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BBA’s

October 25th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve returned from my first R&R (admittedly several weeks ago), and am now ready to start updating the blog.  Hopefully I haven’t lost everyone who was reading through my lack of posting.  I’ve made this promise several times in the past, but I’m going to try to do a better job of keeping the blog updated.

The last couple weeks we had a “Stars and Stripes” reporter embedded with the PRT.  Nice guy named Heath Druzin.  For those of you who don’t know, the Stars and Stripes is a newpaper that is published around the world for the US military.  It is the main newspaper for military stationed overseas - since 1942.  Heath wrote several stories while he was here.  I thought one of his most interesting was on one of our Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural Advisors (BBA).

BBA’s are a huge part of what we do here.  We have probably 5-6 BBA’s in the PRT and all of them are indispensable.  They are Iraqi’s who left Iraq, typically for the USA or Canada, and are now back to help rebuild their country.  BBA’s speak Arabic (often other languages like Kurdish) fluently, and know the culture here.  Additionally many of them have special qualification - we have engineers, and one pediatrician.  Most of them still have large parts of their family here, although for safety reasons they rarely visit them.  Our BBA’s live and work with us on a daily basis. 

This article is on the BBA that works closely with me in my section.  He is a great guy, and has some of the most amazing stories.  I’ll be sad to leave him when my time is up here:

Saturday, October 25, 2008  
 
Ex-refugee from Saddam becomes translator, adviser

By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, October 10, 2008

 

KIRKUK, Iraq — After four days in the back of a semi truck, Ayad Amin Hussein ran out of his meager rations of cookies and Fanta. He had not seen his wife and son in months and was under constant threat of arrest.

This was the easy part of his journey out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

After fleeing Saddam’s regime in the 1990s, Hussein returned to Iraq five years ago and has worked here as a soldier, a NATO adviser and now as bilingual-bicultural adviser to an American Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kirkuk province.

“He brings a cultural knowledge of not just Kirkuk, but the different elements within Iraq,” said Howard Keegan, who leads the reconstruction team.

Hussein, 39, a former English teacher, began his journey out of Iraq and back again began in 1993 when Saddam’s intelligence service approached him about becoming a spy — his command of Kurdish, English and Arabic was invaluable to the regime. It was less a recruitment than an order: join or face jail.

He decided to flee, slipping out of his home in the northern city of Kirkuk and heading east to Sulaymaniyah, where he eventually found work with the United Nations as a translator and got married.

But in 1996, when Saddam sent troops into northern Iraq to intervene in violence between rival Kurdish political parties, Hussein, who is Kurdish, saw his name on a list of undesirables and fled the country, leaving his wife and infant son behind for fear of taking them on the perilous journey he faced.

A smuggler took him and more than 30 others over steep, jagged mountains in the dead of winter into Iran. Two mules walked ahead of the group to alert them of minefields left behind after the Iran-Iraq War. One mule didn’t make it.

From Iran they walked to Turkey, where Hussein said they were shelled by Turkish troops. Many in his party were injured, some killed.

“I was just lucky,” he said.

They walked for days, eventually crossing into Turkey, unfriendly terrain for a Kurd, where they took a bus to Istanbul. There another smuggler asked where he wanted to go.

“I told him, ‘Anywhere outside of Turkey,’ ” he said.

The smuggler had Hussein cram into a small space in a truck laden with boxes of chocolate and told to limit what he ate because there would be no bathroom for days. His only clue to his location was the language spoken by border guards. When he heard Italian he knew he was in Western Europe and tantalizingly close to freedom.

Eventually, Hussein made his way to the Netherlands, where he spent a year in a refugee camp before being reunited with his wife and his son, who had been separated so long from his father that he did not recognize him.

After learning Dutch, Hussein joined the Dutch army and served three tours in Iraq, rising to the rank of captain.

He later served as a cultural adviser to NATO before taking a similar role with U.S. forces. For the past 18 months, he has worked with Keegan and the Kirkuk PRT, aiming to foster reconciliation between ethnic groups in Kirkuk.

“I’m going back to help my people, I’m going back to tell them what I learned,” he said, explaining why he has come back time and time again to his war-torn country.

