August 2004 · Volume 86 · Number 7

Making Sense of the War in Iraq

by Wes Hare

There is more to war than combat. I learned this lesson shortly after I arrived in Iraq last September to begin more than six months of service as a local government adviser. I quickly realized that my greatest enemy would be my own attitude.

I arrived in Karbala on September 15, following some brief training at ICMA’s office in Washington, D.C., and a slightly longer session in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the offices of RTI International. During the training, it became apparent that although President Bush had declared the end of the war in May 2003, we would nonetheless be working in a war zone.

Machine gunners in the back of the Humvees also trained their weapons on what I had thought were our two innocent civilian contractor vehicles. We soon learned that we were mistaken for two SUVs that had been reported stolen.

A few gruesome pictures and the session on handling of explosive devices dispelled any doubts I may have had about the danger of working in Iraq. It is not surprising that a number of people left the project during or immediately after the training. The brief course may have alerted me to some of the dangers of my new job, but it did not prepare me for the trip to or my arrival in Karbala.

I was not warned, for example, that the six-hour trip from Kuwait to Karbala would be made in a two-vehicle convoy traveling at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. I must have offended someone because I was segregated from my companions and put in an SUV that was filled with five-gallon gas cans and driven by an Iraqi who spoke no English.

The gas fumes were apparently anesthetizing, so I was not affected by the high speeds until we hit a pile of gravel on the side of the road. I believe this was the closest I came to dying while I was in Iraq, and I expressed this belief, while the car was airborne, by teaching the driver a new vocabulary word.

Shortly after I recovered from this experience, two American Humvees went speeding by us on the highway and set up a roadblock about a quarter-mile away. Our vehicles stopped, and two American soldiers approached us with their M16s leveled at our windshields. Machine gunners in the back of the Humvees also trained their weapons on what I had thought were our two innocent civilian contractor vehicles. We soon learned that we were mistaken for two SUVs that had been reported stolen. The remainder of the journey was uneventful.

First Impressions

My first night in Karbala was probably my most difficult one in Iraq. I was dropped off at a hotel in the heart of the city, and my international colleagues were all out of town. The hotel staff were friendly, but no one spoke English, and my Arabic was limited to “Salaam Allekum” (a greeting meaning “Peace be with you.”).

I had no means of contacting my family, and the hotel room, although comfortable, took on, for me, the appearance of a cell. I love wandering around strange cities, but I had been specifically instructed not to go out without a “PSD” (personal security detachment). The worst of my character emerged, and I sat in my room beginning to feel sorry for myself. A short prayer and a little divine intervention rescued me, allowing me to win the first of many battles I would fight with myself in the months that followed. The divine intervention took the form of friends.

Jerry Kuhaida is the former mayor of Oakridge, Tennessee, and I have to believe that that city must have received more grant money during his term of office than any other city in the United States. I base this observation on what I saw of Jerry’s uncanny ability to find resources where none appeared to exist. He was able to “liberate” cases of water, gasoline, butter, cheese, and even ice cream for the benefit of his colleagues working in Karbala.

Jerry and I spent a memorable evening celebrating his birthday with two Iraqi colleagues, Asseal and Alaa, while touring the city center and the area around the shrines of Imam Hussain and Imam Abbass. Rice and chicken composed the birthday dinner and formed part of about 90 percent  of the meals I ate in Iraq.

The people we met that night in downtown Karbala treated us with great warmth and friendship. We tried to buy some prayer beads at a stall, but the owner would not take our money. He insisted on giving the strings of beads as gifts. Jerry was transferred to Hilla not long after our excursion and returned home shortly before me in March of this year.

Vijaya Samaraweera was the team leader in Karbala throughout the time I worked there, and I will always value our friendship. Vijaya, who is a Sri Lankan-American who earned a Ph.D. from Oxford and a U.S. law degree before becoming an international expert on the rule of law; organized the office in Karbala and personally visited more than 80 villages, helping to improve water systems, roads, and other basic services.

