The picture below is a fort built by the British in sometime around 1927. The British ran Iraq as a League of Nations Mandate until 1932, when Iraq became an independent monarchy under King Faisal, of Lawrence of Arabia fame. Even after independence, the British maintained bases here. I don’t know if this was among them. In fact, most people don’t think much re this fort, but it is still in use as a police HQ. The British built to last.
When the fort was built there was nothing around it but desert. Rutbah’s claim to significance is that it is a “wet spot” that gets around 4.5 inches of rain a year, and it had a well. The Fort guarded the road that connected Amman with Baghdad and the oil pipeline. If you didn’t have to stop for borders or checkpoints, you could drive from Amman to Baghdad in around 16 hours. Rutbah and the fort are around the half way point. It goes to show how much has changed. Back in 1927 the fort was in the middle of nowhere. It is still in the middle of nowhere today, but around 50,000 people live in and around Rutbah.
I can only imagine how isolated it must have been in the 1920s. I can picture those Brits with their khaki and pith helmets. My friend Tim R bought me a pith helmet as a joke. Of course I cannot wear it here, but I wish I could. They are really good for keeping you cool. Air moves easily inside and if you soak them in water the evaporation over a couple hours really helps lower the temperature inside. They are very good for hot and dry places, which is probably why they were so popular. But they have the unmistakable connotation of old-fashioned empires. Both pith helmets and old fashioned empires are out of style these days.
When I was trying to confirm that date of the fort, I ran across this interesting article about Rutbah a few years ago. It sounds familiar. Above is a new mural on the police station wall. Our ePRT helped pay for it. I read in this article that this once had a Saddam mural. We painted over it. All these murals kind of look alike. I don’t like them, but I suppose the blank wall bothers people.
You don’t learn from experience unless you pay close attention. Failure focuses the mind. We ask what went wrong and identify improvements. As often, however, we don’t fix the problem but try to fix the blame. This absolves everybody else and lets us all continue business as usual. We can find individuals who made poor decision, but the only way to systematically improve is to look at the whole system and analyze the interactions. If you have a dysfunctional system, changing the players doesn’t help.
There is a currently popular saying that “doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” This is simplistic. It is possible to flip a coin ten times in a row and get all heads, but still expect the probability of the next toss to be even, at least after checking the coin. A good system with good people may produce poor results. That is why you study the processes. If you can identify the factors the led to the result and they are not likely to recur wholesale changes are unjustified.Success brings less soul searching than failure. We point to good results and are unenthusiastic about checking to see if they were deserved. But just as it is possible to fail for reasons beyond our control or factors unlikely to recur, we can succeed for the same bad reasons, so success should be as closely scrutinized as failure. There is no shortage of talk about failures in Iraq, although much of it is designed to fix the blame not the problem. As it becomes clearer that we are succeeding, we should learn from what went right and how it might be transferred elsewhere. I have a couple ideas from my own point of view. Keep in mind that I have personal knowledge only of events in Western Anbar and so I emphasize factors and people acting here. My list is not comprehensive.
Leadership
Had Abraham Lincoln had stuck with General George McClellan, or the American people elected “Little Mac president in 1864, we might well need a passport to cross the Potomac. Leadership changes the course of human events and a change in leadership was essential to the turn around in Iraq.
It does not follow, BTW, that previous leadership was incompetent (remember fix the problem, not the blame), just not appropriate. McClellan was a superb general. In a defensive posture, he was great. He just didn’t grasp what he had to do to win and didn’t have the temperament to do implement it. That task eventually fell to Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln found his general in a man who had been unsuccessful in his earlier endeavors but had the appropriate skills, talents and temperament to handle this job.
General David Petraeus was the right man for the new strategy in Iraq in 2007. He wrote the book on counter insurgency and recruited a first class-team to help him with the changes. He also had the support the new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, to make the needed adjustments.BTW – the COIN Manual is itself a great example of the flexible strategy it advocates. It is a living document, almost a wiki. As new experience is analyzed and digested, it changes and evolves.
The right leadership with the right strategy was essential to success, but causality is never so uncomplicated.
Marines
The USMC was employing the “new paradigm” in Al Anbar before it became part of a new strategy. Marine commanders were well familiar with the theory and practice of counter insurgency, but as importantly the Marines in Al Anbar constituted a learning organization. As experience about what worked and what didn’t passed through the organization, Marines adapted and improved their responses. The Marines have a long history with counter insurgency and working with indigenous forces going back at least to Presley O’Bannon on the shores of Tripoli, where they earned the Mameluke sword Marine officers still carry. And they have been a learning organization all that time.
