Baghdad By Night

From 2006:

get a call the other night. They've found four more bodies in western Baghdad. Three of them are in a car. They're bound, hands and feet. They're blindfolded. They've been shot in the head. Their bodies bear wounds from beatings, electrical burns, and someone has used a drill on their flesh. The fourth is the same, the only difference being that his body was tossed onto a sidewalk. That's just one phone call. I get a few more. Every night, it seems, dozens of bodies turn up, often killed in the same fashion, both Shi'ite and Sunni.

We spoke with a journalist recently for a piece we're doing. He works for an Iraqi television station. For the last nine days he's been sleeping at the office. He's been threatened with death because of his work, and he doesn't want to bring the danger home to his parents and six sisters. He told the Ministry of the Interior about the threat, they told him to get a gun.

"Death is the simplest thing now in Iraq. A bullet in the head is nothing, especially against journalists. So crying and sadness are the norm," he said to us. Later, he added, "I have been in love for the last 4 years but my conditions don't allow me to marry, not because of money but because of how things are going on. There is no stability and you never know when a civil war will breakout."

People here are more terrified than I have ever seen them.

Neighborhoods are self-segregating as one either Shi'ites or Sunnis flee out of fear for their lives. Neighbors are getting together and forming their own militias, vowing to fight the death squads that slaughter people here nightly.

A friend of mine tells me today he's bought weapons for his family, and is teaching his wife, who hates to even hold a knife, to fire a gun.

He has a daughter around two. In his neighborhood he saw a few families pack up and leave. Why? They are poor Shi'ites, usually from the south, or Sadr city, who moved to his neighborhood to work as housekeepers. The day before yesterday Sunni insugents burst into one family's home. They were a young couple, maybe 24 or 25. The husband was killed, and then they set his body on fire. They didn't bother killing the wife and four children first. They burned them alive.

My friend tells me this story and says, "I can understand someone who gets killed. I can understand beheadings. I can't understand burning someone alive." I find myself stunned. Both by his story and by the fact that killings and beheadings are understandable. Burning people alive apparently goes violates some behavioral norm that says chopping people's heads off is okay.

It is becoming very clear to me that war can shatter a society and what it becomes as it puts itself back together can become a warped malefic grotesquerie. A social organism that eagerly eats itself alive.

At a press conference the other day an American General said he thinks that Iraqis feel more secure. I think that most of the Iraqis I've spoken with since I've been here might have a slightly different perspective.

KC 135

Had a really fun piece on Morning Edition this morning about the KC-135 Stratotanker. I took this picture while lying down in the back of the plane as an F-15 came up to refuel.

Here's the link:

The Stratotanker: Flying Gas Pump Has Long History And Long Future

More than 50 years after its first flight, the KC-135 tanker is the workhorse of the U.S. Air Force, a flying gas station that loiters over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan every day. It is likely to keep flying for at least 30 more years.

Farming on Mars

I just noticed this gem from the NYT today:

Mars today is cold and dry, and the surface is bombarded by ultraviolet radiation, making life unlikely, but conditions could have made the planet more habitable in the past. Plants that like alkaline soil — like asparagus — might readily grow in the Martian soil, provided that other components of an Earth-like environment including air and water were also present.

My friends, I have seen the future...the hardbitten, but good hearted, asparagus farmers of Mars.

BAE vs. Harper Woods

Just had a piece run on Morning Edition about a corruption case involving the world's third largest defense contractor and the small detroit suburb of Harper Woods. Here's the link to the NPR site:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91332402

And here's the script:

