The Galli Report

BALAD RUZ, Iraq – “The Light” had gone dark. The radio station should have been pushing out 5,000 watts of news and music. Equipment problems had reduced it to only 1,400 watts; and now it was off the air entirely because of a labor dispute.

Army Captain James Goethals, a 42-year-old Reservist – now the leader of a Civil Affairs team – tried to put some backbone into the radio station’s Iraqi manager.

“It’s hard to be boss,” he told the manager. “Sometimes you have to do difficult things.”

The manager tried to convince Capt. Goethals to fire three of the station’s employees, who had fomented a work stoppage over a wage dispute.

“He says he will lose face if he fires them,” an interpreter told Capt. Goethals. “Maybe there will be problems if one of them is the son of some important person. He says it would be better if the American Army fired them.”

“Coalition forces do not want to get involved in the day to day running of the station,” Capt. Goethals patiently explained. “It’s the Iraqi government that needs to handle the station.”

The manager hung his head. Couldn’t the Americans please rid him of those three troublemakers?

Capt. Goethals said he would be willing to meet with the employees; tell them that some changes would be made; and make it clear that the station manager was in charge.

The manager tried again. Could the Army say that it was shutting the station down? Later they could reopen with new employees. That would avoid having to fire anyone now.

Capt. Goethals politely but firmly refused. He was there to put the station on the air, not take it off.

The manager wanted to discuss a list of new equipment he needed, totaling $100,000. The Army was paying for everything at the station. Capt. Goethals said he wanted more justification for each item. One part was on the list at $40,000; but Goethals had found a source for the same part at only $5,000.

They went back to the labor dispute. Capt. Goethals wanted to talk to the employees now. No, the manager said, he would handle the problem later, somehow.

As the Americans left the meeting, they wondered: Why would the manager of a radio station be too timid to fire employees who had taken it off the air? What could have rattled him so?

The team traveled to the office of the Balad Ruz mayor. They discussed a number of projects the Army was developing: to improve the local hospital and schools; to provide better security for the bank; to repave the sidewalks and streets; and to outfit the shops in the marketplace with new, matching awnings.

The mayor spoke fair English, with a nasal voice reminiscent of Marlon Brando. He expressed particular interest in the list of equipment the station wanted the Americans to pay for.

The prices seemed high, Capt. Goethals said, and would have to be justified. And there was a problem with the staff. The manager might have to fire some of them.

Well, the mayor said, if any employees were to be fired, the mayor would want to know the reasons.

The obvious reason, Capt. Goethals said, is that some of them have shut the station down.

Well, the mayor replied, the employees had talked to him about their problems. He had told them that they had a right to quit, yet they should go to the station and stay there until their problems were resolved.

Capt. Goethals said the employees couldn’t be allowed to take the station off the air. “The workers have the right to quit if they want to quit… but he’s the director and if he wants to fire somebody that’s his job.”

Well, the mayor said, “if he wants to find problems, we can find problems on him, the director.” He said the director had already been fired from a job at Baqubah…and ended the discussion with that threat.

“It’s political,” an American officer told another on the way to their Humvees. They probably would have shrugged, but for the 80 pounds of armor and ammunition they bore on their shoulders.

It wasn’t worth it for the Americans to fight over who controls the radio station. In December, after America has paid to restore it to topnotch condition, the station will be taken over by the mayor’s office. He can’t lose.

Assessing and Investing

In Iraq, Civil Affairs teams try to energize local manufacturing and commerce; decrease the terrible unemployment rates; and improve basic services such as water and power. Civil Affairs is nation-building at its most basic level, one project and one building and one person at a time.

The team’s next stop after the mayor’s office was a $40 million water purification site. Americans assessed the need and they hired local contractors to do the work – although they say they are training local people to take over these functions some day. The Army Corps of Engineers is involved in projects like these; but often the designs are crafted and even managed by Iraqi engineers on the Army’s payroll. They do good work; they get good experience; and it puts an Iraqi face on the projects they build.

The team headed east to Mandali, where the mountains at the Iranian border could hazily be seen a few miles away. The soldiers inspected a garment factory and restaurant – new projects on adjoining sites. They met the contractor, and complimented him on the quality of his work and his habit of meeting deadlines. The day before, they had given him $48,500 as a progress payment, in new $100 bills consecutively numbered.

Next the Americans inspected work at a new fuel station in Kuzanyah to the south. Iraq is floating on an ocean of oil, but has a rudimentary system for distributing gasoline. Americans are paying so that Iraqis can buy fuel cheaply from pumps at filling stations, rather than in plastic jugs from a donkey cart.

After that, the team visited a patrol base south of Balad Ruz, manned by a small detachment from the 82nd Airborne Division. A $1.4 million project would repave the road outside the base, which had suffered nine hits in two weeks from Improvised Explosive Devices. There was a problem threatening the project, however.

The road was in Balad Ruz, but the contractor selected by the Army was from another town, Balad.

The Balad Ruz mayor – you remember him – wanted a contractor from his town to do the work; but the Army had not found anyone in Balad Ruz who was qualified. Now the Army was worried that the mayor would sabotage security for the project because a “foreigner” from Balad was involved.

