UMM QASR
Dear Lisa,
It may not be the most exciting detail to note, but the Basra region possesses seven ports (plus a couple of oil terminals), the largest of which is Umm Qasr, located so close to the border that its old and unused airfield lies half in Iraq and half in Kuwait. Before I left New York, I read that security at the port was so good that nautical insurerers had reduced rates on ships using the harbor, resulting in a boom in traffic. And so, figured I, why not take a firsthand look-see at some good Iraqi news?
Layla, in her way, has concluded that Sa'ad cheats me, so for the trip she set me up with a different driver, a nice-looking fellow with salt-and-pepper hair named Basim. (She herself had family obligations and couldn't make the trip.) Off we go through the southern desert, the day hot, the traffic light, the scenery abyssmal. We pass the smiling, curled dolphin (a whale, actually, Layla informs me)--a loney greenish statue situated in the middle of a vast empty circle of rubble and dirt, its charm now lost amidst the surrounding desolation. (I'll post a picture of the statue soon.) After that, flat scrubby fields, brick and mud blockhouses, women in abiyas balancing bundles atop their heads as they trudge alongside the road, an oil refinery spewing bright orange flames into the sky...
Oil refinery
The plan is to contact a friend of Layla's named Mahmoud, a lifelong resident of Umm Qasr and someone with connections with the port. Everything goes smoothly. We hit UQ--like most Iraqi burgs, I arrive before realizing I'm at my destination, the beige brick hovels are so sparse and the dusty streets so empty they hardly qualify as city limits. We're a little early, so I ask Mahmoud to take me downtown and he shrugs and spreads his hands, palms up. This is it, amigo. Main Street, Umm Qasr.
Jesus. I mean, Jee-zus. Crumbling houses, muddy streets, broken down cars rotting in pools of motor oil, plastic bags--the scourge of the Iraqi environment--ensnared on coils of concertina wire...this is a booming port town? As the wind kicks up a mini-sand storm from a vacant lot, we park beside some nebk trees, before a weatherbeaten stucco building that seems to serve as some sort of city council hall. We call Mahmoud, who pulls up a few minutes later in a Chevvy pickup large enough to tow an aircraft carrier. Mahmoud is a lean, graying man with a nearly perfectly triangular face. I hop into his truck and soon we're weaving through rocks and metal fragments and other suicide-sedan-prevention debris to meet--well, I can't tell you whom I met, for reasons that'll soon be clear.
Umm Qasr
We'll call him Ahmed. He's accompanied by some unarmed guards as we sit in his living room. With Mahmoud interpreting, I begin the conversation by telling Ahmed that I'd read Umm Qasr is a southern Iraqi success story, at which point he cuts me off. "Propaganda," he grunts in English.
Turns out, the town of 60,000 people is not doing well at all. The main difficulty seems to be water--its barely useable even for laundry, let alone drinking. UQ used to draw water from four underground wells, but the wells, or maybe the pipes servicing them, became corrupted, resulting in a high degree of salinization. NGOs are doing nothing, "they claim they have set up project and submitted proposals but..." Ahmed shrugged. The UN built a two kilometer pipeline that provides salty washing water. The Brits won't do much either, beyond offering some token material and the Iraqis lack the resources to do the job themselves. The result is that UQ has to truck in most the water they use, adding further costs to their city budget.
Not everything is dire, Ahmed reports. "We see about a 30 percent improvement rate," he calculates, noting increased salaries and security. Along with the port, there's a cement factory that employs about 1,000 people, and state workers comprise another 5,000 workers. There's also some hope on the H20 front, with the Iraqi government set to begin next month building a water pipeline from Nasiriyah.
As for the port, Ahmed begins a long, sad story about criminality and corruption. Seems dockside UQ is rife with Mafia-like gangs who have infiltrated the workers, hijacking and smuggling all sorts of cargo. "The material provided by the Oil for Food Program was completely stolen by Ali Baba," he notes. As for a revenue spill-over into Umm Qasr, "don't know about that," he says. "Money isn't reaching our city." Seems the proceeds from facility operations go directly to the Transportation Ministry in Baghdad, from whence a portion is supposed tor return to Basra Province. But up north, corrupt bureaucrats squeeze the money stream, raking off their percentages. There's some dark talk about the Transportation Minister being a not-so-secret ally of Moqtada al Sadr and perhaps some of the Basran fluus is finding its way into the Sadrists pockets...
Ahmed feels abandoned by everyone--the central government, the Basrah Governing Council, the Brits and the U.S. Interestingly, I ask what he thinks of Amrikia, and he offers a reply you hear a lot in Iraq: "The U.S. did us a great favor by getting rid of Saddam, but in removing one tyrant, you left us with thousands in the form of terrorists." Should we leave? Yes, Ahmed says--but not until security is established nationwide.
After that depressing little visit, Mahmoud and I head off to the port itself, where after security checks and explanations about what I'm doing there, we motor through the facility, led by the chief of security ( a friend of Mahmoud's), to drop in on the port manager. Along the Waterfront, I'm not seeing--I spot only two ships in berths, one being a passenger liner from Dubai--must be a cheap package deal to visit swingin' Basrah--and a lot of containers piled up with no one attending them. The nattily-dressed, wary, slightly disdainful manager only has about ten minutes to talk and seems uneasy chatting with a sahafee, and in pure bureaucratic CYA-mode spends the time painting a rosy picture of his domain. Before Saddam's fall, they used to unload maybe two cargo ships a day, he says, now they handle up to five. The port is operating at near 100% capacity, but it could use more containers, trucks, manpower, etc. When I ask him for some statistics, however, he can't pony up the goods, telling me to come back in a few days.
As for crime, the manager flatly states that the port is crime free. When I suggest that no port in the world is without its smugglers and thieves, he challenges me to find any proof of Ali Baba activity. Okay, I persist, if everything is so going so well, why is the surrounding town so poor--at which point, the chief of security sitting with us nods energetically, seems he's from UQ and has evidently been wondering the same thing. The manager shrugs. "I refer you to Saddam Hussain." As for money from the port, it is electronically transfered to the Commercial Bank of Baghdad, and then to the Ministry of Transportation; nothing passes through his hands. Translation: it ain't his responsibility. I think of the people of Umm Qasr struggling to keep their wretched little town together and possibly get some water decent enough to do laundry in. Whose responsibility is it, I wonder--but that's one of the $64,000 Iraqi Dinar questions for the new democratic government.
Time to go. The security chief (who pulls me aside to let me know that security at the port is 100 percent Iraqi) leads Mahmoud and I on a tour of the facility, and I take few photographs, which I later erase fiddling with the camera (curse these overcomplicated digital gadgets!)...anyway, Mahmoud returns me to a patiently-waiting Basim, and soon we're rocketing north, past the oil refineries and abaya'd woman trudging beside the road, back to the dilapidated building of Basra and its smiling whale, the city's sad and emblematic remembrance of happiers days along the Shatt-al-Arab.
May 8, 2005