Slight and unassuming, Hussein navigates his dizzying world with a soft-spoken manner and easy smile that belies the simmering tensions of Kirkuk province, where Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and other minorities are wrestling for control of the oil-rich region.

Hussein and the team of Iraqi interpreters and advisers who work with the PRT help the Americans broker high-level negotiations between political parties and help with the details — such as how to properly thank the Turkmen delegation for a recent gift of spiced rice and vegetable dolma — that help smooth relations between Americans and Iraqis.

“They’re crucial to the success of the mission,” said Jeffrey Ashley, U.S. Agency For International Development representative for the team. “Without them, we couldn’t do it.”

In addition to English, Arabic, Dutch and Kurdish, Hussein also speaks Turkish and Farsi.

And he speaks them all in the dialect of diplomacy, Keegan said.

Politicians from parties across ethnic lines trust Hussein and will often call him to convey messages to the Americans.

“People have learned that he is a true neutral,” Keegan said. “He may be a Kurd, but he’s not going to take sides.”

© 2008 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.

→ 1 CommentTags: Iraq · Kirkuk · PRT

No rest for the weary

August 20th, 2008 · No Comments

The pace of the work here hasn’t decreased much since the 2nd half of July.  Unfortunately for the blog, I end up doing a lot of writing for work.  When I finish up my day - typically after 10pm - I find excuses not to write a new blog entry.  I do enjoy putting info out there, and I know there are at least a few people reading.  Below is an article from yesterday in the NY TImes about Kirkuk.  The focus of Iraq has turned here over the last month, and it doesn’t seem to be wavering.  I don’t agree with 100% of the article, but it does give an overall good picture of what’s going on here.  I interact on a regular basis with many of the actors mentioned in the article:

Benjamin Lowy/VII Network, for The New York Times

After a suicide bombing in Kirkuk in July, a Kurdish mob firebombed Turkmen political offices. More Photos >

 

This photo is from the NY Times article - taken right after the suicide bombing, near where we work.  Photo: Benjamin Lowy/VII Network

August 19, 2008

Kurdish Control of Kirkuk Creates a Powder Keg

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

 KIRKUK, Iraq — The phone rang, and it was answered by a Kurdish security commander, Hallo Najat, sitting in his office in this deeply divided city. On the line, he said, was a United Nations official wanting to know whether it was true that the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, had left its bases in northern Iraq and was occupying Kirkuk.

No, Mr. Najat told the caller. But after hanging up, he wryly revealed the deeper truth about Kirkuk, combustible for its mix of ethnicities floating together on a sea of oil: the Kurds already control it.

“It’s true,” Mr. Najat said. “What is the need for the troops?”

Of all the political problems facing Iraq today, perhaps none is so intractable as the fate of Kirkuk, a city of 900,000 that Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens all claim as their own. The explosive quarrel over the city is one major barrier to creating stable political structures in the rest of Iraq.

Beyond that, it demonstrates that despite a recent decline in violence, Iraq’s unsettled ethnic and regional discord could still upend directives emanating from Baghdad and destabilize large swaths of the country — or even set off a civil war.

This month, legislation in the national Parliament to set the groundwork for crucial provincial elections collapsed in a bitter dispute over Kirkuk, as Arabs and Turkmens demanded that the Kurds be forced to cede some of their power here. But with the Kurds having already consolidated their authority in Kirkuk, there seemed little chance — short of a military intervention — of that happening.

Kurdish authority is visible everywhere in the city. In addition to the provincial government and command of the police, the Kurds control the Asaish, the feared undercover security service that works with the American military and, according to Asaish commanders, United States intelligence agencies.

Asaish officers are often the first to the scene of an attack and, other Kurdish officials concede, seem always to have the best intelligence. The leaders of the Asaish report only to the dominant Kurdish political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

“He’s my boss,” said Mr. Najat, the commander of the K.D.P. Asaish force in Kirkuk, glancing at a picture of Masrur Barzani, the head of intelligence for the K.D.P. and the son of the party’s leader, Massoud Barzani.

The Kurds’ control over the security forces — and their ability to use it for political purposes — was evident three weeks ago, rival groups say, after a suicide bomber attacked Kurdish demonstrators, igniting a riot that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded.

