Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (2 page)

The only problem was that this so-called new weapon of war was
fast drying up. L. Paul Bremer, whose civilian operation was in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of the military, had some $20 billion at his disposal for so-called reconstruction. Bremer was a civilian, a retired Foreign Service officer who had been dispatched to Iraq as the lead U.S. official when it was understood that the tasks would be more political than military. But during his one year in Iraq he still reported directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, not Secretary of State Colin Powell, and his mission took on the character of a sprawling civilian component to the U.S. military rather than a Foreign Service post reporting to the State Department. Bremer’s colossal budget was far more akin to the military’s mega-budgets than to those the State Department was used to managing. As Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (of course, “CPA”) became an American embassy accredited to a sovereign Iraq a year later in the summer of 2004, the downward pressure of funding a State Department operation began to be felt. As I sat in Nasiriya, the State Department was struggling to convince Congress to support less than $500 million in Iraq-related projects.

I tried to be as forthcoming as possible with my Iraqi hosts, but on the issue of the international airport, I took a tougher line, explaining the enormous funds that would be needed for construction of such an investment in Dhi Qar, that the citizens there need to create more reasons why more people should come to their province. I tried earnestly to explain the need to take ownership of their own problems, to work together, and to be realistic about what can come from outside. “The best thing I can do as an American diplomat is to be perfectly honest with you. We cannot solve all your problems.” That was a formulation I had used in Albania years before, and it had been understood there as the country and its brave people struggled to emerge from decades of communist totalitarianism. But U.S.-occupied Iraq was different.

Indeed, Mohan was nonplussed, suggesting by his body language that part of what was going on was his effort to show the other members of the provincial assembly what a tough leader he was and that he was
not afraid to ask for more, because the Americans always have more, and should give more. Watching this ambitious deputy, I took a measure of optimism in that as painful as some moments of this meeting had been, there was a spark of democratic life here. Mohan had a political interest in showing that he was a doer and a leader. I found myself liking him for that. As if to slow down any emerging comfort level on my part he returned again (and again) to the subject of why an international airport near Nasiriya would be what the doctor ordered. I held my ground on their airport, though flying away from there did have some appeal.

We parted amicably after he had graciously escorted me out of the building to our waiting vehicles; their exhaust fumes mixing effortlessly into the hot afternoon city air. It was late, and we had less than two hours of daylight remaining, with a dust storm on the way, as we headed back to the sprawling U.S. base at Tallil. The team started piling into the cars, including Greta Holtz of the Embassy Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team, who took a seat in the second row next to where I would be sitting. The other “limo” carried staff assistant Jen Davis, a former Peace Corps volunteer and now a Foreign Service officer embarking on a promising career that would soon have her in Chinese language training.

Also in her car was the embassy’s military advisor, U.S. Air Force Col. Jeff Prichard, “JoBu” to his many, many friends. JoBu worked entirely for the embassy, was our liaison to the military, and went on all my trips throughout Iraq. A career officer, he understood the military, its strengths and its foibles, and had a capacity to explain those issues to those of us who had not spent two decades in uniform. A good military advisor—and JoBu was a great one—is invaluable to an ambassador in a country where the U.S. military is so prominent. Nothing ever seemed to faze JoBu, a former F-15 and F-22 pilot, except when the University of Alabama Crimson Tide would occasionally lose a football game. He was extremely quick and smart, as flying those complex aircraft would suggest, but he also had an emotional intelligence.

I said farewell to Mohan and turned to the vehicle that Lance Guillory, the lead security agent, motioned for me to use. Before climbing in I took one more look around downtown Nasiriya, marveling at how our security could have guaranteed our safety in that hardscrabble town. I looked over at JoBu, who was about to get into his vehicle, which would be ahead of mine, and whose opinion I always sought immediately after a meeting (“hot wash,” he would call it, an Air Force metaphor that refers to cleaning a plane’s tail section from the grit and grime while it is still hot from flight). “Hey JoBu, see you back at the base. We’ll talk.” He gave me a thumbs-up and got in his vehicle.

