Category: Iraq

I was back at the POE at Husaybah for the first time since I attended the opening about a month and half ago.  Last time I was here there no commerce flowed through the POE.   There is still not much.  The trade coming through consisted of bongo trucks (short flat beds) and vans piled so full and high with produce and goods that their bottoms scrap against every high point in the pavement and a particularly high speed bump could present an impassible barrier. 

The big rigs, eighteen wheelers, are still not coming through.  We thought it might be for security reasons, but the we were assured that the guys at the POE were ready, willing and able to handle them.  For now, the Syrian side seems to be holding up the big truck transit.   I could not find out the ostensible reason but it seems to be a minor or a technical issue rather than a policy statement.  As of now, it doesn’t make much of a difference.  There was not a line of trucks waiting to come over.  The POE on both sides is small and the roads narrow, which leads to another POE problem.

The POE in Husaybah is currently like a roach motel for big trucks: they can check in, but they cannot check out. The roads leading from the POE to the rest of Iraq are too narrow.  Big trucks can drive along them, but if they do nothing else can move in the other direction.  The solution to this problem seems simple: widen the road or – preferably – build another as a bypass for the heavy trucks.  Of course, the simple solution is not the easy solution because it smacks of effort and costs money, but this will have to happen.  The expedient solution, the one that I predict in the short and medium term, is simply for the trucks to force other traffic to drive across the adjacent desert.  The desert is flat and has a consistency a lot like pavement anyway.   I suppose trial and error will even help identify the best routes for the roads, whenever they are actually built.

The POE manager also complained that he did not have enough room to park vehicles waiting for inspection or secure vehicles that have been impounded or just need to be stored for whatever reason.  I am no expert, but this is also a problem I just cannot understand.  Much of western Iraq looks for all the world like a giant parking lot.  In the short term, all anybody needs to do is put up a fence around a suitable area of it and call it an impound lot.  If you didn’t want a fence, an earth berm would probably do the job, maybe even do the job better, since it would be harder to break down and drive through than a chain link fence.   

My general impression is that the POE is just too small for the traffic you could reasonably expect to be coming through when peace and prosperity takes firm root in Iraq.  Fortunately, along this stretch of the Syrian border topography is very forgiving for procrastinating planners & prospective pavers.  Nature has provided acres of flat, hard packed surfaces with few obstacles to block anything rolling across.  There are no significant obstacles to making this POE work besides human inertia, lethargy, perfidiousness and plain cussedness.   This can be overcome.

The guys currently stifled by the lack of parking and roads across a landscape that is essentially one giant parking lot are the same ones who devise elegant and imaginative solutions to much tougher questions of distribution of the goods and services they want and need.  If people want to make this work, it will work.

I could not get this picture to come out no matter how I tried to sharpen it.  Those little dots are artifacts of the sharpening, not part of the picture. It would be at the edge of the photo. You can see it, but it is nowhere near what I saw.  The moon had a very bright halo ring all around it.  I have never seen it like that.  I stared up at the sky several minutes until I realized that I was cold.  It was like you might expect to see in a Sci-fi movie – UFOs, strange aliens etc.  Since I wanted to avoid any alien probing, I took a picture and quickly skedaddled into the safety of my can.  Who would believe me?

I got a box from Chrissy, which ironically made me sad, since it reminded me that I was not with her and the kids.  Alex sent me some wonderful books and I also got some of my tree farm magazines.  I suppose it is natural to feel lonely and homesick when you are away on Christmas.  I do.

The Marines got together, led by our British Royal Marine colleague, and sang the twelve days of Christmas with Marine themes.  It was funny.  

I don’t have too much more to write today.  I just felt like writing something before going to sleep. Good night and Merry Christmas.

Above is me hanging around, waiting for the sand to settle.

I don’t like being in Iraq.  I look for small successes and enjoy myself observing the variety of new things around me, but overall the experience is not pleasant.   Of course, I am not alone in thinking this.   Few of us would stay here if we were not needed but we all need to stay until we are done.

