apocryph.org Notes to my future self

Iraq Tour Over

Yesterday, as I was making final preparations to leave for Iraq, I received a phone call from one of my stateside managers, telling me not to get on the plane, and that my in-country manager wanted me to stay stateside for a while. Today I went into the office to discuss details, and the end result is that I am not returning to Baghdad and am no longer involved with the Iraqi Justice Integration Project.

I am limited in what I can share of the situation without endangering my career, but suffice it to say I feel a grave injustice has been perpetrated. It breaks my heart to think I will not see my Iraqi development team again, and I feel as though I’ve somehow abandoned them by my absence.

I hope I can stay in touch with the Iraqis, and that they still find success despite the turmoil.

The search for another job will commence presently.

A week into my leave

I’ve been back in the US over a week now, and I eerily feel as though I never left. As I’ve said before, I didn’t realize I missed so much of life here at home. As I read about the ongoing problems in Iraq, and I hear from my team members about various crises popping up on my project, I find myself reluctant to return.

Obviously I’m still going back, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard. I hope once I get back in country that these feelings will fade and I can focus on our objectives once again. If not, it will be much harder to actually get work done.

I think part of the problem is my disillusionment with the lack of institutional support we receive, and the project-specific turmoil that I left behind. For better or worse, though, that’s the reality of work for my employer, for the US government, and in hard post-conflict environments like Iraq and Afghanistan. If I find it insufferable I can always go home, but I don’t want to leave our Iraqi team.

Someday, whether it’s September or January 07 or February 07, I’ll come home. When that day comes, I’ve resolved to stop settling for ‘good opportunities’ that fail to engage me. I don’t want to put on a nice shirt and drive to an office every day. I don’t want to make stupid decisions to appease feckless bureaucrats. I don’t want to work for a company that doesn’t get technology, and doesn’t want to. I want to do meaningful technical work with people as good or better than me. I want leadership I can trust and get behind. I want work I can do anythere there’s broadband and power. I want to stop waiting for ‘someday’.

Of course, it takes more than a desire for something better to make it happen. I don’t have the network I once did, and don’t really know where to begin. My time in Iraq is time I’m out of touch with the pulse of the industry, and I’m certainly not working with cutting-edge technology, so I’ll be rusty and out of touch when I return. I’m reasonably confident I can get back into things rather quickly, but I’ll need an engaging and challenging job to make it happen. With any luck I’ll be able to find one, inshallah.

Home sweet home

At last, I’m home from Iraq for a couple weeks of break. I had a great time in Jordan; I particularly loved Aqaba, and will definitely return some day.

I arrived in the US on Sunday afternoon, and have spent the following two days recovering from jet lag and the rigors of life in Iraq. I’m rested and refreshed now, and looking forward to a couple weeks of sloth and gluttony.

We held a memorial for Hamoodi a week ago Sunday. I and the team have moved past our grief and are going forward, and my anger and resentment towards certain managerial elements over the actions following Ahmed’s death have simmered down to a mild bitterness which should be much more bearable. I think Ahmed deserved a longer grieving period than we gave him, but holding on to pointless sorrow is hardly an honorable tribute to his life.

I’d forgotten how much I missed home. Being in my own place, at my desk with two high resolution monitors and my Kinesis keyboard, my Aeron chair, American television, a wide variety of delicious foods, sleeping through the night, no helos overhead, the smell of my office, my cats; I’ve spent the last two days rediscovering the aspects of my life in America which I’d almost forgotten.

That aside, I will nonetheless return to Iraq, refreshed and ready to pick up the cross again.

More on Ahmed's Murder

Today, as the team grieved over the loss of Ahmed at the hands of terrorist murderers, more details emerged as to the exact circumstances of his death. Even AP picked up the story as part of a general Iraq update.

As you can read in the story, Ahmed (I can’t help but think of him as ‘Hamoodi’) was the son of the chief judge of Iraq’s Supreme Juridical Council. His father’s entire family has been under threat for a while, so it was a matter of time until something like this was attempted.

According to our sources, police believe he was kidnapped sometime Friday along with his two body guards, tortured, murdered, and dumped in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. The article has a few inaccuracies, but gets most of the details right.

