Sisters in War

by Christina Asquith

  “Yeah, it’s still better than being a journalist under Saddam,” said Zia’s friend Susan. “All we did there was read a piece of paper into the camera.”

  Zia agreed. And if IMN overdid it in projecting the positive side of the story, it was only fair; Zia felt the mainstream media tilted the other way, showing only criticism of the U.S. effort and publicizing the increasing number of attacks on the soldiers. Zia attended many big press conferences with Ambassador Bremer, and the questions from the American and British media were more like accusations, often beginning with “Wouldn’t you say …” or “Isn’t it true …” The CPA worked hard, and was making some achievements; at least IMN showed that. Zia still believed in the project.

  And now, as a manager, Zia felt like she might be able to make a difference, and she knew her decisions affected others. Aware of her heightened position, she always had lunch with the Iraqi staffers and tried to stay on their level. When Ramadan came around, she gave them envelopes of cash—money from her own pocket—as was the tradition. She felt a real emotional investment in the office. Despite her problem with the channel’s content, as the fall wore on she could see all her efforts bearing fruit as the office came together.

  Another thing that kept her feeling happy about her work was a new friendship she’d developed inside the Green Zone. Ironically, it was with one of the contractors. Keith was a forty-eight-year-old senior network engineer for a U.S. company, hired to set up the server in Zia’s office. He was more than six feet tall, with a broad chest, sunburned cheeks, and flecks of silver in his brown hair. They called him the “tech guy,” and everyone liked him. He made jokes at the meetings. When everyone else was rushing around on deadline, Keith liked to say “Take it easy,” which he explained was a popular phrase from back home in California. Although Zia knew he drank alcohol, he cursed a lot less than the other contractors and, most important, he was respectful to Iraqis. He treated the staff as equals, made friends with everyone, and asked lots of questions about the country.

  He flirted, too, particularly with Zia. Whenever he came into the offices, he smiled at her. She couldn’t deny being flattered.

  Over time, they got to know each other. Keith rushed into a friendship, letting all his emotions and stories and opinions hang out, but Zia tiptoed much more cautiously. Islam didn’t condone such friendships, since they opened the door to sexual temptation. (The Prophet taught, “When a man is alone with a woman, Satan is with them.”) But Zia decided there was nothing wrong in spending time with Keith in the company of others.

  Eventually, he asked to eat lunch in her office, and she agreed—as long as they left the door open. Keith’s manner was easygoing and non-judgmental, and Zia found herself speaking openly about her opinions of IMN.

  “Iraqis have satellite television now. They can watch dozens of other Arab channels, and no one is watching IMN. Iraqis call it ‘a mouthpiece for the occupation,’ ” she worried.

  “Hey, they’ve got a hundred million dollars, and it’s not exactly going to the channel,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Keith explained that IMN was run by one of dozens of U.S. corporations with multimillion-dollar Pentagon contracts to reconstruct Iraq. “Look around you,” he laughed, gesturing at the bare room and the equipment left over from Saddam. “Where’s the money going?”

  Zia had always thought that they were making do with a low budget.

  “Do you know what Americans get paid to be here?” he asked.

  “What?” Zia asked, not sure she wanted to hear.

  “Some get a thousand a day, plus meals and housing and transportation.”

  She felt stung. Most Iraqi workers, Zia knew, were paid only six dollars a day.

  Conversations with Keith made Zia’s head spin. He came from the contractor world, but he talked to her like they were equals. He never tried to sugarcoat the situation, like the CPA people or the White House people. He was honest and forthright. When she danced around questions about the background of the contractors, he laughed.

  “Zia, if these guys had any kind of normal life back in the States, why would they leave it and come all the way across the world to work in a war zone? Half these guys are running away from alimony payments.” He laughed again. “Not exactly the best and brightest.”

  They talked and talked. Even though Keith broke down some of her idealism about the States and IMN, he also shared her hope. For all the corruption and sleaze, neither of them doubted that, in the end, the USA was going to succeed in Iraq. And for all his frankness, Keith was no cynic—quite the opposite.

