Iraq From an Armored BMW: Where U.S. 'Reconstruction' Funds Are Really Going

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com. Posted February 14, 2009.

Once the visit was concluded, we headed back for Fallujah and had a late night snack at Sheik Aifan's place before settling in for a night's sleep as his guest. His daughter, a shy girl of perhaps seven years of age, sat beside him as we ate. At one point, he suddenly peeled a crisp U.S. $100 bill off a wad of bills that would have stunned any movie mafia boss, smiled benevolently, and added that she shouldn't let her mother know about the gift.

The sheik, of course, had $100 bills to spare, as millions of dollars for so-called construction projects have been funneled his way. It's how he pays the roughly 900 men that he estimates make up his private militia. For all of this he can thank the U.S. military, which delivers regular installments of money -- shrink-wrapped bricks of those $100 bills -- because post-invasion Iraq remains largely a cash-only economy.

Before our journey to Ramadi, a patrol of U.S. Marines had paid Sheik Aifan a visit. As the soldiers climbed the stairs to his meeting room, they took clips of ammunition away from the sheik's security team, and kept them until they left his compound. It was a gentle reminder of who still has the final say in this part of Iraq and of just how far the trust extends between these partners of necessity.

Sheikh Aifan offered a warm greeting to the Marine commander, and the two men sat down to talk. Each was visibly distracted, anxiously looking around. Sheik Aifan toyed anxiously with his prayer beads, wiggling his legs like a nervous schoolchild, while telling his guest how well everything was going. The meeting was repeatedly interrupted by cell phone calls for the sheik who, at one point, left briefly to welcome another visitor.

After the meeting, platters of food were brought in and everyone feasted. As they were leaving, I asked one of the Marines if meetings like these happened regularly. "This is our job," he replied. "We visit sheiks. And this guy is like John Gotti." (Gotti, labeled "the Teflon Don," ran the Gambino crime family in New York City before being jailed.)

I wasn't eager to stay the night, but the alternatives -- at least the safe ones -- were nil. Though in luxurious circumstances, we caught something of the newest Iraqi dilemma: we had "security" of a sort, but no freedom.

Outside the gates of Sheik Aifan's well-guarded compound, generators hummed in the night providing electricity in a land where, if you can't pay for a generator of your own or share one with your neighbor, you are in trouble. In Fallujah, like Baghdad, four hours of electricity delivered from the national grid is considered a good day. Generally, a self-imposed curfew kept the streets relatively traffic free after total darkness settled in.

The city in which Sheik Aifan lives, of course, still lies in rubble, its people largely in a state of existential endurance. The Awakening groups have earned the respect of many Iraqis by providing "security," but at what price?

Reconstruction has yet to really begin in Sunni areas and the movement, sheiks and all, only works as long as the U.S. continues funneling "reconstruction funds" to tribal leaders. What happens when that stops, as it surely must with time? Will the people of Fallujah be better served? Or has this process merely laid the groundwork for future bloodshed?

See more stories tagged with: iraq, iraq war, iraq occupation, surge, sunnis, shiites, baghdad, us military, fallujah, al-anbar, sons of iraq, the awakening, al-qaeda in iraq, sheik aifan, sheik abdul sattar abu ri

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, has been covering the Middle East for more than five years and is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. He reports for Inter Press Service and is a regular contributor to TomDispatch. He has also published in Le Monde Diplomatique, the Independent, the Guardian, the Sunday Herald of Scotland, the Nation, and Foreign Policy in Focus, among others. To visit his website, click here.

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