Category: Victory in Iraq

Our significant task for the summer & fall will be to help Iraqis hold free & fair provincial elections.  It is a narrow path for us to walk.   The elections clearly belong to the Iraqis and it is important for them really to be theirs AND be perceived as theirs by all the world and the people of Iraq.   On the other hand, we can provide experience as well as technical and security support that will make the elections fairer, safer and more generally more successful.   We can easily help too much or too little. Actually I don’t think there is a Goldilocks “just right” solution.   We will get criticized no matter what result and we just have to accept that we will get much of the blame and none of the credit and be ready for it to happen.

Preparations for the elections will begin in earnest on July 15.  We still are not sure of the date of the elections themselves.   They could be as early as October 1 or as late as December.  There is a lot to do.  The Iraqis do not have accurate census numbers for their local populations, so making accurate voting lists will be difficult.  When you consider the significant trouble we Americans, with hundreds of years of experience, have with the practical job of holding election, you can imagine what the Iraqis are in for.

The people of Anbar are very enthusiastic about voting and I expect a big turnout.   They largely boycotted the 2005 elections and they learned a valuable lesson about Democracy:  non-participation doesn’t work.   They will not make that mistake again. 

The Anbaris have also come to believe in the power of the people to make changes.  Their belief and enthusiasm is a refreshing antidote to the pessimism that says “these people” are not ready for democracy.  They will get what democracy provides.  In the words of Winston Churchill, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I prefer the first past the post form of elections, the one we have in the U.S. where every elected official represents a specific district and whoever gets the most votes wins.   Our system, however, is considered old fashioned by much of the democratic world.  The part most often criticized is what I consider the key to our stability and prosperity. Our winners take all approach forces compromise.  A group that wins less than a plurality of the votes has only one right.  They can try to get more votes next time.   That means they have to change their platform to appeal to more people or give up. 

Making elections proportional (e.g. 10% of the opinion gets around 10% of the authority) is in theory a fairer way to go, but it has often been the road to ruin when candidates win by a plurality that is significantly a majority (50 %+) of the votes.  Adolph Hitler and Salvador Allende, among others, were elected by only about a third of the voters, for example.  Extremists can often fool some of the people all of the time, but they have a harder time fooling a majority.  A U.S. style system excludes them.  Proportional representation gets their foot in the door.   But I am being old fashioned.  “Our” system tends to predominate in Britain and former British colonies.  Other places not so much. 

The Iraqi election system resembles those of continental Europe or Latin America.  I suppose that is a necessary component in a country as diverse as this one.  It has some complications designed to make it “fairer”.  Let me explain it as simply as I can.

A province gets twenty-five delegates for the first 500,000 people and then one additional for each 200,000 people over that number.   This is an advantage to Anbar, with a relatively low population, since it gets a little extra representation.   You could say it is like our system in the respect that if favors the small.  Wyoming has a population of around 515,000.  It has two senators and so does California with a population of almost 37,000,000. 

Anbar has a population of around 1.3 million, so it will get 29 seats.   All members are “at large” i.e. they do not represent a particular distraction.  Candidates run both as individuals and as party members.  This is how it works in an easy math example.

Stipulate that there are 100 voters and ten seats available.   The election commission determines that a candidate needs 10 votes to win a seat.  Anybody who individually wins 10 votes wins a seat.   But some candidate might win 20 votes.  His “extra” votes are transferred to his party to bring up the total of another of his party’s candidates.   They has a similar system in Brazil when I was there for my first post.  It enhances the power of political parties over candidates and one very popular candidate can pull up a lot of marginal ones, so you don’t always know who you are voting for, but it sort of works.

We are not quite done yet.  There is a proposal that at least 25% of the representatives be women.  In this case, the election commission would determine the number needed and then replace the lowest winning males with the highest losing females until they got the numbers they wanted.

Complicated as this all seems, it looks like it will produce an outcome that at least will approximate “consent of the governed”.    Nevertheless, a great deal of uncertainty remains.  Working in this ambiguous situation will be tough, but I guess that is why we get those big bucks.

I think we all are honored by the opportunity to see and be a small part of democracy at work in the Middle East. 

Above is a Euphrates scene 

A Combat Camera Presentation made me think of this topic.  You can download that presentation by clicking that link.

I am surprised how open and friendly Iraqis are to the Marines.  You might think that after a war people might be a little more sullen or at least indifferent, but they are usually very happy to see the patrols.   I like to go on “foot patrol” and walk through the streets of the towns in Western Anbar and see for myself what is going on.   The transformation is amazing.  Markets are full of goods, including highly perishable items such as eggs, fresh milk, fruits and vegetables.  Although I cannot see it at the marketplace, I know also that town councils are set up.  Courts are in session.   Things are better.

