In 2004 my boss called me from his office in Baghdad and told me I needed to travel from the Pentagon to Iraq immediately. He wanted me to see our logistics delivery operations there up close so that I could better explain to the people in Washington the problems we faced in executing our mission of re-equipping the Iraqi military and ministries. The challenges of supplying everything from weapons to hospital beds were vast in a country still at war.

“Congratulations, old fellow, you are now in Iraq”, I said to myself as I walked on Iraqi dirt for the first time after exiting the C-130 I took up from Kuwait. I don’t count a new country in my list of those visited until I actually touch dirt there. Just being in an airport doesn’t count. But even though I’m officially in Iraq, I’m not quite done traveling because I still must get to the Green Zone, the highly protected area in Baghdad where the US Embassy and our Logdog offices are located, from the airport.

There were three ways to get from Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) through the “Red Zone” (any area in Iraq not directly protected by the US military) to the Green Zone. One was by helicopter, a ten-minute flight at most, but you had to be a VIP for that. I wasn’t a VIP. Yet. The other two ways took you down the most dangerous seven-and-a-half-mile road in the world, Route Irish.

Route Irish was the freeway that runs from BIAP into the heart of Baghdad. It was the most dangerous road in the world because it wasn’t under full U.S. military control. The overpasses and housing areas along it provided perfect places for ambushes. The bad guys could fire from the buildings along the freeway and then disappear. Or, since civilian traffic wasn’t banned, they could simply pull up next to you and detonate a suicide car bomb. Also, the bad guys liked to position an improvised explosive device, such as old artillery shells, mortar rounds, mines, etc. wherever they could to blow you up as you passed by. Failing all that, they could simply just drop a chunk of concrete from one of the many overpasses as you drove by. Not a fun road, Route Irish.

The most common way to the Green Zone was on the “Rhino”, an armored bus. One major problem with the Rhino was that in addition to being slow, it only ran three or four trips per day, with every single seat taken on each. It was possible to be stuck at BIAP for days before you could get a reserved seat on a Rhino. Another minor problem was the fact that, even though they were armored, heavy machine gun fire, a car bomb, or good-sized IED could easily take a Rhino out.

The third way into Baghdad also involved traveling down Route Irish, but with a personal security detail (PSD) in a convoy of armored SUVs. The dangers are the same as on the Rhino, but the PSD convoys move very fast, reducing the exposure time. My boss told me before I left the States, he would arrange a PSD for me. It wasn’t difficult, because we had to use our own armored vehicles to escort our convoys of materiel moving to and from our warehouses, so they were always available for a run out to BIAP.

One major change since Vietnam was communication. In Vietnam, you might have access to a field telephone with very limited connections, but that was it as far as telephones went back then. Today, we were issued Blackberry cell phones that operated on a VOIP, voice over internet protocol, system that used a Virginia area code. We could call from nearly anywhere in the world to nearly anywhere else in the world, so I called my boss in the Green Zone from BIAP to tell him I had arrived. He told me that there was a PSD already at BIAP they would pick me up in half an hour. Overhearing my conversation an Army captain who had been on the C-130 with me asked if he could bum a ride in with us. I told him certainly if the security team leader agreed and there was room. The captain didn’t want to ride the Rhino any more than I did, any more than anyone did, for that matter.

I took a seat at a picnic table in a shaded area outside the terminal and looked at my email on the Blackberry while I waited. Of course, having email available anytime means that you can always communicate, but it also means you can’t escape work. A World War II admiral was quoted as saying, “I used to enjoy going to sea. Then they invented radios”. That also applies to email, but then you always have the option to ignore the emails you didn’t like. They would still be there later.

Soon my PSD, two armored SUVs pulled up. The lead vehicle had a driver and a gunner, leaving room for two passengers. The second SUV had two gunners and a driver. All five men were civilians but very warlike in appearance. Besides body armor and helmets, all the men were wearing pistols and holding automatic weapons, a mixture of submachine guns, AK-47s, and M-4s. All the weapons were locked and loaded, ready to fire immediately.

The lead SUV driver climbed out and introduced himself. His ID badge marked him as a contractor, not a government employee. He was a tall, thin young man, probably not yet 30 and seemed quite comfortable with being in Iraq and routinely driving Route Irish. I asked if there was room for the captain to ride with us. He said “Sure” and opened the back hatch of the SUV so that we could load our bags. The floor of the cargo area was covered, something I hadn’t seen before, but there was still room for our bags. I thought the rear of the vehicle looked low, like it was overloaded, but decided that it was probably just the extra weight of the armor. We put our helmets and body armor on and climbed aboard. The second SUV would lead for the inbound leg.