I am writing this in my little notebook as I sit at the ADAC waiting for my flight to Anah.  I know my mood is darker than usual. I told you the frustrating story yesterday.  Today, so far, has produced no more joy.  If do not get to Anah by 1230, there is no point in going.   I will have missed the event.  That means if I am not in the air by 1130, there is no point in leaving the ground and I will bail out.  I regret to admit that I find myself hoping for that outcome.  In that case, I can go back to Al Asad and hunker down.  I can not do my job and have a perfectly good excuse for my failure.  It is only a “sin of thought”, not of deed, but I feel ashamed to think it.

Vince Lombardi said that fatigue makes cowards of us all.  He was right.  I am tired today.  Tomorrow I will do better.

You can endure a lot of “how” if you keep looking to the goal and remember the “why” of what you are trying to achieve.

I am climbing out of that pit of despair I inadvertently tumbled into yesterday.  I had the opportunity to talk with General Robert Magnus, the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.  I have to admit that I am still impressed with meeting important people, especially when they turn out to be impressive and I can learn from being with them.  Over breakfast, we discussed our ePRT programs and as I answered his questions about what we had done and planned to do, I remembered our goal and the valuable work we are doing.

Making progress here remains slow and painful.  We have more starts than finishes.  It takes hours or days to perform some simple tasks that might take minutes in a more benign environment. Sometimes we cannot even get started.  I did not make it to Anah yesterday and the ceremony went on w/o me.  But for the losses there are gains.  Missing my flight yesterday allowed me to have breakfast with General Magnus today, for example.  Being trapped in a big dusty waiting room also gave me a chance to think through some management decisions, which I put into effect yesterday.  And through it all, we are moving forward.  Projects, like the courthouse I did not get to see, are being done.  Anbar is becoming more secure & prosperous.  It is worth the effort.

The picture is from my backyard when we lived in New Hampshire.  I doubt if anyplace in Iraq looks like this, but it is the only Christmas picture I have on my computer.

White Christmas?

Yesterday night the temperatures dipped into the 20s and it was even colder with the wind chill.  I wonder if it will get much cooler.  Yesterday was the shortest day of the year.   Now it will start getting lighter and warmer.  I hear that February is a beautiful month.  March has good temperatures, but it is sandstorm season.  It starts to get hot in late April and by June it is again frying pan weather.  Winter evidently turns into what reasonable people would recognize as glorious summer in February.  It gets warm enough, and then it overshoots the mark moving into unbearable heat, so I am less enthusiastic about the coming of spring that I have been other places where I have lived.  Winter is okay with me. 

As I walked home tonight, I noticed something about the landscape in the moonlight.  I could imagine it as snowy.  In the moonlight, the gravel and dirt looked white.  The heaps of dirt could be snow banks and the dust blowing in the light near the guard post could have been snow.  You are right.  I don’t really believe it either.   Merry Christmas anyway.

I was supposed to be in Anah for the reopening of a courthouse.  This is a significant milestone in the march toward the rule of law.  A few months ago, nobody could find a judge willing to stand up to the terrorists.  Tomorrow there will be a courthouse, the symbol of the rule of law.  Our funds helped rebuild and furnish the courthouse.   That is one reason I really wanted to go and see what we had wrought.

I was happily in my can at 730 when I got a knock on the door.  I had to go to the airports immediately to catch my helicopter flight.  This kind of short notice is not unusual.  I keep my stuff good to go.   Breakfast?  We don’t need no breakfast.  We picked up Sam, our new and very good translator, an American citizen born in Iraq.  This is great because he has local knowledge AND a security clearance, and headed out.

We got there for show time.  I made an entry about show time a couple months ago.  Suffice to say, show time is not always closely related to departure time.  Although we had sunny clear skies, it was evidently sand-storming someplace, because we had a weather alert.  We formed up and went to the flight line.  I have learned the system, so when I got there, I laid down in the sun and took a nap.  The air was cool, but the sun was warm.  It was not bad if you can filter out the noise and smells.   I have learned that too.

About 20 minutes later, I heard the sound of Ospreys, got in line and walked onto the tarmac.  Unfortunately, it was not our flight.  Back to the flight line and a few more minutes of rest.   Then the “shepherd” comes by and tells us the weather has closed in. We go back to the terminal and sit.  I read my book.  A very good one about Iraqi history my friend Tim thoughtfully sent me. 

