Father of Money

by Jason Whiteley

  My commander approached him directly, accompanied by me and two or three others, including Ali. Standing stoically, the imam was flanked by an entourage of armed Iraqis. More important, the crowd had grown silent. Thousands of eyes turned to the imam for direction.

  My commander reached his hand out and plainly said, “Salaam melekum.”

  The imam remained impassive and reached his hand deeper into his robes, leaving my commander to pull back his hand and his offer of friendship. I studied the imam closely. He was a rising star in the Sadr organization, by most accounts within the top five of the hierarchy. He was not impressed with our offer of friendship, nor was he about to relinquish, by obliging the Americans, the power of the emotional crowd that he now controlled.

  During the brief encounter, I looked beyond the imam toward a cluster of men standing near the mosque gate. To my surprise, Said Mallek and two other council members were standing among the other men of the imam’s entourage. Realizing that the direct approach had just failed, I needed to get the council members to help us out as soon as possible. As we turned to head back to the Humvee, I pulled Ali aside and gave him the information about the origin of the rocket and requested Said Mallek to help us communicate our findings to the imam in a way that did not undermine his message but would also calm the streets before a fight erupted. Ali hurried over to Said Mallek, joined now by the imam, and the three of them disappeared behind the wall that surrounded the mosque.

  After a few anxious moments, during which time the crowd grew boisterous again, they returned, but the imam was no longer among them. Said Mallek began to address the crowd in a booming baritone voice. At first, his mellifluous words bounced off the cacophonous crowd, but people eventually began to listen. One by one, the cries for revenge stopped. Said Mallek was now holding court, giving his own sermon and gesturing with a piece of metal in his hand. His message, according to Ali, was along the same lines as the imam’s—one of Shi’a solidarity and defiance—but the enemy had changed in his narrative. Pointing to the Arabic writing and the Iraqi insignia on the rocket fragment, he directed the crowd to the Sunni insurgents who had fired the missile. Pointedly, he did not mention that they had targeted the FOB, only that this was yet another attack on the Shi’a people by Saddam loyalists.

  While he was speaking, people began looking to the sky and covering their faces. I asked Ali what was going on.

  “Drone,” he replied.

  I could not hear or see anything, but within seconds the buzzing of a U.S. Army unmanned aircraft could be heard above the crowd. It was amazing that the people were so attuned to these surveillance measures. Even at the height of their concentration on Said Mallek’s speech, they were aware of meddling influences that might subvert them. It was a telling display of the power of the collective consciousness, and it was clear that a common enemy would be needed to manage the Shi’a population and give their ambition direction. One by one, people shuffled back into their houses or deeper into the alleyways. By the time the drone made a second swooping pass, the street was nearly deserted.

  It was this encounter at the mosque that had prompted my hijacking of the scrap metal convoy, which solidified my place within this community. The weeks since that successful intervention into the black market had been a rush of activity, with immediate and appreciable results. Instead of shooting, there were cheers and smiles in the streets of Abu Disher. Noticeable improvements in the people’s attitudes were outpaced only by the positive changes to their surroundings. At the request of two local council members, we funded two projects to install sewage pumps and generators so that the flow of sewage was managed. Thousands of sandaled feet now tread across dirt and asphalt, instead of flotillas of boxes and trash. Soccer balls now rolled down streets, where they had previously floated. The air of the neighborhood cleared more and more each day, as truck after truck removed the smoldering trash in the adjacent field. These projects, all requested by the council and funded by the army, provided more services to this neighborhood than ever imagined by its impoverished masses. And they noticed.

  One day in August, while patrolling a street and noting the large number of new neon signs announcing open businesses, Internet cafés, and markets, I saw a cluster of young men standing near an abandoned field, waving. They were not waving a greeting but more of a frantic beckoning. I motioned for the Humvees to stop and got out to see what they wanted. I could not make out a word. They turned and jogged alongside a building, then headed into an overgrown alley between two brick walls. Several soldiers and I jogged alongside, aware that this was precisely the point were we had been ambushed on our first night in Baghdad. Again, we were surprised by the Iraqis, but this time it was pleasant.

  Motioning toward a pile of bricks, they said, “I-E-D.”

  These were the three English letters they knew we would understand and respect. These roadside bombs proliferated more and more each week, claiming an increasing number of U.S. soldiers as casualties. It was nice to have people point them out before they exploded.

  Almost instinctively, my soldiers and I ducked back the way we came. None of us was comfortable being that close to a live bomb, worse yet, one that could be detonated by anyone observing our curious interaction with the neighborhood watch. We jogged back toward the Humvee, where I called in the location of the IED.

