The Iraqi money pit- conflicting views

The U.S. built hospital was full of new equipment: x-ray machines, dialysis machines, even CAT scanners, but none of the Iraqis had been properly trained to use them. The expensive, desperately needed machines would eventually be scavenged for basic parts.

Complex oil drilling simulators, designed to train Iraqis how to tap their vast reserves, were delivered at a cost of a million dollars each. But the manufacturing company refused to send any advisors to Iraq, so Iraqi never learned how to assemble them. The simulators gathered dust in their shipping boxes for years.

(Two new refineries being constructed at Daura Refinery)

In a Nov. 20th article, Timothy Williams of the NYT lays out the cost to the U.S. taxpayer in reconstructing Iraq- $53 billion, so far. (Some claim the total reconstruction figure is closer to $114 billion including U.S., foreign and Iraqi funds, and projects still in progress.) Out of these totals, the article claims hundreds have millions have been wasted.

Taxpayer waste in Iraqi is an old theme, but revisited at a time when projects are supposed to be improving transferal of ownership to Iraqi counterparts, it's like tearing into scar tissue. There's a natural tendency to blame Iraqis for not taking any ownership over the huge reconstruction projects built to provide essentials like better health care and clean water.. but as the NYT article states, "many projects have remained empty or unused long after completion because not enough Iraqis have been trained to use them."

Amidst the anger and frustration, there' s two sides to this failure. Many U.S. aid and military officials lament Iraqis' lack of initiative and responsibility to cooperate on good projects. A Congressional Research Service Report cited two Baghdad regional power stations rehabilitated in 2007 with U.S. funds as not operational, largely because of insufficiently maintained equipment.

The finger pointing

But several advisors currently working on U.S. funded capacity building programs in Baghdad, reacted strongly against laying the onus on the Iraqis, and letting the American mistakes off the hook. They echo a section of the article stating, "While Iraq has often been guilty of poor management, American authorities have repeatedly failed to ask Iraqis what sort of projects they needed and have not followed up with adequate training."

This too is an old, sad story in reconstruction circles. Americans working unilaterally on huge construction jobs, that they didn't involve the Iraqis in even the initial planning of.

A senior advisor working with a U.S. funded capacity building project to assist the Iraqi Ministry of Planning said, "This is unbelievable to blame the Gov't. of Iraq (GOI) for the lack of sustainability or maintenance of projects funded by the U.S. Gov't. (USG). It is one thing to blame the GOI for its lack of capacity to effectively implement and manage its projects using its own money, but to blame it for not running and maintaining projects which they were never consulted on, or even knew of their existence, is outrageous."

The Congressional Research Service's report on Iraq Reconstruction Assistance stated, the Iraqi Gov't. has not allowed any project transfers from the USG since 2006. As of May 2007, $5.3 billion in USG funded projects awaited transfer to the GOI.

The senior advisor disputed this claim. "I've been working closely with the International Cooperation Directorate at the Ministry of Planning (MoP) for the last three years," he said. "The MoP has been requesting the U.S. Embassy to give them any information about USG funded projects and the later refused until this summer (2009) to do so."

It seems to be a case of finger pointing. The advisor went on to explain, "The U.S. Embassy and Army refused any coordination with the GOI regarding USG funded projects and insisted that these are US tax payer-funded projects and the GOI has nothing to do with them. This summer the Embassy handed over a list of 18,000 projects and claimed that they're worth $21 billion and asked the GOI to take over these projects and start operating them. I will leave you to guess what the answer of the GOI was. If we want to talk about failures, let's talk about both sides and not only one."

One prominent Director General of a state oil company weighed in on the finger pointing, "Get a list of projects from the Americans and come to me (a high level gov't. figure) and I'll tell you if it's right or wrong (completed or not, or if it should be continued or mothballed). The problem is most probably many half finished projects have already been cannibalized."

The underlying problem is the reconstruction efforts were and still are needed, particular in areas of clean water and medical services. The Red Cross estimates 40 percent of Iraqis still don't have access to clean water. Oxfam reports 90 percent of Iraq's 180 hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies.

