A Letter Home

An update from the peaceful front lines in Anbar Province

NOTES FROM THE FRONT

Editor’s note: s.d. liddick, a nationally acclaimed investigative reporter and regular contributor to San Diego Magazine, has gone international. He arrived in Kuwait November 2, where he embedded with U.S. forces at Camp Ripper on Al Asad Airbase, an hour (by helicopter) west of Fallujah in Iraq. His blogs from Operation Iraqi Freedom will appear regularly on this site.

Mel,

… I guess I explained before that I’m in a combat outpost (COP) in a little town called Haditha, in Anbar Province — west of Fallujah. I’m embedded with the 3/7 Marines out of Twentynine Palms, California; there are about 300 of us on this COP. I’ve been here for the better part of a month now, but I’ve lost count. It all runs together. There are no weekends and every day’s the same (though Friday is the Muslim Sabbath and there generally aren’t “missions”—anything that happens outside the wire—on those days).

A mission means rolling out heavily armed to the Haditha district government office or some other place around town for a city council meeting or to meet with police leaders, politicians or businessmen. All the guns and body armor, armored vehicles and high-tech radio equipment is a formality (albeit mandatory) at this point. The shooting’s over here and the words of the day are security and stability. The officers I’m accompanying are no longer combatants but advisers, counseling far older men on everything from good governance to the nuances of the market system.

The municipal government, meanwhile, is effectively ruled by a triumvirate of cousins who are from the same domineering tribe, the Jughaifi. They hold the mayor’s office and run the local police forces. Word around town is that they may have their hands in more than a few local cookie jars — which shouldn’t come as any surprise. This country is just on the other side of a gaping power-vacuum.

In the post-Saddam era, the United States is trying to hand off the reins of power, not keep them, which comes on the heels of a full generation of war (the debilitating conflict with Iran in the late ’80s, then the first Gulf conflict, and then the invasion of 2003, followed by an internecine insurgency). All of that happened amid and right after the authoritarian rule of a repressive dictator. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that in the chaotic post-invasion waters, former soldiers from Saddam's army and even men who fought against the U.S. forces in the early days of the insurgency have risen to the top (but not without a few honest, well-educated and upstanding men … no females on the scene, they’re highly cloistered).

Stuck in the center of that bizarre tableau, the Marines are handing back power incrementally — which is faster than many of the people here are comfortable with. As the Baghdadi interpreters (employed by the military) have told me, there needs to be a strong and capable authority figure here with a big stick, or at least an implied big stick, to keep people in order. They say the Iraqis understand power above all else (not a surprise, given Saddam’s legacy) and that without an authoritarian power figure — and the U.S. military is the only force capable of fulfilling that role right now — the people (largely those in leadership roles in government and police) are going to abuse the system to its breaking point.

I see a lot of parallels with Tijuana: similar strains of Get mine first and worry about the rule of law later (a common victimization complex born of third-world poverty and dire straights, I think). Something different in this part of the world is the sheik system undergirding society. Iraqis resolve issues through their tribal leaders before courts or the police. One of the interpreters explained to me that the sheik gets a piece of the action of any enterprise happening within the tribe ... and it clicked for me.

The corruption I see here is probably, in the minds of local leaders, the natural perquisite of their positions. It's also one of the greatest challenges to the successful institution of the Western democracy the Americans are so intent on establishing. The profiteering and graft delegitimizes the government — and legitimizing that government is the Marines’ main objective.

These guys have accomplished their real mission — peace and stability — and I think they’re champing at the bit to hand off the reins of power and get out of Dodge (and to some place where there’s more action … or at least where they can do things Marines are trained to do, instead of advising on law, economics and civil government). They’ve taken on these effete advising roles in arcane realms of local government without a complaint — despite the fact that in many cases they’re just winging it. There’s no Marine training course, after all, for “how to align a city council coalition of voters to have a corrupt functionary booted out of his seat,” or “how to comfort an extorted businessman — scared for his life — into explaining the parameters and percentages behind the shakedown that’s milking him.”

They’ve managed to keep up morale in the face of sometimes heavy frustration, which reminds me of the DEA guys who work with Tijuana and Baja California authorities. Those agents get legitimate help from their counterparts south of the border — and at times make real progress — only to have it all dashed to hell just when the moment reaches its crisis (with Mexican officials suddenly disappearing, mysteriously rescinding orders, claming up or putting out warning calls to targeted Mafia guys). It's strange, cross-cultural politics, and there, like here, accomplishing even a banal task can seem Sisyphean.

The Marine officers I’ve seen haven’t wavered, however, even when they know the cops they’re mentoring are likely ethically compromised and double-dealing to put food on the table. I think they know they’ve already accomplished their main objective — security. Five years ago, they were asked (by a federal branch with no post-invasion plan and a list of dubious reasons for an attack), to discomfit an army — and they did that. Then they were asked to eradicate a guerrilla insurgency — and I can say that at least in western Iraq, they’ve done that. Now they’re being asked to rebuild a country (including its government, policing structure and social-services sector), and I think deep down everyone knows that request runs beyond the pale of what the Marines are intended for (frontal-attack expeditionary warfare — not political and economic consulting).

These guys are extremely task-driven and they’re not going to want to go home until the peace they were charged with has been achieved on a real level — one that’s not going to fall apart as soon as they leave. And if things seem dire because of the corruption (and rampant poverty), there’s a flip side: three years ago, we couldn’t have talked about any of this. Iraqi Police (IP) were dying in droves and too scared to even come to work. Today, they have thousands of applications on file — people are beating down government doors for work. The progress here is sometimes sluggish, but it’s incontestable.

All of it has reiterated in my mind just how complex and fragile democratic government really is. We take ours for granted — thinking it’s organic, something innate — but really it takes an uncommon level of faith on the part of the citizenry, as well as honesty (some level of it) on the part of those running the government. And that’s a nice thing to see in action after you’ve witnessed a place where it’s desperately wanted but out of reach.

Camus talked about man’s helplessness in the face of absurdity. Despite the absurdity of the situation here — or the inanity of going through the motions of good governance every day when things seem so hopelessly out of whack — I don’t see any helplessness on the part of the Marines. They simply shake their heads and laugh about the most bizarre occurrences (like training Iraqi detectives with high-priced Western consultants when the Iraqis don’t have cars, radios or even manila folders to file their cases). At the end of the day, I think most of the Marines are just biding their time, looking forward to 2010 and their next deployment: Afghanistan.

Un Abrazo,

s.d.

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