He says, 'saving the world, one email at a time.'

She has an exciting, glamourous role. Her organisation is on the front line, providing assistance to people fleeing the conflict in eastern Mosul. When she comes home from work, she excitedly talks about NFI (Non-Food items, not the Australian version), BESK (Basic Emergency Shelter Kits) and how many IDPs (Internally Displaced People) their interventions have assisted.

Late in the evening, when I’m half falling asleep, she’s still sitting upright in bed, frantically typing away on her computer. She and her partners in crime on the Zone 4 Coordination group excitedly Skype each other about potential programming gaps that need to be filled in the Nimrod Corridor. Like giggling school girls, they’re busy discussing a new wave of IDPs that have arrived in x Village. They need shelter, they need water and to get there they need to negotiate their way through eleven different checkpoints manned by the local security forces and several different militia. (Just in case you’re wondering, she is the best-ever at getting through checkpoints. She knits, drives and talks Arabic all at the same time, and is from New Zealand – which is somewhere near Scandinavia, which is probably why they’re too scared to stop her!?)

Yes, it’s fair to say that I’m suffering from a mild dose of job envy.  If her job is like sugar-coated Weetbix, mine is more like eating dry-cardboard for breakfast.

My job seems to be about finding different and creative reasons to say no. An average day at the office normally goes something like this;

7:51 Coffee and emails.

8:03 “No, you can’t go there until we’ve completed the rapid security assessment and tri-angulate that with the information from INSO and the other agencies that tells us that the road from Q to T is cleared of UXOs and IEDs.”

9:17 “No, you can’t stay overnight, because to stay in location A we need at least three expatriates and at least two of you need to be pre-approved drivers who actually know the route between Lima Kilo One and Echo Lima One.”

10:15 “No, you can’t take leave because person x will also be on leave and that will mean that person y is left to manage two MMU (Mobile Medical Unit) and one SMU (Static Mobile Unit) by themselves.”

11:21. “No, we can’t charge the cost of the warehouse to ECHO Project PR 130 because the grant ended on the 31^st of March and the last time I checked ECHO don’t charge retrospectively and you don’t have written pre-approval for the next grant. I know this because I’ve been managing ECHO projects for longer than you’ve been alive.”

12:30. (When HQ finally comes on-line). “No, we can’t place person J, K or Z that you suggested in the Iraq programme because they have no previous field experience and haven’t worked in a conflict situation before. What about the 3 actual candidates we told you we were interested in?”

13:46. “No, you can’t do that because I haven’t had lunch and now I’m hangry.” (For those of you not in the know, that’s a combination of being hungry and subsequently being angry at being hungry and having spent the whole morning saying no to things.

14:56. Respond to more emails, primarily saying ‘No’ for various obscure reasons hidden away in Security SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) #1-14.

15:02. “No, you can’t go and climb a mountain on the weekend because you didn’t submit a clearance before Tuesday and expatriates are not allowed outside urban areas after 4pm.”

16:17 “No, we can’t help the IDPs in the camp by providing aqua tabs and water-trucking because the organisational WASH strategy, that you didn’t ask my input into, says we only work out of camps and where we can see a clear exit strategy.”

17:30 “No we haven’t procured the drugs we urgently need for the camp clinic because the logistics manager at HQ wants you to have three separate quotes from WHO approved Quali-med suppliers. (Even if it takes 5 months to get them delivered here, like it did last time, because the process is more important than saving lives. God forbid if we failed an audit, right?)

So, if you compare our two roles, she’s like Superwoman, saving the world and I’m more like the fat controller from Thomas the Tank Engine.

So that you don’t completely get the wrong impression, my organisation does do some good stuff, somewhere, somehow. I   t’s just that I’m often too busy saying ‘No’ and saving the world, one email at a time to go and spend time in the field. (There’s also the small problem of SOP #9 that says expatriates should only spend <60 minutes in remote field locations to reduce exposure.)

If I was to set a KPI for the next few weeks and months, it would be to start turning some of the NOs into YES’. Working for a risk adverse organisation such as mine , the challenge is to find creative ways of working within the myriad of rules, regulations, procedures, strategy documents and standard operating procedures to achieve something!  Being Australian, of convict origins, with a strong-dislike for overly authoritarian rules and regulations, I’m probably just the person they need for the job.

She says.."Mosul & Markets"

I was recently asked whether I actually go to Mosul for work, and about the distance between Erbil and Mosul. Working in a war zone is more than foreign to most Antipodeans, so hopefully a brief intro to what it looks like through my eyes will be of interest to you.

People talk about Mosul in two ways, sometimes referring to the city itself, and sometimes to the city and the surrounding area. I do travel into Mosul city for work, but I haven't been inside for the last 2 weeks as the security situation in the east (the area already controlled by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)) deteriorated considerably. We had a small window of opportunity to be inside so the first step was, of course, a security assessment of the area. We had a visiting security specialist with us, so our assessment involved learning which of the multiple military or police groups are managing the security of the area, a visual assessment of infrastructure, speaking with community leaders and a very quick survey of how many people have returned to the area, whether they lived there before or have moved there since, and their major needs etc.

Typical damage to a large building on the road to Qaraqosh,
a large Christian city near Mosul.

The road to Mosul from Erbil is not dangerous, but it's slow with many checkpoints, manned by the Kurdish Peshmerga in Kurdistan, and then by the ISF in Iraq. The checkpoints mean the 70km journey takes approximately 2.5h. Recently the military stopped trucks going across the only bridge on the main road so we had to go around (we were transporting thousands of mattresses and hundreds of household item kits and food ration kits for a family for 30 days (83kg per family!). Driving around the bridge meant it took us 5h to travel 70km.

