Field of Dreams

Hareer, Iraq 2 May 2013

Image (C) Badir N. Albadran. Reed Fields near Hareer, Iraq.

Most of us would look at this emerald expanse, sigh, and think of the Low Country, or the Everglades, or the Bayous, or some other half-wild place of shrimping, crabbing, crawfishing, and trolling from a john-boat.

Image (c) Jennifer R. Pournelle. Water Buffalo Rancher near Hareer, Iraq.

Abu Fathi (not his real name) looks at this and sees a hay field. Do not be fooled: there's nothing Rousseauian about this expanse: it did not even exist two years ago. The field was leveled, water diverted, and the reed allowed to grow to young lushness for the sole purpose of feeding cattle. Specifically, water buffalo.

Abu Fathi's brother has a thriving business in Chicago, but Abu Fathi, along with his rather extended family, eschewed the winters of the windy city to pursue a more agrarian business venture at home. He sold up, packed up, and invested all in water buffalo. It's a new departure: in these fields his father tended orchards, not beasts. With salinization the orchards died, but the less-than-ideal waters that killed them are handily digested by Phragmites. To maximize growth, the beasts are penned in mud-walled corrals, fed on vast piles of hand-cut reed-hay.

It's a good living, says Abu Fathi. Hard work, but a good living - he's turning a tidy profit on his investment. But more to the point, he says, the kids are all healthy and strong, with brilliant white teeth. I have to agree: a convivial pack, just released from their classroom, followed me about, giggling and practicing their school-boy English as I snapped photos of outrageously ridiculous things like old boats and dung-heaps.

For us, a living proof-of-concept that expanding reed beds is practicable, locally welcomed, and immediately beneficial. #cmarsh

The Rooftops of Basra

Basra, Iraq 29 April - 1 May

Image (c) Jennifer R. Pournelle. View of Shatt Al Arab from Shams Al Basra Hotel.

Cor, what a sight. Our trip to the Majnoon Oilfield was cut short by a noon luncheon meeting at the U.S. consulate, hard by Basra International Airport. A useful meeting, with introductions to the new Consul-General, who thankfully will be in residence for two whole years. Then, runors confirmed that Iraqi airspace would close for the elections, the rest of the team bugged out, leaving me to hold the fort at the University Guest House.

Except that the fort capitulated at the moment of my arrival. Not through any grave security concern (indeed, I was by then the only guest, tucked away in a corner room far from any prying eyes). No: the concern was occupational - or rather lack thereof. It seems that, with no prior notice, in honor of the elections, the powers-that-be declared a three-day holiday, making for a five-day weekend. Thus closing all national, regional, and local government offices, as well as the university. Including the guest house. On the spot, my lovely guest house staff, only that morning only too pleased to guard the gate, cook, and make tea, had urgent and undeniable cause to be at home. They could not possibly be expected to remain at their duties for the benefit of one paltry guest. I guess I can't really blame them.

It's this sort of day-to-day reality that makes discretionary funds so essential for operating here. No problem: I did what one would do in any normal city: I packed off to a nice hotel. At the Shams Al Basra, frequented by air crews, I joined a bare handful of guests stranded by flight cancellations, and settled in for three days of waiting, reading; waiting, writing; waiting, sleeping; and waiting, re-booking meetings. At this jucture, I must note that in this corner of the world, waits are usually measured in weeks, not days. Think not, in this case, bureaucratic stonewalling. Think instead of the mix of exasperation and secret relief that accompanies snow days. Unexpected by all, unwanted by all, inconvenient for all, but secretly a chance to catch up on niggling tasks and empty the in-box.

The photo above is a wonderful illustration of point-of-view. No doubt, to most of you dear readers, it looks a rather ugly study in dust and concrete. But on arrival, we all gasped at its beauty. After a few days here, the eye is instantly drawn to the stretch of sparkling blue that is the river. The sun rises directly thereover, reflected in a shimmering disk on the waters. Swallows circle and wheel, doves coo, and finches cheep in the dawn chorus. Ashar boats and motor launches cruise past, and traffic cruises over the pontoon bridge to the shopping and restaurant districts on the other shore. It is a pleasant sight, and one I have revisited again and again these past several days, tracking the hours through the river's changing moods. #cmarsh

Water and Oil

Al-Qurna, Iraq, 28 April 

Images (c) Jennifer R. Pournelle. "Pipes Bridge," Majnoon Oilfield.