The entire team is devastated by Hamoodi’s brutal murder. The three day long Islamic mourning ritual will be held somewhere we ex-pats are not permitted to go, so the best we can do is our own memorial ceremony to be held tomorrow. I’ll then fly out to Amman the next day, inshallah.

This is the first serious loss I’ve experienced since my grandfather died over a decade ago. I imagine it will gradually get better, but I don’t want it to; Hamoodi deserves more than a day or two of grieving before his life and death becomes but a memory. I suppose that’s a textbook response to a death such as this, but in this instance it would appear I’m pretty normal.

We’re supposed to talk to the Embassy shrink tomorrow afternoon, which will be nothing more than a box-checking exercise. I suppose there’s a purpose to be served by counselling people on a loss, but I don’t think it’s relevant in my case. I don’t want to feel better or cope with the loss, and I don’t need a psychiatrist to talk to, but I’ll go through the motions.

Not surprisingly, I find myself wondering, now that Hamoodi has been killed indirectly as a result of our presence in Iraq, whether the Iraqi people would be better off under the brutal tyranny of Saddam. I am forced to conclude that day-to-day life for the average Iraqi under Saddam circa 1990 (before the devastating sanctions) and even circa 2000 (after the devastating sanctions) was better than it is now. The same humiliating subjugation and and oppression applied centrally by Saddam is now applied organically by the virulent insurgency and criminal gangs; the main difference is Saddam could keep the lights on.

However, I still believe that, as a result of our invasion, Iraq has the potential–however fading–of overcoming its enormous challenges and emerging as a free and peaceful country. If we pull out now, there can be no doubt Iraq will descend into sectarian chaos, and many more like Hamoodi will die. If we stay and try to keep the devastating, stupendously stupid fuckups to a minimum, many more like Hamoodi will die too, but there’s a chance their children will live to see a free and peaceful Iraq.

For better or worse, I know I’m not done here yet…

Iraq Day 111

Today I was supposed to leave for 3 weeks of R&R, however instead I’m still in Baghdad. One of my local Iraqi tech team was assassinated yesterday, and I can’t bring myself to leave yet.

A2, or ‘Hamoodi’ as we affectionately called him, was a high-profile insurgent target for reasons having nothing to do with our project. He was targeted specifically and assassinated along with his body guards while out in the red zone.

He was always a source of amusement for our team. He had a jovial personality, and consistently made us all laugh. He struggled early on with the tech training, but was coming into his own as a server/network administrator.

He is survived by his wife, and six month old son. He was 23 years old.

Iraq Day 102

I’m past 100 days in country, and it definitely feels like it. Though there remains a degree of excitement and satisfaction with the work I’m doing here, I also can’t wait to get out, first to Jordan for a week of vacation, then back to the US for two weeks of sloth and gluttony. The long days and 6 day workweeks are definitely taking their toll. So much so that I lost track of time (and lost my motivation), which accounts for the two week interval since my last post.

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I attended Good Friday and Saturday Vigil masses at the palace for Easter. No matter how many times I go to Mass there, I can’t get over the armed congregation, the piles of body armor and Kevlar helmets at the end of the pews, and the T-walls surrounding the ‘chapel’.

Each year, I forget that the Saturday vigil Mass is typically very long, and includes the formal confirmation of converts into the church. This year was no different, and amazingly there actually was a lone convert/sponsor pair (junior Army officers both) participating in a somewhat brief rite of initiation.

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Last week there was a rocket attack surprisingly close to our compound. It was a single rocket, and no casualties were reported, but it was notable in that we’ve not taken much IDF in the last few weeks. Hopefully it’s not the emergence of a new trend.

A few days later, a mortar round hit just behind the palace pool where I’ve spent several afternoon meals. The mortar penetrated a sandbag barrier and actually skipped under a few rows of housing trailers, and fortunately didn’t explode (a common problem with the aging ordnance used by insurgents). The entire area was evacuated and a pair of humvees with mounted .50 cal machine guns stationed somewhat pointlessly outside the area, as though subsequent mortars might be fended off by the gunners. In the end, no one was killed, but it was disconcerting to say the least.

