MY COUNTERPART LOOKED at his watch nervously. The battle update meeting had already run for almost two hours. We were expected to be at a neighborhood advisory council meeting within the hour. It would be my first time to try to connect names and faces to the words and the projects that I had been hearing about for the last few weeks. All of the maps and the charts had remained inscrutable against the backdrop of real life. This would be a chance to venture outside of the walled compound and meet some actual Iraqis.
The meeting ended abruptly with the commander rising and raising a salute to the officers seated at the table. In an instant, chairs skidded backward, slamming into the knees of us seated immediately in the row behind. The captains martially answered their commanders’ salutes, while the remainder of us stood ramrod straight, respecting the military custom that demanded we show our allegiance and acknowledge the hierarchy at the beginning and the end of each meeting.
“Let’s go,” my counterpart called to me over his shoulder, already well on his way to the door. By the time we reached the outside exit, a mere ten steps from our meeting room, he had entirely transformed himself. His body armor, strategically hung with extra magazines, a few grenades, and a flashlight, magically covered his torso. His weapon, clipped into its harness, appeared at once casual and dangerous. Holding his helmet in one gloved hand, he donned ballistic sunglasses and shoved open the door. The blast of heat had little apparent effect on him.
I was still fumbling with my body armor. Its rich green color was in stark relief to the dust-smudged armor worn by our counterparts. Sections of the body armor that were long ago discarded as extraneous by our predecessors still hung in perfect form from mine. It had a strap to protect my neck and a triangular piece, akin to a catcher’s cup, to cover the groin. My helmet had no clip for night-vision equipment, and I had no magazines, no ammunition, no tactical flashlight, and no aiming laser—just a new M-16, with no scope. My uniform was more suited to a new recruit at the firing range, rather than a soldier on a battlefield.
We walked to the waiting trucks, and immediately one of the soldiers, politely and pointedly, made the same observation. “Sir,” he addressed me, “you can’t go out like that.”
Within seconds, he had removed the neck and groin protectors and urged me to tuck the tail of my battle-dress uniform into my pants to avoid getting the shirttail caught on anything. I did. He then handed me two full magazines, one of which I put into the weapon and one I put into a pocket. Despite the ad hoc nature of his attempt to get me “battle ready,” I immediately felt more confident.
“Don’t worry,” he added. “We will take care of you.”
That was the personal security detachment’s function. These soldiers’ purpose was to safely escort my counterpart to meetings, secure the building, and generally provide a bodyguard service.
It was obvious they took their job seriously. All three Humvees were heavily armored and heavily armed. The lead Humvee was equipped with three soldiers and a mounted automatic grenade launcher. The second Humvee had three soldiers and a .50 caliber machine gun. The middle Humvee, where my counterpart rode, was equipped with a driver, a gunner, and a M-240B machine gun. All of the soldiers looked loose but grim. They were happy to be going home soon but still very much focused on the mission at hand. The casualties of the IED attack just before our arrival were still fresh on their minds, and they seemed aware that the environment was changing.
On a command, the convoy moved toward the gate, engines roaring and dust clouds trailing. We sped through the gate to the sound of soldiers loading their weapons. A quick test-fire burst from the machine guns gave the whole exit a Spaghetti Western feel. Here, we were the cowboys riding out and shooting our way into town, which was conveniently called “Indian country,” in politically incorrect military slang. The Humvees groaned as they hit the highway, aided by the increasingly familiar “crack” of the warning shots. We wove through traffic at a breakneck pace, while the sheer size of the Humvees intimidated the overmatched cars sputtering along the highway. Once or twice, the driver used the size and strength of our Humvee to ram civilian vehicles to the side of the road. From my seat, “the nudge” was a barely palpable thump, akin to crossing a speed bump. Yet I glanced backward to see the crushed fender of the car, which left its anguished occupants stalled in the middle of the highway. Traffic was already piling up behind the damaged car.
Our convoy barely slowed, swerving back down the highway I had traveled last night. This time we turned right onto Al Dora Road, the main eastwest route. Just beyond the intersection of Highway 8, the airport highway that ran north-south, and Al Dora Road stood the power plant I had seen last night. We were about two miles from the FOB, but everything seemed so much farther under the tension of the unknown.