After the attack, a mob of Kurds set upon a Turkmen political headquarters, eventually firebombing the building. At some point, the Turkmen guards inside fired at the crowd. All in all, American officials say they believe, far more people were killed and wounded in the riot than in the bombing that touched it off.

Yet, while the police quickly arrested 13 Turkmens at the headquarters, charging them with firing on the crowd, they did not apprehend any of the Kurds who burned the building. One of the Turkmen guards wounded in the fighting was quickly interrogated at the hospital by the Asaish and the police. A video, in which the guard says he was ordered to fire on the crowd, soon appeared on Kurdish television.

Kurdish police commanders promise an impartial investigation of the bombing and its aftermath, overseen by officers from all of the city’s ethnic groups. But the senior Turkmen on the force, Maj. Gen. Turhan Abdul-Rahman Youssef, fears a whitewash.

“I don’t think we will have a result,” he said, describing the broadcast showing the wounded Turkmen guard as “illegal.”

The Kurds’ accumulation of power has stoked tensions with Arabs and Turkmens. “There is much fear,” said Mohammed Khalil, the leader of the Arab bloc on the provincial council. “The Asaish are saying they will annex Kirkuk by force, and that is terrifying people.” Arabs also say the Asaish carry out kidnappings, a charge Asaish officers deny.

But rival ethnic leaders also warn that the Kurds’ control of the security forces will not prevent chaos in the event of an outbreak of ethnic fighting. The city’s Arabs, Mr. Khalil said, “will not stay handcuffed by Kurdish actions.”

Under Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Kurdish families were ousted from Kirkuk, replaced by Arabs as part of his drive to obtain a firmer political grip on the enormous oil reserves here. But after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kurdish militiamen reversed the process, driving out Arabs and bringing in Kurds. Arabs and Turkmens now make up about 40 percent of Kirkuk’s population, according to American military estimates.

The Kurds want to fold Kirkuk into the neighboring Kurdistan region. They also warn that any plan stripping them of power will be harshly contested.

“Its fate will be failure,” said Nejad Hassan, the senior Kurdistan Democratic Party official in Kirkuk.

After the suicide bombing, that conflict was evident in a dispute about whether to bring a substantial number of Iraqi troops into the city, in a direct challenge to Kurdish supremacy.

In a series of sweeps conducted with the Americans, the Iraqi Army has helped establish stability this year in other volatile parts of Iraq. But Iraqi troops have largely stayed out of Kirkuk.

After the July 28 attacks, however, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered in a battalion from a nearby base. The troops took up positions in the city.

Aware that part of the proposal being debated in Baghdad was to send a far larger force from central and southern Iraq to administer security — which would mean a mostly Arab force, loyal to the Baghdad government, set against Kurdish-controlled forces — the Kurds objected strenuously.

Kurds were not the only ones opposing the deployment of a major Arab security force after the violence. The American military commander here, Col. David Paschal, said he feared that if Baghdad sent in additional troops, Kurdish leaders would retaliate by sending in their own militia from northern Iraq, creating a potentially disastrous confrontation.

“I just saw this continued escalation of force happening,” he said. Baghdad is expected to withdraw the troops, according to American commanders.

Colonel Paschal blames all the political parties for inflaming tensions to serve their interests. But he said it was difficult to comprehend the level of mistrust.

“Negotiations here are, ‘You give me everything I want, and I will walk away happy,’ ” he said. “It is hard for us to appreciate the level of ethnic hatred.”

The severity of those tensions became indisputably clear three weeks ago when thousands of Kurds poured into central Kirkuk to protest the power-sharing proposal in Baghdad.

In a video that American commanders say they believe to be authentic, a young man who the Americans say appears to be the bomber, not a woman as Kurdish officials initially said, can be seen standing in a sea of demonstrators. He ritualistically raises his hands, palms up, toward his face, then lowers them to his side. An instant later the explosion engulfs him and everyone around him.

It took only a few moments for the demonstrators to turn their fury on the Turkmens, whom they instantly blamed. One mistook a well-known Kurdish journalist, Yahya Barzanji, for a Turkmen correspondent, shouting, “He’s working for the Turkmens,” Mr. Barzanji recalled. A video captured the crowd furiously beating Mr. Barzanji, chanting: “Kill him! Kill him!”

