2007 Press Releases
Eat the Goat, Drink the Tea
December 21, 2007
Author: Blake Dvorak
Paul O'Friel has simple advice for his Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Team: "Eat the goat, drink the tea," he says. It's O'Friel's way of instilling in his team members the importance of engaging with the local leaders and people in an area of Iraq pulverized not by IEDs, but by poverty and thirst. "There are some villages here that look like they came out of the Middle Ages," O'Friel told me in a phone interview from Iraq yesterday morning.
As head of the PRT in Al Muthanna province, O'Friel is in charge of bringing this forgotten realm of a broken country into, if not the 21st Century, then at least the 19th. Bordering Saudi Arabia to the south and sandwiched between the two better known provinces of Al Najaf and Al Basra, Muthanna is the poorest of Iraq's 18 provinces. Situated so far away from the central government in Baghdad, Muthanna suffers from a lack of attention and funds. But thanks to O'Friel and his team of 18 workers, things are beginning to turn around.
PRTs are the civilian component of the United States' surge strategy, designed to strengthen and rebuild Iraqi neighborhoods blighted by years of warfare and neglect. There are about 28 PRTs operating in Iraq, with close to 700 civilian members from several U.S. departments, like State, Agriculture and Treasury. Their goal, much like their military counterparts, is to directly engage the local populations to ensure that things get done, because for too many years things weren't getting done.
When he first arrived in August, O'Friel said the morale among the local residents was low. "They would look around," he said, "and ask, 'The Coalition has been here four years, how are things better?'." Under Saddam, the central government in Baghdad subsidized nearly every aspect of Muthanna society, from water to fuel to seeds for planting to even buying crops at a set price. All that disappeared, including the food ration allowance, in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, which provided fertile recruiting ground for the militias.
"The militias feed on the people who are dispossessed," he said. "They feed on the people who are poor; they feed on the people who are discontented over a lack of delivery of basic services, and that forms of course a pool of recruits."
So one of O'Friel's first tasks was to create trust with the local population. During Ramadan, which ran from September to October, O'Friel and his team went out to the rural neighborhoods and passed out food and other items, like wheelchairs for the infirm. It was a small act, but, O'Friel says, "we did stuff like that [so that] we had credibility."
Next, O'Friel engaged the provincial council to determine what needs were most urgent. Corruption was a problem, O'Friel tells me, but doing good "is our sword." When his team would finish a project in one neighborhood, like installing a sewage system, he would learn that the local inhabitants of a nearby neighborhood would demand the same from their town leaders. And so, little by little, the corruption has dissipated, first at the local level and then moving up to the provincial level. O'Friel says one of his greatest accomplishments so far has been to develop "a coalition of support within the provincial council that wants to do things differently."
O'Friel also went to the local Iraqi Army unit to ask its help in delivering needed medical care to several rural neighborhoods. The commander, O'Friel said, was skeptical. But after delivering medical care to 1,000 men, women and children on a single day, he changed. "He drank the Kool-Aid," is how O'Friel describes the reaction."Now he wants to do more."
It's small steps like these that serve as O'Friel's metrics for success. "If I can get this army general, who was very skeptical whether this medical program would work, now telling me that he wants to do more, that's a metric," he said. "If I can get members of the provincial council, who were originally trying to scam me, to turn around and offer good projects, that's a metric."
Since September, O'Friel says, he has completed 8 projects. Six more are under construction and 14 others are in the planning stages. That's progress, but, O'Friel cautions, "this is one long slog -- a lot of work left."
Just recently, O'Friel and his team have been able to extend their area of operations. Headquartered at the local airbase at Tallil in the neighboring Dhi Qar province, O'Friel's team, with the help of the 82nd Airborne and an Australian battle group, have been able to use a local military outpost inside Muthanna itself as a base of operations. Not only does this cut down on travel time to and from the province -- three hours each way -- but it further embeds O'Friel's team with the local population. "We have to engage the people."
Amazingly, despite the nearness of the 82nd, O'Friel and his men operate mostly without U.S. military aid. The 82nd is busy guarding the important supply route Tampa, which runs from Kuwait, through the northern part of Muthanna, on to Baghdad. In other words, the U.S. military presence in most of Muthanna is negligible, which actually suits O'Friel just fine. "We bring soft power," says O'Friel, who believes that not rolling into local neighborhoods with a fleet of Humvees earns him more trust with local leaders, and weakens a potential symbol for militia recruitment.
Obeying his first order, "Eat the goat, drink the tea," O'Friel and his team found themselves recently talking with leaders of the Bani Zraige tribe trying to learn what needed to get done. One of the sheiks told O'Friel that a local school made of mud bricks needed to be rebuilt. Not only did O'Friel and his team promise to rebuild the school, but they also plan on installing solar panels on the roof to deliver a steady source of electricity. Then O'Friel called up a friend at the Boston-based One Laptop Per Child company, a non-profit organization, and asked if it was possible to send 200 child-friendly laptops. The first batch is scheduled to arrive early next year.
"This is where it counts," O'Friel said. "This is where we have to be on the ground."