This 250-meter-wide canal was cut 25 years ago to drain marshes along the Iranian border. At that time, water levels topped the culvert pipes beneath the bridge, allowed that precious commodity to flush down the Tigris. Now, a dam conserves what little is left, creating a precious green strip of marsh habitat to the west. To the east, de-watered for over a decade, desiccated reed beds stretch to the horizon.

Royal Dutch Shell, the operators of this oilfield, are, like their national homeland, sensitive to the importance of wetlands and wetland management, and take multiple precautions to protect this small refuge.  No return water is currently produced here, but it may be at some point in the future. When that happens, one option may be to turn the 20 km-long dry bed, for which there is no longer any water supply, into salt- or brackish-marsh. That will be tricky, though. Protecting groundwater from salt intrusion would require lining the bed - and before that could be done safely, the entire 300 m - wide basin would need to be cleared of explosive ordnance left from the 1980s Iran-Iraq wars. #cmarsh

Nature Finds a Way

Zubayr, Iraq, 27 April 2014

Image (c) Jennifer R. Pournelle. Raw sewage flows into the Basra River at Abu Al Khasib near Az-Zubayr, Iraq

​Even with the foulest of raw materials, life emerges. Just a few miles upstream from its outlet into tidal flats at the head of the Gulf, raw sewage flows into the Shatt Al Basra from the municipal cloaca - all that remains of the primary and secondary sewage treatment systems destroyed and abandoned during war and decades of economic sanctions. Yet, in the hinterground, amid salt-fouled dirt, sewage-fouled water, and petrochemical-fouled air, sandpipers and egrets scuttle and poke around a rough patch of marsh grasses, eking out a few small clams and fingerlings. With a bit of help, this drainage system can be improved and expanded into a larger, healthier remediation marsh - something more like that in my previous entry - eliminating the need for expensive new waste treatment plants, while vastly improving downstream water quality. #cmarsh

Sheep, Sedges, and Sustainability

 Basra, Iraq, 26 April 2014

Image (c) Jennifer R. Pournelle. Sheep grazing near the U. Basra Marine Science Center Field Station, Hareer,

The first field day was spent viewing firsthand the opportunities and limits for broad-scale freshwater marsh restoration outside Basra City. This stand of cattails (Typha), rushes (Juncus), and bulrushes (Scirpus) is scarcely four years old - re-formed when brackish irrigation return water was allowed to re-flood areas desiccated for over a decade. This mix of marshy plants provides good grazing, and supports local production of mutton, wool, and dairy products.
However, extreme, and unpredictable, fluctuations in salinity due to upstream water releases are more than the date and fruit orchards that used to cover this plain can bear - new trees that manage to survive seldom bear fruit. Likewise, those random fluctuations kill off both fresh- and salt- tolerant fish fry. Unlike in a natural estuary, subject to predictable daily ebb and flow, they cannot follow a salt gradient within their range of tolerance.
#cmarsh

vive la différence

 

Scroll back to the beginning of this blog in 2003, and you'll read of university corridors stripped even of basic wiring and strewn with rubble and ash. Women who braved the streets were forced under the black of the abaya, reduced from their former regional and social variations in attire to the uniformity of a flock of crows. So imagine my delight on return to Basrah U. after less than a year, to find the Geology Department moved in to its new, bright, naturally lit, well-appointed building. Flatscreens for HD laptop projection in every classroom; labs now outfitted with the basics necessary for undergraduate hands-on work. Women compose half of the student population, and dominate the upper class ranks, a fact of which Dept. Chair Badir Albadran is justly proud.N ext step: outfitting labs for specialized research: this is still hampered by the difficulty of letting reliable contracts for delivery, installation, and maintenence.

Winning Trends

Prof Dr. Ali Alattar, Vice-Chancellor, Basrah University, has already concluded research agreements with the University of Oklahoma and Oregon State, and is currently in talks with us here at the University of South Carolina. In this video, he summarizes emerging trends in research and US -Iraqi collaboration - stressing the overwhelming importance of water, water supplies, and water pollution mitigation.  As is clear from this video, the faculty and senior administrators at Iraqi institutions are dedicated, capable, articulate, and determined to raise their standards back up to those of wold-class institutions. That's me holding up the podium.

