Category: Iraq

I got my TV connected a few days ago and for the first time in almost two months started watching the news again.  There was a lot of debate about whether or not the surge was working.  While my experience in Iraq is deeper than it is broad, I have observed a few things since I got here that apply to the wider Iraq debate.  I will not reveal anything sensitive and what I am writing here is my personal opinion.  Those of you who know me can discount/compensate for my biases.  All others are on their own.

From my point of view, the surge in Iraq has worked.  My team and I can go places and do things were impossible just months ago.  The Marines who were here before tell me about the unbelievable changes and I can see for myself people rebuilding and putting their lives back together.  We are well received by Iraqis.  Kids come out of their houses to wave at the convoys.  They clearly are not afraid of us.  It is abundantly evident that this place that has just experienced war and war is a terrible thing to experience.  The bad guys can still murder and do damage, but they are increasingly marginalized.  Iraq will not be as peaceful as Switzerland any time soon, but there is a chance now.  It might be the best chance this place has had since the time of Hamurabi to establish a reasonably stable country where rule of law prevails.

Achieving this, however, required and continues to require strong measures.  Security must come before development and security is established and maintained by force.  In an functioning society, force is less obvious and required less frequently, but even Mayberry has a sheriff and a jail.

Here in Anbar the Marines cooperated with local leaders to establish security.  Insurgents and AQI ruled in most of this place last year.  They could not be persuaded to leave.  They needed to be pushed out.  Not all insurgents were terrorists, and some – most – can be reconciled with civilized societies, as I wrote in a previous post.  Others are just bad.  No earthly redemption is possible.   They need to be removed and the sooner the better because their influence is like a pathogen.  Many people who would be good and honest people are corrupted by contact with them.  You are saving lives by removing them from the population.  I know this is very unPC.  It is also true.  Even in our established societies, we have the Jeffrey Dahlmers and the Ted Bundys.  When the institutions of society break down it gets worse.

What works to establish security is persistence.  The Marines patrol.  Most of the time when they patrol nothing happens.  But it is a numbers game.  Sometimes they find things and their presence disrupts the bad guys and makes them nervous.  In addition, As the Iraqi people see the Marines in routine roles they get accustomed to them and more cooperative.

Most insurgents or terrorists are not fanatics who want to die.  In fact, they are often a little on the lazy side.  Many do it for the money or the excitement.  When success is easy, lots of people want to get involved.  When it gets harder or dangerous, they stay home and find better things to do.   That is why a simple strategy like an earth berm is a useful counter insurgency measure.  Obviously, they could just climb over the berm, but they usually don’t because it exposes them to detection and they are just too lazy to hump their equipment over the top.

The Marines have done their part.   It is now becoming the task of others.  Our PRT is part of that “diplomatic surge”.   We can help but it is ultimately up to the Iraqis to finish this job. Iraq is potentially a prosperous country.   I cannot predict the future, but it seems to me that Iraq can become a reasonably democratic and stable place, if we put in the effort.  This is not a pleasant place, but I would be unhappy if I got pulled out before I had the chance to try to finish my job.

Hunks, Monks, Chunks & Drunks

They told us before we came to Iraq that we would end up becoming one of those things above.   The first two are easy here in Al Asad, the third not so much and the last one probably not at all. There are lots of gyms around here and Marines take full advantage of them, so pretty much everybody qualifies as a hunk by civilians standards. They have a 1000lb club (which means lifting more than 1000lbs in a combination of bench press, dead lift and squat).  It is a big club. 

 I don’t know about monks.  Life is austere but the similarity ends there.  Becoming a chunk is possible because of the availability of free, high calorie food, but the Marine culture and the time in the field eating unappetizing MREs militate against it.  Turning into a drunk is practically impossible, since you cannot easily get alcohol and anybody under the influence would stand out.  

It is getting cold around here at night and in the early morning.  Today the prediction is a low of 38.  That is not so cold, but none of the cans have indoor plumbing.  You need to go to a separate building.  Going to and – especially – coming back from the showers will be a chilling experience that many may avoid.   So I expect there may develop a fifth category: skunks.

Iraqi Weather

Speaking of cool, Iraq is not a tropical country.  In summer it is hot (120 degrees is common), but here in the western desert it gets cool during other seasons.  In the last month, the weather has been perfect, around 70 in the afternoon to around 50 at night, but I hear it will be cold soon at night, although usually warming up in the afternoon.  I am ready. I got my coat from Cabalas in the mail a few days ago.