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Last week there was an odd combination of dust storm and rain storm, which made for some interesting pictures, to be posted soon. I’d been told by those who’d been here that dust storms turn everything orange, but I didn’t appreciate what this meant until I experienced it for myself. It’s as though you’re walking around with an orange filter over your eyes; it was very eerie.

Thankfully, the subsequent rain shower washed the dust out of the air, which is not typically how a dust storm ends.

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In the last couple weeks the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, the very same feckless bureaucracy that brought you two hours a day of power and higher electricity bills, in cooperation with the Uncle Sam’s elite bureaucrats, the US Joint Area Support Group (JASG for short), decided the IZ should feel their pain, and instituted rolling blackouts throughout the IZ. As a result, our camp loses grid power for several hours each day, at more or less random intervals.

Fortunately we have a backup generator and a stockpile of fuel, just like virtually everyone else in the IZ, however this just introduces another logistical gotcha. In fact, last Thursday as were were preparing to head up to the bar in Believer’s Palace, the grid power went off, and Lucent’s huge backup generator failed to start. The cause? No fuel!

Just as we were beginning to dispair that our evening of drinking and self-humiliation would be ruined before it even began, a diesel truck came barreling into the camp and minutes later the generator was alight oncemore. Tragedy, narrowly averted.

That notwithstanding, the A/C unit in my trailer automatically shuts off when it loses power, and does not come back on when power comes back up. There’s nothing so refreshing as coming home after a long day’s work to a 90 degree trailer and a powered-off A/C unit.

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U took N and A2 to CRD last Wednesday and Thursday for two days of intensive training, demonstration, and discussion of the application with virtually the entire CRD staff. The result has been immensely positive, with CRD staff coming up with a number of great suggestions and clearly taking ownership of the application.

Of course, a lot can still go wrong. Earlier we learned that the MoI colonel who was giving us grief over our failure to use Oracle has put a line in the sand, and his superiors lack the initiative and spine to overrule him, for fear something might go wrong and they get blamed. This type of bureaucratic inertia is one of the Iraqi government’s most significant shortcomings, and will likely hurt us again in the future.

For the time being, we’ll slip the schedule and port to Oracle.

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Our housing situation has somewhat stabilized, though a move appears inevitable at this point. The way in which the situation was handled has further eroded my already flagging confidence in the USG’s ability to execute the mission here, and our own internal management as well.

At this point it doesn’t seem that the housing debacle will be enough of a hassle to bring me home, but it is a demoralizing experience.

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My vacation is coming up in less than two weeks. Though I worry what will happen in my absence, I cannot wait to get some time away. The stress, widespread incompetence, six day weeks, long days, and close quarters produce a strain which really does just sneak up on you.

I’ll be meeting Rebecca in Amman, hanging out there for a while, driving down to Petra for a day, then on to Aqaba on the coast of the Red Sea. After a week in Jordan I’m flying home for two weeks. After a total of three weeks away, I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I come back, and my reaction to returning will in large part determine whether I stay past July or not.

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It’s really getting hot now. The last couple days have felt > 100F, and it only gets hotter from there. So far I don’t mind the heat, but ask me again when it’s 140 in the shade.

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One of our developers, Y, has been threatened by a man in his neighborhood who apparently saw him driving into the IZ one day. He will probably have to find a new neighborhood for his mother, sister and himself to live in, otherwise he risks kidnapping or death. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that he could simply stop working for us. I suppose the comparatively lavish salary and education he gets working with us outweigh the risk he runs.

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Before I came out here, I was warned by everyone from the BearingPoint team to DoS staff at DSAC training about how hard it would be here. I heard about the danger, the deprivation, the emotional stress, the distance from friends and family. But there was one hardship that no one thought to mention: the astoundingly high bullshit level.

The government reconstruction activities here are almost as dysfunctional as one could imagine. There are multiple civilian and military groups with no clear boundaries around their responsibilities, and little coordination between them. The civilian groups are led and managed by largely inept bureaucrats, and executed by largely inept contractors.