Fifteen minutes into the ride, Lance, riding shotgun in front of my seat, started speaking into his walkie-talkie in an agitated tone as he saw ahead that our Nasiriya police detail had inexplicably turned left onto another main road while the plan was to continue driving straight. The procedure for these motorcades was never to inform the police in advance which road we would take, but rather to tell them during the journey by radio what turns to make (or not to make). Lance, subbing for my regular head of security detail, Derek Dela-Cruz, who was on leave, was concerned that the trip go well under his command, and therefore seemed particularly annoyed with the police for turning off the route.

As we moved forward along the two-lane road, all wondering why the police car had turned left at the intersection, we heard a deafening boom and saw just ahead of us a massive plume of thick black smoke rise into the air from the right side of the road. The vehicle ahead of us carrying JoBu and others sped furiously through the wall of smoke. My vehicle began to slow down, the U.S. driver momentarily unsure whether to keep going through the smoke, which is a standard maneuver in such situations to foil the possibility that the bomb was a decoy designed to make a stopped vehicle a sitting target for a rocket-propelled grenade or small arms fire. Lance, his diplomatic security training and his personal leadership very much in evidence, immediately shouted at the driver, “Go! Go!” and the driver slammed the accelerator to the floor, violently flinging
those of us who had been leaning forward, back into our seats as the vehicle surged ahead into the thick wall of smoke.

We braced ourselves in the expectation that our armored Chevy Suburban would hit something ahead hidden in the smoke, but as we emerged from the detonation area, I marveled that we were still roaring forward, as was JoBu’s car in front of us, now only vaguely visible through the dust and smoke. Just then the road took an abrupt left turn that our skilled driver, even at an accelerating speed, managed (barely) to careen through, getting us safely onto a bridge and over a dry riverbed. A huge gasoline truck stood on the side of the road. Could this be the real bomb? We sped by it, holding our breath at the thought that everyone had but nobody dared utter. Greta Holz, sitting next to me, shouted to me, “Get your PPE on!” referring to personal protection equipment, a flak jacket, something I had neglected to do when we were departing Nasiriya. “It’s too late, I’m going to be in trouble with Lance. He’ll write me up for this,” I responded, managing a lame joke.

We continued to drive at breakneck speed on through a small settlement, where nobody except for some young boys playing by the side of the road even bothered to look up at our speeding convoy. It took still another thirty minutes to get back to the base at Tallil, where we entered the safety of the facility, past the American soldiers on the checkpoint. We all wearily lumbered out of our SUVs, still feeling the brush with fate in our stomachs. Roadside bombs had claimed so many lives over the course of the Iraq War, but it was not a subject I wanted to dwell on that day. I felt fine and quickly checked the vehicles to see how others were doing.

Jen Davis, who had been sitting next to JoBu, was having serious headaches and some bleeding from her ears, an apparent concussion, and was whisked off to a medical facility. I moved away from the vehicles to telephone the embassy and tell them we were all fine. I told our public affairs team to try to downplay the attack in talking to the press, since we didn’t need any panic buttons pushed. Just as I completed the call my mobile phone rang and it was the State Department Operations Center
patching through a very concerned Secretary Hillary Clinton, who asked for details. I told her “it was nothing,” and that we were all fine. I wasn’t really sure that was true, having been through other such circumstances in the past and realizing that people are not always as okay as they appear.

After concluding the call I found myself momentarily reflecting on the fact that the purpose of the bomb was to kill somebody. Later I saw on the internet the creepy video belonging to a group calling itself the “Regiments of Promised Day,” relating news of the incident with the voice-over, bragging that the intention was to kill me. Whatever the intention, I thought it was best not to dwell too much on that either. I looked up at the darkening sky and saw that a sandstorm was fast approaching and that we would probably be spending the night in Tallil, instead of returning to Baghdad. That was fine with me. I had had enough traveling for the day.

JoBu was also checking on how everyone was doing, with no shortage of his usual high energy.

“You good, JoBu?” I asked. He stood there, glancing around briefly at the scene of hastily parked SUVs, and took his helmet off. He ruefully shook his head in relief as he wiped his brow, and finally looked back at me.

“Jobu?”

“Sir, you should have said yes to the airport.”