Twin problems: Budget execution and Corruption

Compounding the lack of coordination between U.S. reconstruction efforts and Iraqi ownership, are the ever-present issues of Iraqi budget execution and widespread corruption.

Iraqi Ministries have executed less than half their allocated budgets over the last two years. This doesn't make much sense to an outsider who hears cries for assistance amidst falling oil prices. But many officials admit they're afraid to spend the money for fear of being singled out for corruption.

In 2008 Iraq spent only 39 percent of its capital budget, and that was huge leap forward from 2007. As of Aug. 2009 only forty percent of the total $55.6 billion dollar budget had been spent. Meanwhile ministry operational costs, such as salaries, are skyrocketing. From 2005-2007, Iraq spent $67 billion, 90 percent on operating costs.

The implications are serious- Iraq is spending more and more on employee salaries at over-staffed ministries, still hesitant to use its own money on infrastructure developments while U.S. reconstruction is still pouring in hundreds of millions, and Iraq holds out for favorable international oil company consortium deals to stave severe losses in agriculture and prop up an almost nonexistent private sector.

Ghosts in the project

Earlier this year, a USA Today story reported that USAID suspended its single most expensive program, a $644 million initiative run by a U.S. non-profit to give Iraqis jobs and steer them away from the insurgency. The Community Stabilization Program paid Iraqis cash to do basic public works projects, but the inspector general's audit found the program was rife with phantom jobs and a lack of accountability. One of the companies staffers said that tens of millions worth of projects didn't exist and the documents detailing them were faked.

It's bad, really bad, when one doesn't even know where to start. Kind of chicken or the egg argument. Hard to say whether it's so difficult to account for the money because Iraqi groups and even insurgents used community and religious fronts to enrich themselves, or whether the astounding lack of contractor oversight, itself a form of gov't. fraud, allowed this to happen, probably both. Suffice to say the fact the program was so needed, points to the reasons why it was so easily exploit- corruption perpetuates itself on all levels and both sides.

The most egregious accusations of corruption come from an Iraqi, Salam Adhoob, who according to the Mother Jones article "The Boy Scout of Baghdad" really tried to root out corruption as the country's chief investigator of the Commission on Public Integrity. He went after several of PM Maliki's aides, who eventually issued orders to fire Adhoob.

Thirty two of his 200 employees were killed. The U.S. Embassy was afraid to accuse senior Iraqi officials of corruption, and couldn't protect him. Eventually he made it to the U.S. on an emergency visa.

Mr. Salam Adhoob, whistleblower silenced by both U.S. and Iraqi officials. (Photo: David S. Holloway/Reportage by Getty Images)

According to the article, Adhoob has compared the Maliki administration to the Mafia and declared the government had stolen more than $12 billion.

He also testified before the Senate Democratic Public Committee, where he said, "based on the cases that I have personally investigated, I believe that at least $ 18 billion have been lost in Iraq through corruption and waste, more than half of which was American money." He cited many Iraqi ministries' paying contractors for "phantom projects". He also said an American company delivered only one-third of the 510 Humvees it had been paid to supply the Iraqi military.

After his testimony, Adhoob could not get any kind of job with corruption oversight in the States, he even lost his job as a language instructor.

Ownership

Another senior advisor working on building Iraq's procurement capabilities suggested, "The USG should have involved the Iraqis in the decision on what the country really needed and how much it was going to cost the GOI to operate it. The USG should have ensured that the GOI could operate each project even before reconstruction commenced."

Granted, the point of view of many of these advisors has been shaped by being from the region, by their long-time work in Iraq and by the inter-agency rivalries between U.S. funded projects.

Also there's the pervasive belief that their current practices- embedding local staff with senior Iraqi officials and involving them, even while they are leading them by the hand, in the decision making process, is the best option for continuity and sustainability.

While this intuitively seems to be true, and mid-level bureaucrats respond well to empowerment and skill building training programs, there's no short-term evidence that building the capacity of already bloated, unwieldy ministries will bring systematic change. Those at the top have too much to lose if they let go of their authority.

There's some anecdotal evidence that such training and mentoring will eventually open up bureaucrat mind sets and budgets to much needed fresh ideas, like public private partnerships common in Westernized countries, and without which there is little hope for efficient, corruption-free delivery of basic services.