Houses and Assemblies

The Autonomous Republic of Kurdistan, composing northeastern Iraq, is roughly the same geographical size as South Carolina, or central California, and is governed by its own President and Parliament. Like  our own state legislature, that body comprises a House and a Senate.  Also like ours, their House has a Speaker. There, however, at least as compared to my own state, the analogy ends. The Parliament is fiercely dedicated to improving education, and in demonstration of that, he requested that our delegation meet with him. That's me unseen behind the camera; him in the center; IIE President and CEO Allan Goodman on the left, and on the right, the Speaker's chief aid and foreign  policy advisor - a returned Fulbright scholar. She was one of several extremely capable, talented, intelligent, and well-educated young women I met who have been appointed to positions of real responsibility. The second, we-the-faculty (myself and two others), met in a follow-up meeting: she was an elected member-of-parliament, held the education portfolio, and wanted our advisory input on draft legislation regarding private for-profit universities. Indeed, a full 35% of the legislature are women. (We could learn something from that example). Without distinguishing between private for-profit and private non-profit institutions, they'd trusted the "private sector" to help them rapidly expand higher education, and had been badly burned. They provided land grants, tax-free status, and mountains of other incentives. The for-profits grabbed the money and ran within a year, leaving buildings empty and students stranded without degrees. So diploma mills be forewarned: you'll get no further traction in Kurdistan.  When these people say they want higher education, they mean it, and they know what that is. And now they also know the meaning of genuine accreditation.

Dawn in Erbil (Arbil, Irbil)

A view from the Erbil International Hotel. There have been a lot of conferences in Iraq since 2003, but this one, sponsored by the Institute of International Education, promises to have the kind of impact that extends across generations. "Models and Trends in Contemporary Education," a conference and training workshop will provide an overview of the contemporary higher education landscape, covering topics that include modern university governance, leadership and administration, financing, and institutional and program quality. Approximately 100 participants, including senior Iraqi scholars, university presidents, and deans will attend. Our goal? Rebuild bridges. Among Iraqi scholars; between Iraqi scholars and American scholars; among institutions. Wish us luck.

New Arrivals

In 2003, the Erbil airstrip abutted pastureland. The only flight in was on a Beechcraft operated by Airserv, which spiralled down to a bumpy landing and rolled up to a temporary trailer that served as customs, immigration, and flight operations rolled together. Your security team would hang out at a little tea cafe just outside the perimeter, awaiting the buzz of the inbound engine before roaring up in a boil of dust to meet you. Erbil now sports a brand-new, shiny, international airport, "the world's gateway to Kurdistan," with all mod cons, professional staff, and regular flights from Munich, Istanbul, Amman, and Dubai. And, thankfully, frigid air conditioning.  Royal Jordanian still arrives from Amman at the ungodly hour of  3:00 a.m.; the crisp arrival is a wakeful blessing. The second blessing is the automatic 10-day visa granted all Americans on landing. The third is the low traffic volume at that hour: dashing to passport control, we realize that we needn't have bothered. We were it, and it took, well, as long as it took for two passport agents to scan and stamp us on our merry way. Tea?

Postholes Redux: Promises Kept, Albeit Delayed

Half a decade and several trips later, I am prepping for another trip to Iraq. Last Fall, we pioneered the return of American archaeologists to southern Iraq. My latest outing? Filming with National Geographic Television in the Iraq Marshes! Stay tuned - that episode should air in August. Now, it's off to Erbil for a conference. About time I reinvigorated this blog, eh?

Outies Takes Iraq Out of This World

I thought about the post-war (or was it still war?) period of 2003-2004 for a good long time after returning home. Of the many things I thought about, one was war fiction, and especially military science fiction. War books have compelling plots, generally along the lines of : there are good guys; there are bad guys. Sometimes some bad guys, that is, guys who were individually bad, redeem themselves and become heroic good guys. Anyway, the good guys win, or die valiantly trying. War's over. The End.

But nothing I saw in Iraq was ever that cut-and-dried. On any given day, it was hard to tell if, when & where we were having a war. It was generally impossible to tell good guys from bad guys - and there were many shades of both, on both sides.

Outies is science fiction, set a millenium hence, on a fictional planet. A lot of this blog makes it into the backstory. (Plus a lot more: See Kris Hirst's review in About.com,  where she discusses Outies as Social Science Fiction.)

