In The Red Zone

Dear Lisa --

The idea, according to Captain J., my media operations shepherd during my stay at the Shatt-al-Arab Hotel--an old caravansary on the north end of town turned military base for the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards--is to discourage "insurgents" from massing in the dark and launching mortar attacks on the camp.  The means are illumination flares, two fired from mortars in various directions each night at different times, their parachute-borne coppery light exposing the flat terrain around the base to observers in the hotel's tower (actually the traffic control center for an old and long-unused airport.)

"Seems to work, too," the Captain adds, as the heavy thump! of a British mortar shakes the ground.  "The only time we didn't do this, the hotel was rocketed later that night."

The Shatt-al-Arab Hotel

Later that night--1:30 a.m., to be exact--I'm jarred from my sleep by two loud bangs!, one after the other.  That's funny, I thought, that sounds like an attack on the hotel...a moment later tumbling from bed as a klaxon suddenly blasts out a warning whaa, whaa, whaa indicating that, sure enough, we're under assault.  Beastly fuzzy-wuzzies!  To the wire, men!  Sergeant-major, form a square!

Actually, what I did was throw on some clothes, along with my blue helmet and body armor and, as per instructions, hastened to the hotel lobby (built, it seems, in the 1930s--was that the ghost of a Pan Am Clipper I saw parked on the tarmac?) to stand with similarly attired British soldiers beneath the aged chandeliers and inert ceiling fans while my hosts tried to sort out the disturbance.  About two hours later the word comes down:  seems that--illumination rounds aside--the blacked-out hotel served as a rendezvous for a Chinese-made rocket and an RPG round, fired from different locations in the city, but synchronized to land simultaneously (a degree of "insurgent" proficiency that interested the Brits).  The rocket exploded in the Shatt, the RPG struck just outside the perimeter of the camp.  Bad aim, chaps, frightfully sorry, but you'll excuse us if we don't wish you better luck next time...

Other than that bit of excitement, my embed stay has been a blur of army bases, military equipment, helicopter rides, sweaty trips in Snatches (if you'll pardon the expression), occasional forays amongst the Basran people and periodic afternoons languishing in a KBR-tent on the KBR-built and maintained Basrah Air Station, listening to the KBR-generated (for all I know) desert wind howling just beyond the canvas.  All that, and after-hours beers ($1.50 for a 16-ounce can, two cans limit) at an officers'--and journalists', evidently--"pub."

Highlights have included accompanying Lithuanian troops as they gave hands-on training to Iraqi troops in the fine art of establishing and operating vehicle checkpoints.  ("You most prri-or-i-tize whut vehicles you stup in orrdur not to tie op traffick," the Lithuanian lieutenant tells his interpreter in English, who then relays the instructions to the soldiers in Iraqi--how much information is lost in the multiple relays?)  Then we foot-patroled a small town several kilometers north of Basra where the Liths wandered through the souk, eventually purchasing some souvenir kheffiyas and prayer beads.  (Alas, when was the last time U.S. troops could interact so freely among Iraqis?)  We ended the day driving through some god-awfully poor villages, where the patrol commander pointed out a destroyed stone building where, a month earlier, a group of children found some unexploded grenades, started playing with them and...well, you can guess the outcome of this typically catastrophic Iraqi tale...

Training Iraqi "Facility Protection Service" police

The Brits took us--by "us" I mean yours truly, in addition to French TV2 war correspondent Laurent Boussié and freelance cameraman Dominique Marotel (embedded in order to do a five-part story on British activities in the Basra region)--to a couple of police training centers (one in which young Czech military instructors oozed thigh-strapped-Glock machismo as they trained Iraqis how to shoot) and went on patrols through inner city Basra, where I became acquainted with the inimitable Iraqi expression "jigee-jigee."  (Hint:  it has something to do with offering one's younger sibling to passing soldiers.)

British photographers recording police training

One of my favorite visits was at the headquarters of the Governing Council of Basra, the newly-elected body of provincial legislators.  The pols I saw (and I'll have more to say about them in the future) were an odd mixture of sheikhs resembling Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia, grim-faced representatives of religious parties and even grimmer-faced women councilmembers shrouded in black abiyas, all protected by British soldiers and the occasional Shitte security man, standing outside the council chambers with the blank expression of a hired gunsel whose importance resides solely in his AK-47 and ability to follow orders.  Adding to this exotic, if combustible, mix was Major Robert Cooper, the British liaison to the GC--a droll, erudite, witty throwback to an older tradition of English officer, part diplomat, part warrior, with a touch of the poet beneath the camouflaged khaki and neckerchief tied in a dashing cravat.  One could almost imagine him as a Victorian officer in the British Raj, flattering, cajoling and soothing the indignant tempers of Indian panjandrums and potentates.

The point of all this training--or rather, what the British were keen for the Frenchmen and I to see--is called "SSR," or "Security Sector Reform."  This bureaucratese for a somewhat abstract, objective-sounding and culturally-neutral policy in which the MNF, rather than behaving like an occupying foreign power of yore, seeks to act as instructors, teaching the Iraqi police and army to handle their own security, thus allowing--some day--the various nation's troops to decamp from the Big Sandbox.   Or, to put it less diplomatically, to teach the Iraqis to be our allies against the Ali Baba, "insurgents" and foreign terrorists without--insha'allah--getting sucked into their not-inconsiderable psychological and cultural pathologies.

On patrol in the Qarmat Ali district of Basra

The Iraqis express gratitude for the training--I did not detect among the soldiers and policemen any resentment or feelings of humiliation regarding the MNF.  Instead, I heard constant variations of "Brit-tish zay-neen!  Ameriki muu zay-neen!"--yeah, you guessed it, "British good.  America no good."  (Interestingly, one UK officer said to me, "We are incredibly paranoid about doing anything that makes America look bad...")  Anyway, it's only when you pull the trainees aside that the complaints pour forth--crappy equipment, no boots, shoddy uniforms, terrible accommodations, no one listening to their complaints--and, most bothersome of all, it seems--no pistols!  The Iraqi men (probably some women, too) all want their pistols--Glocks, especially.  "We are in danger 24 hours a day," a police cadet told me.  "We need pistols to protect ourselves."  No doubt--but nearly every Iraqi household possesses at least one gun (legal under Saddam--so much for the NRA argument that private gun ownership deters tyranny...)  One suspects, of course, that strappin' a handgun to your waist or thigh is some sort of cultural trope for social status and manhood that goes beyond mere protection...

I should add, in this already over-long post, that the Iraqis don't blame the MNF for their shortages--although they gripe that British promises of aid do not always materialize.  ("With them, its always 'gimmee, gimmee,'" one Brit complained.)  No, rather, they fault their commanders, who, they whisper, take supplies earmarked for the rank and file and sell them on the black market.  True? Who knows?  The point is, the Iraqis think its true, which undermines their morale ever-so-slightly and resurrects the ghosts of their corrupt, feudalistic and dysfunctional past.  As if those ghosts needed resurrection---around here, they still walk about as plain as day, stalking Iraqi lives and imaginations.

Yours from where the Glocks always run on time.

May 16-17, 2005