In the Red Zone

THE NAIVE AMERICAN

[Note: having discovered an Internet source evidently unaffected by Basra's black-out, we now rejoin our regularly scheduled program...]

[FYI:  if you're interested in a look at the on-the-job challenges police face here in sunny Basra, check out my latest piece in the Christian Science Monitor.]

[It's called the world's largest megaphone, and the New York Times has seen fit to lend it to me for its Sunday, July 31, edition.  You can find it here--registration required--and my thanks to the Gray Lady.]

Dear Lisa,

Standing behind the lectern in the convention hall, the Air Force captain spoke in short, declarative sentences, exuding an earnest enthusiasm as, kneading his field cap in his hands, he explained the process for bidding on projects up to one million dollars. "Remember," he cautioned in his flat American tones, "write your proposals in English--and no more than a single page, please!" The audience of some 200 Iraqi contractors--some of them women--nodded and jotted down the Captain's words in their notebook.

Not surprisingly, given Basra's dilapidated condition, contracting is big business. Not only for the city's numerous contractors, but also for the crooked politicians, parasitical religious parties and criminal gangs who take their cut from every construction job, creating a business climate that combines the accountability of Tammany Hall with the law and order of 1920s Chicago. And though the low-level contracts the Captain awards are not lucrative enough to attract big-league corruption, I thought he might provide some insights into perhaps Basra's biggest problem (far bigger, for example, than terrorism)--and so, when he finished his remarks and stepped off the podium, I buttonholed him for an interview.

Not that I didn't know anything about Basra-style corruption. In our travels across the city, Layla and I have fielded ceaseless complaints of extortion, protection rackets, employment featherbedding, nepotism, bid rigging, influence-peddling--it's impossible to talk to Basra businesspeople and not hear such woes. Mention, for example, the province's Governing Council and contractors will grimace, close their eyes and shake their heads. (One GC member oversaw a multi-million project to extend a street in downtown Basra; a year has gone by and so far no extension--meanwhile, the politician now lives in a $5 million home near the British Embassy.)

Then there was the highly-placed official in the Electrical Transmission Directorate who admitted to us that the government pays the notorious Garamsha tribe to protect high-voltage power lines from--well, the Garamsha themselves. A businesswoman complained that if you're not affiliated with a religious party, your low bid--even for projects involving international NGOs--will have difficulty finding acceptance. The owner of a cargo-hauling company described the port of Um Qasr as a veritable On the Waterfront-like scene of smuggling, theft and looting--which, when accused of complicity in the crimes, the former port manager blamed on--who else?--corrupt Americans.

And this, in fact, was the real reason I sought an appointment with the Captain: I wanted Layla to meet him. I am sometimes dismayed by my friend's willingness to believe the worst about America (working last year with British journalists corrupted her mind, I'm afraid), and while I can't always explain or defend Administration policies--are we in Iraq for the oil, and is that a bad thing?--I do want her to know that your basic Yankee "occupier" is an honest, well-meaning, straight-arrow Joe or Jane, trying to do the best job possible for the Iraqi people. Unlike, say, your average Basran politician.

So it was one recent afternoon--imagine sun so hot it burns the moisture from your eyes--we taxi'd out to al-Basrah Airport, where the Captain was stationed. He met us at the gate and drove us onto the U.K. base, deciding en route that because of the heat and our thirst, we might best conduct the interview in one of the two bars provided for MNF troops. Stepping into a crowded, sunny, air-conditioned room, we found the usual atmosphere: rap music; the low buzz of conversation from intermingling men and women; a large-screen TV playing a video of half-naked women cavorting around a fat, unattractive man; the smell of beer and cigarette smoke; the clik of pool balls on the felt. The only difference, of course, was Layla, her pink headscarf standing out among the Guinness pints and 16-oz. Buds like a WTU banner in a frat house. This was, I realized with a mild start, her first-ever visit to that symbol of kafr corruption, a saloon.

