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Notes from the Jordanian Border
By Maj P
I get emails from all quarters of the globe, from "every clime and place" as it were. Here is one from a Marine I know who is out on duty with a border training team. He gave me permission to post it, and added, "If we can’t make a legitimate contribution to the Long War, at least maybe our saga will amuse a few folks." He is an exceptional officer, and as you will be able to tell, a perceptive observer and chronicler...
Shaku maku is Arabic slang for “what’s up?” Our response to the question is, “Not much…” About the best that can be said for our last month is that it’s another one in the books – August 12th marked the end of number four for those of us who are counting. It wasn’t necessarily a bad month, but the improvements that we had hoped for on the US side still haven’t materialized and the advisory mission is becoming a bit of a grind. Despite the general frustration, morale is still pretty good and should improve as folks start taking their R&R leave.The most interesting event last month was our closest encounter to date with smuggling. One of the many trivial tidbits I’ve discovered since I’ve been out here is that when sheep move over any significant distance, they form what’s essentially a single file line, leaving a noticeable trail in their wake. It looks like a giant snake slithered across the desert floor. During one of out routine trips to our forts, we noticed several fresh sheep trails leading toward the berm. Upon closer examination, they not only led to the berm, they went through and over the berm, through No-Man’s Land, and into Jordan. We reversed course and followed the trails back into Iraq. Not more than a couple of km inland, astride the string of trails, we found our good buddy Abu Munthir and one of his many flocks of sheep. Although he is the only owner (he owns the sheep; he has several Sudanese quasi-slaves that actually “shepherd” the sheep) in the area and the tracks lead straight to where he was standing, he vehemently denied any involvement in or knowledge of illegally moving sheep across the border (my impression is that “smuggling” is one of those words that doesn’t translate directly into Arabic and whatever word the terps use doesn’t have the same connotation we associate, so I try to spell it out as explicitly as possible; I still don’t think the message is getting through, though…). After about thirty minutes of circular discussion -- me: “I know you’re moving sheep across the border illegally; when I catch you, you’re going to jail and your sheep will be confiscated”; AM: “I am an honest man; I am just trying to provide for my family; I don’t move sheep across border”; me: “Look at the tracks, they lead right to you!”; AM: “the bedu (shepherds) took them to look for food”; me: “In Jordan?”; AM: “I am an honest man; I don’t move sheep across the border; me: “You have the only sheep anywhere near here; if you didn’t do it, who did?” AM: “I am an honest man; I am just trying to feed my sheep; would you like a sheep?” me: “No. I can’t take a sheep from you, but I want you to move away from the border so your sheep will not wander into Jordan.” AM: “But this is where the food is. I am an honest man. I won’t let my sheep go to Jordan…” -- I finally gave up. This is probably good training for dealing with teenagers, but not what I envisioned for my “combat tour”.
I get more of the same from my border bubbas – “Abu Munthir is a good man. We have known him for a long time and have never caught him going across the border. Besides he brings us water with his truck and gives us sheep if we “ask” him to. How can we do our job if he doesn’t bring us water?” I’m still not savvy enough with the language and personalities to determine whether they really believe what they are saying (based on some of the ors I’ve heard floating around, they are exceptionally gullible), or whether they’re ignoring what they know is going on and think I’m the gullible one. When pressed, their solution is to take twenty of his sheep to teach him a lesson. What that means is that the forts will be eating well for a week or so and that some of the officers may even be able to sell a few sheep and make a buck or two. We would call this extortion. To them, it is a practical solution that meets everyone’s needs. The policemen can say that they’ve punished the law-breaker; for Abu Munthir, the loss of twenty sheep is offset by the higher prices he gets in Jordan -- it’s part of the cost of doing business. One of the few things I am confident of is that none of them see any correlation between what they’re doing (or allowing someone else to do) and the problems their country faces. I did my best to walk them through it step by step – You have to get water from the shepherds because your government can’t get you water… It can’t get it to you because it can’t afford to fix the water trucks it owns (and that you’ve broken) or dig wells...It’s the same reason they can’t get you food or gas for your patrol vehicles on anything approaching a regular basis…They can’t afford it because, 1) they have to spend a fortune cleaning up the messes the “dangerous criminals” (insurgents) keep making and 2) they have no income because the people that should be collecting taxes and customs duties – not to mention the people who are supposed to make sure things actually go through the proper ports of entry instead of across the border – aren’t doing their jobs. I got mostly blank stares, at least from those who hadn’t already gone back to watching Egyptian music videos on TV.
The primary cultural idiosyncrasy I’m struggling to sort out is whether Iraqis are consciously self-centered – I don’t care what impact it has on anyone else, I want what makes life better for me – or if it just doesn’t occur to them their actions impact others. Either way, it’s very frustrating for Westerners (at least this Westerner) to try and reason with them from an altruistic point of view. From my perspective, the answer to that question has a great deal to do with whether they can sustain anything other than highly-centralized, quasi-dictatorial government. Maj P note: That is indeed the central question.
The bright side to the incident was that it confirmed that cross-border activity is relatively easy to spot, and that the absence of evidence of activity we’ve noted in our area to this point is probably also evidence of absence. Hopefully this will give added weight to my campaign to convince folks higher up the chain that there are much better uses for our little team, humble as it may be.
You can imagine that if that was our highlight for the month, things are pretty slow. We continue to visit the forts and have established what we believe are solid relationships and rapport with “our” Iraqis. They are procedurally sound, although you’ve probably gathered from the discussion above that their dedication to duty still has room for improvement. They’re like school bus drivers who do a great job getting the bus around the route, but never bother stop to pick up any kids along the way. Given the lack of activity in this area and the capability of the Jordanian Border Guards, that’s probably good enough though. The shepherds/Bedouin have been around much longer than the current borders, so if we can limit them to an excursion every three or four months, we’re probably doing pretty well. We expect the coming weeks to be some of the most challenging so far due to the transition of the “life support contract” from a US-funded, American-based contractor (i.e., our tax dollars) to an Iraqi-funded, Iraqi-based contractor. The logistics situation is worthy of its own discussion, so I’ll save the background and the gory details about the big transition for my next update.
Semper Fi,
W
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Comments
John Derbyshire over at NR wrote a good piece a while back on the cargo-cult mentality.
It's got to be tough, taking people who know nothing else but self-subsitance and trying to get them to understand the idea of a "country." Not long ago the government terrorized them and now they are expected to unite under the government(albeit totally different people in power). I know our boys and girls can make it happen, I just hope the citizens of the US give them enough time to make it so.
Chuck
Please keep doing your best, we all count on men like you. Streeter
To me, this is why the whole concept of an "Iraq" has been fundamentally flawed ever since the British invented it. They don't have a sense of "nation".
It's probably less true in the cities, where politics come into play.
That said, this was a fascinating bit of insight. I look forward to more. Hearts and minds.
The US isn't a nation either by most scholarly definitions (Herder's "linguistic community" comes to mind). Lack of unified nationality makes things tougher but is, in and of itself, not insurmountable in terms of building a stable country.
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It's a subsistance mentality. It is fairly common in the 3rd world, we see similar examples in the US during blackouts or hurricanes.
The upside in Iraq is that School Enrollment is skyrocketing, which means a significant portion of the population now understands the concept of "Good Education = Good Job" which is a cultural shift into understanding Cause and Effect.