Read Online Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
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Instead, the benzene was piped out the back of the station into barrels and sold for black market profit on the side of the road, often right in front of that very station.
If anything symbolized the depth of corruption at Al-Waleed, it was the benzene trade. So I refused to tolerate it. On my orders, anyone seen selling benzene was arrested. Their benzene was confiscated and their plastic barrels knifed. The offenders were then forced to stand outside the gates of the compound, where we could watch them, and pump free benzene to the thousands of trucks and cars that passed through Al-Waleed every day. We eventually had to requisition a giant tank to store the confiscated benzene, a symbol to both the criminals and the general population that we were serious about creating a legitimate, affordable economy for the Iraqi people.
The soft power was community outreach. White Platoon had been sent to Al-Waleed without a translator, a disastrous oversight in a strategically important place where trust was built on conversations over cups of hot chai. Fortunately, a customs inspector named Ali volunteered to translate for us soon after our arrival. Without him, we never would have succeeded. Ali allowed us to interact with the Iraqis at the POE, because I trusted what he said. Along with Spc. Pearcy, my gunner and right-hand man, Ali attended our nightly meetings with visiting dignitaries and local tribal leaders, a traditional honor important to gaining support. Formal yet relaxed, lasting well past midnight, and requiring the drinking of more chai and the smoking of more cigarettes than any person should endure, these meetings were our opportunity to reach compromises and bring rogue elements into our efforts. Often, I left the meetings to find dawn breaking over the desert, the morning call for prayer from the POE’s mosque (the only decent structure for fifty miles) rolling beautifully across the vast desert, feeling utterly tired but as if we had accomplished more in eight hours of talking than we had on our last eight patrols.
Initially, I met with Mr. Waleed, who was as gregarious and friendly as he was corrupt. But when it became clear our intention wasn’t to bandage the old corrupt system but to tear it down, Mr. Waleed became less interested in our chats. Instead, we met with other Iraqis, including Lt. Col. Emad, the incoming commander of the port’s border police battalion, who had been a major in Saddam’s Army but was an honorable man. The sheiks in Ramadi didn’t approve of his cooperation, especially after Lt. Col. Emad began to significantly curtail corruption, so they sent a steady stream of new commanders to replace him.
We were polite at first, but after a month we’d had enough. “Leave now,” I told the new men, when they arrived with their “credentials” and politician’s smiles, “or I’ll have you arrested. You’re not going to undermine Lt. Col. Emad’s authority and destroy the good work that is happening here for Iraq and its people.”
Our real find, though, was Maher Thieb Hamad, a junior officer in the local Iraqi Police Service (IPS) who had picked up passable English from American movies and often joked about moving to Las Vegas to live the good life. Maher wasn’t from Ramadi, so he wasn’t part of the mafia clan, and like many Iraqis, he saw the fall of Saddam as a chance to end the twenty years of corruption that, even more than Saddam’s brutality, had destroyed the fabric of Iraq’s more than one-thousand-year-old society. Once we gained his trust, Maher often invited my men over to smoke apple tobacco and discuss tactics, describing the habits of corrupt officials or telling us, “Don’t worry, you can trust him, he’s a good man.” This was in the midst of the first wave of reprisal killings, before Saddam Hussein had been captured, and it took a great deal of courage to side so openly with the Americans. The first time Maher guided us on a desert patrol, in fact,
If anything symbolized the depth of corruption at Al-Waleed, it was the benzene trade. So I refused to tolerate it. On my orders, anyone seen selling benzene was arrested. Their benzene was confiscated and their plastic barrels knifed. The offenders were then forced to stand outside the gates of the compound, where we could watch them, and pump free benzene to the thousands of trucks and cars that passed through Al-Waleed every day. We eventually had to requisition a giant tank to store the confiscated benzene, a symbol to both the criminals and the general population that we were serious about creating a legitimate, affordable economy for the Iraqi people.
The soft power was community outreach. White Platoon had been sent to Al-Waleed without a translator, a disastrous oversight in a strategically important place where trust was built on conversations over cups of hot chai. Fortunately, a customs inspector named Ali volunteered to translate for us soon after our arrival. Without him, we never would have succeeded. Ali allowed us to interact with the Iraqis at the POE, because I trusted what he said. Along with Spc. Pearcy, my gunner and right-hand man, Ali attended our nightly meetings with visiting dignitaries and local tribal leaders, a traditional honor important to gaining support. Formal yet relaxed, lasting well past midnight, and requiring the drinking of more chai and the smoking of more cigarettes than any person should endure, these meetings were our opportunity to reach compromises and bring rogue elements into our efforts. Often, I left the meetings to find dawn breaking over the desert, the morning call for prayer from the POE’s mosque (the only decent structure for fifty miles) rolling beautifully across the vast desert, feeling utterly tired but as if we had accomplished more in eight hours of talking than we had on our last eight patrols.
Initially, I met with Mr. Waleed, who was as gregarious and friendly as he was corrupt. But when it became clear our intention wasn’t to bandage the old corrupt system but to tear it down, Mr. Waleed became less interested in our chats. Instead, we met with other Iraqis, including Lt. Col. Emad, the incoming commander of the port’s border police battalion, who had been a major in Saddam’s Army but was an honorable man. The sheiks in Ramadi didn’t approve of his cooperation, especially after Lt. Col. Emad began to significantly curtail corruption, so they sent a steady stream of new commanders to replace him.
We were polite at first, but after a month we’d had enough. “Leave now,” I told the new men, when they arrived with their “credentials” and politician’s smiles, “or I’ll have you arrested. You’re not going to undermine Lt. Col. Emad’s authority and destroy the good work that is happening here for Iraq and its people.”
Our real find, though, was Maher Thieb Hamad, a junior officer in the local Iraqi Police Service (IPS) who had picked up passable English from American movies and often joked about moving to Las Vegas to live the good life. Maher wasn’t from Ramadi, so he wasn’t part of the mafia clan, and like many Iraqis, he saw the fall of Saddam as a chance to end the twenty years of corruption that, even more than Saddam’s brutality, had destroyed the fabric of Iraq’s more than one-thousand-year-old society. Once we gained his trust, Maher often invited my men over to smoke apple tobacco and discuss tactics, describing the habits of corrupt officials or telling us, “Don’t worry, you can trust him, he’s a good man.” This was in the midst of the first wave of reprisal killings, before Saddam Hussein had been captured, and it took a great deal of courage to side so openly with the Americans. The first time Maher guided us on a desert patrol, in fact,
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