An American tried to be stoic about it. The project will start, he said. If the contractor from Balad isn’t killed before completion, fine. If he is killed, then they will have to look for someone from Balad Ruz to replace him.

No Guarantees

For all of these projects and many more like them, America provides most of the funds and most of the initiative as well. Civil Affairs soldiers foray into the hostile Iraqi environment searching for needs to fill. Every project is expensive to do once; and sometimes they are done more than once because projects are blown up.

When a project is completed, it will be turned over to its new owner, the Iraqi government. Typically, as with the radio station, the facility will be administered by the local municipal government.

According to an American officer, the Civil Affairs team has no idea what will ultimately happen to the property; whether it will be retained by the government or eventually put into private hands.

“How do you know that the restaurant you build won’t be turned over to the mayor’s brother in law?” the officer was asked.

“We don’t tell them how to govern,” the officer replied. “I’m sure those things probably happen.”

Will Civil Affairs Affect the Outcome?

Before American invaded Iraq, the White House didn’t say that the our objective was to fix radio stations, build gas stations, or put color-coordinated awnings on privately owned Iraqi shops. All of those things became America’s burden after it occupied the country.

Much of what Civil Affairs seeks to do in Iraq is “absolute good.” Clean water, a stable economy and decent jobs, for example, benefit everyone regardless of their politics or religion.

But some of the Civil Affairs mission is mystifying. In Iraqi markets, the problems are mortar rounds and car bombs, not window decoration. It’s hard to see how new shop awnings will help win the war; or why only America is capable of providing them.

Setting aside the value of Civil Affairs as a purely charitable or humanitarian endeavor, the question becomes: does it also aid the war effort; and will it help enough to change the outcome?

Some American soldiers say the war can still be won, and Civil Affairs will help. Others say the war is lost already; but Civil Affairs is still worth doing. What you find is a nearly universal commitment to the Civil Affairs mission whether there is hope or skepticism about its impact on the war.

And you find among Civil Affairs soldiers the same bewilderment about our goals that you find at home. “Victory” has so often been redefined downward that no one knows what winning the war actually means.

One officer said he would consider the war a success if Iraq turned into the kind of stable country he could go to on vacation some day. “Like Germany, Japan and Vietnam?” he was asked. “If all you want is a vacation destination, it doesn’t seem to matter if we win or lose the war, does it?” The officer admitted that he would have to find a different definition of success.

“The key isn’t how many projects we finish,” one officer said. “The key is can we train the Iraqis to be able to take over once we’re gone. We can build as many schools as you want but if they don’t know how to manage them, or how to build them, or if they deteriorate, we’ve done nothing here. So the key here for us is to train the mayors, to train the engineers, to train the government to operate so that once we’re gone, they can operate on their own.”

“Once they can take care of themselves,” another officer said, “once they no longer need us, we will have succeeded.”

He was asked: when do we know that day has arrived?

“It’s an intangible,” he replied. Considering the sacrifice he and his friends and their families were making, he probably deserved something more tangible than that to hope for.

Sick Call

I transferred to the 478th Civil Affairs Battalion, and moved to a small team operating from a base in Mahmudiyah. While I was there they participated in two Cooperative Medical Engagements that involved both American and Iraqi Army units. Troops would roll into a town, take over a school or other location, and announce their presence using loudspeakers and word of mouth. People began lining up to be frisked even before the tables were unfolded.

The teams were equipped to handle only the most basic medical conditions. That didn’t stop people with more serious problems from stepping in line. A man whose burned body was covered with scabs and open sores from a car bomb asked for help with the pain and infection. A girl whose right eye was a milky lump hoped there was a pill or an ointment. More than one person asked to be cured of paralysis.

In a couple of hours, the medical teams served about 400 people before packing up and leaving. They ran out of supplies quickly; and it was dangerous to stay too long.

While the Civil Affairs team worked at the second medical clinic I attended, the enemy dropped some mortars into the central market down the street. No one at the clinic paid any attention. It happens all the time, a Master Sergeant told me. The market was a favorite target. I wondered if new awnings would help.

Mixed signals

One day the Master Sergeant pointed to a flat patch of roughened earth behind a fence. It was their biggest project, to build a soccer stadium. He hoped it would bring the community together and, symbolically, confirm a return to normal living.

Unfortunately, nothing in Iraq is that simple. Another soldier in his team regretted the stadium project. This is a Shia town, he said. The Sunni won’t be allowed to attend those soccer games. They will be killed if they try. The soccer field will become a symbol of Shia domination. We will spend a fortune widening the sectarian divide.

This difference of opinion was typical of the soldiers I met in Iraq. Some were dogged optimists; some were unapologetic pessimists. Each supported the mission without regard to the opinion of the other.

So the stadium would be built. It would be nice if soccer-loving Sunni see in the stadium at least one good reason for making peace with the Shia majority. It would be nice if Shia soccer fans who wanted to survive being spectators found a reason to accommodate the mortar-loving Sunni.

And at this point in the war, with a project this prominent and costly, it would re really nice if we were no longer guessing whether it was a good or a bad idea.

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This story is part of a series featuring the Army’s Civil Affairs mission in Iraq.

Richard Galli served as an interpreter in an Army Civil Affairs unit in Vietnam (1970-71). He spent six weeks in Iraq as an embedded freelance journalist.