Armored vehicles, T-walls, checkpoints, helicopters flying overhead, and occasional duck & cover alarms don't even phase me after 2 months.
VIP visits barely register a blip among most of the embassy staff. Since I've been here, we've had 2 secretaries, some deputy and assistant secretaries, numerous congressional delegations, and more visits are planned. In a normal embassy, these kinds of visits would shut down normal operations. Here, it's just another day in the IZ.
Simple pleasures are appreciated. A homemade banner to celebrate someone's birthday, a fresh egg, eating dinner outside now that it drops below 90 at night. Anything that breaks up the monotony.
I'm continuously amazed by the caliber of people here. Sure, there are a few stinkers. But there are some really smart people doing really good work. When all of this is over, nobody can say we didn't try.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Petraeus Show
In less than a week, General Petraeus will turn over control of the multi-national forces in Iraq to General Odierno. A colleague suggested that, before General Petraeus departs, I should attend one of his battlefield update assessments. The update is a daily meeting that covers everything from casualties and status of operations, to electricty output and media coverage.
Standing unobtrusively off to the side of the operations room where embassy personnel connect via video teleconference screens to the base camp where GEN Petraeus runs the meeting, I watched as each person briefed the general. Occasionally he would ask a question, offer a comment or congratulate them for a job well done. Even though I read the battlefield update materials every day, it was fascinating to see it in person. It was a great education of what our military is achieving every single day. I was also impressed with the precision and conciseness with which the meeting was run. Not like a typical State Department meeting!
On another topic, an embassy employee passed along a message he received from a young Iraqi:
That was nice to read.
Standing unobtrusively off to the side of the operations room where embassy personnel connect via video teleconference screens to the base camp where GEN Petraeus runs the meeting, I watched as each person briefed the general. Occasionally he would ask a question, offer a comment or congratulate them for a job well done. Even though I read the battlefield update materials every day, it was fascinating to see it in person. It was a great education of what our military is achieving every single day. I was also impressed with the precision and conciseness with which the meeting was run. Not like a typical State Department meeting!
On another topic, an embassy employee passed along a message he received from a young Iraqi:
One thing more, please thank on behalf of me and many young Iraqis for the sacrifices that you Americans have done for us. A lot of people in Iraq are afraid to say it in public but deep in our hearts we well never forget the brave men and women's who wanted to build a new free and democratic Iraq. God bless America :)
That was nice to read.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Blurry Days of Baghdad
The Arab work week is Sunday through Thursday. That leaves Friday and Saturday for the weekend. To confuse things further, we celebrate Monday holidays on Sunday. So last weekend was Labor Day and, theoretically, the embassy was closed for business on Sunday. But I still had to go in to the office (holiday pay!). The point of all this is that people here never know what day of the week it is.
The job of staff assistant is interesting in a lot of ways, but it can also be frustrating. Everything that happens in the embassy at some point goes through the front office. And just about everything that goes through the front office goes through the staff assistants. It's a great education about what's going on. The downside is that it's hard to predict how each day will go. Most of what we do is unscheduled. So we never know when the end of the work day will be until the work is done.
Working long hours isn't so bad because there really isn't that much else to do. There's the gym. There's reading. And, finally, there's AFN - the television programming the military provides. I've been here just over a month now and I'm starting to meet people and get out a bit more.
I finally had some good news this week when the complications surrounding the assignment of my next post were settled. I accepted a handshake offer to be the Information Officer in Kathmandu, Nepal. When I leave Baghdad next summer, I'll have a year of training in D.C. (including 10 months of Nepali language training) and will arrive in Nepal the summer of 2010. Apart from my dad's frustration at my inability to work in a country that has a decent golf course, I'm very pleased with this assignment. The Information Officer handles press relations, the ambassador's media events, writing remarks/press releases, etc.
In the meantime, the blurry days of Baghdad continue to fly by and sometimes it's hard to tell one day from the other. I'm sure I'll be very excited to take my first R&R break in November.
The job of staff assistant is interesting in a lot of ways, but it can also be frustrating. Everything that happens in the embassy at some point goes through the front office. And just about everything that goes through the front office goes through the staff assistants. It's a great education about what's going on. The downside is that it's hard to predict how each day will go. Most of what we do is unscheduled. So we never know when the end of the work day will be until the work is done.