Just past the turn were twin symbols of the new Iraq. The first was a one-level building that looked slightly like a McMansion back in the States. Sand-colored and surrounded by a large wall, the District Advisory Council (DAC) building performed a very similar function to that of a suburban developer’s demo house. Each day representatives from the various neighborhoods met here with the local U.S. Army governance officer to discuss projects, problems, and progress in their neighborhoods. In other words, this is where they came to describe what they wanted and how they could get a piece of the American dream (Iraqi version).
The second symbol, and the more practical one to most people in the neighborhood, was the district’s only gas station, a source of many of the complaints. Across the street from the DAC building, it intermittently did business as a line of cars several miles long stretched back down the highway. Whatever was discussed in the DAC building was almost immaterial compared to the real-life indicator of societal success across the street from it. There were several measures at work in the gas station. The first was the price fixing. The official price was seven dinars per liter, or roughly seven cents per gallon. This had been the price under Saddam, and any talk of adjusting the price to better account for the lower production after the invasion or the fact that the number of cars had increased fivefold since then had been immediately dismissed. The new regime and the American overlords could not appear to be less capable of providing cheap gas than Saddam had been, and most of the people in the street could not afford to pay more anyway.
Then there was black-market gasoline—a business controlled by the police and heavily “supervised” by the council members who met with us every day. Under this arrangement, certain cars loaded with fifty-five-gallon barrels would fill up their normal gas tanks and then fill up the barrels, while paying some arranged price to the gas station operator. This price included a kickback but remained relatively low. The gas in the barrels then passed into two-liter bottles, which legions of kids sold on the highways for 6,000 dinars each. For those who did not have time to wait in the gas line for two days and could afford the high cost, these quick “fillers” provided a service at a cost that only increased the economic disparity. As I would soon learn, access to the profits from this enterprise was only one of the perks of being a council member.
As we entered the DAC building’s gate, which was guarded by a few Iraqi civilians with AK-47s, the Humvees fanned out. The soldiers quickly disembarked and rushed into the building as if it were a raid. I had barely gotten out of my seat when I could see a few of our soldiers commanding a view from the rooftop and radioing back that the site was secure. The potential for an ambush at this building, which was used as a regular meeting site, was obviously quite high, and every time the U.S. Army paid a visit, soldiers were required to secure the building as if it were being seen for the first time.
Near the wall, a small house sheltered a generator. A nearly senile old man emerged from the house with a lopsided grin. Behind him followed his wife, who was covered from head to toe in a ragtag collection of discarded clothes, along with three or four kids in an almost comical assortment of cast-off American T-shirts. The soldiers had more or less adopted these kids by bringing them sweets and clothing from the base. As we approached, the kids ran toward the soldiers, yelling their new English words. From a ten-year-old Iraqi boy in an Operation Iraqi Freedom T-shirt, I heard the American greeting that he had picked up from the soldiers. “What’s up, motherfucker?” he asked innocently.
I nearly laughed. My surprise must have been obvious because my counterpart immediately explained that the kid, named Ali, had been improving his English every day, but his vocabulary was largely limited to the conversations he heard between soldiers. It was actually a bit of a blessing because his father, Hillal, lived on the premises and was in charge of maintaining the generator that provided some stability during the intermittent blackouts. According to my counterpart, the former facility on this site had been the Ba’ath Party Hunt Club, a social club for the Baghdad elite. During the “shock and awe” air campaign, the Hunt Club had been targeted and effectively reduced to rubble, along with Hillal’s adjacent house. As a sign of friendship, the United States had rebuilt the club with a new purpose—as a meeting hall of the people—and lodged Hillal inside its protective walls to compensate him for his loss. In addition, Hillal received a salary of $100 a month for his efforts and to offset the risk inherent in his living in an “American facility.”
Likewise, the guards, three or four local guys and cousins of Hillal, received a small stipend to live in the guard shack and, at least in theory, guard the gate of the compound. For the most part, they lounged indifferently behind the wrought-iron gate and the single strand of concertina wire, really only moving to open the gate as American convoys approached. It was doubtful that any of them would ever actually defend this place, but there was no question they were in danger of being attacked as minions of the occupiers. In this moment, as we walked toward the DAC, they were actually a bit busier than normal. Cars were lining up to enter the compound, as delegates began to appear for the meeting.