T
here is a bleakness to Belgrade in the winter months, when snow instantly turns gray from the soot-filled air. So even on a clear day like that day in January 1961, everything seemed to have a dirty dampness to it.

The school bus that took me to and from the International School of Belgrade was a two-tone, pale blue and white VW Microbus with gray vinyl benches. Along with its dirt and grime and black ice clinging to its undercarriage, it fit in well with the winter landscape. The best part of the bus was the turn indicators. Incredibly, whenever the driver flipped the turn signal next to the steering wheel, an eight-inch, ruler-shaped stick would obediently snap to attention, flipping up and out from its hidden perch in the pillar just behind the front doors on whichever side the vehicle was to turn. I never tired of seeing that mechanical turn signal operate. As soon as Mrs. Brasich’s class was over, I would race outside from the huge, old stone mansion that served as the school for children of diplomats to find the bus in the driveway and secure my seat behind
the driver to have the best view of the indicator. The driver, Raday, a small man who was usually, though not always, in a good mood, sometimes would let me inspect the flipper up close while he would operate it from inside. One time the driver’s side flipper wouldn’t work and Raday started to pull it with his hand. “My dad,” I said, “always tells me never to force something. If it isn’t working, there’s a reason.” Raday, who by this time was pounding the side of the vehicle, didn’t seem to appreciate the advice coming from an eight-year-old. I don’t know if Raday ever remembered my dad’s advice, but it stuck with me the rest of my life. Things work or don’t work because of something else, so try to find out, if possible, what that something else is.

The school bus drive to my home from the International School was fifteen minutes at most. When we turned from Topcidarsko Brdo Circle onto Tostoljevska Street, I gathered up my books and papers, knowing I was only a minute away from home. Our house was located on a small cul-de-sac, Krajiska Street, opposite a wooded area. But that afternoon, as Raday turned to pull the microbus off the road and into the small woods on the left, I could see that everything was not quite right. As I got out and Raday began the careful exercise of backing the vehicle into Tostoljevska, I saw immediately that the sidewalk and high fence surrounding my house were covered with graffiti that included (in English) “Yankee go home” and “Lumumba,” and something that ended with “CIA.” I looked around, a little confused and concerned, as Raday drove the vehicle off, evidently not noticing what I had seen, because he presumably was focusing all his energies on backing out into the busy Tostoljevska Street. Two policemen in their long gray coats were talking to each other nearby, not an unusual sight for this area of town that housed many senior Communist Party functionaries. I hurried over to the rusted iron gate and pressed the doorbell, anxious to get inside to something more familiar and out of the January cold. But as I stepped back from the gate I could see
the front of the house, the main floor of which sat up like a second floor with the basement and garage level underneath. Most of the front of the house—my house!—had almost all its windows broken, as if it were abandoned and no one was living there anymore.

When nobody came out, I shoved the gate with my shoulder and despite its rusty resistance it somehow opened. I stood there and stared into the cobblestone driveway below the house. I could see shattered glass everywhere. Instead of turning to my left to make my way up the stone staircase to the main entrance, I walked farther along the driveway and could see that not just some, but almost all the windows on the right side of the house were broken and the driveway littered with rocks that had bounced back off the stone siding of the house. Now far more scared than surprised, I ran up the stone stairs to the big, wooden front door and pounded on it to get inside. My mother, holding one of my two-year-old twin brothers in one arm, opened the door with the other. “What happened here?” I asked. And she responded calmly: “Chris, you won’t be playing outdoors today.”

What had happened on that day in January 1961 was that the Congolese leftist leader Patrice Lumumba had been killed at the hands of the CIA—a suspected targeted assassination that was finally confirmed as such years later. His assassination was a cause célèbre throughout the world, especially in communist countries, where he was seen as the vanguard of a new wave of communist expansion in sub-Saharan Africa. And what happened at 2 Krajiska Street in that heavily wooded suburb of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where my father, the embassy’s political officer, lived with his wife and five children was that an angry Yugoslav student mob, presumably with the knowledge of the Yugoslav communist government under Tito, had marched to a house they (somehow) knew to be occupied by an American diplomatic family, chanted epithets, scrawled chalk slogans, and threw rocks until the police, who had apparently stood by, finally chased them away.