Girls, Girls, Girls

Photos: The departing CA Team including the much missed Colonel Stroud.

I got back from my R&R two weeks ago and boy did things change on the base while i was gone. When I left I was the only female and the only person working in Rule of Law on the base (which proved to be somewhat of an issue while I was on R&R because several important developments occurred and I spent several hours every day for the first few days of my R&R in London - sorry Alice! - emailing and trying to take care of business from afar). I returned and our old Civil Affairs (CA) Team (the military component of our Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT))...ok, wait..let me back up...our PRT is made up of both civilians and military. It is headed by a civilian who is a Foreign Service Officer...he is the Team Leader. The Deputy Team Leader is military and part of the CA Team. The other team members are a mix of U.S. military and civilian and specialize in different areas (law, government, small business, agriculture, etc) and Iraqi Bilingual, Bicultural Analysts and Arabic/English translators. Ok - so the old CA Team - headed by Colonel Stroud, the Deputy Team Leader - left our base and was replaced by a new CA Team. The new team contains FOUR women!! Wee haaa. Then our Political Advisor left and his replacement is a women. Then we got a new public affairs person transferred from another base (the one we were supposed to get months ago got hung up in the security clearance process and never made it) and she's female..so now we are up to 7 females (that's not including the female Ugandan security guards but they don't speak much English or interact with us). On top of that good news, one of the Sergeants from the CA team has been assigned to work with me on Rule of Law issues (she is also doing Women's Issues which overlaps with the kinds of things I am interested in within Rule of Law) - she is very competent and enthusiastic and I'm so psyched to have some help...and given that I'm already planning my next R&R (Labor Day for Krista's wedding :) it will be awesome to have someone hold down the fort while I'm gone. I was sitting in my office the other day and overheard my colleagues' conversation - topic was how they felt upon observing the conditions Iraqi women lived in, whether these conditions were forced upon them or self-imposed, and what we take for granted as women in the U.S. - and I thought "ahhh, there are other women on the base". So things are looking up on this front :)

Many of you have asked if I am staying in Iraq given the U.S. troop withdrawal deadline of June 30th. I am. At least until February/March of 2010 when my year is up and possibly longer. June 30th was the deadline for U.S. withdrawal and due to that deadline I have been confined to my base for a week - the embassy didn't think it was a good idea to have us rolling through the streets in our big MRAPs while the locals were having their festivities celebrating our withdrawal...I don't always agree with policy that comes out of Baghdad but have to say they were probably right on this one. The withdrawal was a qualified withdrawal - it was "combat" troops out of "cities"....the military unit i am with is not combat (although the soldiers on my base are technically field artillery and infantry - but for right now they are assigned to provide the PRT security so not "combat"). Also, we are not in a "city". We are located outside of Karbala city in a more rural area. Therefore, we're not going anywhere. Our base will be shutting down in the future, but not this year. So I'm still here even though technically the U.S. is withdrawing. Many of you have also asked me how the Iraqis feel about us leaving/staying....it is hard for me to get a read on this because the Iraqis I work with are not the "average citizen"...they are taking great risks to work with me and are probably much more pro-U.S. than the average. Having said that, from what I can tell most Iraqis in Karbala don't despise us - they don't have bad feelings about the U.S. being here but have good feelings about being strong enough to function without us and are feel good about their increasing capacity to run their own country. There is a minority who feel U.S. troops should stay because the Iraqi security forces are not ready to handle things on their own yet and fear what will happen post-withdrawal.

One big project I have been working on is trying to get funding to get new courthouses constructed in my province....this is part of what I had to work on while on R&R...it had been the thought since I arrived in Iraq that the U.S. was done with "bricks and mortar" work because we were leaving but, all of the sudden, money materialized that was to be used for new construction and we had a very short time-line to submit ideas on how to use this money. I truly do believe that building new courthouses here in Karbala will help elevate the status of the judiciary here...it is hard to garner respect when you are working in a decrepit building with no electricity or phones or security. The other project I have been working on is a women's lawyers association that is providing free legal help and education to women in the province. This group of women is amazing and is doing work that really matters but I need to find a way to keep them funded past the year I can fund them....ideas?