In the Gray Area

by Seth W. B. Folsom

  Most of the IA officers smoke incessantly, and even when they know that a particular Marine does not smoke they still offer him cigarettes. Although I am trying to quit smoking I accept their offers when I am with them, hoping that by partaking I will gain their respect and will get more accomplished with them. Peer pressure is not just limited to high school. Other Marines refuse to smoke with the IAs, and even though I don’t attempt to convince them to do so I know that one way to be successful as an advisor is to occasionally surrender your pride and judgment. Regardless, any fear the Marines may have of the dangers of secondhand smoke must be suppressed, because they know that they are in the IAs’ huts, and the IAs can do whatever they want. If the Marines don’t like it, they can leave. The IAs won’t care.

  The IAs routinely invite the Marines to eat with them, whether it is in the mess tents or the officers’ quarters. The food served to the officers is superior to what the enlisted soldiers get, yet the IA officers don’t feel the same guilt that the Marine officers do when they eat better than the troops. The quality of the food served to the officers is manifested by their bulging bellies. Most senior officers sport paunches that hang over their belts, and some are so grossly overweight that the buttons of their shirts strain against the load, threatening to pop off and put out someone’s eye.

  On special occasions we are invited to feast with the IAs, what the Marines have come to refer to as a “goat grab.” The chai boys arrive with giant round platters heaped high with piles of steaming rice and mutton, and once it is all served the officers dig in with their bare hands. The Marines follow suit, tearing off chunks of lamb and mashing them together with the rice before stuffing the gooey mess into their mouths. Occasionally when the battalion commander spies a particularly good piece of meat he tears it off the bone and drops it in front of me, and as I pop it in my mouth I wonder if he washed his hands before the meal. The Iraqi officers eat before the enlisted soldiers, and in time I realize that once the platters are served we have approximately ten minutes to eat our fill before getting nudged aside by the junood, who attack the leftovers like starved dogs. They place the platters on the floor and squat around them in groups, picking through the bones and scattered rice, seeking hidden treasures missed by their officers. The junood are happy, because whenever there is a goat grab they know they will finally get a decent meal.

  The junood suffer a miserable existence aboard COP South. Their officers live a good life, and the junood know it. Each day I wonder what drives the soldiers to remain in the army, to carry out orders directed by officers and a system that appear not to care about them or their welfare. Do they do it for pay? Camaraderie? The security of their country? Or do they serve because it is the only option they have available to them? I don’t know. I may never know. The stories and hardships written on their faces depress me, because eventually I accept the fact that I have little chance of improving their situation. Only the Iraqi officers can change the plight of their soldiers; whether they choose to heed my advice and do so is not up to me. I am disheartened, yes, but at the same time I am enlightened, and more than anything I resolve to continue where the junood’s officers and their system have failed—I resolve to take better care of my own Marines in the future.

  Chapter 11

  Growing Pains

  We were barely three days into our turnover with the outgoing team before we were wishing they would move on and let us take over operations. I knew it was important not to rush the process. Despite all of the training and briefings we had received prior to our arrival we were still in the dark and needed all the turnover and exchange of information we could get. Advisor duty is far from an exact science, and word of mouth and relaying personal experiences and techniques is always better than reading it in a book. But after three days the camp was already becoming too small for two teams, and the strains were beginning to show.

  During our training at ATG I had worried aloud to Ashley that I was not cut out for the independent nature of transition team duty. An instructor and previous advisor had curtly informed us that, among other things, advisor duty requires strong organizational abilities and a capacity to thrive in an uncertain, unstructured environment. An ability, he had proclaimed, to operate “in the gray area.” I, on the other hand, tended to flourish in just the opposite: structured working environments with an established daily routine and “battle rhythm.” But my concerns were brushed aside by my wife, who insisted that perhaps unbeknownst to me I actually possessed such abilities. As an example, she reminded me of all the previous moves our family had made since we had married in 2001. In six years of marriage we had moved five different times, and she noted that each time we arrived at our new home the very first thing I did was throw myself into organizing our household. Her observation further reminded me of my years as the child of a career naval officer. My family had, on average, moved to a new location every two years, and—as I would later repeat in my adult life—the first thing I would do at each new house was to put my bedroom in order. In the chaotic, uncertain life of a military brat it was one small way of controlling my surroundings. That obsessive trait had carried over into my adult years, often to my wife’s amusement.

  Now, as a team leader, I realized I had been blessed with a group of officers and SNCOs who were perhaps as anal as I was, and they too became fixated with organizing the camp and implementing much-needed changes around our living areas. But our insistence on immediate change rankled the members of the outgoing team, and friction between the two groups of Marines began to surface early in our turnover process. At one point the team leader told me that his Marines were complaining about my team already making noticeable modifications around the camp (such as the kitchen remodeling that Marines from my team had undertaken). He implored me not to make any changes in the camp or the daily routine until the turnover process was complete and they were gone. Despite my desire to assume control of the camp and the mission I honored his request and passed it on to my Marines. “Wait for the old team to leave,” I told them. “After that, it’s open house.”