  While we waited for the demolition team to come to disarm the bomb, the guys hung around, obviously wanting some form of compensation for their efforts. Unfortunately, the army forbade us from carrying any type of reward money or any loose money at all. It was the primary grievance of guys in the field that we were not entrusted with “walking around money.” The army supposedly had its reasons, propriety and accounting issues chief among them. What the army didn’t realize was that the Iraqis considered it proper to give money to someone you trusted. These kids had just betrayed some organization—an organization that obviously had weapons. In return, we could only offer them a soccer ball or a T-shirt. Alternatively, they could get a voucher and go to the FOB, wait hours (or days), and receive money, all the while revealing themselves to everyone as informants and placing themselves in even greater danger. Watching them stand near the Humvees with an expectant look, I knew that this would not be the time to disappoint them. After all, they could have just as easily signaled the IED owner to blow us up, but they made a choice to help us at greater personal cost. I resolved to do the same.

  “Get those three guys into the Humvees,” I told the noncommissioned officer who was my second in command, “and be rough.”

  After a quick flurry of barked orders, bewildered expressions, and confused looks, the Iraqis were in plastic handcuffs in the Humvees, and we were speeding off. While I was sitting there, I had an idea. I had given Said Mallek money several times now. The scrap metal convoy delivered money to him; the contracts in this neighborhood to install the sewage pumps were awarded to his brother, who profited very well; and the trash removal project was being carried out by members of his tribe. This had all been by design, and his influence on the council and in the community had provided a calming effect. But at this moment, I needed cash.

  We drove quickly from the neighborhood, down the dirt roads that fronted acres of flooded farmland, and headed toward the compound belonging to Said Mallek. The kid in my Humvee cried and pleaded with me the entire time, but I did not bother to console him. It would not have been possible to explain to him what was about to happen, and it was not any easier to explain it to Said Mallek.

  When we arrived at his house, I was out of the truck while it was still rolling, and the soldiers hurried to catch up. The dozens of young men lounging in the courtyard suddenly seemed very interested in all of the commotion.

  “Weyen Said Mallek?” I asked loudly and to no one in particular in one of my few Arabic phrases. (Where is Said Mallek?)

  “Salaam.” The smooth voice came from the doorway just ahead of us. Always calm, Said Mallek appeared almost out of nowhere.


  “I need money,” I demanded.

  I then explained to him as simply as I could that he owed me money, and I wanted the dinar equivalent of $10 (10,000 dinars) paid to each of these kids. Moreover, I wanted it done immediately. Although he pretended not to understand me, I could tell from his eyes he knew very well what I was saying. We went back and forth for a few minutes until he said, “Five,” and held up his hand.

  “Okay,” I said. “Five thousand dinars.”

  He reached into his pocket while I asked for the kids to be brought around. For a moment I felt bad for them. They had really helped us out, and now I could see the tear stains on their dirt-streaked faces. Said Mallek greeted them and gave each of them 5,000 dinars. Their relief almost brought them to the ground. As I turned to leave, he invited them inside for tea. The whole clan was assembling inside the house, along with its three new members.

  As we drove back to the FOB, I now saw each person in the street differently. They were not merely friends or enemies. Now they all had the potential to be allies, not only passively accepting the U.S. Army but actively helping us avoid ambushes. Their only expectation was money, and I now had a rapid way to convert my contracting power into cash. The council, the contracting money, and successful combat operations had just been synthesized in this very transaction.

  I briefed my commander on what had happened. He was ecstatic. We had always felt that economics—specifically, the ability to generate economic activity via contracting—would be our biggest advantage, but this newest twist, explicitly tying the contract award to helping us find IEDs and reaching back to the council members to disgorge profits, seemed to be the ideal solution. While this plan not only obviated the need for U.S. soldiers to carry cash, it also strengthened the role of the council member by making him the person who bestowed wealth and made our soldiers more secure. From that point on, all reward payments were directed to me, and I began to establish accounts with council members in every neighborhood.

  To make this plan work well, two key steps had to occur. A council member needed to get a project approved, and I needed to have some idea about how much money he owed for the opportunity to have it. The process for awarding contracts remained in a nascent stage, and the criteria we had been using all along included a direct benefit to the neighborhoods. The only real question was how to get the contract awardees to agree that they owed something back. As it turns out, that part was the easiest. In the early days, each time a contract was awarded, the council member had tried to hand me an envelope of cash as thanks. I had always laughed this off as clumsy blackmail, but, in truth, it was an Iraqi custom. In my mind, we could consider it an income tax, whereby we, the acting government, would ask for the money in order to redistribute it to social welfare programs as we saw fit. Clearly, there were no laws on taxation in postinvasion Iraq. The needs were the same or worse than in any other community in the world, so why not simply make a side agreement that from whatever amount you have received from the army for a contract, a certain percentage must remain available for emergency distribution? I knew the Iraqis would not care. The interpreters probably took a larger cut for translating their bids into English. The plan was set.

  That night I sat on my bed and watched an episode of The Sopranos. The people of Abu Discher were not the only ones enjoying better lives these days. Improvements to our living quarters had continued unabated. The mattresses had all been replaced, the hot water heater in the shower only occasionally went out, and the arrival of a television and a Sony PlayStation had turned a room full of captains into a fraternity house. Lying there watching Tony Soprano control his crime family with violence and coercion, I realized that we were all living in the Sopranos’ moment, sans the organization. We had our family here—the army—and across the street the Iraqis had their families, the tribes. All of us were trying to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam, in one way or another. While we were using money and occasionally violence, the other families were using violence and religion. Now if only the tribes could coalesce around some defined leaders, we might actually achieve the level of “governance” depicted in the fictional TV series about New Jersey, which wasn’t much—but it was more than we had at the moment.