As the same advisor said, "The most important aspect in reconstruction in an environment like Iraq is ownership..." In this case a slow building of personnel capacity through mentoring may be the only way after so many failures.

Talking to the Enemy

(photos by Simon Klingert)

So how does a military intelligence gatherer know if an informant’s lying?

“A lot of times you don’t know if someone’s lying,” Chief warrant officer Edward Strauss, head of a Human Intelligence team based out of Jalabad, said in a phone interview. “Sometimes they outright tell me the wrong name. A lot of times we have other intelligence signals- (satellite or drone) imagery, that will give us ‘contrary’ information.”

“One thing we cannot do,” Strauss said, “we can’t do an operation based on what one person says. Nine times out of 10, (an informant’s motivation is based) on a tribal feud. You don’t go in on one person’s word.”

“The hardest part,” Dan, one of Strauss's enlisted soldiers, said, “is to corroborate and vet the information we get. When we hear a specific high-value target is moving in the region, we note it. When we get two or three sources saying it, then we move to find someone who has had direct contact with the target.”

But the difficulty in confirming such information is, “the Afghans have a fantastic technique of deflecting,” Dan said. “You’ll ask them how many guys they need at a command post, and he’ll talk to you about vehicle requests, more ammunition and goats. A tremendous amount is based on interpersonal skills, reading the subtleties and the signs. You have to pay attention. You have to come in with a clean slate. Pre-conceived notions in a combat zone are useless.”

“There are different levels of people we talk to.” Strauss explained that the insurgents pursue counter-intelligence operations, and it's hard to be sure exactly what a person's motivation is when you first meet them. “When we meet with them we try to give them the minimal level of information about us. We have to maintain operational security. There are people we trust, some have received a polygraph.”

"The big thing is you have to look at their history, if he was actively fighting," Stauss said. "They have to provide a tight (account of what they did and who they are); they have to build that trust slowly... You have to think, how would using this informant look to some one in the U.S. gov't. You have to be very careful."

"We've had several individuals lie to us. If I catch them in a lie, I won't work with them. It’s a lost cause. We put that information out there,” Strauss said.

What if you have a warlord, like Haji Jan Dad, who may be working with both insurgents and the coalition at the same time, I asked.

"He's a very influential man," Strauss said. "Commanders have to work with him. He's influential over a lot of village Maliks; he gets a lot of support from the Afghan government. But I wouldn't work with him. If you work with him, you don't act solely on his information. He's doing it for his own reasons. I'd be careful on any operations with him, whether Shura (community meeting) or road contracts."

I asked Strauss how they conduct interrogations. "Interrogations have gotten such a bad name since Abu Ghraib, we have to take high road at all times... There's a lot of oversight, reports before and after." He said all (interrogations) are managed differently now. "We don't have one person going into the room with the suspect. There's checks and balances. It's more rapport building like in an interview, and questioning and catching people in lies."

“The difficulty is being a principal-driven person when dealing with the enemy on a daily basis,” Dan said.

“Working both sides, it’s hard,” Strauss said. “You basically got to make him feel for the other side,” meaning trying to distill empathy from the low-level insurgent for their own people. “I don’t want to see young Afghans getting killed. I’m always trying to get them to see this, and to do something good.”

The Insurgent Business

“Being Taliban is a business,” Dan explained. “Ninety percent do it to feed their family. When a better opportunity comes, they will leave it for a steady paycheck. I talked to Talibs today, in a business sense,” he said.

Often times they’ll try to get even higher level insurgents to “reconcile”, a promise to lay down their arms, usually in exchange for a coalition-sponsored job or contract for their tribe.

“If they killed Americans we sometimes have to hide that from soldiers," Dan said. In Kunar province they brought in Taliban commanders for reconciliations, but they had to hide it from the battlefield commanders. “We disguised them under cover of the night,” Dan said.

“Every province has it’s own (Talib) shadow governor,” Dan said. In Afghanistan our main priority is to remove the dissenters- the ninety percent who have taken the Taliban name, from the “hard core” Taliban, some of whom are foreign fighters who travel over the border from Pakistan in pairs. They link with a local Taliban commander and move around. They’re classic jihadists… The American idea of borders doesn't effect their movements. It ebbs and flows.”