As we left the last BIAP checkpoint my driver floored the gas on our SUV.  He was trying to maintain about 100 feet behind the leader, who, being more lightly loaded, was already pulling away from us. The armor and four passengers, plus baggage, made our SUV very slow to accelerate. Never mind, soon enough we were hitting 90 miles per hour, closing on the leader and passing the few vehicles on the road like they were stopped. Our shooter, appropriately enough riding shotgun, appeared to tense up as we approached each overpass, even though our great rate of speed would get us quickly clear of any danger.

With all the weaving around the road as we passed everyone and the high speed we were traveling at, the overloaded suspension on the SUV worried me more than possible IEDs or ambushes. While there might or might not be a bomb buried on the side of the road or a machine gun waiting on the overpass, we would roll over for certain if the driver lost concentration for even a very short time. Or hit a big pothole. Or just twitched at the wrong moment as we roared down the highway.

I just sat in the back seat of the SUV, repeating what we used to jokingly call the combat helicopter pilot’s landing check list, “Our Father who art in heaven….”

In a short while, we had to slow down because we were approaching the first of four check points. All vehicles, except for US military vehicles, were checked for anything suspicious and possible bombs before proceeding. There was an Iraqi civilian car being cleared ahead of us, so the lead SUV stopped quite far back, just in case the civilian vehicle was a car bomb. When he went to the checkpoint, we would move up, but remain about 100 yards back.

As we sat there waiting, I noticed my driver staring intently into the rear-view mirror. Suddenly he threw his door open and leaped out, automatic rifle in hand and ran to the rear of our SUV. Looking back, I could see an Iraqi civilian car approaching. As my driver brought his weapon down into firing position, the Iraqi car slid to a stop in a cloud of rubber smoke, hit reverse and as quickly as its driver could make the car go, moved it well back from us. Satisfied that the car was not going to ram us or blow us up, my driver returned to our vehicle, climbed back in and buckled up. He didn’t even appear slightly concerned.

The cars up ahead of us were cleared and we moved up to the barrier. With a quick glance at our pass, we were waved through. The driver quickly brought us back up to 90 plus MPH and continued to bob and weave down the road. There was no drama at the other checkpoints and soon we were approaching the city proper.

 I had seen maps of Route Irish and had a fair idea how to get between BIAP and the Green Zone, so I was confused when my driver started down city streets, still in close trail behind the lead SUV. This was not the Green Zone, but instead was clearly Baghdad’s Red Zone. They must have come up with an alternate route since the last time I checked, but it didn’t seem normal. As we hit downtown, traffic picked up to a level you would expect in any big city and our speed dropped from 90 to 25 or less, something of a relief.

The hyper-alertness of the driver and the shooter was gone. Now we were just another vehicle on the city streets, although both driver and shooter still watched our surroundings carefully. Instead of the emptiness of Route Irish, there were lots of vehicles sharing the streets with us now. Most of the traffic around us consisted of beat-up civilian cars, small pick-up trucks, motorcycles, and an occasional taxi. We saw several Iraqi police trucks, the white ones with the blue doors, but they ignored us. The armored SUVs marked us as Americans and therefore not terrorists. The thick traffic prevented any high-speed maneuvering, so I guessed the theory was that since we were not expected to be here, no one would have prepared an ambush.

Here I did my first Iraq people watching. Knots of men were gathered, drinking tea and idly watching the cars go by. They must be unemployed if they could sit and drink tea all day. There were small shops, mostly convenience stores, along the streets, with apartments above, if the laundry hanging outside was any indication. Sometimes the Iraqi men glared at us as we passed, but there was no overt hostility toward us. No one threw rocks or shook their fists. They knew the men inside the SUVs were armed and on a hair trigger. The Iraqi men didn’t want to see how the men in the cars would react to hostile acts. Like the driver of that car at the first checkpoint, they already knew.

What I had seen of Iraq so far looked more like Cairo did back when I was there in the 1980s than the major metropolitan city Baghdad had once been. It was now dirty and totally neglected, broken looking. Even though there were no signs of fighting, the entire place appeared ready to be bulldozed for new construction. There was trash in the street, graffiti on every wall, and squalor all around. Wires ran haphazardly from poles to buildings. Phone or electric wires? There must be more upscale areas in Baghdad, but if there were, they weren’t around here.

