In better hands

Finally, I've been found. I'm working with another spokesman I know and like, the man who two years ago introduced me to the 1st Cavlary and this. It's still one of my favorite nights I've ever spent as a Stripes reporter.

Tomorrow I'm headed down south of Baghdad to an outpost called Carver, about an hour south of Baghdad. I don't know much about it. I expect I'll be living with a couple of dozen U.S. soldiers who are working with a couple hundred Iraqi ones. More later...

Stuck

Monday night I left Basra, and after a couple of overnight flights and delays, I arrived back at Baghdad International Airport/Camp Victory on Tuesday morning. Since then, I’ve been waiting. And waiting. And trying not to eat too much, ‘cause that’s really all I have to do.

I’ve been stuck in between assignments. Part of it is my fault – I didn’t know where my boss wanted to send me next and wasn’t able to make the formal request until late Tuesday. These requests usually take two to three days. But for whatever reason, it’s been five days now and I just got word I’m going to FOB Loyalty, a base in eastern Baghdad. Because it involves a helo ride, that, too, will involve some waiting. I’ve wasted a week now, and I’m about out of good humor. (Dealing with blogger is not helping.)

I’m not the only one who’s stuck. A week ago, I went for a morning stroll in Shaibah, a tiny collection of stone-walled houses in between an oil refinery and a train station. It was about 7:30 a.m., already well over 90 degrees. (The highs in Basra last week were, for the most part, 120 or higher.)

As usual, as soon as we got out of the trucks boys appeared. The youngest came first, 5, 6, 7, 8, kids whose entire memories include U.S. or British soldiers going through their streets. The older ones met us closer to the train tracks. They were 13, 14, and all had the same text book. They were studying for a physics exam on their way to school. The younger ones persisted in asking for things: watches, cameras, guns, pens, paper, soccer balls. The older ones were too worried about failing their test. They probably know, too, the odds of getting free stuff from soldiers is worse than it when they were younger.

Shaibah itself is hardly a half-mile squared. It has two stores, selling drinks, cigarettes, plastic bins. There’s a taxi stand by one, which also seems to serve as the place to go to work on cars. It’s also the only place in town with a tree large enough to provide shade. There’s a school, a doctor’s clinic – which had a box outside from the United Nations – and at least one place where people can go to by a goat and have it killed. We followed the fuel man around town. He was selling tanks of propane for $4.50. It was enough to keep a family’s kitchen running for a week, one interpreter said.

People work in small farms or at the oil refinery, I was told. A few also work at the train station, which had four or five clean, green engines. One was pulling a car with backhoes. It all looked new. Nobody I was with knew who bought them or what any of the equipment was for.

But people did insist the tracks were still used, a north-south route that carries goods from Basra up to Baghdad. It was hard to believe, not because of the past six years of war. It was because of the trash. Like every other place I’ve ever been in Iraqi, the village was covered in filth. Rotting clothes, warped metal and, like always, plastic bags that float from one miserable pile to the next.

I’ve been told a couple of theories over the years about all this trash. One is that people here keep their own house clean but then just throw anything they don’t want right over the courtyard wall. It is true that the few Iraqi houses I’ve been in have been clear of trash, even the most sparse ones.

But why no one would gather that trash and put it in a pile outside of town – or even burn it now and then – still remains a mystery to me. Many soldiers I’ve been with over the years pass down the lore that Iraqis are dirty and don’t care. I think that comes from their own observations and from translators who speak Arabic but are from a different part of the world. I find this a hard thing to believe despite the heaps of evidence around me. Being messy is one thing. But choosing to live right next to the trash dump seems to make no sense. Still, there it is, and it’s hard to argue. And if there were no trash, then another interesting problem, I suppose. What would the goats eat?

The young officer I was with asked his interpreter about it. The Iraqi was from Basra, and the officer told him he should start the first garbage service in the country. “You’d be rich,” the officer said. The interpreter shrugged his shoulders.

In some towns, the violence was so horrible in the past few years that no one could think about something as common as trash. Ramadi and Fallujah come to mind. The village of Shaibah has been spared most of the direct violence, even though it’s only a few miles away from Basra. But it’s suffered in other ways – unreliable power, inadequate sewage, poverty.

And, of course, it has not been spared the trash. I suppose the best thing I can say is that at least it’s honest. I’m used to places that find it normal to hide refuse. For those 6-year-old boys, trash in the road is just about as normal as the soldiers they sometimes find there.