Within minutes the mob was in front of the Turkmen party headquarters. While American and Kurdish officials agree that the Turkmen guards fired into the crowd, Colonel Paschal — who watched the skirmish unfold in a video feed from a remotely piloted aerial drone — said that the Turkmens did not appear to fire wantonly, and that they instead gradually escalated until they were firing directly into a large and growing mob that posed a threat.

All told, at least 28 people died and 213 were wounded in the suicide attack and the ensuing riot, according to the Asaish commander at the main hospital. Kurdish authorities have sought to play down the intensity of the fight between the Kurds and the Turkmens, but Colonel Paschal said most of the casualties were sustained during the riot.

Despite this outbreak, Colonel Paschal said attacks in Kirkuk had dropped by two-thirds since last summer. Kurds attribute some of that improvement to the Asaish.

“They are in direct contact with the people,” said Hemin Shafiq, a 24-year-old policeman. “They are more rapid. That is why they are much more active than the police.”

Rifat Abdullah, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan here, said: “The Asaish have lots of sources, and that’s why the Americans depend on them and the police depend on them. That might explain why they have more power.”

General Turhan admitted that the Asaish officers were, at times, more powerful than the police, and he said there were thousands of Asaish in the city, though Kurdish officials say there are no more than 1,000. “They have a major role combating terrorism, but the problem is they are loyal to the political parties,” he said.

In an interview, the provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Jamal Taher, a Kurd, did not answer a question about whether he had the power to control the activities of the Asaish. But he praised their ability to ferret out information.

“Maybe they have better sources than me,” he said.

Riyadh Muhammed contributed reporting.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

→ No CommentsTags: General · Iraq · Kirkuk

More writing on the way…..

July 21st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I really don’t have any legitimate excuses - it doesn’t take but 10-15 minutes to make a post.  In my defense it has been very busy around here.  I often find myself working late into the night, and waking up early.  It doesn’t help that we have spent some time hiding out in bunkers of late.  The good news is that i’ve had the opportunity to attend some really amazing events from dinner at a Kurdish politician’s house to market walks all over the city and surrounding areas.  I will put some pictures from some of these events on the blog this week (if I say it that means I have to do it, right?).  I just have to get my camera hooked into my computer to download some of the pictures. 

I will also be submitting my final bid list this week for my next assignment in the Foreign Service.  I think I have my first choice narrowed down to Thailand or Cambodia, but am having some trouble picking the winner.  I think I’ll find out what I get sometime in early August. 

I’m off to a meeting with folks from the United Nations.  I’ll post those pics this week.

→ 1 CommentTags: General

Our Partner

July 10th, 2008 · No Comments

A good article on Colonel Paschal, the commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team 10th Mountain Division whom we work closely with.  He is very inclusive with the PRT, and has a great relationship with everyone.  He honestly is one of the best commanding officers I have ever seen.  I have yet to see him walk through the chow hall without patting at least 10 soldiers backs, and yes….occassionally gives noogies.

U.S. commander in Kirkuk lowers profile, raises popularity

Col. David Paschal and Iraqi Army Col. Abdullah al-Dalawe

Mike Tharp / Merced Sun-Star / MCT

Col. David Paschal and Iraqi Army Col. Abdullah al-Dalawe discuss deployment and training of Iraqi soldiers in Kirkuk Province. | View larger image

By Mike Tharp | McClatchy Newspapers

KIRKUK, Iraq — For the past 11 months Col. David Paschal has back-slapped, noogied and high-fived his soldiers. He’s been kissed on both cheeks by local Iraqis, and he’s upbraided or atta-boyed his counterparts in the Iraqi army and police. He’s sent his gunfighters after the “bad guys.”

He’s balanced that with a reconciliation program for about 350 former insurgents, a six-step process that’s becoming something of a model for other provinces.

Paschal, 46, a Chicago native, is the senior U.S. military officer in Kirkuk, a city of 800,000 some 155 miles northeast of Baghdad. He commands a brigade in the 10th Mountain Division, an Army division whose units have been sent overseas more than any other in the past 20 years.