Another advantage is the Marine’s rotation system. Marines tend to come back to places near their last deployment bringing with them their experience enhanced by the perspective of their time away. Beyond that, when Marines go back they share their experience with their colleagues coming out, both formally and informally. It is hard to envision a better system for learning and adapting. Many of the Marines in Anbar today were in Fallujah or Hadithah during the bad times a couple years ago. More than others, they see the progress and understand what still needs to be done. Those who are here for the first time have heard and internalized the stories.
Beyond that, Marines in Anbar did what they do well: eliminating bad guys & breaking their stuff; making friends in that unique Marine Corps way; adapting & overcoming. When the surge came, the Marines were ready with a receptive environment they helped create.
A Time for Peace
“To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven … a time for war and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Early in the conflict, proud and martial Anbaris allied with Al Qaeda and other insurgent forces to fight against the American invaders. It was an understandable, if mistaken response, but by the close of 2006, they were tired of war; they had come to understand the folly of working with retrogrades such as Al Qaeda and their sense of honor was satisfied and slaked by the casualties they had suffered and those they had inflicted. Al Qaeda told them that the Americans would cut and run. Marines don’t. Anbaris learned to respect CF forces. As importantly, they came to understand that CF forces had come to respect them and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
PersistenceYou cannot achieve success if you do not stick around long enough to achieve it. Difficult and unexpected circumstances in Iraq provided many excuses to give up. Leading experts, pundits and even members of the U.S. Congress told it straight-out that the U.S. was defeated. They were wrong, but they could have been right if we had acted on their advice. In other words, a lack of resolve on our part would have made their prophecies self-fulfilling. In the event, the U.S. stayed for the turn around.
Luck
Risk can be controlled but never eliminated and pure uncertainty lurks beyond all the risks we can calculate. Even the most exquisite plans must run the gauntlet of random chance that can devastate a perfect plan or vindicate a dreadful one, which is why we have to analyze the process and not judge strictly by results, as I said above.
Early in the conflict, many things turned out worse than we reasonably anticipated. Now things have changed. Our enemies turned out to be poorly organized. Often incompetently led and ideologically myopic, they made stupid mistakes that turned local populations against them. Fighting an insurgent enemy can be like playing whack-a-mole. It is a frustrating game, but it is easier if the moles are not very clever. I don’t want to take this too far. Many of our opponents are committed, deadly and dangerous and even in small numbers a ruthless adversary can inflict severe suffering, especially if their goal is to attack civilian populations. But these very tactics erode their support.The big piece of good luck is the flip side of some very bad luck for the rest of the world – soaring oil prices. Iraq recovered its previous ability to produce oil almost at exactly the time world oil prices spiked. During Saddam’s time, Iraq earned oil revenues of around $20 billion a year. Experts anticipated revenues at this time of around $35 billion. Last time I heard, they were looking at $80 billion and the number keeps on growing. Oil money lubricates and more and more often Iraqi funds can pay for the needed infrastructure upgrades and improvements in Iraq.
PRTs, ePRTs and the Holistic Approach
Of course I have to talk about my own stuff. You cannot win a modern war by military means alone. COIN Manual says that some of the best weapons do not shoot. Military units have long had Civil Affairs (CA) teams and Commanders’ Emergency Response Funds CERP. These improved conditions for Iraqis and certainly saved many lives. Building on this success and experience in Afghanistan, in November 2005, Secretary of State Rice established Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq. In January 2007, President Bush announced the establishment of embedded PRTs, who work directly with military units such as Regimental Combat Teams.
These were civil-military teams of experts who engaged provincial and local Iraqi officials as well as ordinary Iraqi citizens. Some of their work was old fashioned diplomacy, meeting people, talking to them and listening to concerns. But unlike diplomats in many other contexts, PRT members have access to concrete resources. This development aspect, helping rebuild or in many cases just build for the first time is not entirely new, but putting it together with the interagency team of experts that made up a PRT is breaking some new ground.
PRTs are led by a senior State Foreign Service Officer with a deputy from USAID or a military colonel often as an executive officer. Included on the team are experts on budgeting, industry, law and agriculture, among others.
