Day 111: A typical day in paradise

Today was a good day -- sort of representative of the things I'm doing here, so thought I'd share...

Yesterday, I left the Regional US Embassy compound in Babil province, which is not far from the biblical hanging gardens of Nebuchanezzar. Unfortunately, I was only there for an overnighter, so I did not get to go see the ruins of the gardens or the palace that Saddam built right on top of some other archaelogical city foundation. I also did not get to take a dip in the pool that the embassy has. I was there to meet the Provincial Reconstruction Team, debrief the outgoing and incoming military support elements, and talk to the civil affairs teams to get input for the series of recommendations I'm writing about how to improve the way the Army and the civilian reconstruction teams work together.

Anyhow, that night, we had another indirect fire attack -- nothing as effective as the rockets in Basrah. The embassy is protected by contracted guards (Blackwater), not the military, so they went up to the roof with snipers while we waited downstairs. I felt pretty useless with the civilian contractors protecting us.

I jumped in with a convoy coming out to Kalsu, also in Babil province, but further north and much larger. This area is notorious for dust, and it was so thick, visibility was limited to two cars ahead, so we kept the speed down. Last week an MRAP driver fell asleep and hit a Iraqi car headon. 18 tons vs. 2 tons -- the civilians didn't have a chance.

The civil affairs guys took care of me and put me in a room in their compound. The room looks like a cross between a 10 year old's playroom and a college dorm. Two beds on milk crates, homemade furniture constructed from 2x4's, snacks and wrappers all over the place, kiddie sheets on the bed, a stuffed teddy bear in the corner, and Maxim's all over the place (man, I thought I had outgrown those, but they're pretty addictive...even if they are from 2003). Best part was that someone routed an internet cable through the wall.

I slept fairly well, and then woke up at 5:30am to get ready for a mission. I ate breakfast and then linked up with the CA guys and the infantry platoon that was providing security. The mission was to check on some issues with the farmer's market that this team had poured over $2M to build. We took the MRAPs, which was unusual, because those things are so big and have such an aggressive, military appearance, which is something we're getting away from. We also did not use an Iraqi police or Army escort, which is also pretty standard after the June 30 security agreement, which requires most movement to be escorted.

We arrived, met the 8 man "management board" mostly composed of the local sheiks and a few other influential people. They explained that they wanted to expand the market stalls because trucks could not get in all at once. They didn't come out and say it, but they wanted money. Before seeing the problem, the project leader said the right thing, which was to ask them if they'd considered getting a loan, adding an investor, or increasing the stall rent. They looked at each other like they really hadn't. I suggested we take a look because it might just be an operational problem. We walked outside and there were two large permanent overhead stall covers about 25' apart. I could see how it could get congested. But, with some established traffic patterns and a couple traffic cops, it could get a lot better. The iraqi traditional way is to just let anyone come in at all times, leave their trucks there, basically chaos. So, who knows if they'll do it. But, asking for money to expand after only 2 months of operations and when they haven't even gotten the liquidity to pay their own salaries, tells me that they're still learning to do things for themselves. We are in the business of helping them take care of things themselves. That's why it's a little annoying to most everyone in the civil affairs community to be told that an additional $500M had to be spent this year.

Anyhow, we told them we had confidence in them (the equivalent of, "Yeah, you got it taken care of.") and then rolled back to camp. Just had enough time to drop my gear, grab some lunch and then went in to interview the brigade commander and his deputy. This is a typical interview with broad questions about what they've learned to pass on to other units and leaders. Generally, I have no problem securing these interviews because commanders love to talk. But they usually have pretty good insights, so it's valuable. The deputy gave pretty ho-hum answers, but the commander was very opinionated. Unfortunately, he was from West Virginia and talked a mile a minute, so I had problems keeping up. Some people use an audiorecorder, but I prefer to just write.

After the interview, I sat in on an intelligence synch meeting to see how the different staff share information. The group here is doing better than most. Usually, everybody is pretty silo'd. The intelligence guys just want to focus on threat intelligence about bad guys, while the civil affairs guys just care about civil information on schools, who runs the electricity grids, etc. But there is a lot of potential for cross-over. For instance, one PRT team leader was talking with a Brigade commander about a deputy governor who was seeming to be very uncooperative and driving a wedge between the rest of the local govt and the PRT. Turns out that this guy was actually implicated in the murders of two Iraqi policemen and was giving information leading to the emplacement of IEDs against our patrols. With that info, she could now plan her strategy to try to isolate him.

I had a few more informal conversations with people who wanted to share some observations from their time there. Like my civilian job, I end up hearing a lot of the frustration of people, and it's tough because I can't influence everything and can't promise anything. But, at least input allows me to prioritize the messages and once in awhile, I can talk to the right people to fix things.

Went back to the room to crunch the past several days' notes into updating my drafts and then sent them out back to Ft. Leavenworth in preparation for a conference call meeting tomorrow where we are going to try to deconflict what everyone is doing. Apparently, a lot of people are working on this topic of civil capacity building, and it's good not to be duplicating efforts.

Finished about 9pm, did a quick check-in call with my analyst back in the US, and then off to the gym for a quick workout before bed.

So that's a typical day in the life...little bit sweat, little bit writing, and a lot of talking. 4 provinces down, 2 to go. I should be back in Basrah in about a week.