I'm still here

Not too much is happening over here...which I think is a good thing. I mean, we did recently see the Iraqis finally come together to form a working government. We were at the meeting when that was decided (granted, we were only there to provide security for our State Department personnel), so that's definitely something I can take from this deployment.

A few days ago, we finally got to go do a mission that had previously been cancelled 3 times. About 75km north of Mosul lies the Mosul Dam. For those geography buffs out there, it is the only dam on the Euphrates river and provides power to most of northern Iraq (the portions that do have electricity). The mission was to take out a couple of UN workers to inspect an IDP site. As everyone knows, IDP stands for internally displaced persons. As we pulled up to a checkpoint near the dam, we entered into what appeared to be a fairly affluent (at least by Iraqi standards) neighborhood. Hardly a place they'd stick displaced persons. Apparently lake-front property is a precious and valued commodity all cultures. However, after stopping to ask for directions (yes...men are capable of doing that...we just hate doing it), we found the right road to take us to the right area. Nestled into a valley that would otherwise be a prime piece of real estate was a village of mud huts. No electrity, though the Mosul Dam Power Plant was less than 5km away. No running water, even though the reservoir was just a few meters away. Their water source was literally garden hoses simply placed into the lake. There were no roads into the village, and on the other sides of the hills were fences undoubtedly placed to keep these people in. Since there were no roads, we had to park our vehicles at an Iraqi army outpost and our guys had to walk through the draw and down into the village. My guess is that these people are Kurds, displaced from previous regimes and wars. Your homework for today is to look up these people. They've not had a place to call their own for decades and decades. They're finally becoming more accepted (or rather, tolerated) in Iraq, and now that there's a government that is involving them, my hope for them is that villages such as this IDP site and others like it will become a thing of the past.