When driving into Mosul, our vehicle travels on a normal road with everyone else, and we see Humvees, pick-ups with large weapons on top, crazy-enormous military vehicles, family vehicles with no windows, trucks of supplies and an occasional donkey cart. It is not unusual to hear gunfire, but it is usually directly related to someone’s frustration at the slow pace of the traffic, or desperate crowds of people being unwilling to wait their turn for goods. It’s amazing how quickly it becomes normal to hear gunfire. I have carried on knitting in the back of the vehicle while nearby gunfire encouraged the traffic to move faster.          

Driving into Gojali, on the outskirts of eastern Mosul

We hear heavy weapon usage throughout our visits, but the action is still 5-10km from where we are. I was close to the city this week training some Mosul locals in household assessment techniques, and the noise from the current battle for western Mosul was fierce. Look out for a future blog on the challenges faced when teaching rote learners survey techniques.

The eastern suburbs of the city that we visited have similar levels of damage to many of the surrounding villages we work in. Almost all, if not all buildings have been damaged by heavy fighting, including artillery and airstrikes. Perhaps 15-25% of buildings have been completely destroyed and I saw very few intact windows. Some suburbs have been hit much harder than others – I learned yesterday that two suburbs I visited were retaken in a battle lasting approximately 72h, whilst a neighbouring suburb was fought for over 23 days. As you would expect, the damage from longer battles is much more severe. Although officially liberated, eastern Mosul is still dangerous. There is a known tactic of the OAG to hide when an area is retaken and to then reappear and cause chaos with violence 10 days - 2 weeks later. Recently there has been a massive increase in the number of drones the OAG is using to drop mortars and grenades in the retaken areas. The OAG targets gatherings, so any obvious distribution of emergency relief is a risk. A number of distributions and NGO convoys have already been hit.

A family, displaced by violence were living in this truck.

There are other reasons for NGOs to avoid distributions in eastern Mosul too.  Since the markets are up and running, NGOs distributing goods from outside Mosul has a negative impact on local businesses. However, not all NGOs can easily offer cash support rather than goods. It’s a hard situation when people’s needs are so desperate and there is no quick or ‘right’ way to meet them. The markets provide a sense of normality, even with military personnel, vehicles and weapons being visible everywhere. It’s incredible how quickly life begins again after such severe violence and such a long period of heavily restricted life. The existence of the markets shows that some people have money to purchase items for sale or the capacity to have grown produce, but very few people have sufficient money to buy enough food, or sufficient variety and quality of food for a healthy diet.

Do you have any questions that I haven't answered? 

He says, "From Kurdistan with love."

In all honesty, I really liked our Nairobi life. Mild weather, green everywhere, the hustle and bustle of one of Africa's largest metropolises. By now you all know, Africa is under my skin. It's what I know and where I feel most comfortable. 

When she made the decision to go to Iraq, I thought it was out of necessity, that it would be short term. Eventually, I figured, we'd find a way to make the 5:00pm G&T session on the back lawn, with the dogs, a permanent fixture.

Still it's hard to mount to a case to stay when you've got no job, no residency and bills need to be paid. Harder still when your marriage consists of Whatsapp messages and bi-nightly Skype calls.  Long distance marriage sucks even more than a long distance relationship. Trust me, I have now done both!

in a very short period of time, I found myself traversing the northern hemisphere by plane and train to the shores of le lac Lemand in Switzerland. I had a fanastic week of briefings and brushing up on my security training, which included building my first ever snowman, before catching more trains and planes to the Kurdish Region of Iraq.

She has already done an excellent job of giving you the geo-political rundown on the whole Kurdistan v Iraq v OAGs  scenario, so I don't need to go there. Let's just say that as a Western Australian, I've always had a soft spot for successionist movements. I think we Western Australians could probably learn something from the Kurds! We just need our own version of the Peshmerga and lots of oil! 

So far my first impressions of Erbil are relatively positive. Of other places I've lived, it reminds me most of Islamabad, except that we've swapped the Taliban for another OAG. Essentially Erbil is a town under siege, with a heavy military presence everywhere you go. But as I have often seen elsewhere, people are just getting on with their life, largely obilivious to the war going on just 80km away.

The weather. In the first two weeks in Erbil I have experienced a combination of  snow, sleet and rain. It did peak above 15 degrees for a few days last week which gave the impression that come the middle of July we're going to be hitting somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees. It is certainly the land of extremes. 

The cars. As an avid car watcher, Erbil is quite the place. Plenty of Audis, Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs and I've even seen a Ferrari. Apart from the European vehicles, there are also plenty of fuel-guzzling American stock cars, including plenty of sported up Camaros. Apparently there is quite an active drifting scene both in Erbil and even in Mosul!

They might have the cars, but sadly Erbilians don't have the skills to match behind the wheel. It's definitely an improvement on the driving in Sudan (which is not saying much), but let's just say most of them would lose their license within a week if they were to drive in Australia or NZ. They seem to find it very difficult to choose from one of two lanes and spend most of their time behind the wheel taking and posting selfies on FB. Please don't try this at home...

Food and wine are expensive. As I have posted on FB this morning, we paid $60 USD for a bottle of Malborough Pinot Noir from Yealands Estate on Thursday night (TGIT in Kurdistan). I may have also paid $35 USD for a steak the week before. Having access to the comforts of home, like a good wine or a nice steak, make me think that living in Erbil is going to turn out OK.

So here we are, for better or worse, living the Erbil life. It may not be the Kenya life I dreamed of, however we are together. We both have work and look forward to being re-united with our earthly possesions from Khartoum (which we haven't seen for a year!) and our four legged boys. This will hopefully bring some much needed stability to our lives.