One of the most flamboyant was a white Mercedes with Arabic music blaring from behind heavily tinted windows. Charging through the gate without slowing down, the car raced up beside us and slid into a space nearest to the Humvee. My counterpart turned expectantly to see three Iraqi men exiting the car, sunglasses on, body armor loosely fastened over Westerner T-shirts, and draped in weapons from head to toe.
“I thought you guys would be late,” my counterpart said, only half-jokingly. The leader, a balding and slightly portly guy named Ali, answered, “Am I ever late?”
“Wow,” I thought, “an English proficiency that allows for sarcasm. Great!”
The second Iraqi to exit the vehicle was an athletic and slightly younger guy named Ammar. He attempted to hug my counterpart, an offer that was refused. Ammar was a Sunni from the Dulaimi tribe. He had worked for the Republican Guard as a soldier and now worked as an interpreter. Although his English was the best we had, his personality was often not conducive to professional negotiation. Within seconds of arriving, Ammar was playing soccer with Hillal’s kids, until he spotted one of the guards. With absolutely no provocation, Ammar ran over and punched him in the face, administering a beating as the surprised and frightened guard cowered on the ground and tried to protect himself. The soldiers and other Iraqis pulled Ammar away immediately, but he was still yelling. It was never clear to me why that happened, but similar scenes would occur many more times during the next year.
Ali could only say, “Ammar is from Anbar province—Dulaimi tribe. They are crazy, hot blooded.”
Ammar was all that and more, but he was also one of the few interpreters who fought back during attacks as readily as most soldiers did. If all interpreters remained a bit enigmatic, Ammar was a self-destructing riddle who was one of our strongest assets and biggest liabilities.
The third interpreter, dressed in khaki slacks and a button-down shirt, appeared to be the elder statesmen. With a slender, bespectacled face plagued with a severe case of vitiligo, a skin disorder that causes irregular-shaped white patches, Sa’ad had a professorial demeanor and was markedly more professional than his colleagues.
Soon enough, the group of us—including Ali, Rambo-esque with an assortment of weapons; Ammar, sweating through his Adidas jumpsuit after delivering the butt-kicking; and Sa’ad, with the bowed frame of a practiced sycophant—made our way to the interior of the building. The cool hallways were a welcome relief from the outside heat, and the rooms were large but barren. Faux marble and concrete continued the impression that we had entered a builder’s showcase home, instead of a Baghdad meeting hall. There were two smaller rooms used for side meetings, a prayer room, and a large gathering hall. For this meeting, we selected the smaller room, though, in truth, we were the only people in the building and could well have chosen any room.
My counterpart put his helmet on the table and dropped his body armor. Ostensibly, this action demonstrated a level of confidence and trust and was meant to reduce the imperial feel that was already overwhelming. I took a seat to his side and likewise dropped my body armor. Behind us, one of our soldiers stood like an angel of death, vigilantly watching and protecting his commander, my counterpart. He was a poster boy for the Airborne soldier—tall, lean, and as hard as a Midwestern fencepost. With sunglasses perched above his rugged cheekbones and his gloved hands rested tensely only millimeters away from the trigger of his carbine, he was the very soul of American military power.
One benefit of having three interpreters in these meetings was that they were in constant contact with the council members and often knew a bit more about the political landscape than what mechanically transpired at the meetings. Each of them dealt differently with the council members, who hailed from both the erudite, English-speaking Sunni neighborhoods and the downtrodden southern Shi’a areas, and I eventually used these interpreters to get as close to as many council members as possible. Ali was an opportunistic Shi’a and a known wheeler-dealer. Given his background, most of the council members who were a bit greedier and openly ambitious preferred him as their translator. On the other hand, Ammar was the only Sunni interpreter who remained quite close to the relatively quiet but still immensely powerful Sunni neighborhoods. As for the third interpreter, Sa’ad was the only devout Muslim among them and remained the only reliable point of contact when we dealt with imams, some of whom would not even speak to Ali or Ammar on moral grounds. In addition to these micro-cultural calculations, the sheer volume of business and the complexity of personal linkages required three interpreters.