In rebuilding Iraq, damage from the 2003 invasion is often the least of our problems. Iraq has been in a state of war and/or sanctions for nearly thirty years. Many things decayed during that time and other things that could have been done never were. The Saddam Hussein regime did minimal or no maintenance on the plant & equipment. The whole country suffered the kind of socialist mismanagement seen in former communist regimes, but with an additional layer of sanctions and war. It might have been better if some of the facilities had been destroyed by CF bombs and could be rebuilt from scratch.The physical damage can be repaired more easily than the damage to human capital. The late despotism actively destroyed most aspects of civil society, anything that might insulate the people from the dictates of the state. In former communist Europe, it was possible to find functioning civil organizations, as the fiercest aspects of Stalinism were generations in the past. In Iraq, the destruction was more recent and in some ways more though going. Ironically, sanctions and isolation helped finish the demolition Saddam started. The only viable non-governmental structure left were family/tribes and religion.
Iraq has a significant, if now distant, tradition of reasonably competent officials. PRT experts work to revive this and build on it. Iraqis are responding very quickly, considering the conditions.The most popular expert in Western Al Anbar is our agricultural advisor. Iraq was once a bread basket and still has wonderful soils, available water and a skilled population. Unfortunately, some of the best agricultural lands has been abused for thousands of years. Saddam’s mismanagement exacerbated it, but I digress.
COIN talks about the need to clear, hold & build. CA, CERT & PRTs have helped build physical infrastructure as well as relations. The Iraqi people increasingly have a commitment to their own future and freedom. They will not easily give it up when terrorists come calling.
What They Said Can’t be Done
The U.S., CF and Iraqi accomplishment is astonishing, especially when you consider the near-death experiences of 2006. The Middle East is more secure w/o the murderous Saddam Hussein in power and it is immensely better off than it would have been had we failed in 2006. I believe this will be seen by future historians as a paradigm shifting event. For awhile many people feared that the initiative had passed to the bad guys or at least to the forces of chaos. The apparent disintegration of our position in 2005/6 seemed to confirm that impression. It was never as bad as it seemed or as bad as it was portrayed in the media, but the trend was unmistakable. Today we have come out of the darkness into a new morning. It is still a little too dark to see clearly all the features and it is still full of challenge and fraught with dangers but also full of opportunities. For the last generation and arguably since the end of World War I or the Sykes-Picot accord, this region has been unstable and dangerous. Maybe we can help make the future better than the past.
Below is one of our local friends. The big black ones are not as dangerous as the little yellow ones. I didn’t check closely, but it looks like this one is harmless because the stinger is broken.
We don’t have to buy coffee and there is no shortage of cookies and other sorts of treats. Generous Americans send piles of these things. Sometimes they go through organized groups; others just send things on their own.
I especially like the Duncan Donuts coffee. The guys at the Civil Affairs unit have a big coffee making machine. They fill it every morning with the Duncan Donuts brew and let me have some. The only thing I have to do in return is be nice to them. There is lots of sharing around here. I will not miss the dust and heat when I leave Iraq, but I will miss the friendliness and feeling of shared mission.
Of course there are limits to generosity. Our ePRT has a couple of non-tactical vehicles, which we use not too often. We let others use them when they are needed. When word got around that there were “free cars” available, the situation got a little out of hand. We still let people use our vehicles, but now we keep the keys in the desk drawer and require that they ask.
Below is our team member Allen Gifford meeting with farmers in the Rawah area north of the Euphrates
Sometimes they expect more than we can give. Usually we can do something.
Our ePRT was part of the diplomatic surge that went in soon after the change in strategy that produced the military surge in early 2007. The initial team was hastily assembled with short term contractors. My predecessor was a senior State Department officer, but he staying in country only six months. The last of the original crew is set to leave in a couple of weeks, which made me think about how much had changed in the last year.
I didn’t get to Iraq until September 2007, so I rely on what others have told me and what I could see when I arrived. It was a lot harder back then, much more constrained and a lot more dangerous. The team could not move as safely as we can now. They could not talk to ordinary Iraqis on the street, as we now can do routinely. They did not have access to the quick reaction funds we now enjoy. In short, their job was to “hold the fort” and prepare the base on which others (i.e. we) could build. I have to give them a lot of credit, as I sit in relative comfort and safety.
It is also easier to work in general. When the ePRT was established it was sort of accreted onto a Marine regiment. Nobody really knew what sort of role the ePRT should play. I think there was a little hostility among the fighting Marines to a group of know-it-all civilians. This was exacerbated by the restrictions in team activities and movement I mentioned above. I felt overwhelmed when I arrived by the uncertainty. How could our ePRT add value? I can only imagine how the first team members must have felt, landing on what was then considered the dark and bloody ground of the Sunni Triangle. What a difference a year makes!