In addition to this, there’s the support. As a BearingPoint employee I’m among the best-treated civilians in the IZ; as a BE employee with a clearance and an Embassy badge, I’m among the elite. And, still, stateside support for our work varies widely from lavish (at the lowest level of management) to ambivalent (at the mid-levels) to abstract distain (at the high levels). This is in large part due to the inability of corporate management units to even begin to understand the extent to which the work we’re doing in Iraq is unlike the bullshit government contract work they think themselves so skilled at.

Not to be outdone, the Iraqi officials vary from extremely cooperative, to ambivalent, to overtly obstructionist. Many are well-intentioned but live in a sort of bureaucratic fear which they no doubt learned in the previous regime, which paralyzes them when faced with a decision. Inevitably, they must consult with a superior, and their superior, and so un, until you find yourself asking the appropriate minister for approval of the smallest decision.

All in all, I have a sense that we/I could really make a difference for the future of Iraq, if only the American and Iraqi governments and corporate leadership would let us.

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On an unrelated note, my learning of the Arabic alphabet is proceeding well. I can write my name in Arabic, and read alot of words. Speaking it, on the other hand, is much more challenging. There are consonants in Arabic whose sounds I would not have thought any human could make, and which require use of vocal muscles that I didn’t know I had. Not to mention that Iraqi colloqial Arabic is essentially incompatible with, say, Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and that the so-called Standard Arabic is not necessarily compatible with either.

At any rate, I spend most of my day immersed in rapid-fire Arabic conversation, so if there’s anywhere I’ll pick it up, it’s here.

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Yesterday I took a PSD convoy with A1 and U to the Ministry of Interior building to meet with a high-level ministry official about the MySql/Oracle controversy. In addition to the features common to all Iraqi government offices which I’ve enumerated before, MoI is noteworthy for another reason: its infamous stairs, the so-called ‘stairway to heaven’.

You see, the elevators are unreliable, particularly in the absence of electricity, so for security reasons the PSDs don’t let us use them. The alternative, the stairs, is particularly unpleasant at MoI because the steps are very tall, uneven, narrow, and without rails. We then climb these stairs, several flights, in stuffy summer heat, without A/C, smoke in our lungs, and of course wearing heavy body armor. By the time I reached our destination on the second floor (the ground floor is 0) my legs were already aching, and I was feeling particularly grateful we didn’t know anyone on the 11th floor. U, who isn’t in particularly good shape, was gasping by the time we finished our ascent.

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The day before yesterday I went to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MoLSA), which is responsible for the juvenile correction facilities in addition to a wide range of other duties. MoLSA is a long way from the IZ, so the drive takes a while and goes through alot of Baghdad. I continue to be struck by the things I see. On the one hand, violence and crime are rampant and life is very hard, but at the same time, there are people clogging the roads in cars, eating at outdoor cafes, children in fenced-in schoolyards, throngs of people at markets, etc. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but that definitely wasn’t it.

This isn’t to say the reconstruction effort is going well or Baghdad is a safer place to be; it’s not. But the prevailing image from American media is also not completely accurate, nor do I know how it could be given the complexity and intrinsic contradictions of Iraq.

At any rate, en route we passed by a disabled armored vehicle abandoned by a Blackwater team after taking an IED hit. The IED left a surprisingly small crater in the ground by the roadside, and didn’t appear to do much to the vehicle apart from shattering the driver’s-side window. On the way back we passed it again, this time with a contingent of Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guard surrounding it and a US military convoy en route to recover the vehicle.

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Having back-to-back two days of red zone travel behind me, I’m amazed how draining it is. During the trip I don’t feel particularly nervous or anxious, but when I return I’m drained and literally exhausted. I hear this from everyone who goes out, though it manifests in different ways. This, combined with my growing burnout and particularly high project bullshit levels of late made for a pretty sour mood. Thankfully, today is Thursday, so I can stay up late, have a few drinks, and sleep late tomorrow.

Iraq Day 82

It’s starting to feel like summer in earnest here in Baghdad. We had a bit of rain last Wednesday, which made for an uncharacteristically rich sunset (see below), but otherwise it’s been dry and ever-warmer.

