| 1) An older man of about 65 fully decked out in a film jacket, I first asked him if he was a journalist but he responded that he was an aviation technician on a two month contract to repair helicopters.
2) A retired policeman of about age 60 from Fresno, who was on assignment to train Iraqi cops; he works for a contractor.
3) A 50ish consultant to the Ministry of Electricity on contract to the Army Corps of Engineers. At first I thought he said he was with the Army Core of Engineers, but he later clarified that because they don't offer the same ex-patriot tax break for government workers and they can't pay more, most of the people doing the work are contractors.
One of them asked me if I was Christian, and I had to suppress my normal response that I was Jewish and instead stammered out "I'm not particularly religious" (also true). One has to be careful here, even among friends, especially when there are other ears around.
I saw a few tough-necked tattooed men with British accents, probably defense contractors on a military-related assignment.
According to one of the contractors I talked to, many of the chefs and service staff are non-Americans brought in by the American-owned contractors. He specifically mentioned that many service roles are filled by Indians, Nepalese, and Filipinos.
Our arrival into Baghdad was uneventful. I had been warned about the rapid spiral decent (to avoid flight patterns that make the plans vulnerable to anti-aircraft missiles) but it really wasn't that bad an approach and my stomach didn't suffer in the least. The airport security was typical of what you might see in most developing nations; there were a few armed Iraqi guards around but nothing over the top. Like any international arrival, I waited in a line to get my passport approved, but was sent over to a visa station to get additional paperwork done and then got through the line. Just as I got through passport control, the power went off and it suddenly darkened. Everyone pretty much went about their business in semi-darkness and I suppose I looked bewildered for a minute because a passerby said "this happens all the time, don't worry" to me. It was just light enough to see, and I gradually made my way out of the airport where I ran into Colorado State Representative Joe Rice, who is stationed here and formed a familiar welcoming crew (he says hi to everyone back home).
The configuration was a like a normal airport; we walked across a street into a parking structure and towards a white van. Before getting into the van, we had to put on a bullet-proof vest and a thick helmet. The windows of the van were bullet-proof, but the primary danger remains from explosions not bullets.
The road from the airport to the IZ (International Zone, also known as the Green Zone) used to be much more dangerous than it is now. They haven't had an incident in months.
It is difficult to overstate the role that private contractors play here. I had understood that they were involved with protection and guarding, but I didn't realize how integrated into the defense and service structures they are.
Apparently, this is modern warfare. Private armies hired by nation states and controlled by corporations. For example, one of our checkpoints was staffed entirely by a Guatemalan contingent of armed people not under the flag of Guatemala or the UN, but rather under the flag of their contractor. Yes, presumably they were working for either the US or the Iraqi Defense ministry, but fundamentally they would work for whoever would pay their bills, and their uniforms proudly sported their logo.
The contractors owe allegiance to the corporations who employ them more than any particular nation state. More scary yet, the corporations who employ them and profit from marking up their labor create a corporate-military complex that can seek to perpetuate policies than increase their bottom lines. I met several Peruvians and Chileans and in fact spoke more Spanish today than I did English, which was certainly a surprise. It is terrifying to think what will become of all these military contractors who are trained and deployed here when the occupation ends and they return home to South America and Southeast Asia, unemployed and only knowing how to do one thing well. Any Ideas for solutions so these contractors don't inadvertently spread strife to new areas?
We arrived at the Al-Rashid hotel, which has a look of a faded glory about it. One can tell it used to be quite a fine hotel, with signs still pointing to non-existent swimming pool and closed-down fancy restaurants. The rooms themselves are more like Motel 6 but are certainly better than what I'll have tomorrow night on a compound where I will be lucky to have a cot (again, more details can be provided upon my return).
After dropping my bags in my room, I went to get lunch in the "24-hour" café in the hotel, and talked to an Army CID officer (fraud investigation) who had just a few weeks left on his one year tour in Iraq. His assignment is to investigate contracting fraud, and he said that there was a lot of it. Some of it is legal (but still reprehensible) profiteering from poorly written contracts, for instance paying a provider $40/meal to provide meals and then they just offer peanut butter and jelly served by a Filipino chef making $10/day and technically fulfilling their contract.
But real fraud and corruption are also far too commonplace. This young man explained how the techniques to corrupt servicemen are the same as the techniques used in espionage to recruit spies, and that the corruption problem is growing.
We then spent some time on the PV compound and Republican Palace, formerly the command central of Saddam Hussein's empire. The Palace was a sprawling compound. It was quite majestic with its grandiose architecture, domed ceilings and marble staircases. In the basement, I popped in for a moment to Saddam's private movie theater with about 30 theater style seats, which now offer movies to entertain our troops. Off duty Americans now sit on the same chairs that Saddam and his friends used.
