Day 125: Wading the Poop River

I’m not in the mood to write tonight, but I don’t really have a choice, do I? Even so, I’m going to cheat a little and defer to the words of my husband. He wrote me this letter two days ago about a project he spearheaded in Iraq. In the 10 months he’s been deployed he mentioned a place called Oubaidy to me many times. His comments were usually about how bad it was there and that they had to wade through what we jokingly referred to as a “poop river” every time he visited. Midway through his tour, a military publication called Stars and Stripes did an article on their work there and created a slideshow with photos and narration by Jeff. I am attaching that slideshow so that you can see what it was like as they started to make changes.

So often, we think of the war as simply warfare. We expect guns and bombs and death, what we fail to acknowledge is the efforts put forth in the community to make a real difference to those people. My husband has never been a big fan of the war, but he is a professional and believes in his job so he will wage war and shoot and be shot at, but he found a way to try to make a difference. Please take a moment to read his letter and learn about some of the amazing changes we effected in the course of warfare. It’s not all shooting people . . . apparently. I couldn’t be more proud of the work Jeff is doing. I guess even pacifists can find a way to appreciate our military – I’m living proof. Here is the link for the short slide show, Jeff is in the second photo with the oranges: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61293. This is his letter:

Hi baby,

I wanted to tell you about the great day I had yesterday. Ever since we first got here I have been heavily involved in the Oubaidy Market project. I think you might remember that - it was in the Stars and Stripes with the a picture of me 30 second clip an interview they did with me while we walked through the area. Anyway, it has been something of a laor of love for me. Oubaidy was a spot that was pretty damn bad when we got here. We got hit with an IED there on our very first day in Iraq and getting shot at, rock throwing, and just general dirty looks were pretty much the norm.

The services there were abysmal. I had a special pair of boots I only wore when I patrolled in Oubaidy because we routinely had to walk through 8-12 inches of raw sewage on the streets. It had a post-apocalyptic feel to it at times. There is a mental hospital in the northwest corner of the area that used to provide retarded women as suicide bombers. One of the doctors was an al-Qaeda sympathizer and would sell them for use as bombers. In short, it was not a great area.

When we came in we did some analysis and came up with a mix of increased security measures, tribal and civic engagement with community leaders and a significant investment in the roads and market to try to stimulate business and a program of individual micro grants to get people off the ground and incentivize legitimate market stalls. Basically this market was horrible. It was trash ridden, smelled god awful, and was so full of illegal "squatter" stands that you could barely move through it.

We were able to push through almost 2 million dollars in projects and microgrants. It involved dozens of trips there and even more meetings to wade through the Iraqi bureaucracy - one of the great ironies here is just how hard it is to help the Iraqi Government. Giving away money is a near herculean task. It is a whole other email to describe the byzantine process of getting this stuff approved and why it is so tough, but I assure you this was no small task. To make things even better, often times we would get shot at coming and/or going from these market trips to talk with locals or leaders, check on projects, etc...

Once we had everything lined up we did a series of major raids and arrested dozens of people we and the Iraqi Federal Police (FP) unit we work with had been tracking there. We cleared out a bunch of weapons caches and then came in with the FPs and helped establish better checkpoints, handed out cards with tip line phone numbers and put up wanted posters of troublemakers to discourage their return. We handed out blankets, water purification units, school bags, toys and food bags because it is hard to get excited about a road when you have no clean water to drink. We wanted to show these people that if they participated in their own security by reporting on the militias that they could help better their own lot. I left to my current job shortly after this phase so although I knew things were on track, I did lose sight of how it was coming along. They recently finished up almost all but a few of the many projects We worked so hard for.

Last night I went out on a patrol there and what I saw was amazing. The roads were paved except for a few that were still in progress. The solar lights we had lobbied so hard for we're about 75% complete and were lighting up the neighborhood which had been a no-man's land at night as the militias would use that time to extort money and silence from the people. People were out drinking tea and watching soccer on TVs, kids were playing in the street, we were actually cheered as we drove through. It made me feel pretty damn good.

It is easy to lose sight over here of why we are here. All the political drama in the background, the massive economic costs of this war, the fact that often times the media and the American public seem far more interested in the pedestrian happenings of the star-du-jour sometimes makes the most committed of us question the worth of what we are doing. I am not naive nor am I particularly idealistic. I get that a few small successes like this do not a grand strategy make. All I know is that today I feel pretty good about what we did over here.

I just wanted to share that with you.