Each council was distinct and, in some way, skeptical of the other neighborhoods, routinely blaming violence on neighboring areas, rather than accepting responsibility. Although the councils were secular by design, the imams often attended meetings or sent proxies to voice their concerns. Each council had five to seven members, and today’s represented the neighborhood of Jaza’ir, a mixed Sunni/Shi’a neighborhood with a definite allegiance to Saddam. The thin strip of houses that made up this neighborhood fronted the highway and began behind the gas station.
“Who do we have today, Ali?” my counterpart asked.
“The council members want to know if their weapon permits will be good for the new unit,” Ali answered.
This pattern would be recurrent, in my later dealings with the councils. In theory, these councils were made to mirror the representative functions of democratic government. In practice, it was impossible to provide a broad enough social service system so soon after the invasion to communicate with the entire Iraqi population. The result had been a formation of these councils, with two goals in mind. First, it was important to provide the people with the means to funnel and consolidate their concerns into “power brokers” who could amalgamate and present these issues at a set time period each week. This was meant to prevent mass protests and lines of supplicants forming at the gates of our base. Second, the arrangement was to give the illusion that a government—or at least a neutral, semibureaucratic organ—was already in place and could help ease the transition fears that now filled the governance vacuum in the minds of the Iraqi people. In short, the council existed as a backbone to an Iraqi society that had been “atomized.”
In truth, the “council members” were largely self-selected, and they incessantly demanded money, weapons, and special permissions, of which the weapon cards were just a single example. The legacy of political leaders having privileges above the law colored their interpretation of public service, and Ali was exactly right about the agenda. In the last few minutes, four or five middle-aged men in poorly fitting suits had entered the room quietly, expectantly, and with the ubiquitous greeting “Salaam melekum,” or “Peace be upon you.” Each of them took his seat, while eyeing me cautiously. The knowledge of a replacement was already well circulated in the street. There was a running joke that if you wanted to know when we were going home, just ask the Iraqis. From their families in the south to the vigilant eyes along the highways, they always seemed to know when a troop shift was happening before we did.
Although my counterpart and I had agreed that I remain quiet at this meeting, several council members came over to say, “Salaam,” seeking to brand their faces early in my mind.
As the meeting came to order, the first issue was, of course, the weapon permits. By interim Iraqi law, each Iraqi was allowed to have one AK-47 in his house or car. Pistols were forbidden, however, with one exception: with a weapon card from my counterpart, a council member could carry a pistol. To facilitate and reward cooperation, my counterpart and his commander had engendered a plan whereby pistols confiscated in other raids were placed into a pool of “gifts” that were given to council members, along with the permits. The point that this was precisely one of the mechanisms that Saddam used to reward fealty seemed to be lost on most people but definitely was not on the Iraqis. In the streets, even now, the display of a pistol meant something more significant than that a person was armed—it meant he was connected. In those days, everyone wanted that.
“Captain Whiteley will be handling all of those requests next week,” my counterpart announced, while gesturing to me as I scribbled furiously. This was news to me, as it was to them.
The second issue of discussion was a vacant seat on the council. Initially, the seat had been reserved for an imam, but the rules of the DAC handed down by the City Advisory Council specifically prohibited imams from holding such positions. Instead, an imam council was established. In Jaza’ir, the council members remained divided on whether to fill the seat. Some of them protested the decision to separate the councils, rejecting the imposed secular government apparatus. Others eagerly pushed to fill the seat with business acquaintances and family members.
“Captain Whiteley will take that up next week,” answered my counterpart, in what was becoming an uncomfortable refrain.
The third and final issue was contracts. The Iraqis had become very familiar with the distribution of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds. CERP funds, largely pooled from confiscated Iraqi funds, allowed each battalion commander to distribute approximately $1 million per month in contracts that did not exceed $100,000 each. The program allowed commanders to make immediate improvements in their areas of operations, thus shaping the social and physical environment in their favor. In those early days, the contracting often occurred in these meetings. A council member would propose something like a light at an intersection or the repair of a sewer pump station. Because there were no Baghdad city services, my counterpart could solicit bids, which always came from a person in that neighborhood, via the council member, and the project could be consummated. One does not need to be Tony Soprano to see that this arrangement is why council members showed up, and why the interpreters risked their lives for a salary of $600 a month. By soliciting these projects, council members continually carved out bribes and kickbacks for themselves.