Working long hours isn't so bad because there really isn't that much else to do. There's the gym. There's reading. And, finally, there's AFN - the television programming the military provides. I've been here just over a month now and I'm starting to meet people and get out a bit more.
I finally had some good news this week when the complications surrounding the assignment of my next post were settled. I accepted a handshake offer to be the Information Officer in Kathmandu, Nepal. When I leave Baghdad next summer, I'll have a year of training in D.C. (including 10 months of Nepali language training) and will arrive in Nepal the summer of 2010. Apart from my dad's frustration at my inability to work in a country that has a decent golf course, I'm very pleased with this assignment. The Information Officer handles press relations, the ambassador's media events, writing remarks/press releases, etc.
In the meantime, the blurry days of Baghdad continue to fly by and sometimes it's hard to tell one day from the other. I'm sure I'll be very excited to take my first R&R break in November.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Field Trip!
Mom Alert!!! – Mom and Marilyn will probably want to skip this blog entry. Click here instead to revisit a nice post from the past.
This week I got to benefit from one of the perks of working in the front office. One of Ambassador Crocker’s Special Advisors had an open seat in a helicopter he was taking to visit a port of entry on the Iraqi border with Iran. He asked if I would be interested in tagging along. Um, yeah.
So I donned my PPE (personal protective equipment) and we headed out to catch our ride on a Blackhawk helicopter. There were 2 Blackhawks, the first one carried the “important” principals, the second one carried me and another traveler. Flying above Iraq in a Blackhawk surrounded by 5 well-formed, well-armed soldiers… at the risk of sounding like Paris Hilton, that’s hot!
In the background is the Blackhawk, right behind me is the Hummer-tank vehicle.
From the landing zone, we traveled to the border crossing in a vehicle that I can only describe as a cross between a Hummer and a tank. Once we reached the port of entry, we were allowed to take off our PPE and we took a tour of the facility. There’s a lot of activity there. Some 200-300 people cross every day, mostly Iranian religious pilgrims visiting holy sites in Iraq. There are also dozens of trucks and oil tankers that pass through every day. The American and Iraqi soldiers do a great job managing so much in-processing and out-processing of people and vehicles.
At one point, we were standing at the small gate that divides Iraq and Iran. I never imagined myself standing at a border crossing into Iran. The atmosphere wasn’t as tense as you would think. The soldiers tell us that their relationship with the Iranian soldiers is cordial. We didn’t have any interactions with the Iranian soldiers, though.
It was an interesting trip and quite an adventure.
This week I got to benefit from one of the perks of working in the front office. One of Ambassador Crocker’s Special Advisors had an open seat in a helicopter he was taking to visit a port of entry on the Iraqi border with Iran. He asked if I would be interested in tagging along. Um, yeah.
So I donned my PPE (personal protective equipment) and we headed out to catch our ride on a Blackhawk helicopter. There were 2 Blackhawks, the first one carried the “important” principals, the second one carried me and another traveler. Flying above Iraq in a Blackhawk surrounded by 5 well-formed, well-armed soldiers… at the risk of sounding like Paris Hilton, that’s hot!
In the background is the Blackhawk, right behind me is the Hummer-tank vehicle.From the landing zone, we traveled to the border crossing in a vehicle that I can only describe as a cross between a Hummer and a tank. Once we reached the port of entry, we were allowed to take off our PPE and we took a tour of the facility. There’s a lot of activity there. Some 200-300 people cross every day, mostly Iranian religious pilgrims visiting holy sites in Iraq. There are also dozens of trucks and oil tankers that pass through every day. The American and Iraqi soldiers do a great job managing so much in-processing and out-processing of people and vehicles.
At one point, we were standing at the small gate that divides Iraq and Iran. I never imagined myself standing at a border crossing into Iran. The atmosphere wasn’t as tense as you would think. The soldiers tell us that their relationship with the Iranian soldiers is cordial. We didn’t have any interactions with the Iranian soldiers, though.
The covered areas are the pedestrian in and out-processing lines;
the oil tankers are waiting to go through; beyond is the Iraqi desert.
It was an interesting trip and quite an adventure.
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