Kurds dominate the province, but there are Sunni Muslim Arabs, Turkmens, Chaldean Christians and others here too. Part of his job has been to coax Sunni Arabs who’d boycotted politics for several months back into the government.

Paschal is trying to prepare the province for the day that the 3,500 men and women in his ranks depart. With four months to go, the signs in the province — roughly the size of Rhode Island — are promising. Violence is down by 90 percent in some villages, and a sense of fragile confidence has returned to markets and mosques throughout the area.

The number of so-called “significant acts” by insurgents fell to 105 in May from 350 last July. Also in May, soldiers in Paschal’s brigade found 66 homemade bombs, down 76 percent from 277 a year earlier. A crucial oil pipeline patrolled by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers carried 13 million barrels in May and June, more than before the war.

Even with those improvements, Paschal wears his body armor and Kevlar helmet and slings his M-4 rifle over his shoulder when he strolls the markets. His security detail shadows him on the sidewalk and from armored Humvees as he takes the temperature of the town.

He has good reason: On one of his recent market walks in southern Kirkuk, a Sunni Arab sniper wounded one of Paschal’s turret machine-gunners in the shoulder. Besides those Sunnis who feel disenfranchised by the Kurds, U.S. adversaries include remnants of the group al Qaida in Iraq — whose members fled north after Sunni tribal leaders turned against it last year in Anbar province.

As in other once-restive provinces, the Americans have co-opted some insurgents by inducting them into a U.S.-backed militia called Sons of Iraq. The Sons of Iraq are paid if they turn in hostile fighters and penalized if homemade bombs go off in their neighborhoods, and their absence from the fight — however temporary — has helped drive down the violence.

Paschal’s superiors say they approve of his actions. Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, the commander of the 1st Armored Division, in charge of all four northern Iraq provinces, said Paschal’s program for training the Iraqi army in medical treatment, logistics, supplies, ammunition and fuel “is the model I’m going to try to use throughout the (northern) sector.”

Kirkuk may be the only province in Iraq in which the police force functions almost like its American counterpart, proactively seeking to prevent crime and terrorist acts while trying to serve and protect citizens. Recently, Paschal helped dedicate a new major crime-unit facility in the city, aimed at helping police bring cases to court against detainees based on evidence, not whim or ethnic affiliation. “It highlights the importance of the rule of law,” Paschal said, “and will stand as an example to the rest of Iraq on what you can establish when you establish security.”

One of Paschal’s most popular actions among the local population is to lower the U.S. military’s profile. On his direct orders, brigade vehicles no longer hog the center of streets or roads but drive normally in the right lanes, which he said was part of the broader U.S. shift from combat to nonlethal operations. “I always tell my soldiers that our actions speak much louder than our words,” he said recently on a local call-in TV show in Kirkuk. Nevertheless, Iraqi cars and trucks still pull over and stop for oncoming convoys.

Paschal stands 6 feet 6, with a type “A” personality to match his oversize frame. That works within his brigade. Soldiers expect a headlock and noogie — after a bear hug — when he meets them at a remote communications-retransmission outpost set atop a lunar landscape.

A few months back, to test his military police officers, he donned a dishdasha — the flowing robe that soldiers call a “man dress” — and parked himself in a detainee cell on base. After hurling water, food and insults through the bars at guards, he fought fiercely for several seconds before five of them tackled him and flex-cuffed his hands and feet. “You want some more or you had enough?” he joked with the men later, as he palmed prized unit coins into their hands.

But type A doesn’t necessarily work in counter-insurgency. “The typical U.S. military officer is an ultra-type A personality, and that generally is a good thing for getting things done, but sometimes is detrimental,” said Michael Noonan, the managing director of the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former Army captain in northern Iraq in 2006-07. “Counterinsurgency is like jujitsu, and impatience by the counterinsurgent can lead to bad decisions.”

A Kurdish Iraqi army major angered Paschal so much by failing to induct some 200 Sunni Arabs into basic training — men badly needed if the Iraqi army is to stand up while Americans stand down — that he stomped out of his office without farewell or handshake. He also refused to ride in two air-conditioned SUVs that the major provided and walked the half-mile back to his own vehicles in 108-degree heat. “He’s a pretty boy,” he fumed about the major.

