The two Marines’ eyes widened. They did not have to say a word; their body language was more than enough to communicate what they were thinking: The jundi are warped! We left the area.
After I dropped off the potential rape victims in the Chevy Luv, I returned to address the jundi. Fifty jundi started yelling, “Jamal, come over and talk. Jamal we love you.” Within thirty seconds forty curious Iraqis had surrounded me. I rushed to lock the doors on the Chevy. Ayad, a goofy-looking Arab and the comedian of the crowd, addressed me: “Jamal, you like boobs and asses, don’t you?” I replied, “Of course.” Ayad continued. “Well you know why you need to try gay sex?” I asked mockingly, “Why, Ayad?” He responded, “The ass is much tighter, feels better, and you don’t have to deal with an emotional woman afterward.”
I addressed the crowd from my uneasy, outnumbered position. “Dude, Ayad, I realize you are too ugly to get women and must resort to men. If you need me to help you get some Iraqi women, let me know and I’ll make a few phone calls.” The crowd erupted in laughter. Ayad slapped me a high five and gave me a huge hug through the truck window. “Jamal,” he said, “you are an Iraqi. We love you.” I smiled and dissed Ayad one last time to the amusement of the crowd. “Ahebbek Ayad,” I said, “bess ma tshoof ila Marinesee. Inta Faregh!” (I love you Ayad, but don’t look at my Marines. You are gay!)
Corruption as a Way of Life
Corruption is a means to an end. I used to think it was a dishonest way of carrying out business; however, I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that corruption is as much a part of Iraqi culture as is greeting friends and guests with as salamu aleikum. Moody, our top terp, and Ahmed, my stellar S-1 clerk, who spoke very good English, gave me a crash course in the economics and social dynamics of the corrupt Iraqi pay system. What he taught me can go a long way in Iraq toward helping Americans at all levels—from my level to the strategic level—understand how business gets done.
Our discussion began quite innocently. “Ahmed,” I said, “I am trying to understand why there are so many discrepancies in what Captain Tseen is telling me regarding the pay status and what he is sending to the Ministry of Defense.” Moody looked at Ahmed, giving him the nod that he would explain to the uninformed American how things really worked in Iraq. Moody said, “Jamal, the first thing you have to understand, is that Captain Tseen is looking after his jundi and does want them to get paid. You also have to understand that Tseen is a highly connected individual in the MOD. This is a huge asset.” I reluctantly said, “Okay.” Moody continued, “Jamal, let me ask you something. Do you know why our battalion is paid at the highest rates in the brigade and do you also know why all jundi in the 1st Division Iraqi Army are paid at higher rates than everyone in our 7th Division?” I shook my head and said, “No, why?” He replied, “We are paid at the highest rates in the brigade because Tseen knows the most people at MOD from our brigade and is able to cut the most deals. First Division is paid at a higher rate than everyone in our division because their pay officers know even more people than Captain Tseen does at the MOD. Americans like to call this corruption. We call this ‘getting things done.’”
I inquired further. “Moody, I understand that it’s all about who you know in this country, not what you know. My only concern is if Tseen is skimming money off the soldiers and lining his own pockets under my watch.” Moody and Ahmed responded as if the answer were completely obvious. “Yes, of course he does. All pay officers skim pay. Why do you think being the pay officer is such a highly regarded position in the Iraqi Army?” I immediately replied, “He is stealing money from the jundi? How is that possible? I keep track of everything he does here at the battalion level. Plus, the higher level MiTTs do the same thing all the way up the chain until it reaches MOD.” Moody jumped in. “Jamal, Jamal, before you go any further, let me tell you about my trip to the MOD with Tseen last year.”
Moody shared his experiences of corruption, money, and power at the MOD. It played like a Shakespearian drama. He explained to me that the MiTTs do a wonderful job of ensuring there is very limited corruption regarding the pay process. Without them, he said, there would be massive levels of fraud and abuse within the Iraqi pay system. However, because of the American military presence within military units, all the checks and balances worked efficiently and correctly.
Unfortunately, the true corruption happens at levels beyond the U.S. military’s purview, namely, in the MOD. At the MOD two corrupt officers will forge documents or submit false rosters and split the winnings. Their oversight is minimal and everyone expects them to be corrupt. After all, that is one of the benefits of being in the pay officer position.
Moody gave me examples of pay officers engaged in corruption. A favorite technique of pay officers was to create false rosters of soldiers. The rosters included the names of anywhere from fifty to three hundred soldiers who had recently quit the Iraqi army. But because of the slow process of updating rosters and the bureaucracy at the MOD, these pay officers were able to collect the pay for these “ghost” jundi.
The final punch line from Moody and Ahmed was that corruption had happened, and was going to happen, whenever money was involved. In Iraq, they said, corruption is a form of payment to individuals who are able to make it to positions of power or to those who have spent time creating networks of friends. The basic logic is as follows: if I spend an entire lifetime building relationships and forming bonds that allow me to reach a position of power, I should be able to extract economic benefits from my position in the form of corruption. Otherwise, what would be the incentive to rise to a position of power?
The more I think about the corruption problem in Iraq, the less I feel the solution is to crack down on these practices. Iraqi corruption is as respected and commonplace as hard work is to the Japanese. Can we tell people in Japan that hard work is bad and that they should simply quit and become lazier? Likewise, I am not sure that telling Iraqis they need to stop being corrupt is the best way to approach Iraq’s corruption problem. If we want to fix this issue, first we need to understand the role it plays in the culture.
Tribalism in Iraq
Tribalism. For most Americans the word conjures up the image of a group of Indians sitting in teepees smoking peace pipes. My experiences in Iraq dispelled this idea. I slowly came to understand that a different sort of tribalism pervades Iraqi society. Tribalism has been in this area of the world since the dawn of humankind—before the Crusades, before Islam, and before Christianity. It has been part of the Arab culture for thousands of years. I will save some time by compacting thousands of briefs and papers on Iraqi tribalism into two statements. First, tribalism exists because it helps facilitate survival in austere environments. Second, the method of survival in a tribal context is to ensure members of the tribe focus on community survival versus individual survival.
While no exact parallel exists, the closest Western organization that works on the same fundamental principles is the gang. Gangs are tight-knit groups that bond people together for purposes of survival. Put simply, a solo gangster with an Uzi cannot maintain drug-trafficking turf in Los Angeles because he is an easy kill; however, thirty gangsters with Uzis are much more difficult to defeat. Similarly, in the desert there may be only one watering hole for fifty miles. A few Arabs alone cannot expect to defend this key turf, but a larger group can maintain their resources and livelihood.