  The growing pains we seemed to be experiencing with the outgoing team made it difficult for us not to adopt a superiority complex. It was common for inbound units to get sucked into the mind-set of “The outgoing unit is all screwed up, and we are perfect.” Conversely, it was just as common for outgoing units to think that the inbound unit was a bunch of idiots who would ruin all of the hard work and achievements that had been accomplished. But appearances mean a lot, as do first impressions, and our first impression of the outbound team had not been a glowing one. They were not bad guys, or bad Marines for that matter. On the contrary, many of them were genuinely intelligent and good at their jobs as officers and SNCOs. But the impression they had created upon our arrival was that they had gone native, an unforgivable sin that we had constantly been warned about in all of our predeployment training and briefs. Relaxing standards was always the commander’s prerogative if he deemed it so, but even that had its limits.

  And the outgoing team members complained a lot, mostly about the Marine infantry battalion to which they were attached. They claimed the battalion never supported them, but instead routinely neglected them and their logistical and operational needs. As I heard the mantra repeated over and over again, I had to wonder whether their complaints were legitimate or baseless. Was it truly as they claimed, that the Marine battalion didn’t understand the nature of transition team operations? Or had the battalion over time developed the same impression of the outgoing team that we had in our short time working with them? Only time would tell.

  As the team leader and I met with Lieutenant Colonel Ayad on the evening of 5 March it was obvious that the Iraqi commander was agitated about the state of the oil pipeline that ran east to west through 3rd Battalion’s AO. He had visited a stretch of the pipeline earlier in the day, discovering more than thirty locations along the route where the line had been tapped by oil smugglers. As he irately pointed at photogr
aphs on his digital camera, I noted how the fissures ranged from crudely formed hammer and chisel punctures to what appeared to be square, professionally cut holes made by skilled smugglers. There were believed to be two types of oil thieves cutting into the pipeline: common Iraqis seeking crude oil to use for their own homes, and professional smugglers who may or may not have been using the profits from smuggled oil to finance terrorist and criminal activities in the region around Al Qa’im. It seemed a stretch, but nevertheless 28th Brigade had directed Ayad to step up antismuggling operations in his battalion’s AO. He appeared to embrace the mission wholeheartedly, and I in turn volunteered my team’s services to assist his soldiers and staff in training for observation post (what the IAs called “ambush”) operations. Ayad seemed interested in what I had to offer, and I was pleased that the team soon would be gainfully employed.

  As I spoke through an interpreter named Joseph, I gained my first insight into the challenges associated with working through foreign linguists. Our Arabic language instruction at ATG had been worthless, taught by an Iraqi dissident known only by his first name. Legend had it that he had been involved in high-level covert operations earlier in the war, and while he thankfully didn’t make a habit of regaling us with stories of working with Special Forces, he instead spent most of his instruction time spewing profanity-laden invective about working as an interpreter in Iraq. Accordingly, our learning of Iraqi Arabic suffered, and most Marines on the team departed ATG with little more than a bastardized working knowledge of basic greetings and salutations. We were forced to rely solely on our interpreters to communicate with the Iraqis, and with that came its own set of challenges.

  Joseph was a native interpreter from Basra, and he had been assigned to 3rd Battalion since its inception more than three years earlier. A tiny, wiry, bespectacled man in his forties, he had been an educator in a previous life and spoke with a crisp but often disdainful tone of voice. I had not developed an opinion of Joseph one way or another, however, until my conversation with Ayad turned to my background in South Asia. When the subject of my language capabilities was raised, I noted to Ayad that the Urdu script was derived from Arabic and Farsi, and that many of the words I knew in Urdu were the same in Arabic. At that point Joseph chose to correct what I had said, telling Ayad that I was wrong and that there was no written language the same as Arabic. I felt the color rising from beneath my collar, and I restrained myself from correcting him. The last thing I wanted to do was engage Joseph in a semantic argument in front of Ayad and the outgoing team leader, and so rather than embarrass both him and myself I chose to keep my mouth shut. We had been taught always to keep our cool in front of the Iraqis, but we had also learned that interpreters are supposed to translate what we were saying, not what they thought we should be saying. Nor were interpreters supposed to speak off topic or offer their own opinions. Joseph had violated both tenants, and it incensed me. His actions caused me to suspect him and his abilities, and I resolved from that point forward to rely more on the three interpreters who had trained with us in the United States and accompanied us to Iraq.

  The six interpreters we would inherit from the outgoing team were, like Joseph, all local nationals, and from the outset I had not been impressed with them or their abilities. Over time they had grown too comfortable with their life at COP South, and as we observed the outgoing team interact with them it often seemed as if the Marines constantly had to convince the interpreters to do their jobs. They ambled around camp dressed only in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, and they tended to monopolize the Internet stations and phones in the MWR hut. As a whole they rarely participated in daily duties around the compound, and they never seemed to clean up after themselves anywhere they went. Upon inspection of their hut I was appalled; their living spaces were filthy, littered with old food and cigarette butts. Yet they complained that the three interpreters who had arrived with us were “too good to live with them.” In general they acted as if they didn’t care about their jobs or what it was the transition teams were trying to do in Iraq. Instead, the sole source of motivation for them seemed to be an almost weekly insistence that they be allowed to go home on leave.

