Thoughts on Iraq

All the entries I've made so far have been about me and my experiences. They've been pretty lighthearted and in looking back over them, it looks like I'm having a Club Med vacation. But this is Iraq, a war-torn country that's still a big mess. Our press only gives us snippets of information, usually about bomb attacks or politics, but that's like looking at the country through a drinking straw. You're not going to get the big picture unless your own boots are on the ground. Now that I've been here a while, I can see things from a different perspective.

Iraq, and our involvement with it, is a mass of contradictions. Some of the people are the greatest people you'll ever want to meet. Generous, open, warm, and intelligent. Others are as crooked as they come.

The American government has done a hell of a lot - and I mean a hell of a lot - to rebuild this country and get it on its feet. Billions and billions of dollars worth. We've built new power plants, water treatment plants, sewage plants, electrical distribution networks, schools, hospitals, airport facilities, prisons, courthouses, government buildings, roads, the Umm Qasr shipping port, hundreds of clinics, and more. But a lot has also been wasted. Many projects haven't been finished - sometimes due to violence, sometimes due to insurgent attacks, sometimes due to corruption, sometimes due to sheer incompetence. Sometimes when the projects have been finished, they haven't been maintained, and within a year the facility can be functionally useless.

The Iraqi government is trying to invent itself. Sometimes it works, many times it doesn't. They just passed a new elections law this past week. You have no idea how big a deal that is. During the much-vaunted elections of a few years ago, Iraqis couldn't vote for individual candidates, they voted for different slates, and the Sunni's boycotted it. The new elections law will enable people to vote for specific candidates. And the Sunni's have learned the hard way that they have to participate. In all, a Very Good Thing.

But try to get support for some of the basic necessities of life and you run into a brick wall. You want fuel for that generator so the city can have some electricity? No. You want spare parts to keep a sewage treatment plant up and running? No. You want books for the brand-new school the Americans just built? No. Part of the reason is that they have a Byzantine bureaucratic system that makes the Byzantines look supremely logical. Part is because different ministries have different ethnic groups in charge. Some is due to corruption siphoning off the funds to make things happen. Some is due to a highly centralized power structure with no accountability to the provinces, meaning the people actually affected by the lack of electricity, water, sewage, and education have no influence on getting the services. And some is due to the fact that any government official who authorizes an expenditure is personally responsible for that entire amount. Yes, you read that right. So if some official decides it's okay to build a road, and somebody else later decides that it wasn't, then the official who authorized it has to pay it back out of his own pocket. Yessir, that'll tighten things up in a hurry, won't it?

So for the time being, I'm of two minds about this country. On the one hand, it has made a lot of measurable progress. You can see it every day. On the other hand, it still has such an incredibly long way to go. I don't think most people in the US understand just how far it's come nor how far it has to go. We see it - I saw it - in a much narrower light. But remember the old tale about the blind men and the elephant. I'm only seeing a small part of this elephant even now. And it's a helluva lot bigger elephant than I ever imagined.