Solar-Powered Street Lights

It is official. The US Army brigade in Ramadi has now spent $1.94 million on solar-powered street lights. Or, more accurately, the Army has spent $1.94 million attempting to light up Ramadi with solar-powered street lights.


The saga of the solar-powered street lights began late this Spring when the provincial government featured a modest project for new street lights in the downtown area of the war damaged city. The solar-powered lights were to be an interim solution until the Ramadi director general (DG) of municipalities was able to repair or replace the preexisting street lights in the city as electricity service improved to the region. The military pounced on this brilliant plan, aiming to exploit it throughout the city. Starting as murmur, soon echoes of "Solar lights, solar lights, solar lights?? Solar Lights!" reverberated through the shabby concrete halls and into makeshift wooden cubicles, wafted over the radios, and permeated emails, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides. Somehow the very future of the city rested in the flourishing of solar-powered street lights. Maybe Iraqis too can learn to have the moral self-satisfaction of having Green public works initiatives. Within a month, Iraqi municipal workers, contractors, and engineers were bustling around the city developing pricey scopes of work and contracts for the ravenous military demand for more solar-powered street lights.


The first completed run of solar-powered street lights amounted to nothing more than a glowstick atop a shoddy fifteen foot pole. Another strip of sixty had only ten functional lights. The Iraqi DGs (director generals--municipal officials) wonder about our zealous adoption of a temporary solution, when already the electricity service is improving to the point when the existing infrastructure should be repaired. But we are paying out--solar lights are lucrative. It's a wonder the municipal employees don't quit working for the city to come build solar lights for the US Army. It was a point of personal pride in our unit that we had successfully stymied any installation of solar-powered street lights in our area of operations during our tenure.


UPDATE: I thought I had escaped the solar-powered street lights once and for all after leaving Ramadi. Not so. Camp Virginia, Kuwait has scores of gorgeous solar-powered streetlights (about eight feet apart, too). Being so closely spaced, they make superb road markers; illumination, however, comes from the noisy, gas-powered generator light systems placed along each row of solar-powered street lights.

Sheik Sittar Albu Resha Assassinated

It was to be my pleasure to write today of two remarkable events: the city of Ramadi's 5k Run: a triumphant competition held in the heart of the city, with over 200 enthusiastic Iraqi participants--a stunning return to somewhat normal life; and also of a sizable delegation of Shiite tribal leaders from the South who just a few days ago sojourned to Ramadi to praise and thank the leaders of the Sunni Anbar Awakening for inspiring their own tribal awakening movement, and to express unity and solidarity in the face of the debilitating sectarianism that has riven Iraq. Tragically, these heartening events have been entirely overshadowed by the treacherous assassination of Sheik Sittar Bezea Ftykhan Albu Resha, charismatic figurehead and galvanizing force behind the Al Anbar Awakening, leader of Iraq's quickly growing political party advocating unity and reconciliation, and source of great hope to any Iraqi aspiring to defy Al Qaeda's insidious grip on the nation.

Will Sheik Sittar become a martyr and shock the people into an even deeper and more earnest effort to rid the region of Al Qaeda, or will it frighten those working for the good and foreshadow the return of Al Qaeda's mystique of fear and control? As for Ramadi, and perhaps Al Anbar, I believe the former case will hold true. Yet I can't help but realize, painfully, that the glimmer of hope Sheik Sittar and his awakening brought to the possibility of national reconciliation has been dimmed. Speaking selfishly, I only wish the perpetrators had procrastinated until our departure, allowing us time to emotionally divest ourselves before succeeding with the single greatest act that could ruin all the impossible gains we have experienced first hand in our year in Ramadi.

Cognitive Dissonance

Military strategist Max Boot has a lucid and sobering article in Commentary Magazine about the possibilities for our continued involvement in Iraq:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10920&page=all

I personally fully agree with his conclusions from a strategic perspective, and the optimist in me along with what I've experienced first-hand in Ramadi believes it is our best shot and also even possible. It seems to me Mr Boot charts the best course of any commentator thus far, even if he does so by drawing out the wretched alternatives to the surge and the current strategy. However, from my perspective, I'm not so sure he has adequately addressed the strain on the military--especially the Army. From what I've seen, most junior officers are already getting out. Fifteen month deployments are difficult to bear for equipment and personnel, especially in a counterinsurgency where tangible results are nearly impossible to quantify, and a tactical success may not guarantee your buddy won't die in a suicide vest attack the next day. For any soldier you might find who wants to stay and "finish the job," you'll find another simply trying to figure out what that job is he is trying to finish, or another who is just trying to survive another day.

I confess I have cognitive dissonance about the war. Though I think we must stay the course and finish what we started, I surely don't want that person finishing the job to be me if I can help it.

Safety is Our #1 Concern

Everyone on Camp Ramadi is feeling a lot more safe today. A number of initiatives have been established recently that have noticeably improved base security. The base management unit has been setting up checkpoints around Camp Ramadi to make sure people are wearing their seat belts and not speeding--and also making sure people are wearing their flak vest and Kevlar helmets while driving in humvees from their barracks to the Post Exchange or laundry point on the camp. A lot of Soldiers and Marines hadn't been doing that, but this initiative will truly ensure that those accidents that never happened previously won't occur in the future either. One unit was stopped for speeding while taking a casualty to the medical clinic; they hopefully learned the error of their ways. Their carelessness could have easily made a bad situation much worse.

Family and friends back home can rest assured knowing their loved ones are safer than ever thanks to the scrupulous tax dollar investments toward force protection upgrades made in the past month. Hundreds of thick concrete barriers now line the roads around post to keep the humvees from veering off into the thick dust. Dust clouds can reduce visibility in an instant and make you cough. A few of these countless barriers also protect a couple vital structures from vehicle borne improvised explosive devices. Although impossible, it can be conceived that one of these vehicles and drivers could pass completely undetected through the triple tiered base entrance security checks and gates.

Lastly, I feel palpably more at ease in our camp dining facility after yesterday. All non-Department of Defense personnel (Arabs and Indians) now have their own entrance line at the dining facility where they are individually searched by the ubiquitous Ugandans. Even though our unit interpreters endanger their lives daily alongside the troops, have been shot by snipers, been blown up by IEDs, had their families threatened and harassed, provided first aid for wounded Soldiers, and so on, when they get on post, you simply can't trust them--even after having undergone extensive background checks, routine security screening interviews, and receiving color-coded access badges. When I saw how many pocket knives the guards had confiscated in the first day alone I was flabbergasted. Fifty of these Sri Lankan laundry workers and Jordanian interpreters were carrying concealed weapons right under our noses! That many men could have easily overpowered me and my 9mm Beretta should I have been the lone Soldier dining with dozens of suddenly fanatical contractors armed with whittling knives. Even some of the Iraqi interpreters I know had the umbrage to complain to me about the safety measures, so I set them straight. They had no gratitude for the vast improvement to their own personal safety. I personally think we could improve our situation even more by requiring all Muslims on base to sew green crescents onto their shirt sleeves. Then I could sleep just a bit sweeter at night.

Safety is our number one concern here on Camp Ramadi. Rest assured your tax money is put to good use; your family members are secure.