We Meant Well (14 page)

Colonel Jim's vision for self-promotion was expensive projects that promised to turn the war around, as if only history would record each of them as another Midway. If his civil affairs team told him the area needed something to help with milk production, a milk-processing plant bigger than a hometown high school football field was commissioned (as in electronics, where size is measured in units of cigarette packs, here the unit of measure was an American football field). As disbelieving Iraqis stood by, a million dollars fell from the sky and a processing plant appeared in some field. Or a water cleaning facility or a hot-air balloon airport. The value of the project was always measured in the future tense. It was about the jobs it
would
create, the stability it
would
promote, the good feelings it
would
generate, and, though no one said it, the freedom it would give us to walk away after the photo session and move on to the next thing. If anyone happened to wonder aloud later whatever became of these older projects, well, hey, look at this new game changer we have going just over here …

Colonel Rich was a more practical man who never saw the self-promotional value in large, expensive projects. They took too long, and you could spend months stalling for time with interim storyboards for the same half-assed construction site when it was completed projects that racked up points with higher headquarters. Besides, the fashion of counterinsurgency had changed, with longer hemlines and smaller, targeted projects the vogue. Through a quick assessment of the battlefield, Colonel Rich determined that the smaller projects were boring (another freaking sewer pump) and nonphotogenic. He needed a new strategy, in line with the administration's childlike craving for successes to trumpet.

What could be better than free stuff? The Colonel hit on the idea of an almost endless series of humanitarian assistance drops. When this scenario wore out, the Army might partner up with some long-suffering Iraqi police unit and have it give stuff away while the Colonel stood behind and directed the action. After every Iraqi pantry within a couple of miles of the FOB was stuffed with bags of Army goodies, the Colonel adapted to the new conditions. He struck gold by sending out Army doctors to provide medical care in the field instead of vittles. The images were amazing—young blond, blue-eyed female doctors holding tiny Iraqi babies, Army women talking to Muslim women about women things, village elders thanking Army doctors for whatever was being handed out. The war was practically won those afternoons.

But without regularly scheduled follow-up medical care, the value was quickly diminished. Had anyone bothered to read those Kilcullen and Nagl war-theory books, they would have learned that haphazard charity had nothing to do with counterinsurgency. It worked pretty well when it came to self-promotion, however, and if publicity were democracy, this place would have looked like ancient Athens.

Mark, the third Colonel I worked with, looked and sounded like Bill Cosby. His walls had a few I Love Me photos, but the main thing you noticed in his office was an Iraqi tea set that actually got used. He would do one-armed push-ups as punishment when he was late for a meeting, and he ran at the head of the pack in every FOB 10K. He seemed a lot closer to the kind of guy you would want leading your counterinsurgency struggle, if for nothing else than his sense of humor. He and I were among the few people old enough on the FOB to remember the Three Stooges, and behind very tightly closed doors Mark would do a wicked imitation of any of half a dozen Stooges routines.

The area near Salman Pak where we sometimes worked was a nasty place, with a large number of s
ahwa
, SOI. Although the United States had bought off the SOI during the Surge and paid them to guard checkpoints, transitioning these angry young men into real jobs had since floundered. Add in the fact that several Sunni-Shia “seams” ran through the area, lines of conflict where the religious communities rubbed against each other, plus the reality that any government authority took a backseat to tribal power, and you had yourself one volatile zone.

Colonel Mark was in charge of our FOB during the run-up to the March 2010 parliamentary elections, which were to be the capstone on the US effort and allow us to hit the door running. Tensions in our area were at an all-time high. One day, Colonel Mark handed out copies of Malcolm Gladwell's
The Tipping Point
to his senior staff, with orders to read it by Saturday. For a good five days, the FOB resembled an undergrad dorm the week before midterms, with some officers chewing rapidly through the book while others procrastinated and begged for summaries and notes. For the three people who haven't read the book, the main point Colonel Mark wanted his brigade to absorb was this: With each new trend, key people exist who have more clout than others. Find these people, influence them, and they'll spread the message or trend widely enough that it will become common knowledge, self-powered and self-sustaining, the tipping point of the title.