In large measure, everyone knew and understood the situation. The financial gain to the Iraqis translated to a political gain for the Americans. The well-attended DAC meetings served as a testament to the successful implementation of the American strategy, or at least this was proclaimed to the American people on the nightly news. Appearing unannounced once a week or so, the Green Zone civilian contractors hired by the U.S. government from various democracy-building firms would descend in heavily armored, white SUVs, bristling with Blackwater security guards, silently taking notes and nodding approvingly at the discussions of governance building.
The real business of the council, however, happened after the meetings. After an hour or so of circular discussions and passive answers, my counterpart signaled his imminent departure. As we moved to our Humvees, his bodyguard worked diligently to keep some space between us and the council members, as did the interpreters, alternatively speaking at a normal volume and yelling words that sounded insulting in any language. After reducing the group to a few final members and ushering the others toward the gate of the compound, my counterpart reached under the Humvee’s seat to produce an old but apparently functional Makarov 7mm pistol. The greedy hand of a council member snatched it almost before it had left the Humvee.
“Bullets?” The council member’s almost childish query simultaneously expressed glee about his present and a youthful uncertainty about the English word.
“No bullets now. Maybe next week,” my counterpart replied with exasperation clearly etched on his face.
Ali translated the reply into something apparently far more belligerent. The council member stooped, chastened for asking for a favor on top of a favor. He meekly thanked my counterpart, tucked his treasured new pistol into his waistband, and walked toward the gate. His slow, plodding walk resembled that of a bureaucrat leaving the office after a full day. There was obviously no residual joy from the “gift” and no satisfaction from the meeting. A practiced disinterest and a steady gait replaced the eagerness of a few moments ago.
Before the council member made it to the gate, we were back in the Humvees and rolling toward the street. Instead of taking the highway directly back to the base camp, we turned left onto Al Dora Road and headed toward the power plant and the refinery. Within seconds, we arrived at an overpass that crossed over the top of abandoned rail cars and overgrown tracks. Looking like partially decomposed beached whales, the cars showed only metal ribs, having been stripped bare during the relentless waves of looting that swept Baghdad following the invasion.
Towering above these industrial carcasses, the four smokestacks of the Al Dora power plant memorialized Iraqi self-sufficiency. Defiantly billowing smoke, the stacks were spared during the recent air campaign but had been destroyed ten years earlier in the first Gulf War. In that time, Saddam rebuilt the stacks using only Iraqi parts and Iraqi labor. Within weeks of the end of that war, the power plant had been activated and pumped electricity to the homes of the chosen ones, exalting the efficiency of the Saddam regime.
Concrete barriers now filled the road beside the power plant, behind which heavy trucks offloaded wooden crates with a Bechtel stamp. The era of the Iraqi-only power plant had ended; the era of the Iraqi reconstruction contract had begun. As we drove by, my counterpart explained that the power plant would be rebuilt in a more efficient manner that would provide more power to more people. It would require shutting down the stacks in sequence and rebuilding them. So, when Saddam was in charge, all four stacks worked, but with the Americans in charge, only two stacks were operational. Explaining the difference, which the people interpreted as a divine sign, fell to my counterpart and me. The council served as the mechanism for distributing this information to the people and ensuring that they understood “progress.”
As we continued past the oncoming traffic, the concrete overpass was narrowed from four lanes to two by a row of concrete barriers. The lane closest to the power plant was now a garden of barbed wire, orange cones, and miscellaneous plastic bags from the nearby shops. Orange-and-white taxis impatiently honked behind bustling minivans packed with families traveling home.
On the left-hand side of the road, a forlorn building surrounded by sandbags and dirt-filled wire-mesh cages stood alone in a barren field. This was the Dora Police Station, a decrepit building masquerading as a new symbol of order in Baghdad. Its impotence, both structurally and functionally, showed clearly even as we drove by. Blue-and-white trucks lay scattered around the building. The disorder was in strong contrast to the U.S. Army Humvees strategically guarding the approaches to the building. Similarly, the helmets of disciplined American soldiers barely showed above the well-constructed sandbagged machine-gun nest on the roof of the building. Meanwhile, groups of Iraqis in ill-fitting blue uniforms smoked languidly, while their AK-47s were haphazardly slung over their shoulders.