I had an interesting meteorological experience on thanksgiving.  I was on my way to run outside Camp Ripper when I saw a strange dark cloud coming my way.   It was dust.  I decided not to run and instead hunkered down (and got my camera).  The dust did not blow in the wind.  It infiltrated like fog.   It just got darker, colder and harder to breath.  It stung my eyes, but not that much.  The strangest thing was that there were cold raindrops in the dust.  The whole thing had kind of a sinister feeling.  I always assumed that rain would wash the dust out of the air, but evidently not.  Then it passed and it was clear again.

“The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits over the harbor and the city on silent haunches and then moves on.”  What Carl Sandburg said about fog goes for dust, but dust is a meaner, dirtier cat.

Phases of the Moon

I never paid much attention to the phases of the moon but I do now because it matters.  We have no street lights here at Al Asad and it gets darker than an average modern urban American thinks possible.  The walk from the chow hall or the office to my can is very difficult on a moonless night; when the moon is full, as it is today, it is amazingly well lit.

The picture shows part of a dog pack that patrols the hills near Haditha. There were about a dozen of them, but most went behind the ridge before I got my camera out.  It is not related to my story below.  I needed to put in a picture. I did not have any other use for this one and I wanted to pose a wild dog question that I have been thinking about.  Feral dogs all over the world seem to have cury tails and are often a kind of tan-yellow color.  Wolves and foxes do not have curvy tails, nor do most domestic dogs.  I wonder why it is that feral dogs do.  Anybody know anything about that?

As I looked out the window where the local council was going to meet, I noticed an old guy in a fine suit walking slowly across the bridge.  I thought how he looked out of place.  I figured he was a city council member.  As he approached the guards, I got a better look.  He was a sophisticated looking guy, tall with strong features and very well dressed.  He looked like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. with a full mustache.  I noticed his shinny black shoes and impeccable dark suit.   It is so dusty here; how did he keep his shoes & clothes so clean.

He was not a city council member and he was not coming for the meeting.   It turns out he was ostensibly the legal owner of the building where we were meeting.  He was trying to file a claim for rent and ultimate restitution, but he had been unable to complete the paperwork w/o a recent picture of his property and he has been unable to get a recent picture because of security.   He waited until he saw the Marine patrol come by and then he walked from his nearby home in hopes that he could get a hearing and a picture.  It worked.  His nice suit and demeanor got in him past and we can get the pictures.

As I looked around the room, it clicked.  This place had been a restaurant, probably a nice one.  Broken bulbs gloomily festooned the now defunct garden that was now used as a big urinal.  The storage room was the kitchen; we were meeting in the main dinning room. The shattered windows overlooked a beautiful bend in the Euphrates and a little park, with a defunct soccer field.   I had seen all these things but not connected them. 

This poor old guy was the once and & perhaps future owner of a fine restaurant and garden on some prime real estate.  He was polite and spoke English.  Fixing the place up looked like a lot of work, but there did not seem to be structural damage.  In fact, I could not figure out how the place got so busted up in the first place.   It was not battle damage, probably vandalism and looting.

It was poignant watching him furtively look around, no doubt recalling happier times, maybe dreading the work he would need to do to get the place repaired, maybe looking forward to it.  He had been a prosperous man and with any luck he would be again. 

Remember in those 1960s TV SciFi shows & how they always featured a post-apocalyptic world that is not really so much destroyed as just devoid of people and busted up?   I found a place where they can do remakes of those classics.

The Al Qaim train depot sits in the middle of a flat desert with tracks stretching to infinity in both directions. The building was new when it was abandoned because of the war; in fact I don’t think it was completed.  Now it is quiet and empty, the vast cavernous inside space ruled by pigeons that spook when you come in, the sound of their wings echoing off empty tile walls.

I kept on waiting for an alien to step out from behind a pillar and cue the Outer Limits control voice:   “There is nothing wrong with your television set.   Do not attempt to adjust the picture.  We are controlling transmission…”  None showed up; all we heard were pigeons and the wind.

BTW – toward evening, I ran a little on the dirt road along the tracks that leads to the depot. The pigeons were sleeping, but I could hear the wild dogs howling in the distance.  It gets dark fast around here.  It was still very light when I started and almost dark 20 minutes later.  I cut my run short because I hoped to avoid getting shot or torn apart by wild dogs.  Neither of these things was a strong possibility, but these are the things you think about when it gets dark in a place like this.   Besides, breaking a leg on the dark rough trail was a danger, so why take chances? This place really has all the needful things for a whole SciFi series.