It is eerie to see the palace so busy with American troops crammed in to every office and hurrying through the corridors. The image of America as an occupying power pervades the area. One person I talk to thought it was a huge mistake for America to occupy this building, because it would be the equivalent on the American psyche, of a foreign power occupying the White House as their embassy. Perhaps this viewpoint was taken to heart, because after America's sprawling new embassy is complete (within a few months) the plan is to turn the Republican Palace back over to the Iraqi government.
After returning from our several stops in the IZ, we had dinner with two Iraqi officials at our hotel. I need to be a little vague here, so I will switch around some of the details, but all the stories are true. One of the representatives was a deputy-minister, indeed almost an acting-minister because like several other ministries, the top slot in his agency is empty. The other was one of the few Iraqi intellectuals left in the country (his wife and children are in Jordan). I will call the former the Junior Minister and the latter The Ambassador.
The Junior Minister and his family had opposed Saddam, and he spent much of the 1990s in exile in Europe. He lost a sibling and cousin to Saddam and clearly had a passion for making the new Iraq work. We had an excellent discussion about the role NGOs (non-profits) can play and how the Iraqi government can work more closely with them. I look forward to continuing this dialog and working with them on a specific plan for the Iraqi government to play a constructive role in assisting non profit relief agencies operating in Iraq.
One of the things I have done in business is hire people, and I also have experience sitting on a board of education supervising a public school commissioner, so I have some perspective on evaluating people.
Unfortunately, while the Junior Minister was well intended, I think he doesn't have what it takes to lead his agency to great success. He cited a few examples of internal conflict that focused on turf-wars rather than achieving real goals. He also bragged of some good things that his agency was doing that had little to do with its strategic mission.
The Ambassador was a wonderful individual. As somewhat of a secular intellectual myself (although I'm just as much of an anti-intellectual), I immediately identified with him and where he was coming from. He had been a university professor and later an ambassador. He was clearly someone who was not political by inclination and had done fine in Saddam Hussein's Iraq by focusing on his work as a professor and diplomat.
The Ambassador was eloquent in English and cared a lot about the future of his country, albeit in a slightly removed way. Whereas the Junior Minister spoke from strong personal experience and his words were weighed by the great losses his family had suffered, the Ambassador spoke in a well-thought out but abstract and theoretical manner. His house had been ransacked and he was now living in temporary housing in the international zone, he was hunted first by the Americans (who thought he had information about Saddam) and then by gangs (for collaborating with the Americans). Even though he was probably only in his early 50s, he appeared weathered and weary. I respect him for working to the best of his abilities within the new Iraqi government when he doesn't have to and in fact most of his colleagues and friends are safely in Jordan and Europe.
As we conversed, I didn't want to say "our occupation" or "our invasion" because even though we both knew that was true, I didn't feel it was polite to remind them by overtly stating it. So early on in the discussion when I was searching for words to ask what they were respectively doing "before the, er, before the..." The Ambassador, observing my pause, kindly offered up the more diplomatic term "regime change" and we thereafter used that term liberally.
The power in the hotel goes out regularly; in fact it is out now while I am writing this by the battery power and light of my laptop. Cell phone service is erratic. The hotel's internet café is being repaired and won't be online for another few weeks.
Finally this evening, I just completed a live blogging event, Colorado Confidential.
at noon Colorado time or 10:00pm Baghdad time. My hotel room has no internet, nor does the lobby. Fortunate, I met a kindly member of the Iraqi Parliament, who lives in the hotel and let me use her room to do my live blogging event. Her constituency is so dangerous that she has not even visited it in over a year and fears she would be killed if she does. Her perspective as a Sunni Muslim is that Saddam Hussein was not that bad and the US should not have invaded Iraq. One can see the difficulty, in bring together people like the Junior Minister whose family was killed by Saddam and the Parliament member who was somewhat fond of his regime.
She believes that America should stay in Iraq because she is afraid of the Iranian influence, which she also blames America for. She claims that America let the Iranian militia into Iraq to assist with the de-baathifacation process but they went awry and started slaughtering Sunni Muslims and Americans. I asked both her and the Ambassador what Presidential candidate they liked and the Member of Parliament said Hillary Clinton, while the Ambassador said "anyone but Hillary Clinton" because he doesn't trust her political machinations.
I am off to bed now. Tomorrow we are meeting with several NGOs. I will also be spending the night elsewhere and will post about it and describe it after the fact. |
RSS Feed