Paschal is “a throwback to John Wayne,” said Staff Sgt. Margaret Nelson, whose father served 30 years in the Navy. “He’s father of the brigade, the orchestrator.” Added Sgt. 1st Class Keven Duncan: “He’s a wild guy. But for a full-bird colonel to try to know the names of all his soldiers and to ask about their kids. … ”

He also has an irrepressible side. He recently gave Maj. Gen. Hertling a bumper sticker: “Friends don’t let friends drive car bombs.”

(Tharp is an editor with the Merced Sun-Star.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

→ No CommentsTags: General · Iraq · Kirkuk · PRT

Where in the world…..?

July 4th, 2008 · 1 Comment

It’s that time of the year again when Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) start combing through the list of available jobs around the world, trying to figure out which posts to bid on.  The State Department has two bidding cycles - one in the summer and one in the winter.  A person’s cycle is determined by when they will be departing their current post/job.  Typically an FSO bids one year out.  For example, someone departing a post next summer will bid this summer.

Since my tour in Iraq ends next summer (June) I am on this summer bidding cycle.  I was very excited to recieve my bid list just a few days ago.  This is actually my first true bid list - coming out of A-100 we had a very short bid list on account of our small 40 person class.  This list has over 500 positions around the world.  Unfortunately not all of the listed positions are available to me because I still need to test out of a language to get tenured.  Therefore, I need to bid on posts that require language training before departure, so no Australia, New Zealand, or London.  Fortunately for me this list is full of positions that would send me through language training.

After looking through the list several times I think I’ve narrowed down my choices to Beijing (China), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Bangkok (Thailand), and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) - all East Asian posts.  There are a couple others that I’m considering as well.  Coming out of Iraq I’m expecting to receive one of my top couple bids - most likely my first choice.  My bid list (a list of my top 20 choices) is due in about 3 weeks, so I have that amount of time to make my decision on the order of the list.  If all goes as planned I should know my next post sometime in early August.  I’ll be sure put in a post on my final bid list.

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I was able to be part of a couple interesting trips this last week.  I hope to post on them this week sometime with some pictures.  Happy 4th of July!

→ 1 CommentTags: Foreign Service

My CHU

June 27th, 2008 · 4 Comments

Bathroom in my CHU

Well, here’s my first attempt at putting pictures into the blog.  These are all photos of my Containerized Housing Unit (CHU).  I mentioned this in another post, but these really do represent just about the highest living quality standards in Iraq.  The main benefit being the attached bathroom that we get all to ourselves. 

You can see from the photos, but we get a desk, a strange sized bed (somewhere between queen and full sized), a small refrigerator, a metal wardrobe cabinet, television, and dvd player.  It’s actually very comfortable - no complaints from my perspective.  PRT personnell are all co-located so we have kind of a little CHU town on this area of the FOB.  The cell phone service is not great here, so more often than not you find people by knocking on their CHU door (or throwing rocks at it - this is the signature method of one of my friends here).  The airconditioning works well, and I have internet access in my CHU. 

Cleaning is a pain in the ass.  Dust and sand get everywhere and you have to sweep regularly.  I just washed my airconditioning filter in the shower this morning and it was full of sandy dust.  I’m a little worried about electronics I brought here - I’m sure the dust is getting in and causing damage.  I still can’t figure out if the dust is good or bad for my health.  One of the theories making the rounds here is that all the inhaled dust acts as a loofa - quietly scrubbing your lungs clean.  As an aspiring optimist I’m going to champion this theory.

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On a much more somber note I learned the name today of the 4 Americans killed by a bomb blast near Sadr City, Baghdad as they attended a local city council meeting.  One of the victims was Steve Farley.  We went through two weeks of training in Washington, DC together before coming out here.  He was a retired Navy Reserve Captain, and was returning to Iraq for a second tour - his first as a civilian.  I didn’t know him well, but feel the loss just the same:  http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080625_12_A1_hAbomb656658

 

→ 4 CommentsTags: Iraq · Kirkuk · PRT

Summer Solstice

June 20th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Today is the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year), and it was searingly hot!  I guess I shouldn’t complain too much because July and August are considered the hottest months here.  There’s a thermometer in front of the door across from where I live, and at about 3:30 this afternoon it was showing 118.  I’ll take the heat any day over the dust storms that pop up from time to time. 

