General Streeter has to attend meetings with General Casey at Camp Victory, so I decide to go with Ambassador Negroponte and Whitey Courts to Kirkuk and then visit the site in the desert where USAID is building the power station that is awaiting the turbine stuck in Jordan.
I'm already at a table waiting for Courts with my breakfast half eaten when he sits down and says, "I saw you limping the other day."
"I've got these dehydration cramps. Water zips right through me."
"How do you feel otherwise?"
"Last night I was on the elliptical trainer and the heart rate started showing 190. I got off. I'd have to climb Mt. Everest to crank my heart up to 190."
"Did you feel anything in your chest?"
"Nothing."
"Your arm? They say that's where the heart attack starts. Nausea? Dizziness?"
Courts's clinical inquiry amuses me. His eyes are red. He's exhausted from fifteen-hour days. "If anyone is going to die of a heart attack, it'll be you," I tell him.
"You got that right," he agrees. "My alarm goes off this morning, and I could have been in the casket." Courts sticks out his lower lip pensively. "Really, what's the difference between this and being dead? We're in this giant prison camp. Reporters call me from their hotel rooms and ask what's up. I'm locked in my cell; they're locked in theirs. How am I supposed to know what's up?" His hair is lighter than his eggs. His skin is pasty white. He's wearing a yellow shirt so that at least the friendlies don't kill him. But what Arab terrorist ever looked like Whitey Courts? "Why don't you go to the medical unit and ask about that leg and the heart rate before we go?" he suggests. "We've got time."
There still are no doctors at the clinic, so I explain to a medic that I have a burning cramp in my left thigh. The medic says I should keep drinking fluids and eat bananas. I say there aren't any bananas. "Sometimes there are," he counters. "When they come in, people grab a lot and then put them in their refrigerators. Just eat a few a day, even if they go rotten. That's all I can tell you, and keep up those fluids. Take Gatorade packs when they're out there."
I go back to my office and get my vest and helmet. The thought of wearing either in the desert heat is repulsive. Then, I cross the rotunda and pass through Courts's immense staff—only two of whom are useful to him—and let him lead the way to Landing Zone (LZ) Washington.
"You feel like you're going to fall off the edge of the world whenever you go anywhere around here," he tells me. "I went down to Basra with the ambassador last week. Oh, Jesus. Today we've got about an hour and a half, but Basra is almost three. I was completely drenched by the time we got there. And then these Basrans! All polite at first, but wait till they get going on the ambassador: nothing works, no money, no reconstruction, no security, no freedom, no word from Baghdad, what's with this Interim government, whose idea was that, why don't these people answer the phone? All the time the Brits are listening, mortified. They're supposed to be in control down there, and now Negroponte is hearing they're screwing it up completely. Of course, Negroponte is deadpan, but he can see for himself everywhere we go that what they're saying is true. Garbage all over the place, and these poor people have to live in it. I'd go nuts. Finally, this one sheik looks Negroponte in the eye and says, 'In America, if a man takes his dog to the lake and the dog goes out in the water and starts drowning, the man can call on his cell phone and a helicopter will come right away and pull the dog out. We know this!' he says. 'Why doesn't America at least help the Iraqis way it would help its dogs?' Now I ask you: What was Negroponte supposed to say?"
Apaches Riding Shotgun
We pass through the gates of LZ Washington and climb into the second of two Blackhawks. In due course, the choppers rev and begin rising. The Tigris, Baghdad, the yellow-brown horizon, the crumbling buildings and neighborhoods, the palms... all begin to give way to an unfolding scene of agricultural landholdings—run-down farms of indeterminate size—and then, the desert thrusts its way into view, swallowing the farms with endless miles of sterile landforms, somehow mind-like when the mind has no thoughts or capacity to think, just the gray folds of the desiccated brain.
We fly low, and we fly hot, right over the griddle. I notice two Apaches in the distance riding shotgun, protecting us from the nothingness in which we are enveloped. Courts and I glance at each other. He's seen the Apaches, too. Absurd, it's all absurd. Before long we're both soaked with sweat as we buck and brawl through the miserable desert heat.
Finally, the Blackhawks drop even lower as we begin flying over Kirkuk, which resembles a mouthful of not very clean teeth. This is disturbing. Kirkuk is supposed to anchor one of Iraq's wealthier regions, sitting on top of its northern oil and gas reserves. If things are so rough here, what hope is there anywhere else?
Kirkuk
We land inside the compound of the former headquarters of the Northern Oil Company. Today is the day this facility formally becomes the "Regional Embassy Office in Kirkuk." Negroponte is here, in part, to commemorate that fact. Immediately, I find myself humbled by the isolation of serving in Kirkuk. The embassy office is staffed by seventy-two people—sixty security guards and twelve reporting officers, communications specialists, and administrative personnel. They sleep in shifts upstairs and are jammed together like sardines in their workspace downstairs. The officers stationed here cannot get out of this little compound more than once or twice a week.