Soon we turned off the main street into a mostly residential area. In a few minutes, we pulled up in front of a large, walled compound, with two Iraqi AK-47 armed guards in civilian clothes standing prominently out in front, indicating that this compound was guarded and not to be attacked lightly.

The compound itself looked more industrial than residential, but whatever it was, it must be important to rate visible armed security. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out there was more security that we couldn’t see, like a hidden automatic weapon pointing down at the gate. The guards pulled open the heavy steel double gate and we drove inside. Both our driver and the shooter visibly relaxed as the gate closed behind us.

Without comment, our driver climbed out and went around to the back of our SUV. Neither the captain nor I said anything or asked any questions about what was going on and no explanations were offered. We were safe from attack, as far as we knew, and everyone, except us, appeared to know what was going on.

Both the captain and I climbed out of the backseat to take in what was happening. Just to add a little atmosphere, somewhere in the background, Middle Eastern screechy music was being blasted across the compound from a boom box. The addition of the music made the entire scene feel very like we had stepped onto a bad B movie set.

Three Iraqis, two of them wearing pistols, had wandered over to the back of our SUV, so I strolled back there too. Our driver had lifted the rear hatch and had taken our gear out of the back. He then removed the panel over the lower half of the compartment and set it on top of our bags. Next, he picked up a box and handed it to the closest Iraqi. As the man walked past, I could see it was a case of Scotch whiskey. The driver handed a second case to the next man and so on until the compartment was empty.

Now, this was a bit of a surprise.

It was a booze smuggling operation, perfect in disguise and execution, because no one searched security contractor SUVs, at least, not when leaving the Green Zone and certainly not out in the Red Zone. I wondered where on BIAP they picked up the alcohol. Booze wasn’t illegal in Iraq, so this must be a way to beat the tax man. I looked at the captain and shrugged. It was almost like being back in Vietnam, except there was no need to smuggle whiskey there since everything was available everywhere anytime.

Watching the unloading gave me time for a little more people watching. All the younger Iraqi men that I had seen so far wore a three-day growth of beard. I wondered, how that was possible? Surely at some point they are freshly shaven. To a man, they had on tight blue jeans and baggy long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up halfway up. The older Iraqi men seemed to be more into mustaches than beards, some of them with quite large and elaborate ones. Even with their mustaches, they too, had three-day beards. Oddly enough, the mustaches were all dark black, but some of the beards were all gray. Hair dye? None of the Iraqis I saw, young or old, wore traditional Arab dress. All of them seemed to be smoking constantly.

Some of the women we passed on the drive were in full Muslem rig, complete with hijab, but many more were in western clothes. Most were in long skirts and scarves. Neither sex wore shorts, as bare legs would have been provocative to any passing fundamentalists. All the females older than six or seven wore head coverings of some kind.

Unloading complete, both SUVs rode much higher in the rear. The driver replaced the panel above the cargo compartment, we reloaded our gear and climbed aboard. Not a word had been spoken between our security team and the Iraqis in the compound. Our driver drove out the gate headed back to Route Irish.

We soon arrived at the entrance to the Green Zone nearest our offices, the Assassins’ Gate. After a perfunctory inspection under the vehicles with mirrors, we were waved through by the American guards. As we passed through the entrance, our shooters cleared their weapons. The US military was on guard here in multiple layers, no need for hyper-vigilance.

About 100 yards later, we turned into another walled compound, this one containing our offices. Instead of Iraqi guards, as at the compound in the Red Zone, and the American military guards at the entrance to the Green Zone, the guards at this compound were Nepalese, commonly referred to a Gurkhas. Some of them may have been former Gurkhas, but the majority hadn’t served with the British army. They were just from a country with a military tradition and where English is widely spoken, making them ideal security contractors, particularly since they would work for lower salaries.

Our offices had been a small Secret Police compound, complete with its own prison next door. The buildings and grounds were deceptively peaceful, palm trees and a few flowering bushes around the walled main building. I didn’t want to know what had gone on here in the past.

As we climbed out of the SUV, my boss came out and greeted us. The hitchhiker captain thanked the security PSD leader for the ride, picked up his baggage, and walked off toward his own area. No one said a word about the smuggled booze.

Welcome to Baghdad, Mr. Curtis.

*** end ***