Morning Edition, June 10, 2008 · This is a story that might seem straight out of a James Bond movie. It involves a massive arms deal, British fighter jets, a Saudi prince and billions of dollars in payments to a longtime ambassador to the United States. But the plot veers away from thriller territory when it lands in a leafy suburb of Detroit.
Harper Woods, Mich., has filed a lawsuit against a massive defense contractor, BAE Systems, over allegations that the company funneled payments to a member of the Saudi royal family.
In the process, this small city has become a central player in an investigation that spans continents, involves accusations of corruption on an unimaginable scale, and has players ranging from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a substitute teacher.
Harper Woods is an almost archetypal American suburb. The streets are lined with trees, the houses are small, the yards big, and just about everyone has a dog. Its residents are big into Little League, and there's an annual parade featuring the mayor driving by in one of his classic cars. One of the finalists for national teacher of the year teaches seventh grade here. And rocker Bob Seger played at the now-closed Hideout dance club before he made it big.
"One of the funny things about Harper Woods is there nothing terribly special about it," says Kim Silarski, who has lived there since 1996. "And so in its normalness, in its normality, I think that is its beauty and its charm."
The Arms Deal
While it's technically a city, the place has only about 14,000 residents living in an area of 2.6 square miles.
This little corner of America is intimately involved in a $100 billion international arms deal between Saudi Arabia and BAE Systems, a giant British defense contractor that makes aircraft carriers, armored vehicles and a superadvanced cannon. BAE also manufactures fighter jets — and those jets have gotten the British defense contractor into trouble.
"In the mid-'80s, the Brits were negotiating a large defense contract with Saudi Arabia, nearly $100 billion. Obviously a huge, huge contract and very important to the U.K. and to BAE certainly," says Patrick Coughlin, a lawyer representing the Harper Woods public employees retirement fund.
"As part of the contract there was a side agreement that basically allowed for payments to be funneled to Prince Bandar," Coughlin alleges. "Bank examiners and people looking at this have estimated it was nearly $100 million a year or a total of $2 billion that was funneled through various U.S. banks."
Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States for decades. Coughlin is alleging that to get that defense contract for a bunch of fighter planes, known as the "Al Yamamah" or the Dove deal, BAE paid Bandar $2 billion over a period of about 20 years.
'David vs. Goliath'
"The Saudi princes sometimes feel that the rules don't apply to them," says Cheryl Constantino, Harper Woods mayor pro tem and a full-time substitute teacher. "This is like David vs. Goliath, only instead of using a rock we're using attorneys."
Harper Woods got involved because its $40 million employee pension fund includes about $135,000 invested in BAE Systems. That's not a lot, but this is not a big town.
Now the Harper Woods fund has taken BAE and Prince Bandar to court. But Constantino says what local officials care most about is not the politics but the money.
"We don't look at this as sort of an international incident," Constantino says. "We just look at it as, 'Hey, here's our retirees' pension money and we just want to make sure that everything is right with it.' And then the next thing we know is that, this whole Prince Bandar thing comes up and we're like 'whoa.' "
Coughlin, the fund's lawyer, says the city wants BAE to recover as much money as possible and put it back into the company. The city also wants to reform the governance of the company so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again, he says.
"Corruption just inflates contracts, destroys competition and is not good for anybody," Coughlin says. "And corruption with a defense contractor, of course, is the most dangerous, because where are the arms going? Where are they ultimately [going]? You have to have real accountability in this area because of the world that we live in today."
BAE: Claims Have 'No Substance'
Asked to comment on the Harper Woods case, BAE replied with this brief e-mail: "The Company believes these proceedings have no substance and will be vigorously contested."
The Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating BAE Systems as well. Department officials didn't give specifics about the investigation, but U.S. authorities briefly detained Mike Turner, the chief executive officer of the company, when he entered the United States a few weeks ago. That is not something that happens every day.
A BAE spokesman says that FBI agents took Turner's BlackBerry away for a short while before returning it to him, and served him with a subpoena before releasing him. Federal officials also served subpoenas on several other BAE executives who live in the United States.
Another Twist
The British government was also investigating the deal. That probe had gotten so far as to gain access to Swiss bank accounts. But then the investigation was shut down. According to British court documents, Saudi Arabia threatened to kill another fighter plane deal with BAE that was being negotiated at the time. The Saudis also threatened to end their close intelligence and diplomatic relationship with the British government.
The Saudi threat to call off intelligence cooperation was taken very seriously. As the former director of Britain's Serious Fraud Office testified, the Saudi ambassador to the U.K. put it to him this way: "British lives on British streets were at risk."
But a British court recently ruled that bowing to those threats was unacceptable.
The court ruled that "when the Serious Fraud Office, under pressure from the government — in particular Tony Blair — decided to drop the investigation into allegations of bribes, it was wrong,"
BBC defense and security correspondent Rob Watson says, "They said it was wrong because British justice should not give in to threats from wherever they might come."
The British government is appealing that ruling to the House of Lords.
A Battle Over Jurisdiction
Meanwhile, the Harper Woods case is moving through the U.S. courts. BAE maintains that U.S. courts don't have jurisdiction over the British company.
Coughlin, the Harper Woods pension fund lawyer, argues that with tens of thousands of employees in the United States, and more than 40 percent of its business here, the U.S. courts should have jurisdiction.
Constantino, the mayor pro tem, says she simply wants to get to the bottom of the allegations, and if there is a problem, it needs to be fixed. As shareholders, no matter how small, the Harper Woods employees have the right to do it.
"Even though we've got Britain and the United States investigating it, and we're little teeny tiny Harper Woods, even smaller than little teeny tiny Harper Woods is the little teeny tiny Harper Woods pension board," she says. "And here we are with the nerve to investigate this and the nerve to do something about it — the nerve to stand up to it."
So far that nerve has had one tangible result: Prince Bandar's real estate assets in the United States, and proceeds from their sales, have been frozen by U.S. courts. They've been valued at more than $150 million.