I took the above picture while walking to the BE camp for burger night. To the left of the frame is the perimeter wall of the BearingPoint camp. The street in the photo is a main drag which runs through the IZ and right in front of the palace compound. The jersey walls divide the unmarked roadway into lanes, and the speed bumps from hell force all vehicles to slow to just over 0 MPH before proceeding.

As I noted above, this was taken after an afternoon rain, so the streets were wet, and there were clouds in the sky; two unusual occurrences.

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The conference we’re hosting in Irbil, in the Kurdish region of Iraq to the north, is coming up in about a week. It should be a stressful time as we make last-minute preparations, but once we’re up there it will hopefully be relaxing.

The Kurds are pretty squared away, so the security situation up there is much better. We’ll stay in a hotel/resort overlooking a valley just outside the city of Irbil, we’ll eat local food (for better or worse), and we’ll mingle w/ the locals at the markets. I can’t wait.

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I’ve postponed my RRB again, until mid-May. I’ve decided to take it at the same time I take my R&R back home, making for a three-week hiatus from the rigors of Baghdad life. I’ll meet Rebecca in Amman as previously planned, then we’ll spend about a week in Jordan, either in Amman, at the Dead Sea, Aquba, or whatever. We’ll then fly back to Virginia together, and I’ll spend a couple weeks at home, where I will, among other things, attend my mother’s graduation from her Master’s program at Hopkin’s.

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I feel like I’m adjusting to life in Baghdad to the point that it’s difficult to imagine returning home. Though I miss my family and friends (and cat), I find the idea of coming home for good to be somewhat unerving.

Multiple factors combine to create this effect. First, I was not particularly happy with my job before I left; it was only the opportunity in Iraq which kept me with the company. Second, I had/have no idea what I will do next, so there’s nothing professional to come home to. Third, the work I’m doing here is almost certainly the most significant, most rewarding, and most well-compensated work I will do in my life, therefore when I come home I will almost certainly feel a multi-faceted sense of loss which accompanies the knowledge that the best times are behind you.

Obviously, this isn’t unique to my situation. I’ve spoken with a few of the veterans who went home for a while then came back, and they confirm my suspicions about the difficulty of returning to one’s dull, mediocre existence. Even assuming infinite capacity to endure this environment, I will go home sooner or later, and when I do I suspect there will be some considerable distress as I re-adjust to my former life.

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It’s Good Friday, so I’m fasting and abstaining. I’ll probably go to the 1630 Good Friday liturgy at the palace, which is no great discipline as I’ve nothing else to occupy my time. I think on Sunday I’ll allow myself some ice cream.

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I’ve learned about another Iraqi/Arab food: kaag is a crispy bread stick, dipped in tea (chai) or coffee much like Italian biscotti. The kaag I had was rather bland and not particularly worth the calories, but I’m sure there are more flavorful varieties as well.

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I’ve lived here so long that I had to conduct a purge of my trailer today, cleaning up and expunging all the crap which had accumulated since I arrived. It turns out that dailing cleanings by a diligent Filipino houseboy are not sufficient to stem the tide of clutter which inevitably follows anywhere I put down roots for more than a few days. The problem is only magnified by the small quarters and minimal storage space; it got to the point where walking to the bathroom was a journey fraught with peril due to various half-put-away bags of clean laundry, boxes from home in assorted states of unpacking, and mail-order boxes strewn about awaiting the inevitable cutting down and folding which befalls them all in the end.

On the plus side, my walls are much more colorful now, with a wide assortment of posters and wall-hangings from geek chic to Iraqi kitsch. Now I just need an Arabic alphabet poster to complete the ensemble.

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Taxes are due tomorrow, but I’ve learned of an automatic two-month extension conferred upon those living and working overseas. I’ll do mine when I return home in May. I suspect I’ll be due a refund, in which case my procrastination constitutes yet more generosity towards the expansive federal government atop a banner year of civic largesse, but due to some unfortunate and catastrophic failures of prospertine back home, I don’t have access to all the financial data I need to complete my return.

Upon reflection, I rather admire the Iraqi tax system: 12% of gross pay withheld for income tax, and 5% withheld for ‘retirement’. One can only assume that the Arabic words for ‘retirement’ and ‘graft’ are easily confused, or the Iraqi government has a wicked sense of humor.