On the right side, cars were crammed into the impossibly full parking lot of a mosque. Here, too, Iraqi men with AK-47s patrolled the roof. The mosque was another institution undergoing a revival in Iraq. Since the invasion, mosques’ minarets had been sprouting among the demolished neighborhoods and the destitute people. The call to prayer sounded stridently into the evening, and the people, as was the ritual required before entering the mosque, stood in line to wash their hands and feet. Gleaming with new tiles and humming with the power of a new generator, the mosque shone its lights and directed its defiance toward the police station. The sermons, which were weekly protestations against the American presence and “American imperialism,” traveled beyond the thin police station walls and echoed in the minds of those who had chosen to cooperate with the Americans. The battle between these two heavyweights—the religious institutions and the civil institutions—was only just beginning, but the mosques certainly seemed to have a more attentive and dedicated following.
As we continued our tour, the road opened back up after the power plant, revealing a bustling market on the right and a series of huge palm groves on the left. The market represented one of the largest open-air bazaars in the city. It was possible to find everything here, from fish to firearms. The narrow mazes of stalls obscured a deeper view into the market from the road, but the smell of diesel and rotting produce swirled through the Humvee’s windows, along with the honking of horns and the general din of a population hustling to buy dinner on the way home.
Just past the market, the houses adjacent to the road became enormous. Gone were the one-story homes that defined the middle-class subdivisions. Soaring entryways, towering walls, and huge vacant windows indicated our proximity to the power plant. These homes belonged to people of status, who were often schooled in the United States in the 1960s. These were the elite Ba’ath Party loyalists who had long since left for Jordan or Syria or gone into hiding. They had received these behemoth homes in exchange for their loyalty to Saddam. Ostentatious even by American standards, they included all of the amenities of Western mansions with highly stylized architectural details. Above the entryway of one grand home, a scale-model airplane perpetually took off from an outstretched hand—it was the home of a former air force general. Other houses had similar markers of identity and stature. The fine homes and their one-acre gardens testified to the payoff that came with party prestige. Even after the invasion and in the absence of guards, looters had not violated the sanctity of these homes. Their windows remained intact and doors unopened. The lingering legacy of party power and retribution hung like an invisible cloak, warding off criminals and miscreants, holding the places intact for the eventual return of their masters.
Suddenly, the grandest of all of these homes came into view—the palace of Sajda Hussein, Saddam’s wife. Between Al Dora Road and the river, surrounded by orchards and open fields, the palace commanded a view of the two-level Saddam Bridge. The occupants had an unobstructed view of downtown Baghdad and could also survey the activity at the oil refinery. The strategic location made the palace an easy choice for a transient American base during the invasion. The several palace buildings provided a perfect place for an operational headquarters. There was also an indoor swimming pool and a basketball court sheltered inside its castle walls.
Presently, the palace was being reconstructed into a community center that could be used by community groups. Any number of nonprofits championed this transition, although the Iraqis had expressed a very high skepticism. If the houses across the street had been protected by a lingering air of fear and vengeance, then the palace of Saddam’s wife deserved the utmost deference.
We turned right and began our circle back toward the base. Tanker trucks poured forth from the refinery gates. The refinery, the third largest in Iraq, had continued to operate during the war and even now ran at near capacity. The concrete highway hummed beneath our tires. The larger houses receded into the distance. We made a hard right onto Highway 5, a four-lane divided highway that ran parallel to Al Dora Road but divided the Sunni and Shi’a neighborhoods. Looking left and right, I noticed the stark contrast between Iraqi rich and poor. To the north, houses rose two or three stories, while to the south, dirt roads wound through collections of hovels that were surrounded by pale-green pools of raw sewage. For the moment, that portion of our sector would remain at a distance.
Whatever feelings of relief one might expect from making it safely back to the base were overwhelmed by feelings of excitement and uncertainty. Even if my counterpart didn’t really accomplish much during the council meeting, he had effortlessly managed his way through its personalities and complicated dealings. The places, the names, and the ongoing projects dotted his conversations as if he had lived in Iraq all of his life. The council members knew him by name and face and, more important, really seemed to respect him. Personal recognition and respect are central in Iraqi culture. Army handouts on the subject emphasized over and over that oral promises were sacred. Apparently, my counterpart had delivered enough results to meet this threshold. How was I supposed to step into that same room, minus any real authority, and make a seamless transition? I was off the map here, with no army instruction book or training to refer to, and it occupied my mind constantly.