What is certain is that the local population is watching how Americans react to Taliban attacks. This summer an IED hit Nuristan’s Provincial Reconstruction Team during their last week in country. The vehicle rolled down a hill, injuring all five occupants. “It was a big upset to the PRT,” Dan said. But the American response was the difference maker.

“Nuristan is used to retaliation,” Dan said. “They thought we would blow stuff up. Now the people mention, you didn’t bomb us. That was a Russian tactic. It was a victory for us, when we were hurt, not to hurt more.”

“There’s two kinds of Nuristanis- those who see Americans from a distance, and the second kind that view Americans as guests," under the Pashtun tradition of Pashtunwali. “The salt of the earth who say if you weren’t our guests, ‘I’d shoot you myself.”

"You can't kill all the bad guys to help locals"

Torquem Gate is one of the main border crossings with Pakistan and notorious for arms smuggling. The intelligence teams use informants on both sides of the border, using a system of concealing informants, Strauss said. Information is passed through more than one person, so that informants aren't seen dealing directly with Americans. These actions probably save lives. Not only does it insulate the informant, 700 pounds of explosives were found hidden in the floorboards of a bus, based on this kind of information sharing.

This summer an informant saw a coffin surrounded by women, coming from Pakistan. It fit a profile he'd been told to look for. Police intercepted the coffin. It was full of suicide vests. They’d previously gotten reports of women smuggling weapons in coffins.

“A big part of it is meeting and talking with locals," Strauss said. "A big part is information operations, to get a sense how public feels about us.”

Often they hear about villagers helping the Taliban indirectly, like with food or shelter, probably under threat. Strauss explained instead of arresting the villagers, they try to garner allegiance from them by offering incentives to the local Malik, like medical assistance or digging a well, to side with the coalition.

The problem is the Taliban know the villagers personally and can return at night to make reprisals. To this reality, Strauss responded, "You can't kill all the bad guys to help the locals."

He spoke of one local Malik in southern Nangahar named Malik Niaz who publically rose against the Taliban. "This is not-media savy culture," Strauss said, "The tough part is working with the villagers who haven't seen foreigners since the Russians. But it's a word of mouth culture. The people knew about him."

Niaz on his own initiative went to the coalition and the local gov't. asking for funding to assemble a militia to defend the village. "Working with a militia," Stauss said, "that's a good possibility. Local people trust them. The Afghan Army is not as trusted, they’d rather have a local national guard."

"I don’t think it’s too out of the realm to pay and train them, so they don’t get into tribal feuds," Strauss said. "Locals are accepting it, it’s on the edge of happening. This Malik Niaz thing, they talked about it (all the way in) Nuristan."

Recent history shows a coalition-funded militia system worked extremely well to de-fang the Sunni insurgency starting in Anbar, Iraq.

But first, a critical mass of influential sheiks had to step forward. Here as in Iraq, the first few who step forward will be targeted and killed.

Malik Niaz was killed by a suicide bomb this summer as he was assembling the militia. But was he the start of a movement?

Intelligence Games: Fishing in Murky Waters

(The following story and images by Simon Klingert, are reconstructed from interviews and eye-witness accounts during his embed in Diyala, Iraq in 2008)

"Do we want to have him killed or not?"

The question hung in the air, as the solider followed up with the target's profile:

"We know that he recently abducted a 14- year old kid and is training him to be an assassin. He has ties to the insurgency, but he's more of a criminal than anything else. He is also close friends with the local police chief, who wouldn't be too happy to see him killed."

Captain Bangura sat in the cramped room that served as home and office to the intelligence cell under his command, and took a moment to process the question his intelligence sergeant had put out in the open. As commander of Cobra Troop, (2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment as part of 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division), it would be up to him to decide if the target, this shady figure with ties to the Iraqi insurgency, would live or die.