I had a real running start, provided both by the team members that smoothed the way for me and by the foresight of the Marines of RCT5. I did not fully appreciate it at the time, but Colonel Malay sent his executive officer and some of his key officers to the Foreign Service Institute to train with us. This helped them understand us and gave us an insight and relationship into the Marines.
We now enjoy a seamless relationship with the Marines. My office is on the command deck, across for Colonel Malay’s and next door to the executive officer. My team sits with the Marine civil affairs team and it is hard to tell where my team ends and theirs begins. I am very lucky in that my team is largely self managing. We form ad-hoc groups to address particular issues and each team member feels free to call on the help of other team members and Marines who can contribute. The task groups are led by whoever is most appropriate at the time and much of the decision making is collaborative. I think it was Henry Ford who said that asking who should be in charge is like asking who should sing tenor in the choir. I find that works in my group, with particular team members talking the lead when their talents and expertise are foremost. Our team and our groups have fuzzy fringes. It is not clear where our team or the subgroups begin and end. Maybe I violate some management precepts about clear hierarchy, but I figure in a group the size of ours with the necessity to form fuzzy teams with people I do not control, including Marines and our Iraqi friends, there is not much option. It seems to work. We get a lot done and morale is high. I think that is an achievement in an environment as challenging and tough as ours.
That point about not controlling is important. I influence. The authority to write those performance reviews is the source of most power in government bureaucracies. I don’t have that, so I have had to pay more attention to other elements of influence. This job has tested my belief that the boss cannot expect to be GIVEN respect but has the responsibility to earn it. I still believe it, but I appreciate more the other side of that equation – the team. It is much easier to win the respect of those who respect themselves and my team members do.
Of course, things are not always so gloriously uncomplicated. We have our difficult personalities and difficult moments, but I think the challenge of being here and the responsibility of doing something important tends to concentrate people’s minds. Maybe teams like ours run on adrenaline. Maybe that is why people tend not to be able to keep it up too long. Maybe these sorts of teams are not appropriate in the more settled environments where a machine bureaucracy can perform at its best. I don’t know. I have only a few months left here, so I probably will not understand it. The team is so fluid in terms of membership and our tasks are so protean that it is hard to hold it down long enough even to get a good look. It works now and that is good for now. Next month I will figure it out again for then.
Management experts will study PRTs. Some have started already. They may even study ours and our contribution to a better Al Anbar. I think they will determine that the concept worked and that we did what we were supposed to do. We didn’t always go in a straight line, but we helped consolidate success in Iraq. If they are really smart, maybe they will figure out how. I want to read the report.
Above is a field of sunflowers near Rawah. They are better at growing the things than I am.
We have had sandy skies that stop us from traveling and make it unpleasant to run. In general, there is not much to do around here, so I have had time on my hands to think. I have been thinking about change
I think it is important to think about these sorts of “irrelevant things”. It makes for better decisions if you have already thought through some of the boundry conditions. Anyway, below are some thoughts. Read them if you like. They are not particularly about Iraq.
Below – Separating the wheat from the chaff the old fashioned way near Rawah on the Euphrates. Some things change faster than others.
Change: Real & Imaginary
Change is constant and inevitable. Being “for change” is meaningless and childish w/o explaining what change you want & exactly how you hope to achieve it. Some people don’t understand that society is a complex system. Disturbing one thing, even a bad thing, will have unexpected consequences throughout the system.
Take a concrete example of a man dying of thirst. If you just give him as much water as he wants to drink, you probably will kill him. His body can process about a liter, maybe little more, every hour, no more. You can make changes but not on your timetable. And the most direct and “obvious” action may not be the most appropriate.
The general rules are that abrupt changes create strong reactions. There are many things you cannot have, at least at the same time, and the time lags are important in any decision. Good leaders in our modern complex systems are catalysts for change. I say catalysts because that is often the best way for government to effect change. It allows the people themselves to decide the details and do the actual innovating. The nation and the state are not the same things. Conservatives recognize that most effective and constructive change comes from citizens, scientists and entrepreneurs, less often from command and control of politicians and bureaucrats (like me – good cautionary tale).
Politicians outline tidy programs that purport to create comprehensive and well-planned solutions. The untidy fact that they often choose to ignore is that when people are free to pursue happiness the usually do not want the same things the planners think they should.
