructure of this city on the Euphrates.   If you sum up the complaints, you could say that their political leaders were failing to provide the basic building blocks of prosperity.

The picture shows a bicycle repair shop in Hit.  The best bikes sell for 85,000 dinar, around $85.  The proprietor told us that he was only 16 years old, but he had a talent for fixing bikes.  It is his labor and skills that he brings into the partnership.  His partner is an older, richer guy who provides the coin to keep the operation going.   Our sixteen-year-old friend said he was happy with the arrangement and hopeful for the future.  He had been in business for around three months and business was good.  Having a business based on the rugged & rubble strewn streets of Hit, he gets to repair lots of bent wheels and flat tires. 

We went to see the political leaders and met the problem.   The head of the town council greeted us with a question: “What do you have to give me?”   When I reminded him that we were seeking a sustainable partnership where he would work WITH us, he promised to make a detailed list of all the things he wanted us to give him.  There was an uncomfortable moment as we explained that we had no intention of just filling orders.  It was his town.  We would help; we would not do the job of the local authorities.  

The most frustrating people are those who are both indolent and demanding.

I should not be entirely negative. We are working well with some parts of the city.  Below constructing drainage in Hit with help of USG funds (CSP).  It just could be so much better.

Hit is the worst of major towns in my district.    The tragedy of Hit is that the people, the merchants and mechanics I met, were hard working and willing to take on more responsibility, but they were held back by the incompetence, cravenness and sometimes downright dishonesty of their political leaders.   The difference that good (or even just not bad) leadership can make is astonishing.  It is hard to hold back progress.  We see gains in Al Qaim, Anah, Hadithah and now even in Rutbah, which sits in the middle of nowhere getting little in terms of funding.   Hit’s satellite city of Kubaysah is even doing well.   I wonder if the people of Hit can trump their leadership and make the transition to prosperity.

In general, this week’s meetings (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post) and travels provoked both hope and gloom.  I am filled with admiration for the brave Iraqis who stood up against violence and terrorism when there was no guarantee or even probability that they would win.  They have seen enough suffering and death for many lifetimes and yet still they persist.   When I talk to the merchants and businesses people, literally rebuilding Iraq, I cannot help feel joy at the resilience of the human spirit.   Yet they all stumble over the pernicious legacy of dependence and dishonesty left over from the socialism and tyranny of the former regime.    I am confident that these problems will be just be speed bumps on the road to prosperity, but we will certainly suffer a few more jolts.

Fishermen near Hadithah are pulling bigger fish out of the Euphrates than anybody can remember.   The fish got a chance to be so big because locals had been unable to fish during the late insurgency.  Coalition forces had limited or banned river traffic to prevent terrorists from using the river as transportation and a way to get away.  With the more stable situation, the ban was been lifted, but fishing did not return to its previous levels, despite the size of the fish population.  Why not?

We thought of the obvious reasons, maybe the boats were not in good repair or that people were still afraid to take to the water, but this didn’t seem to be true.  People were fishing, but not so much.  They were fishing for their own or for very local consumption, but not for market.   Then we identified to missing link.  It was not the boats, river, fish, fish markets or fishermen.  The missing link was ice.

Fish are very perishable.  You can catch that big fish, but it is probably not a good idea to buy it or eat it after it has been sitting around in 110 degree heat in the sun all day.  W/o ice, fish mongering is limited to places very near the river where live fish can be maintained.

There was an ice factory nearby, but it was not in operation.  CF helped get it up and running and now fishing is returning.  All this makes our plans to help with fish hatcheries in Anah and Hadithah more urgent, but the hatcheries would have been ineffective and maybe even harmful if the ice problem had not been solved.

The lesson for me was a reminder of bottlenecks and how well the free market works if it is allowed to do so.    We (in this case essentially bureaucratic planners) didn’t think through the whole system.  No planners really can.  That is why the market works so well.  Individuals or groups identify a need and they fill it – IF they can.  The authorities’ role is not to do, but to enable. I think we did the right thing in enabling rather than providing.  Independently, CF are contracting with local firms for ice, rather than making it ourselves, which we are more than capable of doing.   This is helping build an ice infrastructure, which will be in place after we leave.  Ice is a big deal in this hot climate. 

I am glad that we caught on in time.   You accomplish big goals by a combination of applying pushing energy and removing obstacles.  It is tempting just to push harder because you have more ostensible control, but often the obstacle removal is the way to go.  Buying boats & nets, training fishermen etc would have looked good on our reports, but removing the obstacle and letting them do it themselves was the true key to success.

As the old Taoist wisdom advises, the best way to accomplish a task is when the people say, “we did it all by ourselves.”

FYI – In case anybody notices, I am still in the U.S. and this post is out of sequence.  I wrote it a couple weeks ago.  I just forgot to post.  The pictures are old ones too. The top one is fishermen on Lake Qadissya and the one above is Lake Thar-Thar.