Reunion

So I was just asked by my high school to summarize the last 20 years of my life. (reunion coming up). Here's my shot:

Let's see, we graduated in 1988. What have I done since then? Went to college, dropped out of college, got married, got divorced, started working in journalism, lived in Boston, moved to New York, moved to LA, launched a bunch of NPR shows, got married again, moved back to D.C., covered three wars, 9/11, London, never learned another language, did learn how to fortify a house, made many friends, and stayed close to some I had in high school.

I am no longer surprised at how inventive and eager people are when engaged in slaughtering each other. Saddened, but not really surprised anymore. Wars are terribly frightening, incredibly loud and absolutely exhilirating. Militaries are inherently duplicitous, and soldiers are pretty cool, on the whole, often shockingly brilliant. Everybody lies, especially to themselves. And while there are some true bastards out there, on the whole, people are fairly decent.

I've tried to become a good man, and a good husband, and a good friend. Depending what day it is I sometimes think I've been successful. I've done things I am ashamed of, and tried over and over to do things that I'm proud of, again with mixed success. I haven't written that novel I always told myself I would, and that kinda bugs me. But I can bake bread from scratch, and I make a mean paella. I still smoke, which sucks, and I still want to learn to fly an airplane. I have weaknesses for video games, science fiction, and movies where things blow up. I also still write bad poetry on occasion, and it's just as much fun as it was in high school.

I am married to the most incredible woman I have ever met, who is really completely out of my league in so many ways it is sometimes intimidating. But I love her in a way that as a somewhat obnoxious adolescent convinced I knew all the ways of the human heart I couldn't even conceive. I argue with myself constantly about whether I believe in God. I think I do. The fact that I am with her I can only attribute to providence.

I have a very cool job. Basically I can do stories on whatever catches my interest, if I can sell it to someone. I am constantly learning how to be better at what I do. I am one of the best in the world at certain odd tasks, and I work with people who are better than I am. NPR is a stunning, magical place that reminds me of Commonwealth at times. And the company has encouraged and enabled me to do things I only dreamed of in high school. And I have the journalist's escape at boring parties, you just start interviewing people. Everyone has a couple good nuggets.

I remember clearly one note I got in Mrs. Kaplan's Modern European History class. "Jeff needs to learn that "What happened next?" is not an historical question." That is probably true, but it is most definitely a journalistc one and I've been fortunate enough to have spent my professional life getting paid to answer it.

No kids yet, though they'll probably be in the picture soon. I'm basically happy, have meaningful work, and people who love me. I get frustrated with myself with enough regularity that I don't coast too often. Not too bad.

I'm sitting in Baghdad as I write this. The sky for the past few days has been a sinister and surreal orange due to sandstorms. When I breathe I can taste the talcum fine dust of this place. I am trying not to think about the percentage of human waste contained within it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to the reunion, I hope so, but if I don't, I can, in all honesty, blame this fucking war.

The Motorcycle and the Duck

Seeing Baghdad from the air is a reinforcement, for me, of just how ugly this city is. It is flat, it is grayish brown, the architecture is abhorrent, and the scars of war are everywhere, from blast holes, to the ever present concrete walls…walling off houses and streets and whole neighborhoods.

Okay, so I’m here. The place is not as much of a nightmare as it used to be. Actually, that’s not even fair, the place has radically changed. The daily hide the drill bit in people’s heads seems to have, again I’m not being fair, really has calmed down. Today we have sporadic (for now) fighting between various groups, but nothing all that bad. Mind you, I’m comparing that to a hundred bodies a day or so, as I wrote last year, today, we’re talking 3-5 bodies a day at the morgue with bullet holes in the head, and 10-15 who have been killed in the fighting. Both American and Iraqi (and as important as it is, I’m not going to begin to explain the numerous Iraqi factions in this email, if you really want an explanation I’ll provide one. But to be honest it’s fairly esoteric and not that interesting, unless of course you’re a normal family being held hostage by that sort of conflict, as most Iraqi families are…..sorry, drifting, but if you want the players you need a scorecard, which is far too complex, even for this paragraph long aside) and I know one is supposed to pick up seamlessly from some parentheses, but we all have our limits.