I bought everyone a round of orange juice, and we set to talking. In his mid-to-late thirties, prematurely balding, the Captain told us he was born in North Carolina, and currently lived in Ohio with his wife and two kids. ("That's the hardest part about being out here," he told us, "being away from my family.") He'd been in Basra about a month, during which time he'd awarded some $19 million in contracts, ranging from a few hundred bucks for printers, to a million-dollar police station renovation project. He operated on his own, he said, relying on common sense and past job performance records to select Iraqi contractors. He did not use a translator--one reason he asked for Iraqis to complete their bidding forms in English.

This last point was important. Layla and I have heard numerous stories about how, on big multi-million dollar projects, Iraqi translators and engineers--which the Americans, British and non-Iraqi NGOs are forced to use because of language difficulties--often accept bribes from companies to steer contract their way. Since most Westerners don't know Arabic, and must rely on the translators and engineers as their eyes and ears, the funding sources are rarely the wiser. "In my case," said the Captain, "there's just me, my database and Iraqi companies. No chance for corruption there."

I'd wanted to introduce Layla to the Gary Cooper side of America, and I felt I'd succeeded. Instead of the evasive, over-subtle, windy Iraqi, fond of theory and abstraction, here was a to-the-point Yank, rolling up his sleeves with a can-do spirit of fair play and doing good. "I want to have a positive effect on this country's future," the Captain averred. "For example, whenever I learn of a contracting firm run by women, I put it at the top of my list for businesses I want to consider for future projects." I felt proud of my countryman; you couldn't ask for a more sincere guy.

Layla, however, flashed a tight, cynical smile. "How do you know," she began, "that the religious parties haven't put a woman's name on a company letterhead to win a bid? Maybe you are just funneling money to extremists posing as contractors." Pause. The Captain looked confused. "Religious parties? Extremists?"

Oh boy. Maa salaama Gary Cooper, as Layla and I gave our man a quick tutorial about the militant Shiites who have transformed once free-wheeling Basra into something resembling Savonarola's Florence. The Captain seemed taken aback, having, as most Westerners--especially the troops stationed here--little idea of what goes on in the city. "I'll have to take this into consideration..." scratching his head, "I certainly hope none of these contracts are going to the wrong people." Not for the first time, I felt I was living in a Graham Greene novel, this about about a U.S. soldier--call it The Naive American--who finds what works so well in Power Point presentations has unpredictable results when applied to realities of Iraq. Or is that the story of our whole attempt to liberate this nation?

Collecting himself, "But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?" the Captain countered. "I mean, I've always believed that we shouldn't project American values onto other cultures--that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?"

And there it was, the familiar Cultural-Values-Are-Relative argument, surprising though it was to hear it from a military man. But that, too, I realized, was part of American Naiveté: the belief, evidently filtering down from ivy-league academia to Main Street, U.S.A., that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge "the Other;" and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of Empire (cue the Darth Vader theme).

But Layla would have none of it. "No, believe me!" she exclaimed, sitting forward on her stool. "These religious parties are wrong! Look at them, their corruption, their incompetence, their stupidity! Look at the way they treat women! How can you say you cannot judge them? Why shouldn't your apply your own cultural values?"

It was a moment I wish every muddle-headed college kid and Western-civilization-hating leftist could have witnessed: an Air Force Captain quoting chapter and verse from the new American Gospel of Multiculturalism, only to have a flesh and blood representative of "the Other" declare that he was incorrect, that discriminations and judgment between cultures are possible--necessary--especially when it comes to the absolutely unacceptable way Middle Eastern Arabs treat women. And though Layla would not have pushed the point this far, I couldn't resist. "You know, Captain," I said, "sometimes American values are just--better."

He and I then spent a few minutes wrapping up the interview--he truly was a decent, well-intentioned guy--during which time Layla's attention drifted toward the activity around her. She seemed interested in the pool game, and a dart contest caught her eye, as did a pair of women soldiers drinking at a side table. It wasn't until 45 minutes later, when she dropped me off at the hotel (remember, maaku Engliziyya bit-taxsi), that I asked her opinion of the bar. She shrugged. "Maybe some people in my culture might consider it corrupt, but I just saw people doing everyday things that their religious values allow. Nothing wrong, nothing corrupt--at least there."