In some of these places, fighting raged less than a year ago.  Al Anbar was supposed to be the center of the new Al Qaeda caliphate.  Instead it is the place where our Iraqi allies and we have most completely defeated the retrograde forces looking to drag us back into the 8th century.  This is astonishing.

Whether or not all Americans are ready to accept it, our new strategy is delivering a victory in Iraq. Our forces faced down the bad guys at a time when conventional wisdom told us our best bet was just to get out and leave Anbar and its people to them.  I know some would say that it is too soon to claim success, and they are probably right.  I would keep my mouth shut if I had to talk about the big picture or carefully weigh the political considerations, but those kinds of things are above my pay grade. I am talking only about the things I know from my own experience.  From my position – standing with my boots on the khaki dirt of Western Anbar – it is very hard to overlook the objective reality of how much things have improved.  I think we are approaching the point of self sustaining progress.  The Iraqis are increasingly taking the initiative and moving forward.  They are smart, adaptive and sick of war.  After literally generations of oppression and conflict, they want to get on with the pursuits of peace, a peace made possible by the security umbrella the Marines provided. 

We did the right thing in Anbar and we generally did it right.  I am proud that my team and I have played a small part in the new strategy that is making this possible.  

When I read the media about Iraq, it seems very different from what I see being here.  It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx line (with the media playing Groucho), “What are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”  Sorry if I choose to believe what I see myself.

Two separate groups of people came to see me about measuring progress in our area of operation and gave me an opportunity to pontificate in my very best style.  I am doing my best to deploy all my skill and experience on how to assess and measure.  I am delving way back to my MBA days when I studied marketing research, but Iraq presents a researcher with almost the perfect storm of confusion.  I am not sure how to measure progress in Iraq and I am not sure that information is knowable even in theory.

One of the guys who came to visit was a practicing anthropologist.  I didn’t know they had that kind of career path, but it makes sense.  Anthropologists study relationships between people, institutions, traditions and society.  The skills of an anthropologist are more appropriate in Iraq than those of a public pollster.   I don’t believe the usual polling methods can produce valid results in a place like Iraq. Figuring out the situation here is more an art than a science, more anecdotal than analytical. My study of marketing research methods gave me a good feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of statistical studies. 

Graphically Misleading

The most misleading sort of study is the pseudo-scientific one, with lots of numbers and graphs w/o valid grounding in reality.  Such things are usually based on a kind of snowballing of the power of a few guesses.  A few people make estimates that are locally valid for decision making but not scientific.  For example, “How much traffic is there on the road?”  “Lots.” You could make a decision based on that, but it is a soft estimate.  Somebody aggregates these guesses and gives them numerical weight.  As the aggregations get farther from the original sources, they get less and less related to reality BUT more and more impressive in terms of certainty of numbers and presentation.  

In my traffic example, if you aggregate traffic information from downtown Manhattan and rural Wyoming, you might conclude that traffic is a moderate concern in both places and you could produce graphs and charts to support your position. I learned a long time ago that if you want to enhance the power of your own gut estimate, you should put it into writing and if possible draw a chart or a graph. I know this works, but I also know that it is primarily a presentation ploy.  Even in the best cases, it is used to simplify information and make it easier to understand.  In the process, we trade some degree of accurate detail for presentation. Anyway, I think we are demanding more of the information we have than it has to teach us and much of our precision is unjustified. 

Spock Trap

I remember in the old Star Trek when Spock would say something like “impact in 10.5 seconds.”  How stupid is that?  That is why I prefer Picard. By the time he says 10.5, the number has changed.  It is unjustified precision, but it is easy to fall into the Spock trap.  It is attractive and makes you seem intelligent.  BTW – my own experience in using deceptive numbers is that you are much better off using precise odd numbers.  For instance, 97 is a more credible number than 100 or 90.  (Remember that Ivory Soap was 99 and 44/100ths percent pure, not 100 %.)My feeling about the part of Iraq that I know best, the places I have actually set foot and looked at with my own eyes, is that things are much better now than they were when I arrived six months ago.   I use the word “feeling” because that is what I have.  I have observed that people seem friendlier.  Markets are fuller.  There seems to be less fear.  Local people were once afraid to talk to us or work with us.  Not any more.  It just feels better.