So, groundwork laid, sort of. And there’s a curfew the other day. No vehicles allowed on the streets. Cool, fine. But then there is the journalistic immunity and the need for ice cream. And we head out. Let me put this in a tiny bit of context here: I show up a few days after (insert deep explanation of the Mehdi Army here) has been shelling the the Green Zone, well, a lot. Not so much since I’ve been here, couple times a day. But I and someone I work with finds a deep need for ice cream in our souls, and of course a basic journalistic desire to find out what the heck is going on outside our walled environs.

So, we head out. We’ve been told that there is a vehicle ban, but people are out on the streets of Baghdad, on foot, in force. That is true in other areas of the city, but not the one we venture into, unbeknownst to us. Here there are not only no cars, there are no people. Well, besides the folk with machine guns at every corner.

But here’s the weird bit. We wave and smile and flash badges of one sort or another and we’re fine. No issue. So I go into an Iraqi store for the first (and let’s be honest here, the only) time in years. Basically beyond the not that exciting local stuff, I’m walking into any second world super market. Lots of Crest (not a big Colgate country), nuts, ice cream and canned beans of various types, but heavy on the garbanzo.

The scary part was leaving. We’re stopped by people pointing rifles at us. People who scare me more than anyone else. Yes, the Americans. And after dealing with Iraqi security forces, I felt like I got pulled over by the staties. I had to tell everyone in the car to make their hands visible. The American woman I was with had to call out to them, “Hey, we’re Americans, can I step out of the car.?” And they never smiled. I could have sworn I was in Connecticut, but they let us go with a warning, which is a sure sign I wasn’t.

So today I’m in a small town south of the city called (and you can’t make stuff like this up) Garf al Sucker. It’s a good news story, used to be an insurgent stronghold, now they’re opening the new city hall. Which is a really small building with a few rooms and an office. And like the city of Baghdad, Iraqi taste in office décor is well, a bit different. There are ugly faux Chinese prints on the wall, picked out in gold. Massive over stuffed furniture, and the kicker is that they’ve laid blinking Christmas lights all around the place. Hearts and daisies for the most part, red and blue and green and yellow, blinking in synchrony as a general from the US meets with local leaders and a big deal tribal sheikh. I couldn’t get over the juxtaposition and kept wanting to chuckle.

These kind of gatherings follow a pretty standard pattern, lots of speeches, everyone telling each other how great they are. But I have to admit, this one was pretty cool. During the usual endless speeches they would break out into chanting and dancing every few minutes it seemed. Men in traditional headdress, folk in business suits, policemen, random guys with guns. I got the chant translated and it’s something like: Praising the tribe leaders and their rule in the stability and the security, and promising the terrorists death if they dare to touch their lands again. But it was cool, and it seemed that every coupe of minutes they felt the need to go into it again.

But the best part of the speechifying was when one tribal sheikh got up and started listing his demands. It’s all in Arabic and I don’t have any idea what is being said at the time (I got it translated when I got back to the bureau). But he is very serious, talking about food prices, and the security forces and so on…and then, the most important demand of all: The US has got to get rid of the motorcycle and the duck.

Now, I’ve had a few waterfowl problems of my own, and understand the frustration, but to being it up to a US division commander?

Turns out though that it is nickname for a car. The Iraqis do this a lot, I’ve heard different makes called a swan or a dolphin. But this is a certain type of Toyota. Apparently a fave of the Shi’ite militia known as the Mehdi Army. That can fit five bodies in the trunk. This is a feature.

Your man in Baghdad,

jj

City of Light

This is something I wrote a while back that I'm still figuring out what to do with...but I figured I'd post it here. Makes a good first post, I think.

The cathedral was full. Its' impossibly tall grey arches holding the echoes of a dozen different languages and the smoke of incense. People moved from shrine to shrine. Fanny pack wearing tourists taking pictures and talking to each other, old women lighting candles and moving their lips silently, Asian tour groups staying together and praying loudly. In the center of the cathedral the pews were roped off as a priest said mass was said in French.

I don't go to church all that often. And when I do it is usually more of an inchoate desire to feel something rather than a intense religious feeling. But here I could feel it. To me, a few churches contain a reverberation not only of voices, but of prayers. So many people for so long have worshipped in a place that they have consecrated it in a way a priest never can. We build our own holy places. Sometimes they are burned into the ground by blood and horror, sometimes they are smaller churches off the beaten path, sometimes a river or a pool or a circle of stones. And sometimes a gargoyle-clotted building on a island, in a river, in a metropolis becomes one also, just as it was designed to be.