In early 2008, the violence in Iraq had calmed somewhat. U.S. and Iraqi security forces had pushed insurgent groups from their strongholds in cities like Baghdad and Baqubah, forcing them to retreat to the Northern city of Mosul and to more rural areas, such as in restive Diyala governorate. In this area, about 15 Kilometers (9 Miles) North of Baqubah lies the quiet town of al Khalis, where Captain Bangura had set up shop at Joint Combat Outpost Blackfoot.

The outpost's strategic emplacement in a residential neighborhood in close proximity to an Iraqi Police station and the local Bazaar was part of the then new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) that required troops to move off their big Forward Operating Bases and live amongst the population they sought to protect.

While it is hard to gauge exactly which factors brought the relative calm to al Khalis, one element stood out as a reliable indicator of the improved security: The amount of information or "human intelligence" coming from the local populace. The near constant presence of U.S. troops instilled a sense of security in the neighborhood, which enabled residents to covertly rely information to the military without the fear of immediate insurgent retribution. Even so, appearing to be close friends with the Americans was still considered hazardous to ones health in Iraq.

In the end it was strategy that kept the criminal suspect alive. His partnership with the Iraqi Police and their commander was too important to jeopardize, given the fact that the local security forces also played their part in securing the town.

After the meeting, Sergeant Hines, the man in charge of the intelligence cell at the combat outpost, sat on his cot and started to explain. Fearing that the preceding discussion might have created a distorted image of intelligence operations, he pointed out the possibilities as well as the limits of methods used to collect intelligence. He took his M16 assault rifle, checked that it was on safe, laid it on his lap and slowly moved the barrel in my direction.

"I cannot even do this when I interrogate suspects," he said, the barrel of his rifle pointing menacingly in my direction. "I try to extract information by opening and closing doors. I thoroughly explain the situation to the suspects I interrogate, and offer them various benefits if they cooperate. For example, that I can make sure their families will be provided for if they are sentenced to jail."

With regards to the darker side of his job, Sergeant Hines in a matter- of-fact tone suggested a method to eliminate a person: "If we really decide a target should be killed, we would set up a meeting with him, invite his worst enemy and simply wouldn't show up."

In a country where conflicts are often resolved with arms, this seemed to be an efficient method to get an enemy out of the way.

But his rifle wasn't Sergeant Hines' most important tool. Almost constantly, he checked his cell phones. There were five of them, neatly arranged in a row on the single table that dominated the room. Every now and then, he would receive calls from informants who either lived in the town or the surrounding area. As time progressed, his Arabic language skills had put him in a position to build personal relationships with his sources. As a result, a relatively constant flow of intelligence kept coming in, but it came with an increased responsibility to protect his sources, who knowingly risked a violent death at the hand of the insurgents.

Only when a real threat to one of his informants emerged, would Sergeant Hines bring his rifle.

A trick to protecting informants

The Cobra Troopers entered the courtyard and dispersed quickly, their weapons raised. Some of them swiftly climbed the stairs to the roof while others stormed inside the house, passing the anxious looking Iraqi women who opened the door. Running upstairs in a blur, there were shouts and the bang of more doors. One soldier entered what seemed to be the bedroom and began to rifle through the closet, looking for weapons or other suspicious items.

Meanwhile Sergeant Hines, together with an Iraqi interpreter and other soldiers at his side started to question a middle-aged man who turned out to be the homeowner's brother.

"Where is you brother, we are looking for him. When have you last seen him?" Sergeant Hines said using a stern voice. "We have information from– he named a local insurgent who had recently been arrested by coalition forces– that you brother is supporting the insurgency. Where is he?"

The brothers face changed from disbelief to anger: "God is my witness, my brother has nothing to do with the insurgency! Anyone who claims that is a liar!"

It quickly became apparent that the man either did not know his brother's location or was not willing to give away, so the soldiers went on to question some of the neighbors who had come out on the street. The suspect's brother was left alone standing in the courtyard, visibly distraught.

Little did he know that in reality the soldiers were looking to protect, not apprehend his brother. He was a local shop owner who sought to maintain the calm by providing Sergeant Hines with valuable information about insurgents operating in the area. With the shop owner's consent, the soldiers of Cobra Troop had simply put up a show to deflect suspicions from him, as rumors began circulating in the neighborhood that he was working with the Americans.