I thought about pointing out the multicultural tolerance and relativism in her attitude, but wisely refrained. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson reminds us, and if he'd lived in Basra, he'd've added--the djinn of Islamic extremists, as well.

Yours from the land of the no-show employee, back-door pay-out, paper corporation and unbalanced books (but don't you dare wear too short an abiya!)...

July 19

We Interrupt This Program...

Insurgents sabotage Baghdad, Basra fiber link
Associated Press (July 19, 2005)

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents sabotaged a fiber optics cable connecting Baghdad with southern Basra, telecommunication officials said Tuesday.

The attack occurred Monday night in the Rusmaiya area, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Baghdad.

All phone communications between Baghdad and most of southern Iraq were cut off due to the attack, said Karim al-Tamim, head of Wasit Province Communication services.

Al-Tamim said the fiber optic cable was expected to be repaired within a couple of days.

OK, it is now Thursday and Steven Vincent still has no email capabilities. Once the optic cables are reconnected he will be posting again, so please keep checking back.  Thanks.

UM AL-RASAS/BON APPETIT!

[Note:  the Christian Science Monitor has been kind enough to run another of my articles, this one on the religious parties who now dominate Basra.  When you read this, keep in mind that for various reasons--not the least of which were safety concerns--the piece only scratches the surface of what is happening here.] 

Dear Lisa --

How many belong to the turbans?

Down Basra way, the country most preoccupying the locals is not Amrika, but that brooding, seething, over-cleric'd Mordor to the east, Iran.  Whether its supporting religious parties, smuggling oil and gas, sabotaging the energy infrastructure, orchestrating sectarian assassinations or other neighborly deeds, Basrawi detect the stealthy hand of Tehran in nearly every aspect of their lives.  "We don't talk about this in public," a professor at Basra U. told me.  "Get too explicit and you get 'disappeared.'"

Give such sensitivity to their ancient Persian adversary, its not surprising that many Basrans were peeved to read a few weeks ago former defense minister Hazim al-Shalan's contention that Iranian soldiers had occupied a small Iraqi island in the Shatt-al-Arab near Fao.  Scandal!  Dishonor!  Shades of Quemu-Matsu!  What's next, Ayatollahs promenading on the Corniche?

No Iranians here..

So it was I recently found myself storming the beaches of Um al-Rasas Island, searching--hoping--for signs of Iranian infiltration.  To my disappointment, I discovered nothing but ducks and weeds and bull rushes and dirt paths meandering off into yellowing papyrus reeds.  Turns out, the car trip 40 kilos south of Basra and a boat ride halfway `cross the Shatt was little more than an op for some Ministry of Defense official to photo with a cadre of security guards and prove that Um al-Rasas remained free of the minions of Tehran.

Iraqi dignity restored.

Aside from pondering the unchanging ways of the Iraqi fishermen, plying their nets in the Shatt-al-Arab in the venerable ways of their ancient ancestors (actually, fishermen these days use dynamite to WMD whole schools of fish into oblivion--when, that is, they're not fighting territorial waterway battles with their Iranian and Kuwaiti counterparts...) there wasn't much for us journalists to do except crowd into a tiny concrete blockhouse and interview the seven border patrol cops cooped up on Um al-Rasas like an all-male Gilligan's Island.  But that was when things got interesting.

As I listened to the Iraqi cops and reporters chat away in Araby and tried to stay awake in the soporific heat, I noticed affixed to the wall of the station a picture of...well, let's call him The Leader.  You've seen The Leader.  He's a young, under-educated but extremely canny tire-head with chipmunk cheeks and a perpetual scowl who nevertheless possesses the adoration of millions, particularly among the poor.  This only-in-Iraq cross between Thomas Muntzer and Al Sharpton has caused many headaches for the Coalition and the Hawza, not to mention countless young women who must suffer the humiliation of his "monitors" scrutinizing their clothing and make-up to insure they meet their standards of Muslim propriety.  Meanwhile, The Leader's beady-eyed mug appears everywhere in Basra--on the street, on the campus of Basra U., in business offices, in the vestibule of the Appellate Court building ("We're afraid to take it down," a judge told me).  I got to wondering why his picture was adorning a police station, and so I asked.