The head of the embassy office invites his subordinates to say a few words about the political, economic, and security situation. We hear that the Kurds believe Kirkuk is Kurdish and so are its oil and gas. But starting in the 1970s, Saddam began pushing the Kurds out of Kirkuk and populating it with Arabs from the south. He did the same to villagers in the countryside, eliminating perhaps one thousand villages and replacing them with the mass graves with which I have recently become familiar. Caught in the middle were the Assyrian Christians and the Turkmen, whose affinity is with Turkey, not the Kurds or the Arabs.
Now the Kurds are encouraging families pushed out of Kirkuk to push back in. The Arabs are resisting; the Assyrian Christians are taking cover; and the Turkmen are keeping Turkey apprised of Kurdistan's repopulation policies. Meanwhile the insurgency, cum indigenous Islamic extremists, is raiding the periphery of Kirkuk, whose final status is unresolved. Is Kirkuk really the Kurd's Jerusalem? Woe to him who would answer yes or no, but the fact is that impoverished Kurds are arriving by the hundreds every day from Kurdistan proper, and housing is in short supply. This means internally displaced people camps are overflowing with both immigrants and emigrants, neither having a permanent place to stay. And just as in Basra, Baghdad offers no answers.
Listening to all this drama and dreariness, I am perversely chipper because it doesn't sound as if Kirkuk will explode in the next six months. Kurdistan's war-hardened leaders quiver like Dobermans in the north. Beyond the mountains, the Turks are hyperventilating. But there's a kind of violent stasis here.
Working the Crowd
We go outside to conduct a ceremony in the fierce late morning sun. Some press have been brought in, some dignitaries, too. Afterward, we go back inside and have a little feast. As trained, I begin working the crowd, extending my hand and wading into linguistic terra incognita. Some educated Iraqis speak English; many know a little bit; many don't know a word. Doesn't matter. They like being greeted. Fortunately, after my third grip and grin, I meet a former executive from the Northern Oil Company; his English is quite good, so we talk through the oil agenda. This building once was his headquarters, but he doesn't seem crestfallen by its demise. "I know you must think things are terrible here," he says, "but we will keep doing what we can, and at some point, we will have more success, yes? Five years. Ten years. If we are left alone to do it, we can do it, but we need foreign investment and technology. We're behind. We have to catch up." He is a British-trained engineer turned executive. The politics he leaves to others, but he knows there are worse politics and better politics. "Under Saddam, we did have revenue sharing. We shared our revenues with him. He didn't share his with us. That's got to change, sir. I am not Kurdish. I am Arab, but I know this. We should be a reasonably comfortable country—I don't say Switzerland—yet you have seen what you have seen. Twenty billion dollars a year in oil revenues have destroyed our economic common sense."
The reception comes to an end. We go back outside for a motorcade that will take us to the government building for a sit-down civic discussion. Two explosions occur a mile or so away.
"Mortars," Courts says, sliding beside me in the back seat of a Suburban. "Just heard it from one of the security types. No casualties."
The road between the embassy office and the government building downtown has been cleared for us with Humvees stationed at quarter-mile intervals. We race past plywood kiosks full of canned goods, slumping apartment complexes, and trashy, vacant lots. A Third World scene. Life in scraps, swarthy people wearing dirty clothes, apparently inured to the fierce, dry heat. The government building is a blockhouse with wide stairwells. Its conference room is packed with press, aides, servants, and more of Kirkuk's leading citizens. With animal-like poise, Negroponte goes from person to person at the table, offering his greetings. It is as though he were a sizeable stag making his way through the forest understory, greeting the trees. There's nothing pompous about this. He's almost delicate as he meets and focuses on each dignitary, one woman among them.
When we're all seated, the governor tells Negroponte that everyone is working together to make a new, better, democratic Kirkuk. Yes, there are problems: housing, jobs, and the terrorists, but there is freedom in Kirkuk and opportunity. The mayor seconds the governor. They're both handsome Kurds with thick black hair and powerful jaws. A third Kurd, apparently a law professor, speaks in English. He's a slender fellow, very proud of his English, and he likes the word "mosaic," which he uses three times in describing the social conditions and opportunities for all the citizens of Kirkuk. When he concludes with a peroration about the possibilities for tourism in Kirkuk, I imagine him as a provincial romantic out of Chekhov, unfit to deal with the brutish nouveaux riches (us) who have just become the town's largest landowners. Little does he know that we know there's oil here, and essentially nothing else.
The next three speakers—Turkmen, Assyrian Christian, and Arab—see a different Kirkuk. The Turkmen states that Kirkuk is, always has been, and always will be a Turkmen city. The Arabs have no place in this region and should go back south. The Kurds have no place here either; they should go back north. All the Turkmen ask is that the new Iraq—if there is to be a new Iraq—recognize their historic place and leave them in Kirkuk in peace.