Dreadful Conditions

I am convinced that conditions here are better than our measurements will be ever able to detect.  Iraqis have a long history with oppression.  Smart people learned to hide their prosperity from predatory authorities.  If Saddam’s henchmen found out you had something good, you might not be able to keep it.  We also saw the age-old desire to hide assets from the tax collectors.  As a result of all this, people have become accustomed to lying to anybody asking questions and trying to make conditions seem as dreadful as possible. 

Sing the Body Electric

A good example of a statistic we cannot use – but we do – is electricity.  Iraqis get some hours of electricity from the grid.  This power is essentially free, since the authorities have generally lost the capacity to meter and charge for it.  Naturally, everybody wants as much of this free power as they can get and when the power comes on they plug in everything they own.  It makes demand appear much higher and shortfalls more acute. If asked, people complain bitterly about the lack of power.  BUT if you fly over Anbar or drive thorough a city at night, you see plenty of lights even when there is ostensibly no power.   The fact is that many communities and even individuals have generators.  They prefer not to use these generators because it means that electricity is no longer free.  However, when they say that they do not have electricity, they really mean that they do not have FREE electricity.

Demand for electricity in Iraq is growing at around 12% a year, as people buy more things like refrigerators, microwaves and DVD players.  Supply can never catch up with demand as long as electricity is de-facto free.   I am convinced that if/when the authorities figure out how to meter and charge for it, the “problem” of electricity will be mostly solved, or more correctly it will stop being a problem and become an expense.

Fear v Greed

There are some sorts of statistics that I think we might be able to use IF we could assess them.  One is the risk premium that contractors and others demand.  Six months ago we had to pay relatively more for services because people thought it was risky to deal with us (i.e. they were afraid the insurgents would target them in retaliation). They charged us more to compensate.  Now the prices we are paying for our projects are dropping.  Of course that could be because we are getting better at knowing local conditions and negotiating better deals.   I think that if I could figure out a reliable way to estimate the risk premium, I would have a very good measure of improvement.  It is a kind of greed v fear measurement.

Banana Index

One of my own assessment methods is a “banana index”.  I observe fruits in the market especially bananas.  No bananas are grown locally.  They all have to be imported from somewhere else.  It is very hard to get a banana to market exactly at the right time.  They will usually be either green or brown.  A banana stays yellow for only a short time and if it is mishandled it gets easily bruised.   If you see lots of good quality bananas in the market, you know that the distribution system is working reasonably well and that good are moving expeditiously through the marketplace. Anyway, I shared my methods with the researchers. They are just rules of thumb, but if you call them heuristics they sound almost scientific. 

Above shows accommodations down range.  These are nice ones, but the snoring can be intense.

Camp Ripper is a forward operating base – a FOB.  A FOB has some of the comforts of home, including a good chow hall, toilets that flush and cans with electricity instead of tents.  You also have access to laundry and shower facilities.   FOBs are comfortable and some people never – or very rarely – leave the FOB.  They are called Fobbits.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but my guess is that around half of the guys in Iraq are Fobbits.  I am a semi-Fobbit.   I spend most of my time on the FOB, i.e. I endeavor whenever possible to return at night to the comfort of my own can.  However, I do regularly travel away from the Shire and sometimes get stuck at some outpost or tent city where conditions are less comfortable.  

Fobbit is a term of some derision among non-fobbits.   Some people love the FOB and there are others who evidently like to be out in the deserts eating MREs.  I prefer the semi-fobbit life.  I go out when my job requires it and do so eagerly and happily.   I always enjoy getting away from Al Asad and most of the blog-posts I write are about those experiences.  However, it doesn’t take long for me to satisfy my sense of adventure and I like to get back to the cans of home. 

I am getting too old for this.  Most other places are either too hot or too cold and I sometimes worry – irrationally – about scorpions, camel spiders and snakes.  (I say irrationally because I have seen only one scorpion and no snakes, but I know they are laying in wait – stingers and fangs poised.)Besides, you usually have to sleep among people who snore loudly.   I also have the sense of guilt since I know that I snore too and am inflicting this on my colleagues.  Of course we all have earplugs.  Better to be in your own can.

Some bandits robbed a train last week.  I thought that only happened in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” days.  Unfortunately in this case no horsemen came galloping out of a boxcar to chase the miscreants.  They got away with some oil bound for the refinery at K3.  I really don’t know any details of the circumstance.   It was probably just an inside job and a lot less picturesque than I imagine it.  But I have been learning a little re the transportation network in Iraq.