It was getting on toward lunch time, so I went to see what the MRE situation was like.  It was, sad to say, normal.  I had something labeled cheese and what they said was wheat bread.  Bread in MREs comes packed with one of those little silica packets you get in the pockets of new clothes.  That tells you something about the quality of the product.  I am not sure you could tell it was bread in a blind taste test.  But hunger is the best cook.  I ate two pieces.  My colleague Sam asked me whether it was mold or a type of fruit sauce on his desert cookie.  I asked him if he thought it really mattered.  He said no and ate the cookie.

Our flight was called again.  We tramped out and went back to the flight line.  I resumed my previous position, now wonderfully enhanced by a warmer sun.   The flight shepherd came by and promised the helicopter would be there in 15 minutes. Twenty minutes later he came back and said that he had good and bad news.   The good new was that the helicopters were coming.  The bad news was that we couldn’t get on them.  They were going straight to Al Qaim with no stops.  Seems they were late (yes) and making up time.  He told us to come back at 2000.  We left the flight line just as the chow hall closed.  

I went back at 2000.  There was no flight going to Rawah/Anah. The guy at the desk told me that I should have been on the flight that left at 930.  I explained that I was there for that very flight.  It did not actually show up until 1330 and it did not go to Rawah/Anah at all.   He looked at the book and said that the flight was scheduled for 930 and his book showed it had gone.  Where it had gone in reality was neither specified in the book nor a concern of his.   Anyway, my options were to stay there all night and try to get a flight in the morning or go home and come back and try to get a flight in the morning.  Which option I chose also was not one of his concerns. I chose option #2.  That is where I am today.  If you don’t see an entry from me tomorrow, it probably means I was successful.

Of course, if I don’t make it to Anah, I might not write because I will have nothing interesting to report.  The MREs will neither improve nor deteriorate.  It will likely be cool and sunny tomorrow, as it was today and as it is every day this time of year.  I really want to go to Anah.  I have never been there.  I hear it is a planned city, planned by the French more than 80 years ago.  It is supposed to be a pleasant place.  That would be a nice change.  Take a look at the Al Asad pictures in my last blog note and you may understand what I mean. The French are good at planning cities and complicated meals.  Pierre L’Enfant planned Washington DC.  Now there is a subway stop named after him.  People should do what they are good at doing.

I have been accumulating short notes but none are enough for a post, so I have glommed them all together in no particular order.

Plexiglas Beats Sandbags

I have Plexiglas in my windows.  Everybody else has sand bags.  I did too, but once when I was standing near my window some of the sandbags spontaneously fell down, bathing my office in natural light.  The Marines thought it was odd that the sandbags fell down only in front of my windows and they piled them back up.  I felt like the guy in the “Cask of Amontillado” watching out the window while the sandbags piled higher.  The colonel allowed that if natural light was so important to me, I could have Plexiglas.   Now I do.  The view is not spectacular (as you can see in the photo), but the windows are above me and when I look up I can see the sky.  I like that.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, Wie grün sind deine Bottles

The picture speaks for itself.  In some places they use beer bottles, some of which come naturally in green.   In this heaven, however, there is no beer.  They use Gatorade bottles filled with colored water.   

Tatooine

That is the desolate planet where Luke Skywalker lives, or maybe it is Al Asad.

Gettysburg Can City

I just think the name if funny.  It sits across from Lima Tent City.  They actually are cities where people live (cf Tatooine above) You probably cannot tell from the picture, but that bunch of concrete on the left is Ripper Mall.  We have a laundry, little PX and telephone calling center.  Parking is free and always available.  That “parking lot” you see in the front is not paved, BTW.  The desert can be as hard as pavement and is sometimes easier to drive next to than on a road.

NPR Worldwide

I recently got Worldspace Satellite Radio.  The antenna is in the picture.  It gets very good reception of NPR, BBC, CNN radio etc. I really missed NPR.  With Worldspace, I can listen to “Morning Edition” in the afternoon and “All Things Considered” & “Talk of the Nation” before bed.   I still download “Dianne Rehm” weekly news roundup onto my I-Pod for time shifting.  Now that I also have a TV with AFN, I can watch the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” just before breakfast.  I was worried that I would become uniformed during my sojourn in the desert.  Now my only problem is becoming misinformed.