With the neighbors and even his own brother thinking the U.S. military was after him for suspected connections with the insurgency, these rumors were blunted. The source had come off the hook and was left to swim in the murky waters where intelligence operations are carried out. In Iraq early 2008, nothing was as it seemed.

Good intelligence vs. Bad men, not easy to distinguish (part 1)

(A high-value target poster of insurgents operating in Nuristan- Simon Klingert (c)

Forward Operating Base Kala Gush, Nuristan-

“What we do isn’t classified, but how we do it is,” Dan said from his small plywood office covered with maps marked Secret. He wore a beard and civilian clothes. His cell phone was constantly ringing from Afghans who wanted to meet with him.

I’d seen him work the day before. We’d trudged through rows of farmland along the river to a mud and brick compound (qulat), where an Afghan patriarch with a salt and pepper beard welcomed the American Provincial Reconstruction team. The man’s brothers and sons spread a rug over the hard packed dirt and served the Americans Chai tea without sugar, a sure sign they didn’t have much.

It was a simple meet and greet, one that happens dozens of times a day in this rugged northeastern province of Nuristan, where the U.S. Army has recently announced it's pulling out of some remote outposts before a recent insurgent attack killed eight soldiers. But there’s an ongoing cultivation of relationships and information during these informal meetings, that often passes below the regular soldier’s radar. That’s Dan’s job. Dan works in intelligence. The Afghan farmer was John Hasit, who local legend has it, was a former Mujahadeen commander who earned a name for blowing up Russian tanks coming through Nuristan’s mountain passes.

Dan nodded as John spoke to him in Pashto. He learned Mandarin in 68 weeks at the Army's Defense Language Institute. “After the first three months, it’s all immersion,” Dan said, of the renowned program reputed to train intelligence types in highly desired languages. Immersion is also how he learned Iraqi Arabic and is learning Pashto.

Dan is a part of a HUMINT (Human Intelligence) intelligence team based out of Forward Operating Base Kala Gush. According to GoArmy.com the HUMINT soldier’s job is to coordinate and participate in controlled operations and interviews. There is not much online information available on HUMINT operations in the war on terror.

What’s not online is the implication that the CIA is able to hit insurgent leaders with drone missiles guided from Langley precisely because human intelligence is constantly being gathered on the ground. We can bet that the drone strike that killed Baitulla Mehsud in the Southwest tribal region, started with a chain of human intelligence placing his location and timing. Insurgent leaders of his status know they are targeted, eschew technology and move constantly. (See David Rohde's "Held by the Taliban" for an account of being held hostage in this Insurgent-controlled region.)

But Dan doesn’t act like a spook. “A pen and paper and a cell phone,” he said, “that’s our bread and butter… Ask questions and demand answers. That’s what we do. We have entire echelons above us that need information. We need answers quickly. Yes, we’re looking for bad guys, but the biggest part is to build relations with locals.”

“The most important skill is rapport building,” said Dan’s boss, Chief Warrant Officer Edward Strauss. “Adapting to a situation to relate to those cultures, to direct your questioning and interviews,” said Strauss who has 23 years experience in the field in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo.

Dan did three tours in Iraq. He experienced his share of explosions- propane IED’s, IED’s made of 155 rounds, and didn’t advertise what else he was doing. “We always embed and blend in,” he said. “Subtlety is the key.”

Dan volunteered to come to Afghanistan. He’s been here close to nine months and is trying to extend on another tour in this same region.

Non-lethal vs. Lethal

HUMINT teams conduct two kinds of operations categorized as non-lethal and lethal. “Non-lethal is information operations,” Dan said. “That includes civil affairs, psychological operations, counter-propaganda…Of the information we collect, 40 percent goes to the PRT, 60 percent is to target bad guys. Intelligence analysts use the reports to feed into the targets. We do the grunt work.”

“We create target packets as a collection team,” he said. Meaning they collect information on the enemy’s patterns that Special Forces use to either capture or kill them. “Tracking guys, they rarely fall off the grid because we have coverage from here to Pakistan. It’s a big area, but there are common weapons depots, a car rental place in Jalabad, for instance. We have people (informants) in places they pass through.”