Iraq has the biggest rail network in the Middle East.  Rail lines reach from beyond Mosul in the north, west to Al Qaim and south to the Persian Gulf.  During the early 20^th Century, the Berlin to Baghdad railroad line (part of which was the famous Orient Express) was an irritant in German-British relationship, as the Brits thought the Kaiser in league with the Turkish Sultan, who controlled Mesopotamia, would use the rail network to threaten access to their colony in India.  Iraq was in the middle of things then and geography has not changed.

In a reasonably peaceful Middle East, Iraq will serve as a gateway from east to west, north to south.   I am told that container ships could offload their cargos in the Eastern Med ports onto railroad cars, which could then go overland through Iraq to the Persian Gulf where they could either serf local markets or be transshipped.  Goods could also go the other directions.  It would cut shipping time by about a week over going through the Suez Canal and save millions per shipment.   Containerization of cargo makes this a profitable venture. 

The Iraqis recently ran their first passenger train from Baghdad to Basra.   This is more of a political than an economic endeavor.  Passenger rail loses money.  This trip to Basra cost around $6000 more than it made in revenue, even fully loaded.  I personally love passenger rail, but the economics are tough. 

Tougher than passenger rail are prestige airports.  Iraq has lots of airports.  Saddam Hussein built them for his vast air force, which he never used.  Some people say that they should be converted to civilian use.   The is easier said than done, or put correctly cheaper said than done.  Most big passenger airports also lose money.

In the case of both rail and air, the freight tends to make money and the passengers lose money.  It is not widely appreciated that the U.S. has one of the best rail systems in the world.  I found an interesting webpage re.  It is overlooked because ours is mostly a freight rail system.   The Europeans move people; we move goods.  One is easier to see than the other, but the efficacy of our rail system is reflected in the less expensive goods we can get.

Away from the ocean or big rivers, what doesn’t move by rail usually moves by road.  It is best to take as many trucks as possible off the road, by putting their loads on rail.  I prefer to ride my bike or take a train, but I know that most people prefer to drive.  If the choice is between taking the passenger car or the big truck off the road, I think taking the truck off is the obvious choice.  

The realization that container cargo could be sent throught Iraq like this was a surprise to me, a paradigm shift.  Ferdinand de Lesseps would also be surprised and perhaps a little chagrined that his great creation was being outclassed by something as mundane as freight rail. Maybe they should play the chorus from Aida as they load the first rail cars.

No real  road connects the border forts along the berm that separates Iraq from Syria and Jordan.  There is a sort of track, which in its better sections resembles a bad dirt road, but sometimes you cannot tell where the “road” starts and the flat desert floor ends.  Fortunately, the desert is naturally hard and more or less paved with gravel.  The bad news is that it is full of axle-busting ruts and tire piecing rocks. 

As we rolled down the perdition highway between the border crossings at Trabil & Waleed, one of our Humvees got a flat tire.  I was impressed at how fast the Marines deployed into defensive positions and got to the job of fixing the tire and moving along.  Colonel Malay pitched in and helped with some of the heavy work. I took advantage of the unscheduled stop to make a head call.  I took a canine-like pride in marking this section of featureless desert.  

We stopped at a border fort commanded by an enlisted man.  He took justifiable pride in how well his men cared for their weapons and generally maintained operations, but he was in a tight spot.  He had not been receiving sufficient supplies of fuel, so he could not patrol as much as he might have wished.   His diesel generator was turned off to save power, so there was no electricity.  They were taking advantage of the weak sunlight and you could still see within the fort, but as shadows of evening spread over the place, it was getting harder. 

His vehicles are in terrible shape.  I remember as a kid watching the Baja Challenge, where off the road driver raced across the that rugged desert in a vehicle survival contest. The winner was not the fastest, but the one that made it to the finish line.   This is what our Iraqi allies face every day and you can see from their vehicles that they are not always making it to the finish.  The best thing anybody could do to make life better for these guys guarding the border would be to pave a road along the berm.  This is their lifeline.  (The Syrians have a asphalt track on their side of the berm.)  It would probably pay for itself on saved vehicles and fuel within a short time.

Below is the berm taken from the window of the Humvee.   It is certainly not Hadrian’s Wall or even Offa’s Dike, but it does deter anybody who wants to drive over the border and inspections can reveal breaches where people have crossed.

Morale at the fort we visited was surprisingly high.  I just don’t think I would take such conditions so kindly, especially because many of the troops are evidently from Baghdad where it doesn’t get so cold.  The sharp breeze blowing across the desert reminded anybody who needed the hint that we were not in Baghdad anymore.  They seem to have decent food.  We saw a goat carcass (at least the lower half) being readied for supper and rice was boiling in a big pot.  I suppose good chow is helpful. 