Minor Ailments

My ears are still ringing from the helicopter ride I described in the post a few days ago.  When I sleep on my left ear, it does nearly deaf.  I have to tug on it a few times to unlplug it.  The trend seems good, however.  Persistent dust makes for dry eyes and throats.  I am not fond of dust.  I read that some Egyptian mummies have symptoms of a sort of black lung disease caused by the dust there.  I will not be in the desert long enough to suffer it, but this clearly is not a healthy place to live.  The adjective phrase “God forsaken” leaps to mind when looking around most of Al Anbar, at least when you get a short distance away from the Euphrates.  You get beautiful lush places across from lots of nothing – a strange blend of heaven and hell.   

Goats, Grass & Deserts

Dennis has hopes for a kind of wildlife restoration corridor.  I described his grand plan in an earlier post.   Goats & sheep are a big impediment.  These beasts are very picturesque, but they are desert makers.  The land here is arid, but it is barren because of the works of man and his sheep & goats.  They eat everything down to and including roots.  Where there is rain enough or where pastures are properly managed, this is okay.  Neither of these conditions applies in Iraq.  The land will not recover until and unless the goats & sheep are controlled.  Since this is a problem 4000 years in the making, I do not expect too much.  We will try an “ink blot” strategy of protecting small areas as we can and hoping they will expand.  This may be the triumph of hope over experience, but even if the sound management does not spread, at least we will have helped some restoration.

Small Victories

In the small victories category, we have identified a source of “gopher wood”.  This has nothing to do with the small rodent pests.  Rather it is a type of common Mediterranean cypress that grows 25 meters tall and has very durable wood.  The story is that Noah used it to construct his Ark.  I don’t know about that.  What I do know is this cypress was part of the original forest on the upper Euphrates.  We plan to give the little trees out when we visit towns and villages.  If they thrived once, I hope they can thrive again, even if the soil is a bit depleted because of bad farming practices and goats.

The picture is Van Gogh.  The real trees do not look so menacing.  Van Gogh had a different point of view.  BTW – he had more trouble with his left ear than I do and he wasn’t even in a helicopter. 

We have achieved a few other prosaic but important successes that should clear the way for a more effective operation.   A team member returned from Baghdad with funds to pay for dozens of QRF projects.   We also learned that we will no longer have to send a team member down on the four day trip to fetch funds; Fed Ex will do the job for us.  We are also in line to get another team member who help us with business development, something badly needed in western Anbar.  As peace returns, prosperity will follow faster if we can help develop local business.  Finally, our new bicultural specialist, an American citizen born in Iraq,  has developed a plan to help us recruit LES in our outlying districts.  We have been planning this for some time, but it is good to get something – literally – on paper with an Arabic heading. Fox News spent a week in our AO and produced several positive stories about western Anbar and about RCT 2.  I have video clips which I can share with anyone who wants to see them.

In the background are Hesco barriers.  Guess what those things in foreground are.

I truly enjoy the RCT 2 Marine briefings.  A lot of information passes but feelings of camaraderie and humor lighten the mood.  But it is a special kind of subtle humor, often more conveyed by slight changes in word emphasis (there can be a lot of meaning in a “yes sir”), facial expression or what goes unsaid.  I am afraid I will not be able to properly convey it, but I will try with an example.  First I need to provide a little background.

The Regiment is in the process of demilitarization – demiling.  During the recent unpleasantness, the Marines deployed various types of fortifications.  As areas are returned to civil Iraqi control these things must be removed and the place returned to its former condition.  This often means barren desert, but it has to be smooth barren desert.  The recently demiled desert is usually better than the original, since the smoothing tends to squash down and bury the preexisting garbage.  It doesn’t take military action to create a litter problem. 

Probably the most common forms of fortifications are Hesco barriers.  A Hesco barrier is essentially a barrel of fabric, held in place by wire and filled with dirt and debris.  You can see the pictures above.  They are easy to make and very good at absorbing explosions but unattractive.  The wire is valuable as scrap, but the fabric, which has no salvage value, must be separated.  The protocol calls for the fabric to be burned and the metal salvaged.  Now that I have set the stage, imagine the scene. 