The island is Ile de La Cite, the river is the Seines, and the metropolis is Paris. I love Paris. It's one of the few places I feel completely justified in speaking only English. And revel in the fact
that the natives have to struggle with it. I enjoy their resentment in some way that probably speaks poorly of me as a person, but makes me feel all warm inside. Plus, the food is fantastic.

I was there on a sunny afternoon in May. I had walked through the enthrallingly close urban channels of the Left Bank. Stopped in a wine bar for a bottle of Cotes du Rhone and as many pork sausages as I could eat and headed down the river to the church on that island, the Notre Dame.

The wine, the sausages and the cathedral were all for the same reason. Twenty four hours earlier I had driven down the most dangerous road in the world. People had died on it fifteen minutes after I had passed by. The explosion rattled the windows of the airport terminal I was standing in and a black column of smoke rose lazily into the cloudless sky. I watched it from the terminal and unconsciously began saying the Hail Mary over and over to myself. I had left Baghdad, safe, again.

The wine had settled my nerves, the sausage the burning desire I get for pork after spending any amount of time in a Muslim country, the cathedral felt like something I needed to do. To acknowledge, in some official way my gratitude for being alive. Like I said, I don't often feel spiritually compelled, but I needed to do something, to show gratitude. I was alive and other people weren't and that felt like a gift I should feel thankful for.

So I entered the cathedral and walked past shrines of saints I didn't know and confessionals offering three languages. I began to look for the shrine of Mary. Every Catholic Church in my experience has one, so I wandered silently through the crowds of tourists and worshippers looking for it. I walked around the Church for what must have been an hour. Stopping here and there to stare at statues or people. I felt numb and enraged at the same time. Some strong emotion welled up in me that I didn't recognize. It gripped my chest and my throat and my eyes. I became despondent I couldn't find the chapel of Mary and began to become angry at myself, at the world and certainly at Baghdad.

Then it occured to me that Notre Dame aren't just funny sounding foreign words. Amazingly, they have meaning as well. Our Lady. The whole damn place is consecrated to her. I turned left, knelt on a wooden Prie Dieu and once again began to repeat the hail Mary as my shoulders shook and I began to sob.

Other people had died and I had lived. And I had no idea why. I still don't. I have been in and out of Iraq for years now. I have reported on the politics of it, the lives of the people here, the stories of the soldiers who are fighting. I can talk about the intricacies and complexities of the place. I can talk endlessly on the failures of this or that person or country or strategy or administration. I can list off the horrific numbers and talk calmly of the different ways innocents are tortured and killed.

But I really have no idea why it is happening. I send emails out to my friends and family regularly from here, sharing with them my experiences. On my first trip I got a response from my father, a former soldier. He wrote that I really sounded like I was in a war zone. A little perplexed, I asked him why he said that. He wrote back tersely, "Because people are dying for no reason."

Whether they are the butcher carving happily in Dresden, a newspaper boy calling out in Hanoi, or a barber snipping unknowingly in Baghdad...war can, and does, claim them all.

The only wisdom I have to share about war, after covering three this summer alone, is perhaps best expressed in the in the poem "Musee des Beaux Artes" by Auden. It opens:

"About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

So I'm not going to write about the war. I feel unable and ill-qualified. My ability to tell the subtleties in sound between an AK and an M-16, the cannons of a Bradley or an AC 130, the careful differences in rubble caused by a car bomb or an IED or an air strike, they seem to have the mundanity of a birdwatcher distinguishing between species of robin. Unlike Robert E. Lee, I cannot understand becoming too fond of it, because it is so terrible. It is a madness that fertilizes
every dark place in the human soul.

What I can write about is that feeling I had in in the church, on the island, in the river. The one I didn't know then I know intimately now. It was a release of fear, and fear has become a close companion of mine. I know its shapes and expressions, its spasms, its grinding, its slow blooms and quick deaths. I lean on it, am driven by it, loathe it, and, occasionally, revel in it. I have become expert in the fine lace of fear that has been stitched into me, and at times caress every loop and knot.

Maybe I was wrong and Lee was right. Perhaps I have grown too fond of my fear and the clarity it brings. I find my fear to be ammonia on glass, cutting through the ordinary oils that make up one's day in a safe place. Sure, I shrink from loud noises, and wake up sweating and shouting. But, in Baghdad, I have a clear window on the world, framed by life and death. All the words you say to someone in their deathbed I try to say everyday. All the dreams deferred anger me like a dying man wishing he had done something different with his life.

I am heading back to Iraq in a couple months. Each time I think to myself...this is the last time. But, I'll be back...describing the subtle layers of feathers, or death, that move from red to grey across the breast of a small bird, or the streets of a city never washed clean.