IRAQ: Trapped in Taqaddum -- I become a local national

By Doug Smith in western Iraq

“Welcome to Taqaddum,” the sign said.

I looked at my Iraqi colleague, Saif Rasheed. He shrugged. The name meant nothing to him except “progress” in Arabic. All we knew was that we were on a base somewhere in Iraq’s western desert.

A mechanical problem had cut short our flight to Ramadi. The crew chief told us, shouting through our earplugs in the dark noisy belly of the helicopter, that another would pick us up at 9.

It was dusk. Not too bad. We’d be back on our way to Ramadi in barely an hour. Or so we thought.

A Ugandan guard in a floppy hat who carried an assault rifle across his beige bush jacket stopped us with a humorless stare.

“Search.”

He looked suspiciously at our cellphones, laptop, tape recorder and video camera.

A sign on the wall said all were prohibited, but we were carrying credentials issued by the U.S. military’s Combined Press Information Center in the Green Zone.

“DOD badge?” he asked.

“We’re press,” I said.

Unimpressed, he ordered us into the hooch, a dim room with four handmade benches and a few cots squeezed in the back. Three Iraqi translators from our flight were already there. Two more Ugandans sat at a desk. I saw our passports tucked into an old ledger book.

“We’ll keep these,” one of the guards said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just for security,” she said.

Ugandans, like Bolivians and before them Georgians and Nepalese, are scattered all over Iraq performing guard duty under contract to the U.S. military.

Each group has distinctive traits. But I’ve found them all to differ from Americans in one notable way: Where Americans are comfortable interpreting rules, these quasi-soldiers will only follow them. Lacking a rule that precisely fits an occasion, they will apply one they think comes close.

Thus it was that Saif’s Iraqi passport and possibly my faux Iraqi facial hair put us in the category of Local Nationals, along with Third Country Nationals the absolute bottom of the pecking order of a U.S. base. Not only that, we were outlaws carrying phony badges and contraband.

I asked to speak with the PAO, the base public affairs officer. They had no idea what I meant. They ordered us to put down our bags and move away from them. I was beginning to be annoyed.

“Just let it go,” I thought. “It’s only for an hour.”

At 9, a Marine from the manifest office burst through the door and called the three translators, two men and a woman, all bound for Fallouja. They went with him.

By 9:30, I was growing concerned. I stared down the Ugandan at the desk and said, “I’m going to the manifest office.”

My meaning was clear: “Shoot me if you must.”

I went through a plywood door into the large dark cavern of the hangar. On a row of plywood offices to one side a sign over a closed window said “Manifest.” I knocked. The window slid open.

“That flight was canceled,” the Marine behind the window said.

The next would be at 0900, nearly 12 hours away.

“Can you call the PAO?” I asked.

He didn’t know what a PAO was.

So there we were, in the boondocks of a giant base among people who had no idea how its center worked. The Ugandans had our passports, and no one who could help us knew we were there.

I withdrew to the hooch, resigned to spending the night under the unblinking eyes of the Ugandans. When we asked to use the bathroom, one of them escorted us under arms.

Saif and I laid out our sleeping bags and did our best to sleep through the blare of the Ugandans’ radio and TV, both on at once.

Some time later, I was awakened by a commotion when the three Iraqi translators returned for reasons that made no sense to me then.

As nearly as I could tell from her elevated voice, the woman was saying she couldn’t sleep among half a dozen men, a plea that failed to move the Ugandans.

Since there weren’t enough cots, a young man who had been reading the Koran earlier moved to a wooden bench, giving his cot to the woman.

In the morning, a Marine came in the door and told us to put on our helmets and body armor, grab our things and assemble outside.

Elatedly, we marched back to the runway. There we were told to put down our things and retire to the waiting hooch, a small shack inside a ring of blast wall next to the runway.

A blustery wind had levitated the desert sand. The helicopters were waiting for the weather to clear.

Two hours later the Marine came back and told us to grab our things and follow him. The flight was canceled.

At this point, my frustration erupted. If I had to stay in Taqaddum 12 more hours, I was going to get some work done. In the back of the Ugandans’ hooch I took out my laptop.

Saif told me later that the guard at the desk looked at me as if I was strapping on a suicide belt.

He ordered me to bring him my laptop. Since he had the AK, I complied.

But I kept on going out the door and into the hangar. At the manifest window I unloaded on a Marine named Navarro.

“You’ve got to do something,” I whined.

Navarro followed me out to the hooch. Taking a quick look at our passports, he shook his head in disbelief.

“They’re good,” he said gruffly. “Give them their stuff.”