I keep telling myself that I’m going to take some photos and post them.  More importantly, I have some postings I want to do, but want to include some photos along with them - so I have been holding off.  We’ve been fairly busy since I’ve been here, but I suppose this is how it always is. 

This is actually the start of our “weekend”.  Weekends in Mulsim countries are Friday and Saturday - so we follow suit.  Weekend for us still means work, but we typically stay on the base and attend meetings, catch up on paperwork, etc.  It’s also the best time to get laundry done, pick something up from the store, or clean.  I managed to get a load of laundry done before my meetings started today.  I’m hoping to make it to the gym for some basketball this evening.  My grand plans to get in shape still haven’t materialised, but I manage to make it to the gym a couple days a week.

Happy Summer Solstice!

→ 1 CommentTags: General · Iraq

My New Home…..

June 14th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve been in Kirkuk now for a little over a week.  It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since I left DC two weeks ago - it feels like a month.  This last week I’ve been mainly following around the guy that I am replacing.  He actually left yesterday (for a plush S. American Post), so I tried to glean as much as I could from him in the time that we had together.  I’m feeling a little more comfortable with the job, but I still have a ton to learn.  Based on what I’ve seen so far I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and really rewarding.

I’m based out of a small Army airfield in Kirkuk City.  Living arrangements are top notch as far as living conditions for US personnel in Iraq go.  I have my own Containerized Housing Unit (CHU - the military loves acronyms).  The best part is that it is “wet” - meaning I have an attached bathroom and shower.  That doesn’t seem like much, but I would bet that only about 5% of State Department people in Iraq don’t share a bathroom with at least one person.

I’m working with about half civilians and half US Army on the PRT.  Everyone is very nice and there is a lot of pride in the work that is getting accomplished.  I don’t want to get too involved in the details of the work that we are doing here.  Not because it is super secret or anything, but some of it can be sensitive.  We basically go out in an Army convoy about 5 days a week to visit work sites, officials, leaders, you name it.  There are several sections in the PRT (Infrastructure, Rule of Law, Economic, Governance, USAID, etc) and they all have their contacts and priorities in the Iraqi community.  The overarching goal is to help the Iraqi’s help themselves, not to do things for them.  We are working at the Provincial level of government - think State level for a comparison to the USA.  Just as an example:  In one day we might have the infrastructure folks meeting with engineers on the design of a sewage treatment plant, while the Rule of Law people are meeting with Iraqi judges, and the Governance section is sitting in on a Provincial Council meeting.

The weather here is hot, but not as hot as Baghdad.  High temps during the day are usually around 100-105 right now.  It actually gets nice at night with lows in the 60s.  That’s probably going to change here soon.  I’ve heard by July and August it gets up into the 120s here with correspondly high lows at night.  We’ve had a few small dust storms which can be really annoying.  The dust (fine sand) gets into everything including eyes, and hair.  The sun is very intense.  It is painful to walk outside during the day without sunglasses on.  Not only is it incredibly bright, but there is a reflection from the Sand which increases the intensity.  It’s a dry heat, though, so it actually doesn’t feel as bad as India where the humidity was through the roof.  

I have a lot more, but have to take care of some things for work.  I’m going to try to get some pictures up soon when I figure out how to do it.  I’m also open to suggestions for future postings if anyone has an interest in something particular.  Take care!

 

 

→ 1 CommentTags: Iraq · PRT

On Baghdad

June 8th, 2008 · No Comments

I’m finally getting settled in here in Kirkuk.  The guy I’m replacing is here until Friday, so I’ve been busy following him around and trying to learn as much as I can from him before he takes off.  I wanted to put down my thoughts on Baghdad - mainly the Palace Compound on the IZ - before I start forgetting things.