  The interpreters who had traveled with us from Camp Pendleton brought with them their own unique set of challenges. From the outset they began complaining about what they considered to be “quality-of-life” issues aboard the camp. To them everything was inadequate, whether it was the quality of food, living spaces, or the hygiene facilities. They also seemed to resent our insistence that they participate in the daily cleanup and maintenance duties around camp. As Marines we were accustomed to living in austere conditions, yet life aboard COP South could hardly be considered austere. After all, we had beds, showers, satellite television, Internet access, and phones. There was also the fact that the three of them had volunteered to deploy with the Marines—not the Army—and I had made it abundantly clear to the team prior to departing the United States what we could expect in terms of living conditions once we were in-country. None of that seemed to matter to the three interpreters, though, and in the first days and weeks following our arrival I grew exhausted with their constant repetition of the phrase “My contract says . . .”

  In the end their grumblings fell on deaf ears. The Marines too had all once signed contracts, yet none of them was coming to me every day complaining that shitting in a bag was a violation of the terms of their agreement. Life is frequently hard for Marines in the field; we were used to it.

  Chapter 12

  Storms

  The blowing aajaaz forms on the horizon, and I wish I could run for cover. I know the destruction and personal discomfort the sandstorm announces, and were it possible I would cocoon myself in a hermetically sealed container until the air cleared and the skies once again filled with the deep azure that has become one of the only things I admire about the desert.

  The atmosphere feels electric and pressurized, almost heavy on my shoulders, and it feels as if my ears will pop as they do when aboard an airplane at altitude. The view of my immediate surroundings is unaltered, save for the horizon, which becomes shrouded in what appears an impenetrable blanket of dirty fog. The wind picks up, and soon garbage and debris flutter through the camp as if they too are seeking refuge from the gathering storm.

  Knowing what is coming, I rush to protect my personal belongings and prepare my body for the physical onslaught it is about to endure. Clothing is stored in plastic ziplock bags, and towels are wedged against doorjambs to staunch the invasion of dust that the storm shepherds. Computers and other electronics are sealed in plastic or under heavy blankets in a vain attempt to preserve their inner parts. But I have been here before, and I know what happens to even the toughest laptop computers after a heavy sandstorm. The first symptom is the keypad that begins to stick and jam once depressed, turning the simple act of typing into a forceful, conscious effort. I know what comes next: slow, unresponsive operation of the machine, followed by the dull, grinding death rattle of sand and dust that has been injected into the compact disc drive and the eventually the hard drive itself. My computer’s life becomes finite, and more than ever I understand the requirement to back up my data as often as I can remember to do so.

  I dig through my pack and retrieve my shemagh, that checkered-pattern Arabic headwrap so despised by commanders for its un-uniformity but beloved by Marines for its secret ability to warm, to cool, to filter the airborne particulate matter that characterizes the aajaaz. Wrapping my head in the shemagh I resemble a uniformed terrorist, but I don’t care. I grab my goggles and mount them on my forehead, prepared at a moment’s notice to cinch them down tightly over my eyes. Then I watch the horizon and wait.

  The wind intensifies, and soon the desert howls in our ears in a scream of tortured pain, a cry like it is being torn apart. Anything not strapped down rattles in its own attempt to escape, and the fragile wooden huts shake and moan with the echoes of the gale. My eyes water uncontrollably and sting from the needlelike sand an
d dust particles that infiltrate the goggles, and my mouth and nose both seal shut in a thick brown cake of grit and dried mucus and saliva.

  On one occasion I am unlucky enough to be stuck in a moving convoy during a storm. My world shrinks into a tiny prism and my mind becomes as focused as the narrow field of view from within the vehicle. Visibility worsens and the road ahead of me begins to disappear from sight, being eaten alive by the storm’s fury. For some bizarre reason civilian traffic continues unabated. Their inability to see our approaching convoy and their sudden, palpable fear as our vehicles emerge from the storm only feet away causes them to brake and swerve crazily, endangering themselves and our convoy. We continue our movement, common sense screaming at me to pull over and wait out the tempest. But a burning desire to get the team back inside the wire forces me forward, and I assume the risk. We have reached the point of no return, the point where it would be senseless to turn around and head back to our point of origin, and so we slow our speed to a crawl, and my vehicle commanders begin a continuous chatter that fills the air waves. The tension in their voices is evident as they too navigate their way through the din, and the radio is a chorus of warnings and acknowledgements.

  “Vic One, slowing down.”

  “Roger, Vic One slowing down.”

  “Vic Two, stopping.”

  “Roger, Vic Two stopping.”

  “Vic One, moving.”

  “Roger, moving.”

  Kilometers trickle by, and what is normally a one-hour convoy becomes two or three. Time stands still, and my single point of reference becomes the slowly vanishing highway to my front.