“Our non-lethal target packets focus on villages that are on the fence,” Chief Strauss said. “We coordinate with cultural development teams, PRT teams on projects. They’ll make an assessment on how to help them out.” In other words, payment can persuade a village elder that working for the coalition can be more profitable than submitting to the Taliban’s will, even though the Talibs will probably return to the same village and make threats later that night night.

And Strauss said even with high-value targets the answer is not always to set up a military operation to nab or kill them. “We’ll collect on a high-value target and it could be more value to persuade, (probably with promise of tribal jobs or payments) than to send a guy to jail…This culture can switch sides as quickly as we can track them. This guy is the good guy, and then he isn’t.”

Chief Strauss said he believes Afghan children will have better attitudes about coalition forces, not necessarily their parents. “It’s a never ending cycle and it will take generations, to resolve.”

Responsible for the High Ground

I asked Dan if they pay informants. “We don’t traffic for information,” Dan said. “If we did, we’d be no better than a spy. It’s an intelligence taboo.”

“We’re responsible for the high ground,” he explained. “We could go to the Taliban and say we’ll tell you about one of our informants if you give us three of yours, spy for spy, but we don’t.”

Strauss explains it more pragmatically. “We try not to be a money pot…We give them a phone, we compensate them for their travel. They provide information on where the bad guys are... The whole culture is big on respect. But they’re not doing it for free. And we don’t go in and shoot guys, we just get information.”

(Dan speaks with a local Afghan- Simon Klingert (c)

Dan wouldn’t say how they groom an informant. It’s classified, but he hinted that a lot is based on reputation of operatives like him. He said they can gain ground on the smaller fish- those paid to plant an IED or shoot an RPG on a weekly basis. But the bigger fish, the ones who make the most wanted posters and for whom cash is rewarded for their capture, are a combined intelligence gathering effort.

“We have laws for war. Yes, other teams will slip to the dirty side and get people killed by trading information for someone’s life,” Dan said. “People sometimes forget it’s actually people’s lives. Sometimes there’s a justification for greater good, sometimes there’s an inhumane side. If you use your training and experience and follow the rules you can avoid it.”

But there are ethical conflicts in the intelligence business, even using the rules as guidelines. For example, sometimes insurgents will put the intelligence gatherer into an ethical quandary by saying, if you don’t tell us who an informant is, we’ll continue to fire rockets at the base. Dan explained if they give up the informant, they’d be violating the rules of protecting the soldier over the more vulnerable local population.

“It happened in Iraq. You try to gather the most information in the shortest time possible to seal your target packet (to get him) before he can kill more people. The insurgent has the advantage of being a local; we have the advantage of training and resources.” In such a fast paced, deadly competition, “We’ve had to be in multiple places,” to win, Dan said.

But note everyone, even allies, play by the same rules. In Iraq a few years ago, Dan’s team was rotating into an area of operation controlled by a Macedonian intelligence team, many who were former KGB, near Camp Taji. “They took us out to test us, to basically see how we’d react,” Dan said.

“There were two neighbors, Dan recalled. On one side of the street was a weapon’s dealer for the Badr Corps. (Shia insurgents allied with Iran) and the other side was their informant. The Macedonians pretended to do a medical evaluation at the informant’s house and then went to the Badr house across the street. (A bad practice since, the insurgents were clearly aware whose house they had just come from.) We didn't trust the Macedonians, we knew they were trying to get information on us, but we went along and shook hands. The next day the informant called and said they’re (the insurgents) standing outside my house. Two days later his body washed up on the Tigris.”

Despite a terrible compromise, and loss of life, Dan said, “Keeping an informant safe is the most important thing. I’ve not lost an informant in seven years on the job.”

“I had my own selfish reasons for stealing a language and a clearance,” Dan said, “but any soldier worth his salt wants to challenge himself and learn. Pushing yourself is all about hard work. A mentor of mine told me, there’s no such thing as high-speed (the Army term for its bad-ass warrior elite), just hard working. I’ve been in more countries than I can remember, but I’m here to help local people who’ve been constantly abused.”