The FOB was to turn all of its resources toward identifying those key people in the area whom we should influence, who would then in turn help sway the larger population. The goal was to contain the violence, root out the few hard-core nasties, and locate places to spend money and do stuff that would channel the locals' anger and frustration away from disrupting the elections. We embarked on a long series of late-night discussions, some formal, with PowerPoint (this was still the Army, after all), some held spontaneously in the hallways, with cold coffee. Tough captains who led night patrols were made to sit down with doughy pay clerks to sort out who was really a tribal leader and who was merely a guy who had figured out how to take our money. People who had not always played a significant role on the FOB, such as second-line translators and quiet anthropologists recruited by the Army, rose to new prominence. The Colonel was omnipresent, encouraging discussion and challenging his staff to create an ever more complex matrix of the thugs, politicians, and cutthroats who shaped events in our region.

With the matrix done, the Colonel then used his own clout (if you thought of the relationships in our area as an uneasy truce among street gangs, the US Army was still the baddest boy on the block), money, and status to start talking. The brigade sacrificed its kidneys in a long round of midnight teas with Iraqi sheiks. Promises of security and safe passage were negotiated and some old scores were allowed to be settled, all culminating in a meeting that brought most of the right people together to hear our message. Small groups held discussions about how to ensure fair elections, who would be responsible for what, and who would need to stay the hell away from whom. Lines were drawn and deals made, some less savory than others, but an understanding was reached on how we were to get along. As each Iraqi leader thought over whether to follow us, he saw we kept our side of the deals. It was not all pretty, but the relationships that were formed made for a smooth election and laid the foundation for control and stability in a Wild, Wild West area that knew neither previously.

One of the difficult parts about counterinsurgency was that it was hard to tell when you had won. You measured success more by what did not happen than what did, the silence that defined the music. Silence did not play well with self-promotion, but it sure as hell beat the sound of IEDs.

Some Chick Event

A huge line of effort for the reconstruction of Iraq had to do with the empowerment of women. The origins of this are murky. Some of us expected the Republicans to like the fact that women could not work outside the home or drive, as well as all the other features radical Islam offered to the distaff gender. In the odd way things bounced, however, freeing women from their oppression got tied into the overall idea of liberating Iraq, with the net result that women ranked high on our collective agenda. Sure, the idea helped sell the war at home but there was always this sneaking feeling that the real reason the Bush people liked it was that it pissed off Muslim men.

Our goal, the Embassy reminded us regularly, was to turn Iraq's Islamically oppressed women into entrepreneurs and have them throw off their
hijabs
for miniskirts, liberated and free. Most Iraqi women, however, seemed less interested in owning businesses and hopping around in short skirts than in somehow finding water, medicine, and education for their non-miniskirted children. No matter. As with pretty much everything we did, our vision was not to be disturbed by anything as silly as reality. We treated Iraq as a blank slate and discarded any lessons of past experience.

Reality, even when enthusiastically ignored, is a stern teacher and so our women things got off to a slow start. No one signed up for the early business training events. Unable to raise corporate executives from the dust in the brief time allotted, we focused on locating women who would, in return for our money, form NGOs and attend a nearly endless round of conferences and seminars we paid for. It was easy for them, as little was expected other than that they pose for photos. It was easy for us as well. Two hotels, one just in and the other just next to the Green Zone, offered packages so that with a single phone call (plus money) we got a big room, food, music, and microphones. These conferences were perfect venues for Embassy speakers. They could dart out of the Embassy compound in armored Suburbans, make quick speeches composed of the words
freedom
-
liberation
-
empowerment
-
women
randomly rearranged several times, and then rocket back to Planet Embassy before dinner. The Embassy people could claim they had ventured into the Red Zone (actually everything in Iraq but the Green Zone was Red) and buff up their performance reviews. We would reward the women who attended with additional projects (cash) for playing along.

Both the Army and the PRTs got into this game, but the Army was always a bit clumsy when it came to the ladies. Male Colonels who would probably have felt more comfortable dragging women into caves by their hair stumbled around trying to come up with what they described as “some kind of goddamn chick event” to satisfy the Line of Effort. At our FOB the Colonel rooted down through his staff until he found a woman and then assigned her the task. The female Army Major stuck with the mission committed her befuddlement to the record.

