America's North Shore Journal

82nd Airborne

BAGHDAD – 1st Lt. Larry Graham had come to talk about power generators, but the members of the Ur Neighborhood Council had something else on their minds.

The previous morning, Graham’s unit had arrested the father of one of the council members. The council was angry.

“We don’t want you here. We need engineers. Electricians. We don’t need killers,” one of the members began the meeting by saying.

Some of the other U.S. officers in the room bristled, and tried to change the subject. But Graham told the man to continue.

“If that’s what he wants to talk about, tell him we are here to listen,” Graham told his interpreter.

“The wind could blow this away tomorrow,” he said, holding up the meeting’s planned agenda. “We are here to build relationships.”

As the war in Iraq continues, there is a consensus that military successes alone will not be enough to achieve victory. Progress on the battlefield must be matched by political progress. That idea has led American commanders on the ground to focus on building up local government institutions like neighborhood councils.

The job often falls to young officers like Graham.

Graham, of Springfield, Mo., is the fire support officer for Company D, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. Since February, the unit has been based at an outpost in Al Beida, a neighborhood just a stone’s throw from Sadr City, in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah District.

In those two months, Graham has worked hard to build up the neighborhood councils in Al Beida and Ur. His goal is to get the councils to the point where they can identify problems and implement solutions at the grass-roots level, he said.

“What we’re trying to achieve is a paradigm shift,” said Graham. “We want to show (the people) that in spite of the bad people living in this area, they can still move forward, they can still accomplish their goals.”

He attends council meeting regularly, and spends much of his day on his mobile phone, smoothing over problems. One evening Graham was behind his desk when he got a call from one of the council members. The man was trying to back out of attending an upcoming meeting.

“What’s wrong?” Graham asked patiently. “Is there something I should know?”

The man confessed that he was scared of being attacked if he went to the meeting. Graham assured him that security would be tight. The man agreed to come.

Graham, 28 and boyish-looking, makes a good ambassador. The son of missionary parents who spent much of his childhood in Latin America and Europe, he has a talent for cross-cultural communication. He also has experience working with local government bodies, having served on the neighborhood advisory council in Springfield.

“It was a lot of the same stuff I’m doing now, but I never thought I’d be doing it in Baghdad,” he said.

Graham’s goal is not to solve the community’s problems, but to empower the NAC to come up with solutions itself, he said.

“We’re here to be the grease that makes it work smoothly,” he said.

Graham’s work with the Al Beida NAC has so far led to the completion of two projects. On April 21, the NAC dedicated a new soccer field and a new gate on a local girls’ school.

Graham helped the NAC apply for the funds to complete the projects. The labor was provided by a local contractor.

“They’re small projects, but they’re important,” said Graham. “The small things show they can manage larger things.”

After a brief ribbon cutting ceremony at the school, Graham and the NAC members moved to the soccer field, where a throng of children was waiting. Word had gotten out.

The site of the new soccer field had previously been a dump, said Ayad Hassan, a NAC member who helped oversee the project.

“The children had no place to play,” Hassan said.

Now there was a level playing field, benches, and new goalposts.

The gate to the field was locked. On the other side of it, a hundred gleaming, white soccer balls were strewn across the field. After a little boy snipped the ceremonial ribbon, the gate was thrown open and the crowd of kids poured through like a dam bursting. The stampede kicked up a cloud of dust that obscured the view. Then from out of the dust, a young boy emerged clutching a soccer ball tight to his chest, a smile spread ear to ear on his face.

Graham said the success of projects like the school gate and the soccer field will lead people in the community to rely more on the NAC for solutions to their problems.

“The community has really started to buy into it,” Graham said. “They’re seeing results and they’re like, ‘Oh, the system does work.’ So they’re asking for more projects and they’re going to get more projects.”

As the children ran happily amuck on the soccer field, Hassan and Abu Raad, the contractor who built the field, shook hands. They were proud of what they had accomplished.

“This is the first step,” Hassan said. “One day, I hope that my area will be better than any area in the world.”