  He told Zia the story of taking an Iraqi man atop the convention center to install an antenna. From the rooftop they could see all of Baghdad, and their gaze fell upon the nearby zoo. The Ferris wheel was broken, the cages were empty, the boats in the ponds sat on mud, and the grass was dead. Keith’s Iraqi companion teared up, and pointed in the distance to a mosque under construction. It was the size of several football stadiums; Saddam believed he could impress the Muslim world by building the largest, most expensive mosque in the Middle East—even if Iraqis starved, they died of simple diseases, and their children begged on the streets. “I used to drive past that mosque and hate Saddam. We were starving while he was building that. Now I stand here and look at Baghdad and I actually feel there might be hope for the future,” the man had said.

  As Keith told that story, tears welled up in his eyes. “It rips me up to see things like the zoo. Those places should be filled with green grass and families having picnics and children laughing.”

  Zia was touched by his concern. No other American seemed to care in such a heartfelt way about her country.

  “Why don’t you let me take you out to lunch sometime?” he suggested once, casually.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “What, like on a date, with you?” Zia said. Iraqis don’t date, she thought. “Um, you’re a friend who I work with, and that’s it.”

  Keith pretended to pull a gun out of a holster at his hip, and aimed it down. “Bang!” he said, grinning.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I just shot myself in the foot. Any woman says to you, ‘You’re a friend,’ that’s it. It never goes further. That’s the kiss of death in our country.”

  Zia laughed, but she couldn’t explain how different things must be here from his world in California. In any case, she had to admit that Keith was fun to be around, and she found herself thinking about him more and more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN LATE SEPTEMBER, Aqila al-Hashimi left her home, bodyguards in tow, and began her morning commute to the Green Zone. An Iraqi mother who had just turned fifty, with bobbed black hair and owlish glasses, al-Hashimi held a PhD from the Sorbonne, and was one of only three women appointed in July to Iraq’s new interim government. She was regarded with hope as a proponent of women’s rights.

  But that day she never reached her government office. Only a few blocks from her home, gunmen ambushed her car. Five days later, she died of her wounds. The news of the assassination reached Heather as she had just begun working on a project to promote women’s rights in Iraq. Instead, she found herself overseeing a memorial and consoling sad, terrified women, many of whom had known al-Hashimi. “Was she being punished for pushing women’s issues?” they wondered. Her attackers got away, and no one knew for certain the motive. Some speculated that al-Hashimi was punished because she didn’t wear the veil. Heather didn’t know how to respond.

  After a summer juggling dozens of different reconstruction projects (none of which came to fruition), Heather had changed gear. When her unit, 354th Civil Affairs, prepared to return to the States at the end of the summer, following their six-month rotation, she had requested to stay, with whatever organization would take her. She was assigned to the CPA to work on governance in the Baghdad region. Although she’d still be in fatigues and army boots, and carrying a
weapon, she was detailed to work mostly with civilians from the State Department and aid organizations. She was thrilled. Her dream job had always been to help the people of Iraq, and the army had just been a way of getting here. Besides, she was ready to move on. The U.S. Army might be the best in the world in warfare, but had been a nightmare of disorganization when it came to rebuilding and running a government. Every project fell apart in the details. The soldiers were tired, confused, hot, and overstretched, and were feeling like their work belonged to the CPA. In the last few weeks, kids had stopped waving and attacks against soldiers and Westerners had increased. By far, the biggest blow to the reconstruction effort came in August, when terrorists blew up the UN headquarters in Baghdad. About a mile away, Heather had felt the living room of her villa shake, and minutes later, concerned emails began pouring in. Unable to leave the Green Zone for security reasons, neither she nor her comrade—a trained paramedic—could rush to the scene. Twenty-two people were killed, including the much-beloved head of the mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who had survived for hours under the rubble before dying. How had terrorists slipped past 140,000 troops to blow up the UN building in the middle of occupied Baghdad? Morale sank. The United Nations withdrew its operations immediately. After a long hot summer of disappointments, most soldiers in her unit concluded that implementing democracy was merely a fantasy: mission impossible. The sense of adventure and purpose with which they had started the mission had worn away. She was sick of the greasy food, her grimy, salty army hat, and her grubby, hot Kevlar vest. Most of all, she was exhausted by the army’s increasing fixation on its own bureaucratic rules rather than on the deteriorating situation, as evidenced by the many memos emphasizing the importance of wearing the uniform correctly, fastening their seat belts, and passing the physical fitness test.