"We believe in him, he is a great man," enthused one cop, a rangy, smart-alecky kid with an Eddie Haskell smirk.  "Seventy-five percent of Basra's police follow him!" .  Actually, that's 25 percent more than the city's police chief admitted last May to a U.K. Guardian reporter (the indiscretion cost the cop his job), but I figured the young buck wanted to impress the foreign sahafee with the prowess of his Leader.

As I've written , the fact that many, if not most, of Basra's constabulary harbors primary loyalties to the city's religious parties is--as you might imagine--a serious problem.  To the despair of many secular-minded residents, the British are doing a cracker-jack job of teaching Iraqi police cadets close-order drills, proper arrest techniques and pistol marksmanship, without, however, including basic training in democratic principles and a sense of public duty.  As a result, our Anglo allies may be handing the religious parties spiffy new myrmidons to augment their already well-armed militias.  Worse, the knowledge that a cop's sympathies may lie more with the Badr Organization than the Basran citizenry erodes general trust in the police.  "If someone, say, stole my car, I wouldn't go to the police to get it back," an Iraqi journalist told me.  "I'd negotiate directly with the thieves."

Back in the concrete blockhouse, Eddie Haskell had evidently decided to add to his day's busy agenda an effort to irritate the American journalist.  "Amirka muu zayna," he informed me.  ("American no good.")  Not once, or twice, but like one of the flies buzzing around the station, he wouldn't stop, giggling "Amrika muu zayna, Amrika muu zayna," glancing at his buddies for their nods and approbation.  He continued to relate this insight as we trudged back to the motorboat, me smiling & shrugging & adopting the typically American toleration of criticism--hey, you want to attack my country, well, gee, okay, I guess we somehow deserve it...Just as we were boarding the vessel, however, Eddie grabbed my arm and, smirking and snorting, shoved his cell phone in my face, where prominently displayed on its call screen was a mini-image of...the Twin Towers burning. "Zayn?" he snickered.

No, asshole, muu zayn.  Gritting my teeth, I worked my way to the boat's stern where the AK-'d cops'd gathered, there to pondered my response to Eddie's anti-American glee.  But how do you retort to an armed soldier when neither you nor his comrades speak the same language?  The vessel lurched off and as we chugged across the water, I noticed how my friend was sitting with his rifle barrel jutting up between his knees, and knowing a little about locker-room humor, made a familiar gesture that suggested what Eddie does with his "gun" off duty, then offered to photograph him in commisso.  After a moment of silence--during which I imagined I was about to join the dynamited fish of the Shatt--his pals suddenly burst into laughter and, snorting and slapping one another, initiated a series of more increasingly graphic pantomimes at Eddie's expense--boys will be boys, you understand--until everyone was in rollicking good spirits, clapping and shouting "Na'am, na'am!" ("Yes, yes!") as they ridiculed their bewildered compatriot.   

This is my weapon, this my gun...

The boat approached the mainland, and as the hilarity reached a peak, I took the opportunity of our male-bonding to evoke The Leader's name and--avoiding descriptively apt but possibly familiar Anglo-Saxon phraseology--offered my estimation of his effect on Basra.  Na'am, na'am!  The cops chimed in, unsure of what I was saying, but responding to the Great Man's name with smiles and nods and double-barrel thumbs-up.  Even Eddie, eager to reclaim face and re-establish his peer position, joined in the general approval of my comments.  Pleased at this unanimity of opinion toward The Leader, I flashed my new friends a Chesire grin and a score-one-for-the-Amriki wink.  Immature?  Yep.  Dangerous?  Possibly.  Satisfying?  Na'am!

BON APPETIT!