First off, the IZ is huge.  I only spent time in a small area of the IZ known as the Palace Compound.  This is  Saddam’s Presidential Palace which currently houses the US Embassy in Baghdad along with the surrounding area.  When I arrived in the IZ, I was given a room in one of the transient trailers close to the palace.  This was a small hooch about the size of a walk-in closet with a small bed, and wooden wardrobe box, and that’s it.  This is the room where I spent my 4 nights in the Palace area.  Despite being small and not having a TV, radio, or even a mirror, the only thing that really annoyed me was that I had to walk about 50 yards or so to get to the community bathroom.  This was especially bad in the middle of the night.  After putting on my shoes, and stumbling around outside in the dark for 10 minutes I could never fall back asleep.

The Presidential Palace is very big.  It’s just about a city block long, and houses the largest US Embassy contingent in the world.  While doing my check-in I managed to walk around and see most of the palace and it was fascinating and sad at the same time.  Fascinating because of all the hustle and bustle, and the fact that I was standing in Saddam Hussein’s palace.  Sad because some of the history and originality of the palace is lost to the various additions that we (the USA) have put in since our occupation.  I’m not saying that Saddam deserves to have his stuff preserved for history.  I’ve just always been interested in old or historic things and I saw a lot of Saddam’s old furniture torn or broken in corners of rooms, and walls, or doors that appear to have been recently altered. 

The palace is full of marble (floors, walls, stairs).  The ceilings have ornate arab style decorations with massive chandeliers in almost every room and hallway.  If you could look past the various signs of the embassy, it was a pretty amazing place.

There are tons of people wandering around the embassy at all times.  Lots of gun-toting military, people in suits, various government agencies, and even Peruvian guards (the US uses a lot of third-country nationals in Iraq for security reasons.  Near Sully Compound I think the guards were S. African).  People seem to work long hours in the embassy - from what I gather people are often there from 8 am until late into the night (11pm).  There is a large military dining facility (DFAC - the military loves acronyms) right outside the palace that serves buffet style food.  The palace pool is right next to the DFAC, and there is a gym and PX (general store) close by as well.

Most of the embassy employees enjoy better accommodations than I had, but almost everyone has to share a bathroom with at least one other person.  They are in the process of moving people over to the new embassy compound (NEC, pronounced like “neck”) which is just about complete.  I think everyone is excited to move over there.  At the NEC people will be living in apartments rather than trailers.  These apartments are hardened structures unlike the trailers so people will sleep much easier (a few people have been killed in their trailers during mortar or rocket attacks - one embassy employee was just killed a couple months ago).  I think the plan is to have everyone over at the NEC by late this year or early next year.  At that point I believe they plan on turning the palace over to the Iraqi government, which I think is for the best.

I wanted to get a ride with motor pool and see some of the monuments in the IZ, but was too busy or too jet lagged to do it.  Maybe I’ll have a chance during my time here.  I also didn’t get a chance to take any pictures.   I’m sure I’ll be back sometime over the next few months - maybe even at the NEC.

→ No CommentsTags: Baghdad · Iraq

Back at Sully Compound

June 5th, 2008 · No Comments

Well, I finished my check-in in Baghdad, and have started my journey up north.  Today I had a few meetings in the morning, then checked out of my hooch and got a ride in an ATV over to the helicopter landing zone.  I waited there about 2 hours, then caught a flight in a Blackwater helicopter back to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).  It was a cool flight because it was daytime and we flew low over the city so I could see a lot.  We couldn’t have been more than 50 feet over the top of Saddam’s “Hands of Victory”.  I’ll be spending the night here at Sully Compound before heading up north tomorrow.  Show time for my flight is at 0630, so I’ll be up early.

I’m really looking forward to getting up there - mainly because I am sick of hauling my bags around, and packing, unpacking, and re-packing them.  I’ve been hauling these bags for a full 2 months now, since I left India on April 5th.  It will be nice to get in my trailer and unpack them for good - well for a year at least.  I’ll tell you what, though - the bags have taken a beating.  They look like someone hung them up as a pinata and beat them with a baseball bat for an hour, then buried them in a sand box.  I’m not sure they will survive the final trip out of here.

I still need to post my limited observations of Baghdad.  I hope to do this in the next day or two after I get settled in my PRT.  I think I’ll have internet access in my trailer making writing much easier.

→ No CommentsTags: Iraq