12 N
OVEMBER
2009:

I presented the non-lethal target to the Brigade Commander. A State Department man attended and provided neither guidelines nor issues with moving forward. I relayed cost figures to the Brigade Commander. He selected the highest priced option, $22,987, because he wanted to illustrate his commitment to women's issues.

20 N
OVEMBER
2009:

The State Department man complained to the Embassy in an email, “I just found out a Major has stepped over our ePRT Women's Initiatives Advisor and is attempting to coordinate directly with the Embassy Women's Issues Coordinator. This is not protocol. Evidently, there was even a scouting trip to the al-Rasheed Hotel Saturday morning and I was not invited!”

26 N
OVEMBER
2009:

At the non-lethal target decision brief, the Brigade Commander asked whom we were requesting as the keynote speaker for the Woman's Conference. I told him I would like to pursue the women's issues Ambassador, because she projects a presence as a lifelong women's advocate. He said she was a busy lady, so make sure we did this immediately. Great choice sir!

28 N
OVEMBER
2009:

The Lieutenant in my planning cell asked if she could invite an Army band. I said roger and requested a chamber band of four female soldiers to play welcoming music.

29 N
OVEMBER
2009:

The State Department man said, “I have now had three different discussions with the Major and I am not sure if she gets it.” I think he was saying I am stupid, which I do not appreciate.

01 D
ECEMBER
2009:

The Brigade Commander decided to hold the conference the “Army Way” without the State Department's involvement.

After another two months of back and forth, the Army held the conference at the al-Rasheed Hotel. All the males except one master of ceremonies left the room after lunch, while some 180 women, including a female US Army Sergeant who was sent to monitor the event and who provided these details, stayed. The master of ceremonies serenaded the women before switching to a DJ role and blasting out Arab pop tunes. All 180 women in the room began to dance. The group formed a large circle, and women jumped in voluntarily or were pulled in to dance what our shocked Sergeant, who came from Wisconsin, called a “kind of belly dance.” The Sergeant said she wasn't sure whether it was the non-Wisconsin-type dancing or that the US Army paid for it all that was more upsetting to her, but she asked please not to be ordered to attend any future such events. The Iraqis have a saying that what women want is roasted ice, so maybe there was no way to have made everyone happy. The Colonel, however, was very happy, as he indeed got his chick event and could cross off another item on his brigade's reconstructing-Iraq to-do list.

Widowed Tractors, Bees for Widows

As the ground turned muddy with the seasonal rains Mesopotamia has always depended on to fill its rivers and cisterns, we decided to give away some tractors to help ensure the annual planting and harvest went smoothly. This required Salina.

Like many a budding entrepreneur hoping to scoop up some reconstruction money, Salina had turned herself into an NGO. She came up with the idea that we would give her NGO greenhouses and tractors and she would employ widows to farm for her. The women would have jobs and Salina would acquire a sweatshop operation paid for by the US government. The key was the widows. Of the many things Iraq lacked, it did not lack widows. We had created many of them ourselves, and so the Embassy told the ePRTs to help widows. Salina and her pods of widows were also useful in that they represented our blurry vision of women in Iraq as entrepreneurs and employed. The widows themselves were a trend, something every ePRT had to find a way to work with. The previous big trend, sports diplomacy, had not been good for widows. Few played sports. The movie
Invictus
, about how apartheid was solved in South Africa by the various races playing rugby together, started the sports diplomacy meme after the film was a minor hit somewhere in 2009. For about six months in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to hold soccer matches pitting Sunni teams against Shia teams. Both sides agreed informally to stop the violence long enough to pick up American money, plus neat prizes for the winners (aw, hell, you're all winners today!) like colorful jerseys and soccer balls. There were a few hilarious United States versus Iraq matches as well, as our soldiers valiantly faked enthusiasm for soccer while getting their asses kicked by teams from local schools. The troops made jokes about how “you beat us at soccer but we beat you in the war,” which never seemed funny to the Iraqi side.