A Fond Farewell

Durham, North Carolina.
As many of you have noted, I stopped blogging on my return to Amman from Baghdad. During the interim I was winding down my involvement in the USAID-Iraq HEAD program, which I departed at the end of my contract year (31 October 2004). I wish USAID-Iraq HEAD, and Stony Brook U., every success.

While all postings were always my own, I wish to be clear that I no longer have any affiliation with SBU or USAID-HEAD. Beginning tomorrow I will try to fill in some of the missing dates from my paper diaries, and add new posts. Note that I do think carefully about the security implications of my posts: public individuals in Iraq, by virtue of their position, are presumeably already known to people who might wish them ill. But in a public forum I do attempt to refer to events, gatherings, etc. that might be targets only in the past tense. I'd be happy to discuss them in more detail offline.

Amman: Computing Days and Breezy Nights

We've had a large new IBM instructional computing lab installed here at ACOR (American Center for Oriental Research), where basic computing, internet connectivity, and how to access archival and research sites is taught evenings after lectures. Spent the day troubleshooting, upgrading, and updating: all the behind the scenes back office tech support more-or-less taken for granted at home institutions. It's a great addition to regional instructional capacity: we'll probably use it again in the Fall for librarianship training (here, because the library, and librarians, are well-ordered and well-trained) in online cataloguing, circulation, and reference.

Had a glorious evening up the hill, at the classy British equivalent of ACOR (in their new building). Stunning time up on the roof: view of the city, fireworks in the hills, muezzin, sunset, windy, cool night, music, even a wedding going on down below (and still going on). Everything we imagine a wonderful time in the Middle East to be. Several Californians; lots of mutual acquaintances. Heaven, in fact.

The Land before Baghdad

Amman.

The air for the flight out yesterday was stunningly clear, lending to pensive consideration of landscape, agriculture, and the land before Baghdad. I'll update this post later with a more descriptive account.

Arrived uneventfully to bustling Amman, to glorious weather. Cool, breezy, and clear. Second Session of our Summer Workshops is well underway, with participants ever more actively engaged. Roger Matthews has joined the teaching faculty for these last few weeks. (See our website for the full course list).

It was amazingly soothing to hear traffic late in the evenings: a sudden return to normal street life.

Bugging Out

Baghdad.

If all goes well, phones and internet will be turned on at Baghdad U. as of next Saturday, so that we can finish troubleshooting before the fall quarter begins.

Things were quiet last night, except for another football victory interlude—largely thanks to a curfew preventing movement between the most troubled districts and the rest of the city. However, with the very noisy national congress in session, discretion is the better part of valor. It’s back to Amman for me, for now.

Deaf, Dumb, Blind, and Tense

Baghdad.

The U.S. server on which our internet access depends has been inaccessible all day, leaving me feeling deaf, dumb, and blind. Tense, tense, tense: everything and everyone is tense. I spent the day twiddling with a PowerPoint presentation showing some of our progress. I’ll try to post it to the site once we get re-connected.

Combat Football and the Late Show

Baghdad.

In the course of a workday, life seems pretty normal. Office, email, meetings, more email, write a bit, more meetings, more email. Outside, traffic flows; shops bustle. It’s been a week of tension, all through the city; all through the country, but you only really know that, here, by noticing irregularities. Someone returns from Amman, overland. They’re extraordinarily bright. Smiles, laughs, and a fevered gleam that comes from extraordinary relief at arriving safely. The there’s the meetings. Too many. With too many people. Behind closed doors. Closing time is prompt. Windows and doors are shuttered early. No one is allowed to walk anywhere alone.

And you know things are coming to a head; that things will get worse before they get better, when the helicopters start thundering overhead, on their way to the next round of mischief and misery, for one side, or another, or both. You know the mischief has indeed begun, with fierce intensity, when blaring horns weave their way through traffic at double the average speed. On their heels come sirens: first police, then ambulance. And you know that the ambulances are in response to fighting somewhere, because they blare everywhere, in every direction, heading for every hospital in the city.

But all of this happens with a bizarre sort of time lag, betwixt the hours when you know things are happening far out of view, that may one day affect your day-to-day work, and some mention—sometimes any mention—on the TV news. First there’s a murmur on the street. ‘It’s bad.” What’s bad? “We just need to get home. It’s bad today.” Yet all around, traffic beeps, shops bustle; a virtual parade of watermelons are carried down the street from the fruit stand. Two days later we see film footage of the extent of the fighting; the hundreds or thousands (hard to tell) demonstrating in the streets in some far-off neighborhood.