One of the Marines was telling me that when they go out on a joint operation with the Iraqis, our guys report that they have whatever day’s worth of MREs, water etc.  The Iraqis report that they have enough of that flat bread they eat and Pepsi-Cola, the drink of choice among the Iraqi forces – after tea, of course.  I suppose you can always count on finding a goat if you really need one.

The picture is me on the roof of the fort.  Off to the distance on my left is Syria; off to the right is Jordan.  You have to wonder why anybody would even bother to set up a border on a place like this, but I suppose you have to have some demarcation.

This is a post I wrote for the State Department blog (blogs.state.gov).  It is a little more policy/pr than many of my posts, but I include it FYI.

Public perceptions of Iraq are not wrong; they are just out of date. Media coverage of Iraq has dropped in almost perfect correlation with progress made toward peace and stability. As a result, the picture persists from pre-surge 2006 but it is not 2006 anymore. It is post-surge in Anbar Province where a significantly more secure Iraq exists rebuilding, learning, governing, producing and starting to make huge strides along the road to prosperity.

Members of my ePRT recently made a visit to Al Qaim, near the Syrian border, and this provides a good example of what I am talking about. Back in 2006, Al Qaim was a bloody battleground, with AQI cutting off heads and hands while insurgents moved around the province with near impunity. This is the picture we all saw in 2006 of Marines fighting building to building and making gains street by street is the one unfortunately far too many of us still recall. The picture in 2008 shows an area of growing prosperity, with markets full of people and things to buy, homes and businesses being rebuilt and people looking to and planning for their future.

During the visit, ePRT affiliated trainers were just finishing up a course for city managers and local officials on project development and anti-corruption efforts. About forty officials attended the four-day program and even on the last day of the training they were involved, excited and animated. A four-day course will not solve Iraq’s governance problems, but at least these officials had the ability to imagine and work toward a future better than the past.

Not far away is a vocational training center, run by a USAID contractor. It is graduating its second class of students since it was founded just over a year ago and a third class is already oversubscribed. Young Iraqis are learning all sorts of useful basic skills, such as electrical work, heating and air conditioning, appliance repair, auto mechanics and many construction trades. Students are enthusiastic and are already giving back to the community. For example, in the wood working classes they are assembling desks and bookcases for local elementary school rooms. Graduates are hired by local firms eager for employees with proven basic skills. They are offered good wages, apprenticeships and on-the-job training. Demand for graduates far exceeded supply in the first two classes and there are plans to expand the program and make it self- sustaining by getting the businesses that benefit from the program to help fund it.

Iraq’s various wars and the late insurgency took a heavy toll on the men of Al Anbar leaving many widows and orphans. One of the ways we are helping address their situation was by opening women’s sewing centers, where they are offered training in sewing and tailoring. This is not a temporary fix. These skills can provide basic income and the chance to start a small home business. Graduates get a sewing machine and some basic materials upon graduation to get them started. Empowering women even in a small way that enable them to prosper in specially heartening given the plight of so many widows and orphans across Western Anbar.

A proven way to jump start small businesses is with small loans (microfinance). The microfinance program in Al Anbar made its first loans last November. The number now has reached 211, totaling almost $500,000 and 100% of the payments have so far been made in full and on time. Our team met the owner of a small tire repair shop who benefited from the loan program. He bought a computerized tire balancing system, which increased his customer numbers several fold while saving him time and allowing him to do a better job faster. We talked to another small merchant/manufacturer who creates custom steel rebar and angle iron for construction. When we asked him how his business would have been w/o the small loan program, he told us that he would clearly and simply not have a business at all without the program.

Iraq is certainly no paradise and but what is important here is that it shows what has been done, what can be done and what continues to need to be done here in Iraq. Behind the thriving shops and busy markets are wrecked buildings and damaged lives. Terrorists continue to lurk in the shadows looking for weak spots and openings. But Iraq today shows an unquestionably brighter picture than in 2006 or even back when I arrived just a few months ago in September 2007. The Iraqi people are proving resilient in the face of enormous challenges and demonstrating every day and many ways that if given a chance to improve their lives, they will take it and they will grasp at this new life with a vigor that we often do not see in even more developed situations. The people of western Anbar risked their lives to break free of the grip of AQI and the insurgency. Now they are building the lives they fought for. In our small way, we are helping.