  Heather’s had been the lone voice arguing it was not the Iraqis’ fault; that this wasn’t working because the army was bureaucratic and inflexible. Soldiers weren’t trained in nation-building; most were trained to blow things up, not build them.

  Many soldiers had been shouted at by Iraqis who they were trying to help. “If those hajjis had any balls they would have overthrown Saddam themselves,” they responded. Hajjis was the derogatory nickname for Iraqis, taken from the Arabic word Hajj, which is the annual pilgrimage Muslims make to Mecca.

  Even Major Norcom, who had worked around the world, was calling democracy in Iraq a fantasy. “Coyne, it’s in the Iraqis’ DNA to be ruled by a strong man. They don’t get democracy.”

  Heather was glad to be at the CPA, among people who still believed. This was the “wave” that Heather and her unit had expected would be coming in on the heels of the troops, back in April. The mood behind the palace walls was energetic and optimistic. Everyone was willing to work from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m., and over dinner they talked of nothing but their big plans to rebuild Iraq. Few had spent much time outside the palace, working with Iraqis, Heather observed. But she was as keen as they were to believe that all their grand plans would succeed if they just worked hard enough. Inside the palace, the UN bombing was viewed as an “isolated incident” committed by Al Qaeda terrorists, not an albatross signaling worse acts of resistance to come.

  Heather sensed disorganization was still widespread, and there were aspects of the CPA that bothered her. New arrivals crowded the cafeteria and lines of tiny, white trailers rose up behind the palace to accommodate them. Although they were thousands of miles from home, the dynamic inside the CPA was becoming as insular and incestuous as in a small high school. Cliques formed, with status bestowed on those closest to Bremer’s inner circle. Romances flourished, although they usually died quickly. The sense of adventure and danger mingled to create a strong sexual energy that led to endless one-night stands, much gossiped about, in locales as exotic as Porta-Johns, Saddam’s poolside, and behind tanks. Although the hedonism would be shocking to an outsider, Heather rationalized it with the explanation that they were away from home for months, if not years. They were only human. She herself was no angel, although she had gone to great efforts to keep her flings private. Most in the CPA thrived on a mix of intense workdays and just-as-intense partying. But what Heather didn’t approve of was those who cared only about the latter. As the Green Zone became its own self-contained city, hundreds of corporate contractors arrived to fill jobs that had more to do with sustaining the CPA than helping Iraqis. Heather knew them as corporate contractors, and the most offensive were those assigned to the security of officials such as Bremer. They brandished their weapons and had a reputation as trigger happy when an unlucky Iraqi passed in their crosshairs. Their self-image as wild cowboys was backed by the absence of any law with which to restrain them. They operated under immunity from U.S. or Iraqi prosecution, and they knew it—occasionally getting themselves into late-night, drunken gun battles on the streets of the Green Zone. Heather steered clear of them and surrounded herself with those who believed in the mission. There were plenty of other groups to associate with. Tasks were massive, and CPA employees that she met described with awe their responsibilities, though no one doubted their ability to pull them off.

  Heather was hired to be a civil society officer in the Baghdad region; her job was to “build up civil society,” a nebulous goal that included supporting grassroots Iraqi organizations, developing local councils and community outreach, and supporting women’s groups. She was to oversee training and development for all the Iraqi civil society organizations; to support the local advisory councils, which were the building blocks of Iraq’s new democracy; and to take up Colin Powell’s call to bring women’s rights to the country.

  so FAR, HEATHER discovered, U.S. efforts on behalf of Iraqi women had been scattered and disorganized. Her friend Jody Lautenschlager was getting all the humanitarian groups together each week in the convention center. Bremer’s office had assigned women’s issues to the office of Judy Van Rest, a former regional director for the Peace Corps who had worked in D.C. under the Republican presidents Reagan and Bush senior. Her office was pushing women’s issues through its “democracy initiatives,” aiming to increase the number of women participating in the local advisory councils, but few women were even showing up for those meetings.