The depot is structurally intact.  It looks like what damage it suffered is superficial vandalism and neglect. It seems to me, since there is no town nearby that the whole place is vastly over engineered for its probable use, but maybe it was built with future growth in mind. When they built Dulles Airport, it was ridiculed for being in the middle of nowhere; today it is in the middle of a thriving business district.  Some things take time to catch up.  

The railroad was built to serve the local state-owned enterprises. There is a cement factory and a phosphate plant within distant sight of the depot (with a lot of desert in between).  Farther down the tracks was/is a rail repair yard, currently occupied by the Marines.  The rail line was supposed to move heavy materials produced at the plants, such as phosphate and cement to other parts of Iraq and markets in the Gulf and the Med.  The passenger depot would bring in workers from other parts of Iraq and presumably take them back home when they could no longer tolerate life in the desert.  

It was not a bad plan as far as central planning goes.  Locating the phosphate and cement plants near sources of bulky raw materials made sense.  Of course they were managed in the typical socialist way.  That, coupled with local proclivities for flexible accounting methods, meant both facilities soon became massive boondoggles. With decent management and planning, however, this complex probably could make a profit and  contribute something useful to Iraq’s future.  The cement is good quality and there is a large unmet demand.  (Producing cement, BTW, is energy intensive and releases prodigious amounts of CO2.  You literally bake CO2 out of the rocks at high temperatures.  Cement is not an eco-friendly building material, but there is not much wood around here.  Maybe they should import eco-friendly southern pine.)  I have to learn a little more about the phosphate plant before I have an opinion on it.  I hear that it will not make as good an investment, so keep your checkbooks in your pockets for the time being. 

It is a common misconception that every working factory is worth saving.  Often the expense of rehab and various legacy costs associated with previous management give them zero or even negative value in comparison with starting from scratch in a green field (or in this case a brown heap of dirt).  Sometimes the scrap value exceeds the working value, but who knows?  Such decisions are beyond my pay grade.  It might work out just fine.  Maybe the train depot on at the edge of forever will not be forever empty.

Imagine that you lost everything.  Now you are getting it back.  How lucky do you feel?  That is where the people of Western Anbar are today.  After years of suffering, things are finally starting to return to normal and normal looks plenty good when you have not seen it in a while.

The reopening of the port of entry at Husaybah will open western Anbar to trade with neighboring Syria and through that to the Mediterranean. It means that Husaybah and the Al Qaim region is now in the middle of something instead of at the far end.

Goods and people will not move immediately.  The Syrians have been less involved in the opening.  In fact, they were downright petulant, saying that THEY had never closed the POE so they could not reopen it.  But they have begun to clear rubbish, paint buildings on their side, and even touch up the large portrait of Hafez Al Assad, whose friendly face greets visitors entering Syria.  Reopening the POE will profit businesses on both sides of the border and everybody knows that. A Syrian official did wander over from the nether region of the border to congratulate his Iraqi brothers on the reopening.   Whether this was a carefully planned diplomatic move or just some guy wanting to get in on the free food, I do not know.

The refurbished POE will have everything it needs.  There is passport control, a medical unit, police station and a bank.  Outside are docks for the unloading of trucks, as well as a quarantine area and acres of parking. Presumably businesses will pop up nearby to serve the traffic. 

Hundreds of invited guests turned up for the official opening ceremony, including business leaders, officials and local sheiks.  Officials made longish speeches about the work that had gone into the opening as well as the perceived benefits of trade and commerce.  In other words, they made predictable political speeches, normal politics, thanking and acknowledging all those who may be useful in the future.

The opening ceremony itself represented a return to normality.  Although security was very tight, great pains were taken to have security not visibly intrude.  As a result, it looked like an ordinary event in a normal country, with Iraqi flags and Iraqi guests generally dressed in suits or traditional garments, not armor.  The ceremony was followed by the traditional feast.  I understand that 40 sheep contributed the last full measure to the festivities.  And when the feasting was done, the guests went home, without incident.

Below is me at the border.  Over my shoulder is Syria.  Still some work needs to be done on the connection, but normality is on the way.

Our ePRT will be facilitating the flow of commerce at the POE, most immediately with a QRF supported grant for signage to direct traffic.  In the longer term, ePRT personnel are helping with planning things such as traffic flow and placement of commercial areas.

A lot of planning went into making this spontaneous event possible.  I like to remember this from the Book of the Tao:

The best rulers are scarcely known;
The next best are loved and praised;
The next are feared;
The next despised:
They have no faith in their people,
And their people become unfaithful.

When the best rulers achieve their purpose
The people say they did it themselves.

I would presume to add one more line: AND they are right, IF planners get initial conditions right and understand when to get out of the way.