The private sector is the source of almost all innovations. Here I have to point to the difference between innovation and basic research which often depends on government resources and rightfully so. Basic research creates options. Innovation involves taking those options and packaging or developing them into something people want. The process is not automatic. There are many examples of societies possessing some great knowledge and never creating the innovations that put it to practical use.
(Of course government can innovate within government when there is a similar competitive environment for those sorts of ideas. In the ancient world, we had Greek city states, with their various mixes of democracy, oligarchy, monarchy and tyranny. In our times, U.S. states are good examples.The ancient Romans had the basics of things like steam engines, engineering skills and water power networks, but never made the jump to the industrialization. In the late 18th Century, the Chinese had the requisite skills to make intricate machines, but used those skills to make mechanical novelties for the Mandarins. Whole books have been written about why the Middle East just stopped innovating about 400 years ago, after making a real promising start. Getting innovation out of the lab, into the workshop and out in the market is not easy and it is not been the most common thing in world history.
What often seems to be the common denominator is that a powerful centralized state, w/o significant competitors, stifles innovation. Conversely, messy, contentious and competitive systems with loose connections produce innovation.
The United States has been extraordinarily innovative following this general pattern. Our states have been the laboratories of democracy. Good innovations are copied; bad ones are limited. Our free market welcomes ideas, and for most of our history people, from around the world. Foreigners often brag that their particular former citizens create so much innovation in the U.S. The interesting question is why they had to come to the U.S. to do that.
We have enjoyed this wonderful system for a long time now. Nevertheless, it is possible mess it up.
So when some politician promises change, it might be a good idea to inquire re the type of change he is proposing AND the mechanism he plans to use to achieve it. Emperors in Rome and China (as well as lots of other places) were confident in their ability to order change. As a result, not much changed in these places over the course of hundreds or thousands of years. If you were the emperor, life was okay. The guy covered in sh*t using the same basic technologies for a thousand years was probably less enthusiastic.
Change directed from the top was not the change they could believe in.
Adam Smith published the “Wealth of Nations” in 1776. He was not so much advocating an ideal system as describing the one that was emerging in the Atlantic world. It was the beginning of the market system where diverse communities were linked by an emerging world market, where governments did believe they had the right to regulate every aspect of life and the economy, as they had in most places whenever they could since the dawn of history. For the first time in history, a large number of people came to believe that THEY owned the government rather than the other way around and an autonomous private sector was developing. It was a new paradigm, which conveniently coincided with the birth of the novus ordo seclorum that same year.
Even after 233 years, the old paradigm dies hard. It is very difficult for most people to think systemically. We are accustomed to hierarchy where somebody is in charge. In a market economy, lots of people have influence, in a state of constant change, but nobody is in charge.
We perhaps can understand it better now that we have things like Internet and Wikis. Who commands those things? I read an interesting book “The Starfish and the Spider” here the author talked about investors demanding to see the “President of the Internet”
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclites used to say that everything flows (πάντα ρει) and graphically illustrated his point by explaining that nobody could step twice into the same river. Flowing water is an excellent way to understand change, the time it takes and the unexpected consequences of making changes. You shore up one bank with rocks, only to find that the current undercuts someplace else. You clear a channel and find two weeks later that you have changed the course of the stream a half mile UPstream. How can that happen? The simple direct solution is usually wrong and often the person who seems most in charge isn’t. He just talks the loudest – a good lesson for those who want to mess with markets.
You CAN make changes to a system like a market, just like you can to a stream. The trick is to make haste slowly. It is usually better to remove obstacles than to try to push more of your own energy into the system with direct solutions. With this approach, you often do not get what you expected. Usually it is better.
Today is the 233rd birthday of the U.S. Army. The U.S. would not be the land of the free if it were not also home of the brave.
The chow hall had a better than average meal with roast beef as a tribute. They also had a special cake and a marzipan diorama.
When the Marines had their birthday, we all got two beers. As you recall, we cannot have beer or any alcohol out here in Al Anbar, but the Marines get a two-beer exception on the Corps birthday. No such luck with the Army, unfortunately.
Water: Toilet to Tap and Back
We live in a desert so it should not surprise us to know that we have a water problem. Currently at Al Asad, they suggest that we don’t waste water. It is becoming harder to waste water in some of the bathrooms and showers since the tanks are running dry because they are being replenished less often.
I am not particularly fastidious and I don’t have a job that makes me sweat too much, but I do like to take showers after I run, so I am interested in some kind of solution. If I can predict when water will be available, I can adjust my schedule and use less, but right now I am just confused.