To me he said, “You go in that hooch.” He pointed to an adjoining building. The words “Outbound Helo” were painted on its side. It was larger than the Ugandans’ hooch, brighter, air conditioned and quiet.

But most important, we were no longer Local Nationals. We were free.

In the confusion, the female translator slipped through the Ugandans’ net and approached Saif. They exchanged a few words in Arabic. Surreptitiously, she handed him a small gold card.

Saif opened his cellphone, removed his SIM card and put hers in its place.

Tearfully, she called her children in Baghdad who hadn’t heard from her in two days.

I felt a twinge of guilt leaving her behind, but I had made up my mind to act.

Saif and I set out to find the PAO.

Next: The Lioness

Comments

[Patty]

Let me get this straight. You purposefully grow faux Iraqi facial hair. Show up unannounced at a secured U.S. military base in a war zone. Act out (whining, getting annoyed, etc) because you are not pampered. All you knew was that you were on a base somewhere in Iraq’s western desert? All they knew what that you showed up unnaounced at their secured base in Iraq's desert supposedly not knowing where you were. I guess since you're the PRESS you expected a soft sweet room to sit in while they immediately ran your luggage (bag) over to a fueled and waiting private jet and then came back and pulled you in a wheeled chariot to the steps. Then you could come back home and complain about how they have soft sweet rooms and private jets. How would you like it if they let you in, let you keep your credientials, put you in a soft sweet room, and while you were waiting, they let another unrelated guy in with faux Iraqi facial hair who proceeded to do harm to those around you. Then you could come back home and complain that they let guys in with faux Iraqi facial hair without following proper safety procedures. Silly. You probably don't even read the comments on here. Just write your garbage and then to heck with what it really means. NICE!

[James]

Wow! Having served at TQ & having been in the military for quite a while now & having been thru much worse= this all stems from someone who is not conditioned to deal with adversity. This is a very, very mild form of adversity at that. This situation is beyond trivial....

[Kevin]

You are being melodramatic and taking a huge amount of "artistic liberty" with your story, beginning with the title. "Trapped" you say? I think not. Asked to remain in a secure area because you couldn't otherwise convey that you were credentialed press, YES. Maybe you should understand the entire scope of your situation. You arrive in a combat zone, without coordinating your travel properly, and expect to be treated otherwise? Whether or not you had a passport is irrelevant. Security is in place for a reason. It is there to protect the men and women of the Armed Forces from those who would like to do us harm. Your "horrible" 24 hours at Camp Al Taqaddum is a joke. This is one of the best bases in the Area of Operations. I am on my 3rd tour in Iraq and your article is nothing more than inflammatory garbage. You are absolutely right about being a whiner. Your easy target is a junior Marine who you say didn't know who a PAO was? Please! All you have to do is explain who the Public Affairs officer is, or better yet, ask for the Marines OIC (Officer In Charge). Finally, you blatant disregard for the use of cell phones is alarming. Are we to believe that you are that audacious enough to risk someone’s life over a cell phone call? Apparently so. The rules that govern the use of cell phones are in place for specific reasons. If you're such a battle hardened reporter as you think you are, you should know these things, but by the way you write this article you seem to be nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum over not getting a toy. There are thousands of Marines and service men and women serving over here doing great things under austere conditions for much lengthier amounts of time than your minor inconvenience at the Joint Reception Area. Were you injured? NO. You were inconvenienced while being transported through a combat zone by the men and women of the United States of America's Armed Forces. Maybe a thank you would be more appropriate.

IF U ARE AN AMERICAN, AND THEY PUT YOU IN A ROOM FULL OF TCN'S WITH UGANDAN GUARDS...WOULDNT YOU FEEL WIERD AND MAYBE SAY SOMETHING AS SOON AS U NOTICE THAT??? NEXT TIME LET THE GUARDS KNOW YOU WANT TO TALK TO ONE OF THE MARINES. STOP TRYING TO ACT SO HEROIC BY SAYIN YOUR "MEANING WAS CLEAR: SHOOT ME IF YOU MUST". YOU KNOW YOU DONT WANT THAT AND WAS PROBABLY THINKIN "I HOPE THEY DONT SHOOT ME". ALSO ITS IRAQ....ITS NOT A VACATION...NOT EVERYTHNG GOES AS PLANNED OR AS YOU WOULD LIKE IT. ALSO WHY DONT YOU TRY MAKING A REPORT ON HOW TQ (AL TAQADDUM) IS THE BEST AIRFIELD IN TERMS OF THE PEOPLE AND CARGO WE MOVE IN AND OUT OF COUNRTY INSTEAD OF PESIMISTIC ARTICLES.