What’s new

I’ve never been to Basra before, and I’ve been in Iraq for less than 100 days total. Still, I gotta say, things are a little different around here. It’s more than just the soy milk, which is also here. The wireless is not, and I’m not surprised, though there’s a Subway and Green Beans coffee is coming soon. Yes, the Americans have arrived.

There are still soldiers and Marines living out in small outposts in and near the cities. It’s generally 30 to 60 guys and girls living in air conditioned tents or Iraqi government buildings running on U.S. generators. They have a common area for eating, studying and, if they are lucky, television. Some have personal internet access, some don’t. Those without e-mail buy Iraqi cell phones to call home. The ones out in the field say they like it. They’d rather live with their buddies than with wireless. I know they are talking to a reporter, but I tend to believe them. Even if they hate the Army, the generally like each other. It’s better to camp for a year with friends than with strangers, especially when those strangers outrank you.

Here’s a little about what’s different.

Convoys allow civilian cars to travel in between trucks. On one of my first patrols in 2005, the gunner shot off a .50-caliber because a car got to close. He gave the car a flat tire and the driver, and me, near heart attacks. Now, the U.S. military trucks also give way to other cars, except at intersections. There, somehow, they manage to go through. Still, we’ve been stuck in traffic for a few minutes the past couple of days. I’ve seen a lot of traffic in Iraq, but I never dreamed I’d be sitting in it.

American soldiers here do little patrolling. The main task is training, with dozens of teams paired up with Iraqi police and soldiers. The Americans here rarely go on missions unless the Iraqi Army invites them along. Some U.S. soldiers are tasked to guard the U.S. training teams. It makes sense – if the Army’s going to use four trucks and 15 to 20 soldiers to go from point A to point B, it’s better if the training team has some help getting there and back. The change has turned an infantry battalion here into a guard unit. Some have taken to sunbathing, even in Basra's 120-degree heat.

It’s been common so far to pull inside an Iraqi-run facility, take off our armor and helmets, and get out of the truck and walk around the grounds. I remember wearing armor inside buildings in Baghdad in 2005 and 2007, even when it was the U.S. protecting the area. I also remember feeling like I’d sweat through my gear one afternoon, when our hosts gave us warm orange juice to drink. This way, with less armor and cold water, is much better. At the immigration and customs area at the land border between Iraq and Iran, U.S. soldiers work every day without wearing vests. Even today when we stopped by the train station manager’s office in a small town outside of Basra, the soldiers took their helmets off while inside.

A group of soldiers took me around Basra on Friday. They let the Iraqi Army know why they were traveling through their territory. It’s not exactly like asking permission, and they didn’t tell them what streets they’d be taking, but they did tell them their starting and end points each time we got in the truck.

These new MRAPs – heavily fortified vehicles that look like garbage trucks wrapped in beige, steel plates – have a variety of seating arrangements. In some, the seats are like a bus with a tiny window to the side. Others have seats that face the middle, like seating on a small cargo plane. It means much of Iraq goes by without anyone, save the driver and the commander in the passenger seat, noticing.

I’m off to Baghdad next week, where I’m sure I’ll discover other interesting stuff. Like what’s going to happen to all those massive T-walls when peace finally comes. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s been bugging me for years. Yes, I’m still trying to figure out an interesting way to write about concrete. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

P.S. Sorry there haven’t been many photos. I’m having a little trouble posting them. Give me some time.

Water, water everywhere

Spend a day or an age in the desert and the answer is the same – It’s all about the water. In Iraq, the Euphrates River brings water from the west, while the Tigris River flows from the north. They form a helix on their way to the sea, first crossing in what is now Baghdad, and then again just north of Basra. There, the two rivers combine into the Sha’at al Arab, a thick waterway that goes another 40 or 50 miles before hitting the Persian Gulf.

Yes, young grasshopper, Barsa is not on the sea. It’s on the next best thing – the Sha’at – a deepwater strait that brings in trade and once made Basra the Venice of Iraq, or so they say. According to the two translators I’ve asked, Sha’at translates to “sea of Arab” or “coast of Arab.” If I asked two more translators, I think I’d get two more answers. English, and the people who speak it, sometimes requires a definitive answer when there is none.

Basra has five ports and the one in the city itself is far from the biggest. The one at Um Qasr, further west and on a dead-end vein of water that shoots up from the sea, does the most commercial business. There, the ports handled almost 900 ships last year and nearly all of the country’s imported grain. A passenger ferry from Dubai lets off twice a week at Um Qasr with about 50 passengers. Air conditioners, Kias and Hyundais, cement and steel, sugar and rice. It’s all imported into the country, and for the past six years, the Iraqis have pretty much done it all without any attention from the Americans.

