The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

“We might have been better off if we’d loaded up C-130s [transport planes] with $20 bills and dropped them out, because at least some of it would have gone to locals, not all to contractors and scam artists,” Pope says of what he found on the ground in Ninawa. Before the November 2005 es- tablishment of PRT Ninawa, FSOs in Mosul were part of the regional embassy office working out of U.S. Forward Operating Base Courage, supported by State Department security and administrative personnel on site. They had operational phone lines and computer con- nections to Embassy Baghdad and Washington. The Foreign Service staff of the REO were protected by a dedicated Blackwater (private contractor) personal secu- rity detail. In May 2006, when FOB Courage was trans- ferred to the Iraqis, personnel were moved to FOB Marez, which would serve as the base for the PRT. State and DOD were arguing about a memorandum of under- standing right up to the date of the move, according to Pope, causing confusion about who was respon- sible for what. The move resulted in a general loss of State Depart- ment support. Administrative and security personnel from the REO were transferred out of Mosul, and the remaining Foreign Service members lost phone and computer connections, with no communication sys- tem available except borrowed, intermittently function- al, military links. Contractor KBR (formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root) conducted the expensive phys- ical transfer of office equipment and furniture from the REO to the PRT. Much of the furniture and equipment was destroyed during the relocation, according to Pope. F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 “The unstable security environment in Iraq touches every aspect of the PRT mission.” — Special IG for Iraq Reconstruction