Soon after I left Karbala, Vijaya and the remaining international staff were forced to take refuge at a Polish military compound, where they endured some difficult conditions for a two-week period. Every time my attitude would start to suffer from the predictable frustrations associated with work and being away from my family, a friend would step forward to quietly offer support. More often than not, the friend was one of my Iraqi colleagues.

It is almost too painful to write about friends like Hamid, Ali, Asseal, Ismail, Waseem, Sabah, Jassim, Alaa, Alyaa, Gaida, and many others. There is a tragic tendency to assume that the people of Iraq do not share our values. Based on my experience, I will always believe in the essential goodness of the vast majority of the Iraqi people.

My friend Ismail, a young chemical engineer, sent me the following e-mail a few weeks ago: “Dear Mr. Wes, How are you? I hope you spend a good time with your family. How is the little baby (my newest granddaughter)? All the staff are good, the international and the local, but the office is closed. In spite of these circumstances we shall fight to build our country. Waseem here send his regards and wishing to you a good time with your family. Please correspond with us and do not forget your little sons Waseem and Ismail. God bless you and keep safe your family. Yours, Ismail.”

Home Again

Since my return from Iraq, many people have made a point of commending me for my bravery. While I am grateful for any praise I receive, the truth is that I saw much more courage in Iraq than I ever exercised myself. The courage that most impressed me was the willingness to do difficult and dangerous things while knowing that extremely unpleasant consequences would follow.

I never really believed that anything bad would happen to me during the nearly seven months I spent living and working in Karbala, aside from the one brief moment in the flying SUV. It’s hard to claim courage when most of your time is spent doing ordinary things, and the greatest danger you face is a car wreck.

Many of my Iraqi colleagues did not have it so easy. Dr. Talib Al-Hamdani is an Iraqi-American who arrived in Karbala a couple of months after I did. He left a good job in California and his wife in the United Arab Emirates to return home to an uncertain future. Talib had spent the past 25 years in the United States, where he earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Utah.

He is now living and working in Karbala, attempting to promote democracy in a country that has only a vague idea of what the term means. Prior to Talib’s arrival, I was the designated lecturer on democracy. I would like to believe that my efforts were not a complete failure, but most of my audiences had a difficult time getting past the fact that I was an American.

I was usually the first American they had spoken with in person, so I was often held accountable for issues like why the United States did not conquer Saddam Hussein in 1991, the theft of Iraqi oil by the Coalition, and the capitulation of U.S. democracy to corporations.

Talib made an immediate impression. He was able to talk about democracy and Islam to audiences in their native tongue, and his doctoral dissertation, which examined the influence of a respected cleric on the politics of his people, was a subject of great interest to Iraqis. When I spoke to audiences about democracy, their reaction was either polite at best or hostile, while Talib’s audiences were engrossed.

He plans to remain in Iraq and work to rebuild his country. Following my departure on March 25, Karbala became a dangerous place, as supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr attacked public buildings and forced the evacuation of international staff from the city. Talib chose to stay behind and continue his work. I haven’t heard from him since I left, although I believe he is safe.

His decision to return to and stay in Iraq required great courage and sacrifice. I used to joke with him that I expected him to be the first popularly elected president of his country, and he would tell me that I could return and be his local government adviser. I can imagine no greater honor.

My friend and colleague Sandra Tripp-Jones, the former city manager of Santa Barbara, California, described her view of her Iraq experience as being “the flea on the back of the elephant.” Like Sandra, I saw only a small part of the situation, so I do not have good answers to all the troubling questions about Iraq and the U.S. presence there. The best sense I have been able to make of the war in Iraq is a belief that the courage, sacrifice, and commitment of people from Iraq and from all parts of the world will eventually prevail.

Wes Hare is city manager of La Grande, Oregon (whare@ucinet.com).