That’s what we know. What we don’t know is how much is smuggled into the country. Weapons, heroin, prescription drugs and people top the list of trafficked goods, I’m told. The Brits have been working with the Iraqis on the borders in recent months, but it’s still unclear to me for how long. As best I can gather, it’s been a little more than a year, since the Iraqi Army drove the militias from the docks. That means for almost five years, Basra was an unwatched doorway right next to Iran. As one officer told me, we drove through in 2003 and haven’t been back until now.

It’s pretty hard to fathom. After all the evidence of smuggling of deadly bombs and bomb-making materials, after all the billions spent on uparmoring vehicles, we forgot about the water. More than one officer has told me in the last week – “We came to the borders too late.” The quotes are so similar, I wonder if they are off of a set of talking points.

The ports are just one way, the legal way, to get in. The Sha’at south of Basra is the actual border between Iraq and Iran. It’s too big to swim, but a pirogue and a cell phone would do. Row over, make a call, and have your friend pick you up. Never mind the copper plates – the ones that can still rip through Humvees and MRAPs despite all that armor – in your backpack. Further north, minefields leftover from the Iraq/Iran war still litter the borders. Those, too, the locals say, are navigable. Up and down the border Iraqi border guards have posts. One I visited on Tuesday had two guys, a couple of guns and no car.

Moving forward, a team of U.S. and British officers – some Navy, mostly Army, and the humor is lost on no one – are working with the Iraqi port officials to help them legitimize and improve business. If the ports are safe and legit, more ships will come. If more ships come, more locals will have reliable work and have less need to earn money smuggling. It’s a nice circle, and there is some money behind the idea. The Japanese just loaned the Iraqis millions of dollars for port improvements. It makes sense. I’ve yet to see a Mazda or Toyota here, but give it time.

A few days ago, a 60-year-old major was killed in a roadside bomb near Um Qasr. His job was to lead a team of soldiers to train the Iraqi coastal guard. Yes, the humor wasn’t lost on him as he used Google to help him understand nautical things. His friends think he was targeted because his training was working. The guards were getting better.

I met with his team this week, and they told me how he rejoined the military to fight another war. He’d been in the Tet Offensive, and he wanted to do it again. At 60, he beat young soldiers in runs and won over his team with enthusiasm, practical jokes involving tampons, and Werther’s Originals. His only problem, his friends said, was this new Army. It was more interested in straight cuffs than in fighting, he told them. He had a hard time understanding why. Looking at Um Qasr and the Sha’at, I do, too.

Fish – The other desert meat

So this is worth writing down. It might even be worth saying out loud. I’ve eaten Iraqi fish. And it was good.

I spent Sunday listening to a conversation between two officers, American and Iraqi, talk about border security in and around Basra. The city has two land crossings and four or five ports all pretty much smack up against Iran. Those stories will take a few days to sort out.

In the meantime, the homestead.


I’ve moved into the main military camp here and I found two things I did not expect. One, I have my own room and my own bathroom. This, too, is a first. I wish this stay was my last two weeks instead of my first because I am getting very, very spoiled. For example, I can just cross the room, instead of a gravel mess, to go wee in the middle of the night. I actually took a shower last night and again this morning. I feel extremely arrogant. And clean.

Second, a woman I worked with in South Korea, a former 8th Army PAO, is here. She’s fun and feisty and someone I really respect. I’m glad she’s taking care of me.

Other than that, there’s not much here beyond an airstrip, a horde of dusty buildings and a British restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and no beer. (I have a feeling that’s a recent change.)

The Brits officially gave up ownership of Basra a few weeks ago, although it will take them a few more weeks to move out. The Americans have been here for a while for the transition. Since they came, IED attacks have gone up slightly. That’s par for the course when a new unit takes over a territory, so it’s hard to tell if it’s a U.S./Brit thing or just the bad guys testing out the new cops in town.

Already, the base is becoming American. It’s building a larger weight room and MWR (internet, library, game room) facility. It has a Subway and more calories in the DFAC. When I asked one U.S. soldier what was different about the British food, he said: “It was healthier. I think they use less grease.” This is undoubtedly true. During my last two stays in Iraq, some DFACs had signs reminding everyone that each soldier was allowed only four eggs at breakfast. There is, however, no limit on French fries or onion rings.

On Sunday, I spent my first day outside of base. We took a short drive from the U.S. base to an Iraqi compound and spent five hours in a smoke-filled office. I’m not complaining. Outside it was well over 100 degrees.

