Visiting Basra
9 August 2006Today I actually got to leave “the wire" for the first time in over a month. I accompanied the BCT Commander and some other staff officers on a trip to Basra. Basra is the second-largest city in Iraq, located near the Persian Gulf. It is also the site of the headquarters for Multi-National Division, South-East (MND-SE). MND-SE is a British Headquarters. Currently the 7th UK Armored Division headquarters is serving there.
Basra is also, according to some stories, the historical site of the Garden of Eden. It is near the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet; since both those rivers contributed enormously to the “cradle of civilization" in this area, it’s only natural that their meeting point should assume some legendary significance. However, as one soldier pointed out, “If this place is the Garden of Eden, I can understand why they ate that apple." It’s hot, it’s dry, and you can only imagine what it smells like in a city of 1.5 million people with no municipal trash system and inadequate sewage.
It was exciting to meet the UK staff, though. The division staff there is mostly British, but there are also Australian and Danish officers. We found that we could usually understand the Danish officers better than the Australians and most of the Brits.
I was particularly amused by a few things:
1. As we were getting ready to go to lunch, an Australian Colonel with whom we had been meeting, said, “I’m going to head on over to the cookhouse and secure a table, mates. I’ll see you there." I wanted to tell him to throw a couple of shrimp on the Barbie for us, but I held back.
2. While using a porta-john (I’m not sure what the Brits call these – maybe a “porta-loo?"), I noticed some authentic British Army Graffiti: “The QRH [Queen’s Royal Hussar’s] RSM [Regimental Sergeant-Major] is a WANKER!!!"
3. The British Division Chief of Staff looked almost exactly like Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, to the point where LTC Kerska (our BCT Operations Officer) confessed that he kept wanting to call the guy “Tim."
4. While a few of us were waiting in the lobby of the HQ between meetings, we were trying to decipher some poorly edited Iraqi English-language newspapers. A British soldier who was guarding the entrance walked over to us and said, “Here, gents. You look like you need to read some REAL newspapers," and handed us a stack of British tabloids. That was much appreciated by a lot of the guys.
I can’t write about the actual substance of the meetings, of course. They may provide a mildly interesting passage in a book someday.
Here are a few pictures from the trip (captions are below the photos):
I rode down to Basra and back with these guys: SPC Olson and SPC “Dirty" Whelpley. As with most Army nicknames, you really don’t want to know where that one came from.
This is me in Basra, with the vehicle. COL Elicerio, the BCT Commander, also rode in this vehicle, but he didn’t pose for photographs.
How do most people in Iraq live? Well, most of them live in cities, often in very crowded neighborhoods, trying to get by with 6-12 hours of electricity a day (which seems to come at the times you need it the least). I rarely go into the center areas of any large cities, though, so most of the Iraqis I actually see live like this family, along the main highway. As you can see, it’s a mud house. There are no electrical lines to it, a few animals, and little to no shade. Most of the families I see along the road, I have difficulty figuring out what they do to get by. Very few of them seem to have crops growing (there are a few irrigation canals, in very poor condition). Few of them seem to have enough animals to make a viable living from that. Some of them run little roadside shacks from which they sell items, and others, no doubt, are somehow involved in smuggling. Actually the ones with the roadside shacks probably are also involved in smuggling. For some of the tribes here, smuggling has been their way of life for as long as anyone has recorded their existence – hundreds, if not thousands, of years. As long as they are not helping insurgents, we leave the smuggling issue to the Iraqi authorities. Sometimes it’s best not to mess with the local traditions.
Most of the tribes here were fully nomadic until the early 19th century. Around that time, the Ottoman Empire launched a campaign to forcibly settle the nomads in this part of their empire. When the southern Iraqi tribes settled and switched to a more agrarian lifestyle, they also converted to Shi’a Islam. Partly this was due to their anger at the (Sunni) Ottomans who were forcing them to change their ways, and partly because Shi’a clerics aggressively targeted these tribes for conversion at around that time. It also helped that the two main Shi’a shrines and centers of learning, Karbala and Najaf, are in Southern Iraq. Some scholars say that before settling down, the nomadic tribes really could not be described as either Shi’a or Sunni, since they had kept themselves apart from the main streams of Islamic thought. In any case, something like 95% of the tribes adopted Shi’a (more specifically, “Twelver Shi’a") Islam at around this time.
Hard to believe, but it appeared that there were people actually living in this house.
It’s also hard to believe that this land was once the “Fertile Crescent." A long time ago, it really was perfect for agriculture and city-building. The mud here makes good bricks, and there was natural tar available upriver. The Tigris river level was slightly higher than the Euphrates, so irrigation canals were built between the two, and huge plots of land could be cultivated. These natural advantages help explain why so many well-known empires were based here: Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, the Sassanids, the Abbasid Caliphate….Over time, though, governments stopped maintaining those canals, and they fell into disrepair. Finally the Mongols destroyed most of what was left.
More recently, Iraq used to produce 90% of the world’s dates. But 12 years of UN sanctions destroyed that industry. The Iraqis are trying slowly to bring it back, but first they must defeat a parasite that has infected or killed most of their date palms.
Anyway, that’s all I have time to write for now. I could say a few things about my daily activities, but unfortunately most of it is extremely boring. Stone Cold the polar bear manages to have a lot more fun than I do - you should check out his site if you haven’t already.
I shall write more soon, Insh'allah.