It's called Qasr Sultan--the Sultan's Palace--and its a decent restaurant on the corner of Jazar and Tamouz Streets.  A few weeks ago, an Iraqi journalist spirited me out of the hotel for a night on the town--actually a drive through what passes for nightlife in downtown Basra (basically restaurants, ice cream parlors and narghile cafes) and dinner at the ma'taam.  What follows is a verbatim selection of the delicacies this fine establishment offered on its menu. 

For starters, begin with a steaming plate of

• Sultanate Arabs
• Fleshy & Homs or the ever-popular,
• Urination

Follow that with a main course of

• Wishing & Flesh
• Flesh Stuffed
• Make bread & Flesh
• The hen of my curry
• Kream chab flesh
• Steak is by the pepper
• Kentakey
• A drawstring Fleshy
• Pluck
• Corden blo Chickens
• Chickens Cabbage & Cheese Whiteness
• Ordinary Fish Hammer
• Shrimp Osteoblast

For dessert, may I suggest

• Vassal banana, or the house specialty
• The plate of a fruit is problematic

Enjoy!

Yours from the land of the breakfast-time Mixture & Flesh, with a side dish of Whiteness.

July 2

SONG OF BASRA

Dear Lisa,

Located about five miles south of central Basra, it is a large, partially-tended expanse of nebk trees and palm groves, the last bearing clusters of unripened dates high amidst their spiky green leaves.  Intermingled among weeds and foot-high grasses are small vegetable plots--cucumbers, okra, red pepper, figs and bamber--an Indian fruit about the size of a cherry tomato.

"This land has been in my family for seven centuries," says Samir, walking along the banks of the Ahsahraji River, its still green waters streaked with the copper glow of sunset.  "That is nearly half the age of Basra itself."

A stocky, dark-skinned, middle-aged Iraqi with soft, sympathetic eyes, Samir is the editor-in-chief of one of Basra's largest newspapers.  A secular man, he is nevertheless respectful of, but not beholden to, the religious parties that currently run his native city.  "I am a real Iraqi," he is fond of saying.  "Not Sunni, not Shia, not Christian, not Arab or Kurd--Iraqi."  He's also as native a son of Basra as you can find--not only has his family resided in the city since the days of the Mongols, but twelve generations of his fathers have dwelt in the very house he lives in today.

We met in his downtown Basra office last week for an interview, after which he invited me to visit his 5,000 square-meter "farm"--refuge is more like it   I jumped at the invitation.  If anyone knew the answer to a question that has increasingly obsessed me, this tolerant, urbane, surprisingly Western Basrawi was the man.

"You want to find the 'soul' of our city?" he repeats, as we sit on the edge of a shallow irrigation channel running through his property.  "This is difficult.  Basra is a mixture, ever-changing.  Like it's weather.  Do you know," he adds, picking an emerald green squash from a patch beside him, "that people have called this city 'The Idiot' because it's character is so unstable?"

As if to underscore Basra's turbulent reputation, Samir outlines its history.  Founded in 637 AD as a military outpost for the expanding Muslim empire, Al-Basrah (the name has many translations --my favorite is "black specks," referring to distant palm groves rising from the desert, the first sign that approaching caravans had of the city) has experienced pillage and plunder, wealth and renown, neglect and decrepitude at the hands of numerous powers--Persians, Turks, Mongols, Portuguese, British, Baathists and, most recently, Americans. 

"But will this bring you to an understanding of Basra?  Not quite."  To the west, the sky takes on a silver sheen, as the air seems to weave a thickening skein of dusk among the palms along the river.  Overhead, a few stars begin to appear.

I ask about Shia Islam.  "Of course," he nods.  "After all, it forms the personality of southern Iraq, and the Shia have waited 1,400 years to rule this area."  Visions fill my imagination of black flags fluttering in the desert, armies of men chanting Ya, Hussein!, bearded mujtahids preaching sacred blood and holy martyrdom.  But Samir shakes his head.  "No, no...for most of its history, Basra was not Shia, but maintained loyalties to Sunni caliphs.  It even revolted against Imam Ali!  Basra didn't become Shia until the 19th century, when people from Amarra and Nasiriya began immigrating to the city.  No," Samir says again, "Shiism is not the place to search for Basra's soul."