There, I met a man who lived his whole live in Basra. Here’s what he told me about the city and its economy.

Goods from Kuwait, Iran and Saudi Arabia come into Basra. Iraqis eat Iranian watermelons. The people in Basra get their water from Saudi Arabia. Basra has salt and fish and oil fields, with a natural doorway to get that crude to the rest of the world. Now it needs businesses to come and invest, the man said.

More people have money, he went on, a change from a year or two ago. When I asked about jobs, he said most people labored – construction, building roads. Some find money at the ports. Some are starting to picnic again around town. But most people are still scared, he said.

We’d been there about three hours when he asked if we’d like to stay to lunch. It was 2 p.m., and the American officer accepted. It was only his second meeting with the Iraqi, and it would have left a bad impression to say no. The Iraqi ordered up 10 fish, and when he found out I liked that Iranian watermelon, he took a few bills out of his pocket, gave it to a soldier, and sent him shopping.

An hour and a half later, the fish arrived. It was deep fried and filleted but not deboned, just the way hoke is served in Japan. It came with flat bread, sliced cucumbers, raw onions, oranges and the newly bought watermelon and musk melon. The fish was divine, white and tender and spiced with salt, pepper and turmeric. I asked what it was and immediately regretted it because the U.S. major sitting next to me was making a valiant effort eat a lot of bread and little fish without anyone noticing. I mean, it’s probably best not to think about where most food comes. But when the answer was carp from the Gulf, I have to admit I was a little relieved.

Especially because I’d realized in the last two days that Basra, contrary to what some of us may think of Iraq’s only port city, is not on the sea. Stay tuned.

25 things

I've been in Iraq now for a little more than three days. Here's what's happened so far.

1. The flight crew aboard the C-17 from Ramstein to Balad shared their fresh-from-the-over chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Warm and gooey, from an aluminum-lined tray. I couldn't make this stuff up.

2. Iraq smells the same, salty, burnt fuel.

3. The day heats up fast. By mid-morning, it feels like mid-90s. By mid-afternoon, it must be over 100. Yahoo says the highs haven't reached 100 yet, but I don't believe it. At dusk, it's back to mid-70s and feels refreshing. The air, even during the day, is still relatively cool compared to the sun. That will change very soon.

4. The Green Beans coffee at the Balad air terminal serves MOAC -- the mother of all coffees. It's four shots of espresso.

5. So far, things on base are the same, but better. The internet cafes on base have new computers. Most waiting areas, like air terminals, billeting, have wireless.

6. Two dining facilities (DFACs in military parlance) have soy milk. It's not that Silk crap but some brand that actually tastes like soy. Knock me over.

7. The internet cafe at FOB Prosperity is in the midst of a palace. The outside was mortared, chunks of marble still hang from the walls. On the inside, it's a maze of theatrical hallways and makeshift offices enclosed in plywood. To get to the internet cafe, you have to walk by the Stress Free Zone, a place where soldiers can go to get counseling. Both times I walked by the doors were closed, though once music from a soft, jazzy trumpet hung in the air.

8. Of the five people who died in last Monday's shooting at Camp Liberty, two were assigned to a unit out of Germany. I thought I was going to Babylon, where that unit is based. Now I'm going to Basra. And as it turns out, those two soldiers worked at a different FOB.

9. The only chatter I've overheard about the shooting is a recitation of the news -- how it happened, where.

10. I haven't been off base yet, except for two quick bus rides at night between Camp Victory and the Green Zone. I feel like I'm at camp. I'm wondering who still lives in Baghdad. I wondering what they're doing right now.

11. In the green zone, I stayed for about 24 hours at FOB Prosperity to get my press badge. Getting there, and back to head to my assignment, has eaten up the better portion of three days. Getting the badge took less than an hour. I asked some of the soldiers who helped me why they didn't open a smaller office at the airport to register the journalists as they arrive in country. They said they've suggested it, but the higher-ups haven't caught on.

12. During the elections a couple of months ago, the press office was dealing with upwards of 60 reporters from around the world who were covering Iraq. This week, the number is eight to 10. That includes two reporters from Stars and Stripes. It doesn't include the few agencies who still have their own bureaus here, namely the New York Times.

13. At FOB Prosperity, there are four barbershops and about half a dozen other businesses -- including a restaurant -- just outside the PX. Iraqis run the shops, one of which sells pirated DVDs. You can get the entire Sex in the City show for $20. You can also get a face massage at the barber.

14. A new shop was going up, one framed entirely in glass, like a car dealership. The crew was laying the stone sidewalk, a thoughtful mix of white and gray stone that curved to the store's door like a garden path. They were planting a heap of flowers. The only ones I recognized were marigolds.