Dennis is helping try to find water up in Rawah. Aquifers are there, but a prolonged drought and a lot of tapping is emptying them faster than they are filling up. If you pump out too much, the whole thing can collapse. The picture above shows a monitoring device. Dennis just uses a watch and sees how long it takes to fill a 5 gallon bucket. This very expensive technology pictured above does the same thing, but it looks better doing it.One partial solution to water shortage is reverse osmosis. Water is forced at high pressure through a filter that takes out almost everything except the pure H2O. It takes a lot of energy to make it work, however and while they say that these systems can go from toilet to tap, most people do not have the stomach for that, even if it works. But we could and do use that water for things like showers and toilets. You are not supposed to use the tap water to brush your teeth.
New Team Member
We got a new team member called John Bauer. We should call him Jack, both because of the 24 series and because otherwise there are too many Johns. He has a lot of experience in city planning, budgeting and capital projects and specifically worked for many years on waste water treatment and water projects in general. His skills are exactly what we need in places like Rutbah. I think he will be a good addition to our team.
Al Asad Weather
We get some dust storms and it is very hot during the afternoon, but I am happy with the weather in general. I have started waking up around 530. It is pleasant around dawn and if it is not dusty I can go running. You have to hunker down during the middle of the day, but it could be worse. Iraqi weather from Mid-October to May is very pleasant, even a little on the cold side in January. November & March are almost perfect, with cool evenings and warm, sunny days, except when there is a lot of dust. Of course, it will get hotter. Even now, temperatures do not dip below the middle 70s even during the coolest part of the day. We have around a 30 degree difference between the highs and lows. When it highs get to be around 120, which they will next month, it will only dip into the 90s and that is pretty hot, even if it is a dry heat.
The helicopter ride from AA takes around an hour. You need around forty-five minutes to convoy from our base at El Dorado (formerly COP Norseman) to the Village of Nathara near Rutbah. The ride there was bumpy and a little unpleasant. The trip home was even worse. I felt queasy, as did the others on the flight, but nobody got sick. The EXO told me that should I ever actually become sick, I would be called “Chunks” from then on. It is a powerful incentive to avoid messing up the helicopter floor.
We went there to deal with a local matter involving Marines. This is a barren area in a barren region. The township covers 172 square kilometers of dirt and gravel on top of a plateau around 700 meters above sea level. The elevation and topography mean that it is not as hot here as in the WERV. Besides that, however, it enjoys no advantages. Houses of the village are widely spaced. I have no idea why they do that. There is nothing between them and the spacing makes it difficult to get around. I suppose everybody wants his space. Buildings are made of a kind of a plaster/mud/concrete mix with facades of stone. Most of the houses are small, but there are lots of people per unit, since most of the local men have more than one wife and lots of children.
We shared the MRAP ride with Mayor of Rutbah and his associates. They talked a little about the regional problems, not surprisingly sheep, water and fuel. We hear that trinity of trouble everyplace we go. The problems are interrelated and most likely unsolvable in the short run and beyond our control in any case. Rain will mitigate the sheep/water conditions; fuel will require market prices.
Along the way we had to drive thorough a dry wadi to bypass a collapsed bridge. CF had destroyed it early in the conflict as part of the shock and awe campaign. The mayor pointed out that it was not very shocking and inspired little awe since this particular bridge was so isolated and it was relatively easy to drive around. I don’t know much about bridges and as I looked at the supports I could not tell how easy it would be to repair the structure, but I am not sure they need a bridge there at all. I suppose that is why there is no urgency about making repairs. On the rare occasions when it rains, the wadi would be impassible for a couple of hours, but I bet culverts could take care of that.
We met the local sheik and his entourage when we got to Nathara. The imam also showed up. We had not expected him because he was reportedly sick, but he insisted that when he heard about our visit he had to come to see his friends. He evidently has some kind of bronchitis, but didn’t seem very sick and whatever ailed him did not interfere with his socializing. He greeted our Chaplin very warmly and with genuine affection. They spoke a little about Christianity, Islam and Judaism all being Abrahamic religions making all of us brothers. This brotherhood thing is very important around here. It is used fairly loosely and I am uncertain of its real significance.