Thursday night was exceptionally bizarre in this regard. All was normalcy: the shops, the traffic, the bustle of loading docks. All was awry: the brightness, the meetings, the walk home; the gunships, the horns, the sirens. Then silence. Then cheerful sounds of a Friday evening get-together next door: laughter, clinking glasses, a blaring TV. A game of some kind. The rising and falling cheers of (I’m guessing) a football match. A happy evening. I was lulled to sleep.

I awoke to discover that, instincts intact, I’d just hit the floor behind cover, as a roar of gunfire engulfed the city. It volleyed; it rolled; it thundered; it erupted from beneath my very balcony. Shouting erupted with it, from every direction: hundreds, it seemed thousands, of--of cheers? And fans screaming GOAL!!!!? I realized that I’d been jolted from sleep by—a winning side in a soccer match? Yes! Iraq defeats Portugal! Securing a place in the Olympics! The gunfire was deafening. It grew in intensity. It swept eastward, then westward, then eastward again. Then in a staccato riff on dueling banjos or howling coyotes, distant burps were answered by local reports. As it began to fade, I could once again hear my neighbors clearly—unconcerned, laughing and clinking and happy. I became extraordinarily bright myself. I climbed sheepishly from the floor.

But what goes up, must come down. The velocity of a bullet, having reached the apex of its trajectory, and falling once again to the ground, is the same as it was when it left the muzzle of the rifle, discharged into the sky. Following the jubilation, came a different kind of rifle fire. More pointed. Single shots. With a different kind of shouting. Angry shouting. Angry fire. Some of it from directly beneath my window. Then silence. Then horns. Then sirens. Then, finally, a less easy quiet, with night watchmen milling like disturbed ants on the street. Finally, relief, and, in the wee hours, sleep.

So it came as no surprise to hear on the morning news—having caught up at last with the wind—that fighting in Sadr City had been fierce on Thursday, with scattered fighting thoughout the city. What did shock was the news of a British journalist kidnapped in Basra, abducted from his very hotel room on the very football evening. I spent my Friday alternately doing normal things: a bit of email, a bit of washing up, a bit of writing—with plotting exit strategies and contemplating some security meetings of my own for Saturday morning. Then, in the afternoon, four explosions rattled our windows—about half a mile away, I should think. Then sirens. Then helicopters. And then an evening movie on the tele. And now the waiting, for the news delay, that will tell me what has been.

Combat Archaeology

Baghdad

One might well ask what fighting in Sadr City and Najaf has to do with archaeology. Nothing. Everything.

Nothing, at the moment, in that it is physically happening far from where we are. Sometimes we hear gunships flying overhead. Sometimes, if the mortar fire and counter-fire is really intense, we here a distant rumble, mostly drowned out by traffic noise.

Everything, over the past few days, because of Sadr’s calls for, and threats of, violence. No doubt you see in the news interviews with locals, righteously (and rightfully) indignant at the prospect of American troops entering the 3-square-mile cemetery to root out insurgents. But there is more to that story.

First, the reaction against American troops continuing the fray is merely a part of a reaction against all foreign adventurism here. A quote: “We tell them all: why are you coming here to fight Americans? Go fight them in your own country. This is our country. Everyone should just go home. Do not come here and kill us because you wish to kill Americans.” But, above that, beyond that, is a resurrection of fear regarding Iran and Hezbollah. Here, the “first” Gulf War refers to the Iran-Iraq war—and it is still etched in memory. There’s a strong conviction that Iranian factions are sponsoring a good deal of the violence. Shia from Basra, formerly sympathetic to Shia from Iran, now see the latter as spoilers who wish only to take over control of holy sites in Iraq. Another quote: “They care nothing for this country. It is not their country. They wish only to push us aside and take what they want. But this is my country, not theirs. It is my country first. That comes before any religion.”

Second—and here’s the bit that has more to do with archaeology at the moment—are the afore-mentioned calls to violence. Earlier in the week, flyers appeared, circulated to Christian-owned shops. Convert to Islam, they say, and you will no longer be in danger. Yesterday, Sadr declared a “curfew” on all ministries, police forces, military, emergency services, and government offices, warning employees to stay home “for their own safety.” His “supporters” (are they his? Are they Iranian-backed “organizers? Who knows?) then attacked ambulances and water-delivery trucks serving his own neighborhoods.

