letters from mosul

June 25, 2006

            T-walls (also known as Texas barriers) are made of concrete, and stand around 16 feet high, around 5 feet across.  They are tall versions of the ugly gray barriers you see surrounding public buildings in Washington, or in the middle of the Interstate during construction.  Look around yourself at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, the new home of the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), and you see gray T-walls around every building, around every bunker, everywhere.  Gray.  With a coating of light brown dust.  Looming over a layer of gray gravel. 

We have no shortage of T-walls.  The PRT may not have enough “movement assets” (armored vehicles) to get more than ten people off the base each day to do the work of capacity building in Iraq; the PRT may not have a landline phone that can make a call to a commercial phone number in the United States (my successor sent me an email from the Department of State and asked how he can call me.  I told him we’re working on that one); the PRT may have only 20 of the 30 Civil Affairs troops to staff its governance, economics, reconstruction, and rule of law units it was promised by Baghdad when PRTs were set up six months ago.  But the PRT has plenty of T-walls.  More than enough T-walls.  T-walls around the main building.  T-walls around the outlying buildings.  T-walls around each settlement of living trailers.  And then a whole stockade of T-walls around the PRT’s complex, lacking only guard towers in its attempt to resemble the Berlin Wall.

I’m told that, in the years since we arrived in 2003, we’ve outstripped the capacity of the local Mosul cement factory to make T-walls.  So we import T-walls from Turkey.  That’s right:  convoys of big trucks, their drivers earning premium pay because of the danger of driving through Iraq, loaded up with tons of concrete slabs for us and for everyone else on the sprawling base at Marez, roaring down the highway from eastern Anatolia.

(Of course, Mosul may have a lot of T-walls, but Mosul doesn’t come close to matching the number of T-walls in Baghdad.  There, in Baghdad’s Green Zone – which we now call the International Zone, or IZ – it’s easy to get lost because every street, every lane, every alley is lined with T-walls.  Driving around the IZ in Baghdad is remarkably similar to being a mouse in a maze, except that I’ve never found a piece of cheese lying around anywhere to reward me for making it to the center of the labyrinth.)

I’ve asked how much T-walls cost.  I hear various estimates, and they run between $500 and $1500.  So let’s assume that each T-wall costs a thousand bucks.  Let’s not even count the cost of the labor to bring the T-walls to their destination, or to install them.  The Mosul PRT has been at FOB Marez for more than three weeks now, and the heavy equipment is out there still, erecting and aligning T-walls:  T-walls now not only around our buildings, but T-walls around the C-bunkers – the shelters we’re supposed to dive into during rocket or mortar attacks.  C-bunkers are open at both ends.  Gotta make sure they’re covered at both ends!  Thus the need to install T-walls at each end of each C-bunker. 

I counted the number of T-walls surrounding my building, Supermax.  You ask how my building got that name?   It should give you a hint of the esthetic quality of living in a plywood buildings surrounded by T-walls.  (We’ve named the three outlying buildings Leavenworth, Rikers, and Sing Sing, and the living areas Alcatraz, San Quentin, and Attica.)  There are 96 T-walls around Supermax alone, including those at both ends of the C-bunkers, but not counting the C-bunkers themselves.  So let’s give this an estimate:  it costs $100,000 without labor to surround this building with T-walls.  Each of the other buildings, each of the living areas, each toilet/shower unit, is also surrounded by T-walls.  Plus there’s a ring of T-walls around the entire compound.  I went outside today and counted them:  there are 418 T-walls in the ring that surrounds us.  Do the math. 

Easily – easily – it has cost the U.S. Department of State more than a million dollars to purchase and install the T-walls around this one particular “pad” on this one particular base.

My military colleagues point out another important fact.  T-walls are installed for one reason:  to protect personnel against shrapnel in case of mortar or rocket attack.  True enough, here in Mosul, we get hit regularly by mortars and rockets.  But most of the time the mortar rounds and rockets come from “thataway” (my military colleagues gesture upwards).  And the roofs of our tin living trailers, and the roofs of our plywood work buildings, are not protected by T-walls.  In fact, they’re not protected by anything at all.  When a mortar comes down out of the sky onto a trailer (even if the trailer is surrounded by T-walls) that trailer is obliterated.  During my time in Iraq, I’ve seen this happen.  And last week a rocket came down out of the sky onto the plywood roof of the brigade’s command post here at FOB Marez and, sure enough, the shrapnel went right through it.

So a million dollars worth of concrete keeps shrapnel from hitting us sideways.  Am I complaining?  Not me. Any time the U.S. government spends money in an attempt to keep me and my team safe during our time in Iraq, I’m grateful.