  The only problem was that although there were still a colossal number of burned-out hulks, no more convoys were taking Iraqi army equipment out of our sector, thanks to a crackdown on the national level. To continue to patronize the tribes that were sympathetic to coalition initiatives, we needed some new ideas. The contract ideas were good but limited. The ideas of Said Mallek seemed like a perfect solution. By starting several mass labor projects around the sector and employing a large number of people, we could start paying Iraqis directly and give them a chance to feel that they were earning a living. For the most part, people had begun to agree that disbanding the Iraqi army was the single worst decision the United States had made in Iraq. By sending home tens of thousands of fighters, unemployed and bitter, ripe for recruitment into various insurgencies, the United States had sown the seeds of the very problems it had not yet solved. Yet the deal on the table solved both of those problems; it created an “army” of job holders. The ancillary benefits of security and further ingratiation with the majority of the population made the deal a slam-dunk.

  At our strategy meeting the following day, I floated the idea of the security force starting at five hundred people to guard various sites, overpasses, and intersections. They would be required to wear badges and carry their weapons openly. They would need radios and would be in contact with the American patrols that worked those areas. The idea was met with broad skepticism. We were arming and authorizing as guards the same people who had recently shot at us?

  We had no real choice. Our continued progress toward legitimacy rested on our ability to provide security. The incidents of people reporting IEDs had risen, but so had the number of illegal roadblocks established by the mujahideen to intimidate the population. These roadblocks were witnessed by us only via unmanned aerial vehicles. Three or four heavily armed trucks would appear in a street and begin to stop cars, taking money, CDs, and anything Western. Occasionally, there would be an execution of a driver or two. Although these roadblocks happened no more than once every five or six days, we could never track the perpetrators, and that exposed our one weakness. We were not Iraqi. We did not live in the neighborhoods. As much as we tried to be present, we could not be everywhere. The insurgents, on the other hand, were everywhere and nowhere. They lived in the streets and could form into a striking force as quickly as lightning, then disappear like the wind. Their disruption directly refuted our claims of security and stability. In a battle for the population, it was a test of our ability to provide economic gain against the insurgents’ ability to rob the neighborhood of security. The people were scared, and they appeared ready to turn away from money and toward security. We had to offer both. The plan for our “private army” was approved.

  Now for employment. This idea came from the captain in our unit who was responsible for directing artillery. In the absence of artillery pieces, his job became managing our reputation, and he was keenly aware of the same problems I had noted. His solution was a step further than anyone had yet taken. Along the most dangerous roads in our sector, exactly in the heart of Ba’ath Party territory, was the sewage plant. Contracts from the Green Zone to rebuild this plant were repeatedly being set back, due to the violence in the area and the intimidation by the local tribes. These tribes were not amenable to speaking with us. They had no council representation and seemed content to wait for the return of Saddam. They were also lethal, firing nightly rocket attacks into the Green Zone and on at least two occasions executing contractors who worked in the sewage treatment plant. They had an advantage, in that they were a twenty-minute drive from the FOB, down the only road that provided access to their territory. It was a death trap for our patrols, which had seen an increase in IEDs, and we sought a way to balance the threat.

  The n
ew idea was to dig a landfill, by hand, adjacent to the sewage treatment plant. Harkening back to the days of the Civilian Conservation Corps, this project could employ more than a thousand people. We could pay them a low wage. They would bring their own shovels, and they could start digging. Of course, we would hire someone to survey the area and give them the broad outlines, but in large measure it was about process, not result. This idea quickly spawned more ideas, eventually leading to more than five thousand Shi’a laborers sweeping streets, dredging canals, and painting curbs.

  The final piece of our approach was a weapons buyback program. A similar program had just ended in an adjacent area, to great reviews. The idea was simple. I would get the current prices for a variety of weapons and IEDs from the black market, and we would offer a slightly higher rate, for one day, on an amnesty basis. This plan also sparked some criticism, particularly from members of the staff who thought this was a “weapons upgrade” program, which allowed people to get money for their weapons and buy better ones. This was a definite possibility, because weapons prices in our area had fallen considerably since April. As a matter of course, I always had our interpreters inquire in the markets about weapons and their prices. It seemed that before a major offensive, weapons prices would rise, and in periods of peace, prices would fall. So far, the data had been sparse, but there was a certainty that AK-47s that had previously cost $50 when we arrived in March had risen to $125 for a brief time and were now selling for $100. That was good news.

  I called Ali and told him to pass the word about the buyback program. The response was almost instantaneous. Within minutes, my cell phone started to buzz. Caller ID said “Ali.”

  “Said Mallek wants to meet tomorrow. He wants you to meet someone who knows who put the IED there. He wants to meet tomorrow at noon at the new Husseinya that Imam Sa’ad is building.”

  “Okay, see you there. Be early.” I switched off.