15. Glass walls in a war zone. That's all I'm saying.

16. I'm headed to Basra either Friday or Saturday. I'll be there for two weeks, I think. We haven't had a reporter there in months, maybe close to a year. The British have relinquished control but have a few dozen folks still around. The city has had a couple of IEDs in recent days. Otherwise, I don't know too much.

17. The U.S. is supposed to relinquish its bases in Iraq's cities to Iraqi forces by June 30. This doesn't include Baghdad, but everywhere else. Commanders still don't know how this will work.

18. I'm about to go eat lunch. I haven't eaten in about 18 hours. I'm excited about the possibilities.

19. Contractors run much of the administrative stuff for travel throughout the country, for civilians like me and for the troops. If you want to fly up to Mosul, it's the Army who flies but it's a contractor who does the paperwork who gets you signed up for that helicopter ride. They deal with tired, grumpy people who miss flights, get lost and just want to leave where they are and get to where they are going.

20. Those contractors are very kind and patient. Most have a stock set of corny, avuncular jokes to try to make you laugh. When no one picked me up when I arrived at the Green Zone around 3 a.m. a couple of nights ago, it was a series of contractors who figured out what I should do. It ended with me getting three hours of sleep in a cot. I can't say enough.

21. Last night, Thursday, was my third night and the first time in four days I was able to sleep more than three hours at a go. I slept six hours on a cot that leans decidedly to the right. It was the best night's sleep I've had since leaving Tokyo.

22. When I walked toward the the Internet cafe at FOB Prosperity yesterday afternoon, a soldier stopped me. "This is a smile only zone, ma'am." It still makes me smile now.

23. I figured out that my gear and bags weigh at least 60 pounds. That's half my body weight.

24. I'm on my fifth book in 12 days. I haven't written a story in more than three weeks.

25. I can't wait to get to Basra and see the sea.

Hullabaloo in the Ramstein Air Terminal

I’ve been waiting just about five days now for a flight to Balad, my first step to Babylon. Once on the plane, it should take at least another two days to get there. It’s about a five-hour flight to Balad, followed by a helicopter ride to Baghdad to check in with the press center. Then, they’ll be another helicopter ride to FOB Kalsu, the headquarters base in Iskandariyah, near Babylon. Between waiting for manifests and rides from one place to the next, I’d be better off driving. The cradle of civilization is, after all, only about 2,200 miles and one time zone from here.

Jem Finch gave credit to the Egyptians for pointing us all in the right direction with two critical pieces of work – embalming and toilet paper. While it’s hard to argue with the Nile’s vastness and Charmin’s softness, I’m making an official case for Mesopotamians as a slightly craftier group. They figured out that a circle’s circumference is always just about 3 1/8 times its diameter, that the day is 24 hours long, and, most importantly, that the length of a hangover is directly proportional to the length of time spent downing the king’s swill. Yes, for those of us who have forgotten, we can thank Mesopotamia for beer. (If anyone doubts me, it’s written in plain English at the Sapporo Beer Museum in Ebisu.) I can understand why poor Jem didn’t know to pay homage. We all teach our own history, and I assume those good teachers in Maycomb, Ala., with their good intentions, chose to teach theirs.

Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris, the delta of the Middle East. About 4,000 years ago, Babylon was its center and the largest city in the world. It was the zip code everyone wanted. Nebuchadnezzar built its walls, Daniel interpreted its dreams. By about 500 BCE, the city’s populace, too drunk to fight back, let Cyprus the Great walk right in and expand Persia. Two hundred years later, a young man named Alexander took it back. The city was Persia’s again – and in ruin – by the 7^th Century, when the rise of Islam took over much of the area. Iraq became the country’s new name.

So, I sit and wait. It’s certainly not the worst thing, not even close. I can shower, walk around base, watch really bad movies, read and rip from Wikipedia. I finished “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” at the terminal on Sunday while a group of about 10 kids screamed like monkeys in and around the indoor gym. It proved the perfect soundtrack for Kiran Desai’s hysterical tale about human misdirection and primate resolve. Now I’m halfway through “The Shipping News,” and I’m convinced this first blog entry reads like cement.

As of today, it looks like I’ll fly to Kuwait and wait, again, for a flight to Baghdad. It should happen Wednesday. Maybe. I’m not holding my breath. I’ve hitched rides through Mississippi and Germany with almost no effort. Who knew it’d be so hard to get a lift into a place that so many people are ready to leave?