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 b
ut 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 build
ing.
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.
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