The modern legacy of war, revolt and impoverishment?  My host nods again and begins to describe the effects of Saddam's military adventuring--the nearly incalculable death and destruction unleashed by his megalomania, the coarsening of Basran society and the nightmares that the survivors of that period carry with them.  Samir himself witnessed the death of his own brother during the Iran-Iraq War, when they were both serving near Fao.

"I saw him enter an Iranian mine field, where an explosion sent a piece of shrapnel into his spine.  It took our troops ten days to fight our way to the area, and by the time I found my brother, his corpse was thick with worms and maggots."  He relates the story with the impassive tone of someone who has long ago buried the pain of his memories.

But the obscenities didn't end there.  As the night darkens, and the cooling earth causes a soft breeze to stir, Samir describes Basra during the "Intifada" of 1991, when Shia Muslims, encouraged by the White House, rose up against Saddam, only to encounter the full might of his security forces.  The stories are gruesome--mass executions at the university, corpses torn apart in the street by feral dogs, the legless torso of a man lying in a gutter, his face staring wide-eyed at passersby too terrified to move or bury him.  I ask him to stop.  Is this where I'll find the soul of Basra--in the trauma inflicted on the city by Saddam Hussein?

Samir shakes his head no, then, after a pause offers his answer:  "Walt Whitman."  Chuckling at my reaction, "Yes, your country's poet--you are perhaps familiar with his book 'Leaves of Grass?'"  Cormorants, bedding down for the night, flit from palm to palm.  From a concrete block house nestled in the underbrush a generator coughs and sputters, and a small trickle of water comes splashing down the irrigation channel. 

"In his poem," continues Samir, eyes gleaming in the dark, "Whitman talks as if his soul were a part of nature--free, filled with love, encompassing every aspect of life.  I think of this often."  After weeks of experiencing little but shortages, poverty, frustrations and dysfunctionalities--Iraqis' and my own--this evocation of the great American Bard startles me.  Kafka, yes--but narcissistic, homoerotic, barbarically yawping Walt?

"Yes, you see, Basra was once like that.  It is, you know, a port city.  Open to influences from around the world--Asia, Europe, Africa, America.  In the 50s, 60s, 70s, life was here--if you went to the Corniche, you found bars and casinos and nightclubs.  People gambled, drank Arak, had sex and prayed.  They may have sinned, but they did it indoors, with the result that Allah forgave them."

This last theological point is lost on me, but I understand Samir's general meaning.  Again and again, I've heard similar sentiments from Basra's intellectual class:  the "turbans" who are imposing their Islamic beliefs on the city--often at the barrel of an AK--are not Basrawi, they are an aberration, a glitch in the city's history, a "transitional" phase from 35 years of Saddam's tyranny to a truly democratic future.  It is dangerous--possibly fatal--to express these thoughts too forcibly in public, but they exist on the minds, lips, tongues and soon the voting fingertips of thousands of Basrans come the next round of elections this December.

"This is what I look forward to.  That someday, insha'allah, I will live in a country without any differences from any other country.  Just a normal place where my family and I can live normal lives.  You ask about the soul of Basra?  Look for it in the humanity that your poet, Walt Whitman, expresses."

It's late.  I must return to house arrest in my downtown funduk.  We stand, brush the dirt off our trousers, walk back to the car.  Through a picket-line of palms I see the rising moon, hanging full and yellow in the blue-black sky.  With the trickling sound of water in the background and the gentle whisper of the breeze, the scene approaches a tranquil beauty I've yet to encounter in Basra.  For an instant, you can almost imagine the world inviting you to lean and loaf and observe a spear of summer grass.  The moment contains multitudes.  Walt Whitman would love it.

Yours, camerado,  from where the wisteria falling over a Basran wall satisfies more than the metaphysics of the mullahs.

June 26-27