I had a talk with Sheik Q at a meeting with the US Commander of the Bagdhad Province (more on that later) about Caprice Classics. According to him, the Caprice Classic was THE car of choice in Iraq several years ago. Now, it is a second tier car because they are older, hard to get parts for and get very poor gas mileage. The last part, the gas mileage, threw me for a loop, even though Iraq is sitting on oceans of oil, getting gas is hard here, just like everything else. There is no distribution system, few refineries that produce gas and the black market is huge. Even though it is a second string car, we saw 16 of them in a couple of mile stretch of highway that we travel on regularly. That is a lot of Caprice Classics, I will try to get a few photos of them. Sheik Q, for the record, drives a Chevrolet Envoy, he says it is ok, but not as powerful as the Caprice.
Reconciliation Round #3
Reconciliation was breaking out all over our region, there were two huge reconciliation meetings this past weekend, and the mother of all reconciliation meetings is this afternoon at the General's headquarters. The team asked me why reconciliation was such a big deal, I pointed at the map. If you look at Bagdhad it is broken down into several chunks, each chunk of terrain is controlled by a US Task Force partnered with an Iraqi Brigade (either Iraqi Army or National Police). When I read through the significant activities (SIGACTS) report (translation: IEDs, Car Bombs, Suicide Vest Bombs, mortar or rocket attacks) all of the regions around our area had multiple SIGACTS. The area directly to our north has 18, to our south 3, over across the river in Bagdhad there were 8 in one area, 2 in another area, 5 in another area. Our area, ZERO. In 5 days we will have gone one month without a SIGACT. Most SIGACTS are caused either by genuine terrorist activity, by petty crime or by tribal conflicts. With all of the reconciliation going on, the tribes can stop worrying about each other and focus in on what their young men are doing - - eliminating all three areas of concern. If the tribal elders are watching the kids, the kids don't get involved with terrorists, don't do petty crime and there is no fighting between the tribes. The only thing left to do is go out and get a real job and build the country.
The General is instrumental in all of the reconciliation. Every meeting we go to the tribal elders praise him and fight to be allowed to sit next to him. Pretty cool, I just sit back and watch. The two reconciliations this weekend were one for Northern City and a second round of the reconciliation from two weeks ago. We were all set to attend the Northern City one, which was the most important one, but a US General was coming to round two. The General switched to round two to escort the US General. This was the US General's first faisal (the arabic word for the meetings) and he was blown away. Being an old hand, I was not blown away and took part in the reconciliation amount pool that the other old hands put on. If you remember from two posts ago or so, a gentleman lost 4 houses, 7 cars, 3 fish ponds, several cows and his farm fields when he was chased away. He was reconciling with another tribe, the folks that actually did the chasing away (the last tribe was the tribe that ordered him chased away). He was asking for 500 million Iraqi Dinar as compensation. There were 6 of us in the pool, I thought he would walk away with 50 million Iraqi Dinar, based on last reconciliations percentages. The final settled amount was 120 million Iraqi Dinars.
What is a US General worth?
During the negotiations, the sheik of the plaintiff's tribe stood up and said that since a US General took the time to attend the faisal, he would lower the amount they were asking by 50 million Iraqi Dinar. So, 50 million Iraqi Dinar.
What was the General worth?
During the final negotiations, the General went outside to the sheik huddle and addressed the sheiks. At that point, the agreed upon amount was 150 million Iraqi Dinar, the General said that was pretty steep and the defending tribe would have problems paying that much so he asked them to reduce the amount. They did, by 30 million Iraqi Dinar.
Northern City reconciliation
The reconciliation up north was about 40 displaced families returning to a small village that had been destroyed by the insurgents. The General has been trying to get the families to move in up there for 3 months now, and was planning on attending the reconciliation up there. The Tribal Sheik Support Council (all the powerful sheiks in the area, including Sheik Q and Abu A) all attended the Northern City reconciliation. All parties agreed that the families should be moved back to the village, which will happen sometime after the election.
What, Elections?
Yup, election time in Iraq. This causes a lot of extra security work for the Brigade. The General told me that his head was so full of information it was about to explode yesterday. We are working with our higher headquarters, the Iraqi chains of command, the local election councils, the SOI and tribal leaders to make sure the elections go off without an incident. This election is for provincial leaders, this summer is national elections and in OCT 09 they have the local city council elections. Should be an interesting month.
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