The Marines took the opportunity to set up a local health screening. Iraqis do not have access to much heath care. Even the rich sheiks like to get American medical opinions. The poorer people we served on this visit may never have seen a competent doctor. Men brought in their sons. A big challenge is women’s health. That is why we brought female doctors. This is a conservative area and women are not allowed to talk to strangers. Colonel Malay asked the local sheik and the neighborhood imam to help get women to come. Both promised to do what they could, cautioning however that women might choose not to come. The imam even promised to preach re during Friday services in his mosque, but we don’t expect a high turnout.
Below is stonework in the buildings.
The imam mentioned that he personally could use a checkup and maybe some medication to help with his breathing problem.
Villagers were friendly and local leaders are supportive of the Marines, who they know protect them from insurgent attacks. They told us that they recognize any outsiders trying to infiltrate into their area and report what they know. Bad guys are still hanging around in the deserts and the wadis and some are crossing the borders. The vast distances and sparse population make this a good place to hide, but the atmosphere is much improved.
Local authorities were anxious to talk to me because they knew that our ePRT had helped with wells and animal health in nearby places. I will ask Dennis to assess potential here, but my own observations tell me that we will not be able to do very much. A short observation of the local soils and topography did not make me sanguine re the prospects. The land falls off in all directions from the place we were standing and a look at the map does not reveal any likely sources for an aquifer. Dennis told me that there is indeed water in the area, but it probably not sufficient and it is 250-300 meters down. Beyond that, the water to the west is evidently so full of dissolved salts that it is brackish and unsuitable for consumption. The soil looks okay, seems to have a lot of iron, but it is just dry dust. It would be wrong to say that there is not a blade of grass, but there is not much more than that.
This situation in Iraq’s western desert is emblematic of a coming world crisis in water. It is just more acute here sooner. In the 1940s, Iraq had a population of less than five million. The land and its water resources could sustain a population that big. Now there are twenty-eight million Iraqis and the population is expanding fast, fastest out here in the western deserts where there is not much to drink even in a wet year – which we see only once in every 5-7 seasons. The population of sheep and goats has expanded along with the population. The number of animals is well above the carrying capacity. We can advise on improvements and make things better, but trying to find more water for more sheep as well as more people and more irrigation is not a sustainable solution in the long run in all places.
The natural condition of this desert is to be mostly empty. There is little here that would attract population and maybe it should stay that way. Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe in making improvements. Some parts of our AO cry out for just a little water and some smart agriculture. Along the WERV there are Eden-like places that could supply high quality fruits and vegetables sustainably and in very large quantities. All they need is the initial investments and better management. The high desert we were in yesterday is not such a place. Sometimes you need to recognize what shouldn’t be done.
All that said, we CAN help with a well and we probably will. It will enhance Nathara’s prospects at least a short time. Perhaps it will buy enough time for the people to make an adjustment. No, I don’t think so easier, but hope is trumping experience. On the plus side, one of the local leaders complained that the sheep herds were significantly smaller and that people were being forced to sell off large parts of their herds. Of course, that is exactly what must happen. I regret that hardship is creating this solution, but it is nonetheless the right direction.
Below is not Iraq. That is lake Michigan, Grant Park in South Milwaukee Lots of water and very pretty. I just put that in for contrast and because I like it.
When you are “in charge” of the helicopter, you get to wear the goofy hat. I caught the CH46 to Ramadi to consult with the PRT there and to deliver our agriculture advisor Dennis and our rule of law advisor Burt Brasher to meetings. The advantage is that if I go we can get same day service, i.e. we can leave in the morning and come back the same evening AND we can leave from the Ripper landing zone, all of which makes life a lot easier for us. I get this special treatment because my SFS/SES1 rank is finally paying off. I am the highest ranking USG civilian in the AO. Of course there are not many of us around here.
I will try to use the one-day service once a week. We can bring several members of the team to each engagement and get many of our appointments done at the same time and then get them back to AA. This will save us literally day of waiting at landing zones & sleeping in those interesting advance bases. We – almost everybody on my staff – are getting a little old for that sort of thing. It will give me better opportunity to do the oversight and diplomacy job I am supposed to do.
Until now I got to use priority assets only when I went with Colonel Malay or with one of the generals. These are always great opportunities and I think I add value to the delegation but it will be good to be able to deploy our ePRT resources independent of other people’s travel when appropriate.
Stories that begin with somebody winning the big lottery usually end sadly. I suppose it has to do with the corrupting power of unearned/unexpected wealth and the frailties of human nature. Oil wealth can be as bad as a lottery win because not only does it often shoot more money into a country than it can usefully absorb, but it also empowers governments and encourages both centralization and corrupting patronage.