Now, it's the woman's turn. She's Assyrian Christian. Figures I have seen put the Assyrian Christians around one percent of the population. Not a strong hand, but there is always the moral argument, which she plays well, citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the imperatives of religious freedom and pluralism, and Christianity's profound desire to promote peace and love. "We do not need to trace our historical trajectory," she concludes. "Before anyone else, Assyrians ruled this land, but for millennia we have been ruled by Jesus Christ Our Lord." How the Assyrians became Christians interests me, and I make a note to ask Strangeness about this, but then, the sole Arab speaks, interrupting my note taking. He isn't swallowing anything he's heard so far. Generations of his people, he says, have lived in Kirkuk, rescued Kirkuk, and built Kirkuk. Now they are being overrun by people with false claims, and no one is doing anything about it. Hold a census, he tells Negroponte, but do it now, so that he can see that the Arabs are the majority in Kirkuk and have been for decades. Yet they are being chased from their homes, pushed out of government jobs, intimidated on the streets, boycotted in the marketplace, and attacked at night by lawless gangs. Kirkuk has no future if things keep going like this, he says, never once looking at the governor, the mayor, or the aspiring director of tourism.
No Promises
Negroponte pauses to let everyone know that he's taken it all in, every perspective, every injury and allegation. The worst thing he could do would be to respond directly to any of it or make any promises. Their conflict isn't going to be settled by a first-time visitor. Instead, he simply repeats, almost verbatim, the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 1546 and the provision therein pertaining to Kirkuk and its eventual disposition by a duly elected government, which he hopes everyone present will help select. Then, we go outside for group press photos in which the Arab will not appear because he won't stand next to the Kurds, although he'd welcome a photo with Negroponte by himself.
Next, we fly into the desert and land outside a thirty-acre fenced construction site that is half trailer park and half power plant. We begin the visit in a doublewide, frosty cold trailer set up theater style where the lead engineer, the contracting rep, and the liaison from the Ministry of Electricity present their project. The lead engineer seems to be Welsh, which makes him pleasant to listen to as he describes the strategic location of this site on the Iraqi power grid. The Ministry of Electricity liaison also speaks English fluently. He praises the quality of the Iraqi workforce engaged in the project and the opportunities they are deriving from participating. "There is no power generating facility in Iraq that is more modern or sophisticated than this," he says proudly, "so our people are grateful not only for the electricity we badly need but the chance to learn about new technologies and systems."
"We have had a few security delays, but not many," the contracting representative says. "We had insurgents destroying segments of the transmission grid. When they saw how effectively we could make repairs with a specialized crane, they attacked the crane one night. But now we've got two cranes, both under guard, and the attacks have died down. We won't be generating power for some time because the turbine is still in Jordan, but we'll take you outside now to give you a sense how big it is by looking at where we're going to install it."
We walk out into the heat, all of us in yellow hardhats, no need for vests because we are in the middle of nowhere. Iraqi workers smile and nod to us. As usual, it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I could do without the hard hat and feel my inner thigh smarting. I look back at the trailer camp. Again, I'm humbled. How can people work in places like this for months at a time? It's like being trapped in a submarine in a waterless ocean. But then I consider what the Iraqis are getting for free: a 300-million-dollar power plant. We study the structure within which the wayward turbine will be fitted. It's the size of a Saturn V exhaust cone.
Feeling Stupid
Finally, we walk back out to the helicopters, which for some reason are three now. I seem to recall that the one I was riding in landed in front of Negroponte's, so I trudge over there through the sucking sand. After I climb on board, I see a Marine waving at me to get out. "This one's acting up," he yells. He gestures at the two choppers behind us, about sixty yards away. "You're over there, sir!" I dig into the squishy sand again and almost buckle under the leaden heat. I'm soaked; my thigh seizes; it's very difficult to jerk myself forward. The rotors on the two helos back there already are beginning to wonk and wheel. Alone in the rising and falling sand, I feel stupid holding everyone up, but I can't unlock my seized left leg; I have to swing it with my hip, plant it, then pull forward with my right leg. Only sixty yards, but suffocating. I get to the chopper on the left and find it's full with Negroponte and his guards. This, it turns out, is the new bird. Now I have to lurch across the sand to the third one while everyone waits for me. This is too hard, too hot. When I finally get there, an airman gives me a shove from behind to propel me up and in.
Courts watches all this comedy, too wasted to even laugh. His face, which for a moment I mistake for my face—Who is he? Who am I—is skeletal. Brother Death.
[Editor's note: This article has been slightly edited for purposes of language. The author did not know at the time that he had developed a deep vein thrombosis in his left thigh.]