The Foreign Service Journal, March 2008

When we finally arrived in Abu Sadia, a normally quiet village where the Civil Affairs Team had made excellent progress, we had another surprise waiting for us: a protest. White Arabic-script banners hung from every wall and one across the gateway stated in English: “Coalition Forces Must Appease Our Demands to Stop Sit-In.” Apparently an Iraqi element had come in the night and arrested several of the local sheiks’ relatives. The meeting to resolve the protest was attended by the local battalion commander, the mayor and a single sheik. The rest of the city council boycotted the meeting, hold- ing a sit-in by the gateway, during which one of our sergeants and a local policeman became involved in a very animated discussion. As soon as the main meeting broke up, we all hopped into our vehicle for the trip back. This was not a day to be left in town. Travelers must stay alert in Iraq. David R. Speidel Agriculture Adviser Provincial Reconstruction Team Diyala P INGITY , P INGITY , P INGITY There I was, 500 feet up and moving at 125 knots per hour in a Blackhawk helicopter on my way back from Regional Embassy Office Al-Hillah to Embassy Bagh- dad, where I was an information management technical specialist. We were over the built-up area of south Baghdad when I started to hear pingity, pingity, pingity. Are we having engine trouble? No, some of the noises are coming from below. I don’t see any new ventilation ports opening in the roof, so I guess the Kevlar floor blanket is doing its job. Pingity, pingity, pingity. I started counting the seconds and was into the high teens before the sounds stopped. No one was hurt, and when we got back to the LZ Washington Helipad, the crew chief did a walkaround checking for damage. It wasn’t until I was back at the office that a soldier told me that I would have qualified for a combat action ribbon if I had returned fire. Since the biggest weapon authorized for State Department personnel is the F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39