The colonel asks the engineer captain about a particular stretch of road being cleaned up and Hesco barriers removed.  The captain explains, “We burn the fabric, sir, to salvage the metal…”  The captain pauses.  The colonel looks up in anticipation, saying nothing.  The captain gets a satisfied smile on his face and adds “… with our flame throwers, sir”.  Everybody in the room perks up.  The colonel says, “You have flame throwers?  Why do you have flame throwers?”  The captain answers, “Yes sir.  For counter vegetation, sir, we have two flame throwers.”  Testosterone surge in the room is palpable. There are several spontaneous offers to help with the flame throwers. 

It is true that the flame throwers are good for “counter vegetation operations.”  They are very effective in clearing a defensive area around a fortified position.  But it was clear from the enthusiasm expressed that using the flame throwers against vegetation or Hesco barrier is a chore nobody avoids.

BTW – in the picture foreground are urinals.  You try to hit the pipe.  Privacy is not an issue.

The picture is Madison, Wisconsin where I went to school.  I took it in September, just before I left for Iraq. It has nothing to do with Iraq.  It is just a place I enjoyed being.

I have conflicting feelings being the boss.  Everybody else on my staff has something particular to do.  In the “management position” you give up much of the hands-on fun and have to resist the urge to interfere in the productive work of others.  In compensation, you get to avoid some details as well as see and maybe shape the big picture.  The bargain is worth it, but there are clearly costs as well as gains.  For example, I would dearly love to tramp along on the agricultural assessments, but I cannot justify the investment in my time and, besides, I would surely get in the way of the real work if I hung around like a f*rt in a phone booth. 

One of my management duties today is to aggregate the work of my team so that I can understand and to coordinate efforts and, more urgently although perhaps less importantly, be able to brief high level visitors who will be coming around in a couple of days.  The team is active, making the aggregating job more complex, but at the same time making the leadership job a lot more satisfying.

I have everywhere been lucky in finding good colleagues and being able to profit from serendipitous opportunities.  Timing has also often worked to my advantage.

My timing in Iraq was luckier than I had any right to expect.  My predecessor set up the ePRT.  In the creation stage of any endeavourer, investments in time and resources show few tangible results, so the poor guy was working hard and doing good work, but had few specific achievements to brag about.  I inherited an operation at the takeoff stage.  In my short tenure, I have been able to approve and start scores of small projects collectively worth a half million dollars.  I look pretty tall standing on my predecessor’s shoulders.

I had even better timing with the security situation.  I set foot in Anbar at almost exactly at an inflection point in the violence.   Investments the Marines made in blood and treasure were beginning to yield results and the situation just continued to improve. The remarkable reduction of violence make it POSSIBLE to do our projects.   My colleagues who have been here longer tell me that six months ago it was hard to find organizations or contractors brave enough to take our money for projects.  Our problem today is choosing who among the many excellent opportunities.   Nor do I want to minimize the personal benefits for me and my staff.  It is much more pleasant to visit projects or contacts when you have a reasonable expectation of coming safely home.  The excitement of danger is much more attractive in the movies than in real life and I prefer to do w/o it whenever possible.

Life is an enormous relay race.  I got the baton now and it is my duty to run as best I can until I hand it off, but I have to be grateful that my stretch of track is smooth and mostly downhill due to the work of others.

Anyway, I need to get to work actually assessing the projects, making the list and checking it twice, so that I can better understand and explain all that we do and what we will do.  I am proud of my team.  It just goes to show that you don’t have to be smart if you are lucky and I am lucky to be here at this time with these guys.

BTW – to help me keep up with the many projects and commitments, I have gone low tech returning to something I used successfully for years – a durable little green notebook (Federal supply 7530-01-060-7511) about the size of a wallet that fits in my back pocket.  I always have access to it and when I have even a short time available, I can page through my notes.  It is a type of study and memorandum.  It has the advantage of being simple.  I used to make notes on a Blackberry, but I often forgot the notes I made and even more often let the urgent of the latest message replace the importance of the best idea.   With this, my constant review keeps important things at the front of my mind.  I am not going to give up technology, but for some tasks perhaps the appropriate technology is the simplest.

The picture above shows a couple of my paper PDAs.  Don’t worry the notes are from unclassified briefings and I made sure to practice good OPSEC.  Besides, who can read my writing?