Along the Silk Road
I.
I.
Leaving Iraq
I ordered a draft and a small cigar. I sat at a table by the walk near the street overlooking the Seine and the back of Notre Dame. I reflected on the ordeal getting out of Iraq; a fitting end to a frustrating and difficult mission.
It had been a sunny 140 degrees on the twenty-sixth of July, the afternoon we boarded the PSD for one final trip to BIAP – Baghdad International Airport. Without incident we arrived at Camp Klecker where we got hooches for the night and I got a ride to Camp Sully to turn in my issued gear, including my armored vest and helmet, the most patent evidence of the bizarre experience I had finally concluded. The next day, my sixtieth birthday, I would board the C-17 for my final trip out of Iraq. A few days in Paris with Sharon, then off to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and a new adventure. This project would follow more disciplined USAID developmental principles, even though it is a Millennium Challenge Corporation project.
Baghdad had drained me emotionally. Not the rockets falling randomly around me, or the sandstorms, or living an institutional lifestyle, or even visiting counterparts dressed to kill – in the most literal sense. Combine those circumstances with a massive rule of law development effort with no guidance, no strategy, no one with development experience, mixed with a military rule of law mission of some unknown ilk and delivering only a series of ad hoc products of limited if any value and no sustainability. Most were tolerated by the Iraqis; virtually none wanted by them. And so it was. A bad experience. I did manage in that torturous period to inaugurate two projects that will likely be sustainable, which have Iraqi court buy-in, and which should advance rule of law in Iraq in a meaningful way. Things that no one in the five years before me had thought to undertake, but which are so fundamental to rule of law development that every project I have worked on, including my new project in Kyrgyzstan, have them included. I read it as a testament to the dysfunctional effort costing tens of millions of US tax dollars annually rather than any genius on my part. It was a struggle getting them off the ground. Now they were beginning and a new cadre of consultants was arriving to implement them. But I now had a better offer at an opportune time. It was a good time to leave.
Iraq, being what it has come to mean to me, would not release me so easily. From beginning to end the struggle and frustration continued until I finally reached my beloved Paris. We awoke early so Tommy could drive us to the airport about a mile down the road. We would check in and then go for breakfast at the DiFac there. It was apparent from the time we walked out of our hooches. That hazy sky and shrouded sun that sand storms bring. As we loaded our suitcases into the car, Tommy assured us that the C-17s were not as susceptible to sand storms as the C-130s were. He assured us we would fly. But as the morning progressed the storm did as well. Visibility was reduced to near nothing. I had thought that we had seen the last of these storms a few weeks earlier, but the Iraqi desert had one more for me on my birthday.
The C-17 arrived from Kuwait and circled for an hour or so before determining that it could not land. It returned to Kuwait. We would have to wait a day, perhaps longer. Our luggage had been “palletized” for the trip. It was unstrapped and a hundred disappointed people dragged suitcases across the gravel yard again. Tommy took us back to Klecker. Later that afternoon he advised us that there would be no make-up flight on Monday but that we would be given first preference for space on the Thursday flight. I unpacked my computer and sent an e-mail advising Sharon that she likely would be in Paris alone.
As the afternoon waned, so did the storm. Bill and I decided we would go get some detergent and do laundry. On the way we would also eat and perhaps stop at the airport to sign up for a possible flight to Kuwait on Tuesday. From Kuwait we could re-arrange our itineraries. As we drove the borrowed car toward the PX at another camp, Bill asked if we should stop first at the airport. I said yes, only because we were approaching it then. We had brought our travel orders in case they would be needed. As we walked toward the building, one of the MilAir desk men saw us and asked if we had been on the cancelled morning flight to Amman. We responded affirmatively. He said, “get your luggage, we have a plane. It will be leaving in fifteen minutes.” After brief further discussion, Bill took the car, my hooch keys and went back to pack us while I took his and my paperwork in to secure us seats on the flight. I waited helplessly while Bill packed and got a ride back. They would not officially put us on the flight unless we were there. They would not hold the flight for us. When it was ready, it would go.
With minutes to spare, Bill returned and we managed a seat. It was a C-130, but we did not care. We could easily tolerate the more cramped conditions for the hour or so flight to Amman. It seems that the Air Force was transporting a low security US prisoner to Amman, a place to which they normally never fly, and they had an otherwise empty plane. Bill had long ago missed his connection, but by going directly from Markum to Queen Alia, the other Amman airport, I could easily make my flight to Paris.
Having been transported to Queen Alia airport, I checked in and was eating a sandwich while trying to get on the Internet to tell Sharon that I would in fact be coming to Paris as scheduled. I opened my e-mail and discovered an e-mail from my son Patrick. He said that Sharon’s fight was cancelled due to storms on the East Coast of the US. I immediately recalled Bill’s words to me as we sat on the C-130. “This is the weirdest day I have had in a while;” an understatement of even more strange circumstances.
So I sat alone at the Tobac Bar looking at the great cathedral. I had lit candles inside. I know my sainted mother would be happy with that religious gesture; an indication that her hard work at spiritual indoctrination was not totally for naught. I snuffed out the cigar and drained the last of the beer. I have now closed the book on Iraq. As this last page turns it shows only three letters surrounded by a sea of white. END
But the protagonist lives; and when the protagonist survives the trials the story presents, to carry him safely to the end, he invites a sequel. And so I write this from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, on the old Silk Road. As with all these stories, I will turn the pages not knowing what lies in the chapters that follow. I wonder sometimes what drives this insane wandering. I have no answer. I will likely stop in a year or two and return home. My only fear is that when that time comes, I will no longer know where home is.
Until Next Connection
Dan