So although nothing overt has happened outside Sadr City, it casts a pall and slows street-level commerce. Some businesses closed up for the day; some just closed early; others are opening late this morning. While this did cut down on traffic, making a certain amount of running around and purchasing that much easier, it also meant that yet again the university was closed, and no work done. As the uni is normally closed Thursday and Friday (the local weekend), we will not finish this week after all.

There’s no general upwelling of support for all this. Sadr’s fighters, in the local view, are a bunch of hired thugs, and he is himself the worst kind of political opportunist. I have now heard this universally from people of all religious stripes: Christian, Sunni, Shia. A chilling quote from a man normally most kind and gentle: “They should just kill him. We are sick of this. He cares nothing for his people. He cares nothing for this country. He’s just a thug pretending to be a religious man.” And from his wife: “This is not Islam. I’ve read through the Quran, line by line. There is nothing there that says what this man does is right.”

A rumor is circulating, supposedly corroborated by several witnesses: on the day of the church bombings, before the bombs went off, al-Arabiya and al-Jazira reporters were already on hand, cameras trained on the doorways on the sheltered side of the church, just in time to catch the screaming victims burst out. How, it is asked, could they have known to be there? Who knows. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe they were not in fact there at all. But in this climate, Sadr’s calls to random violence certainly do not need any more media outlets. That sort of publicity is its own kind of adventurism. It merely pours gasoline on the fire. Violence ends—by ending. By everyone—everyone—laying down their arms. His community would be better served by wiser elders teaching its young men some traditional negotiating skills.

Good News and Threats to Fruit

Baghdad
A New York Times piece today, commenting on the government shut-down of Al-Jezira reporters, was headlined something to the effect “no bad news allowed.” Now, of course, the Times was addressing appropriate concerns that free press not be suppressed. But I must question the very substance of the headline. No bad news? From Iraq?

My impression is that there has been very little except bad news reported from Iraq. This despite concerted and often successful efforts by a great many citizens to calm things down and move life onto a—if not normal, than at least hopeful—footing. The utter failure to report any of the good news has been demoralizing for a lot of people—most of them Iraqi; and a dedicated few of other nationalities--who have not had a day’s respite in over a year. They’d like a little credit for what they have accomplished.

So, I’m not going to deliver bad news today. I’ll leave that to the wire services. Even without Al-Jezira, I am sure they’ll find plenty. I’m going to give credit where credit is due, and concentrate on some good news.

Yesterday evening, after the office closed, I went grocery shopping. This may sound utterly mundane. It was. That’s the point. No-one harassed me. No-one closed the door. No-one nervously thanked me for my custom, then requested quietly that I not come back. I made my selections from well-stocked shelves, paid predictably high-ish prices for imported items, and predictably dirt-cheap prices for local commodities, then went on my way. Nothing at all out-of-the-ordinary happened.

Next stop was a roadside fruit stand. Much haggling ensued over a watermelon the size of New Jersey. Insistence (on our part) that it not be cut for a sample. The melon is cut nonetheless, with a knife worthy of a bad b-movie. Now that it is cut, we don’t want it. Now that it is cut, we must take it. A price is named worthy of a Brentwood organic grocer. For an unwanted, uncut melon? Never! We buy elsewhere. Mundane. Again. Despite much brandishing of melon knives, only fruit was threatened, and in the end we bought two monstrous melons for about $1.00 each.

Of course, you are hoping for archaeology news, mundane or otherwise. Much of the past several days has been mundane indeed, spent reviewing invoices for equipment orders, making final decisions about placement of things like flatbed scanners and fax machines, and figuring out what, if anything, we are to do about the leaky roof at Mosul. As at home, it somehow takes the combined decision-making skills of at four Ph.D.s, the CEO, an IT chief, a senior civil engineer, a security chief (travel to, from, and within Mosul is dicey), a systems integrator, a budget analyst, and a secretary to accomplish this. (And these are only those of whom I am aware). But accomplished it is: installation at Baghdad U., Inshallah, is to be finished this week, and work will start in earnest at Mosul U. in the next several days.

Other good news is USAID’s donation of a used 4WD vehicle for the duration. We must first figure out how to pick it up from an undisclosed location, but it is destined for Baghdad U., so that they can get out to their field school at Sippar.