Let me hasten to say that I am speaking only my opinion and it is not based on any special knowledge, but as we see Iraq’s oil revenue jumping from around $20 billion under Saddam to $70+billion today. I fear we may have a lottery winner.
Oil revenues past helped destroyed Iraqi agriculture and retarded local initiative. It doesn’t make intuitive sense that good fortune could be such a curse, but the influx of so much easy money crowds out other endeavors. It cheapens hard work. The lottery winner feels like a chump if he keeps on working just as hard. Local initiative is stifled more directly, as money from the central government supplants local funding until the only guys left standing are those from Baghdad.
Oil wealth also creates a feeling of entitlement. People think they deserve “their” share and start getting angry when that share is too small in their opinion … and eventually it always is too small. It really is true that money cannot buy happiness and bribing people with gifts is a losing proposition. Over the long run (or even the not so long run), resentment & irritation always trump gratitude and satisfaction in these sorts of uneven relationships.
All this is much beyond my pay grade and since I have no ability to influence the outcome, I feel free to speculate. Take it for what it is worth. I think it is a stroke of good, but dangerous luck that Iraq is taking in so much more oil revenue. The money will allow Iraqi to rebuild and recover from the damage done by so many years of war and mismanagement. The caveat is that the oil wealth helped create the mismanagement and waste in the first place. To adapt an old saying, to err is human, but to really screw up you need the steroid power of oil wealth.
I hope that Iraq will spend that windfall on infrastructure upgrading and maintaining what they already have. There are certainly many places that could use such investments. Infrastructure investments that do not include governmental management of the economy are usually a good thing. Another thing that could be usefully done is to distribute revenues directly to the people, like the State of Alaska does. This is not perfect, but it gets some of the money out of the control of the bureaucrats. I fear there will be pressures to “do something positive” such as subsidize the dinosaur state owned enterprises and spread patronage from the central government. Actually, I suppose it will be a mix of both hope and fear. Let’s hope the hopeful part predominates.
Below are the date palms at our oasis. We have been having a little dust lately. This picture was taken at the middle of the day.
Iraq has 12-16 million date palms. This is down from 30 million in the pre-Saddam times but it still makes Iraq the world’s largest producer of dates. In Western Anbar, however, dates are not producing properly this year. Dennis and I did a local check out in the grove in our oasis and could not find even one producing tree. We are trying to figure out how the extent of the problem why it is happening and what Iraqis can do about it. Last year’s crop was good. Even a partial failure of the date crop would be a big problem, so we are very interested is making accurate assessments.
In the longer term, there is a lot Iraqis can do to improve their date production. Some of the techniques they currently use go back to Babylonian times. They are not wrong, but could use some adjustments. Most of these improvements would be easy and organic. For example, planting a cover crop of ladino clover under the trees would help control water absorption and regulate humidity, as well as improve soil. Another management fix is to plant the proper mix of male and female trees. Date palms have gender. Each male tree can pollinate around fifty palms. Pollen is distributed by wind so location makes a difference. It is also useful to plant the male trees on the sunnier part of the grove. Of course there are also the issue of irrigation scheduled to avoid salinity, better genetic quality of palms and modern use of nutrients. Iraqi farmers need to learn some of the new techniques and often relearn some of the more traditional ones.
Dennis also did a field survey of around 10,000 donum (6,000 acres) of irrigated farmland in the Ubaydi area of the Al Qaim district. Things have fallen apart. The tragedy is how easy it would be to remedy the situation IF it could be properly managed. For example, a twenty foot section of a pipe that draws water from the Euphrates is broken. The system could be fixed for a few hundred dollars and an afternoon’s work. Unfortunately the people farming the land don’t own it. The owner is no where to be found. Word is that they have left the country and the uncertainty is freezing developments.
There is also the problem of bureaucratic inertia. In all our districts we find warehouses full of agricultural equipment and fertilizers local farmers need, but bureaucrats representing the authorities are unwilling or unable to release. Some of it related to the problem of who should get it and the land tenure problems I mentioned above complicate every solution. Our ePRT is trying to broken agreements, but our work is made awkward by our incomplete understanding. I am not sure that anybody really knows the answer, but we are looking hard.
There are some things we can and have done on our own initiative. For example, we equipped an agricultural laboratory that will help with things like soil analysis. We are also looking to fund some solar powered water pumps and a we are helping buy some tractor for an equipment rental operation.
In ancient times, Iraq was a phenomenally rich agricultural region. It will be again after we all pass through this rough patch.