  Over a few weeks, Heather made friends with other U.S. aid workers interested in women’s issues. There were also people she met inside the palace who expressed interest: the hardworking State Department bureaucrat Stephanie Kuck, who was appointed to work on democracy and women’s issues in Judy Van Rest’s office; the handsome globetrotting ex-soldier Sloan Mann from the Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI), an arm of USAID; and the wryly cynical Eastern European aid worker Ester Lauferova—all had come up as people informally interested in the subject, but there was nothing connecting them, and they, like Heather, were swamped with other projects.

  One morning, though, at a staff meeting, her boss, Ted Morse, told an anecdote about a female engineer he had met the other day, on a trip to Baghdad’s electrical switching station, who had been prevented from rising in her career by Saddam’s government. (Heather had already realized that if there was one thing the CPA loved, it was anecdotes about how Iraqis had suffered under Saddam.)

  “Very few women are in technical or managerial positions in Baghdad’s municipality, yet Iraqi women are competent and highly educated,” he said. “How can we utilize women in terms of rebuilding civil society and in restructuring Iraq and get them into government, education, and politics?”

  Someone else mentioned a proposal that had been submitted a month earlier, suggesting that they build a series of women’s centers in Baghdad.

  “I like that idea,” Morse said. “Let’s do it! Where’s the proposal? Who can we give it to?”

  Inside the world of the CPA, Heather had been shocked to observe how massive decisions involving millions of dollars were made quickly, handed over to people with no experience, and yet few doubted that the outcome would be successful. No one was surprised when
he turned to her.

  “Um, okay,” she said.

  The budget was soon decided on: $1.4 million for the first of nine centers. For her, that was a massive sum, but in comparison with most other projects, it was a drop in the bucket. And just like that, Heather became in charge of the largest U.S. project on behalf of women in Iraq. She knew that many Iraqi women had been pushing for more to be done, and was excited to announce her program at one of Sergeant Lautenschlager’s meetings. Then al-Hashimi was killed. After a few days of grieving, the women seemed ready to return to the issues, but Heather noticed that the crowd was smaller and quieter.

  …

  WHEN IT CAME to Iraqi women’s rights, Heather didn’t want to meddle much in the substance of the issues. Sure, the hijab would irritate the heck out of her—it looked hot, and Iraqi women were always fiddling with it—but whether they wore it was their choice. She didn’t have strong feelings on how Iraqis should view abortion rights, marriage, children, or divorce, either, nor did she get involved in individual cases. She wanted the legislative processes in place so women’s views were represented equally. What those views were was entirely up to them.

  Heather had not come to Iraq specifically to promote women’s rights, and she didn’t know much about doing so. In that respect, she was a classic American postfeminist. Born in 1972, she was raised with an awareness of the feminist battles that preceded her, but she felt that the battles had all been fought by the time she came of age. Equal rights were something she took for granted. “Glass ceiling” was not part of her lexicon in high school and college. Work hard, and you’ll get ahead just like men, she had assumed. Any woman still talking about “feminism” was just part of a special interest group.

  But the older she got, the more she saw subtle signs of discrimination, small and large, although it wasn’t until she enlisted in the army that she really experienced blatant sexism. In the airplane to Kuwait, she had leaned forward to remove an item from the overhead container. A commanding officer slapped her on the ass. Heather had chewed him out so loudly she doubted he would ever try that again, but she had the confidence and experience of a thirty-year-old, and most of her female colleagues were much younger, some barely out of high school. They got harassed the most, and few stood up to the sexist banter and the occasional groping that was the norm in the military. When a woman is treated like that from age eighteen onward, she never really learns to stand up for herself, Heather knew.