Thirty-nine-year-old British Army Captain Steve Morte rides into the tense, sweltering city of Basra in the steel belly of a Warrior armored vehicle, wearing a Kevlar helmet and toting a rifle. But when his patrol arrives at a downtown orphanage and Morte dismounts the Warrior, the helmet comes off and the rifle disappears behind his back. He extends one meaty hand and grins broadly as he greets Fadil, a tall Iraqi man wearing slacks and a dress shirt.
“Salaam alaikum,” Morte says. Peace to you.
“Alaikum salaam,” replies Fadil, a 39-year-old local construction contractor with a $56,000 contract, issued by Morte using U.S. reconstruction funds, to shore up the orphanage’s ceilings and build new bathrooms. It’s just one of more than 200 projects that Morte oversees. Officially, his title is Civil-Military Cooperation expert. Unofficially, he’s like Santa Claus to the thousands of Baswaris who rely on him for employment and the hundreds of thousands who benefit from their labors.
“Buying a little consent in the area, showing them the way,” is how Morte describes his mission. For eventually the American money will dry up and the 8,000 British troops will leave. When that happens, contractors such as Fadil will be on their own.
“That’s a problem,” Morte stresses, adding that hopefully the contractors he has set up in business will work for the Iraqi government as it assumes more responsibility for reconstruction in Basra.
Read the rest at Military.com.
–David Axe
Santa Claus Wears Kevlar
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
he rifle disappears behind his back.
Behind his back hell- what’s that in his right hand?
Looks like the scope to his rifle- He could have it pointed at that kid in front of him in like half a second? Who edited this story/photo?
Emastro,
Relax, dude. I edited and posted the story and photo. I was there. Morte, unlike the force protection soldiers, made an effort to keep his rifle discreetly out of sight during his visit to the orphanage. Yes, the rifle appears in the photo, but people do move around, you know? And no, he did not point his rifle at any children.
Glad to see a positive story like this from Iraq. I wish the public could see more stories like this. If average people were bombarded with positve press on a daily basis, peoples’ opinions of the war would be different. Obviously I want the truth, but it’s painfully clear that some media outlets only care about the negative stories.
Unfortunatly most people never hear about the good things that go on in Iraq, and sadly that is causing us to lose the public opinion war. I don’t know where it breaks down, but ideally people should be presented with as much fact as possible, and allowed to make their own descisions based on fact. Not the “Daily Show’s” version of fact.
Morte is one of those everyday guys we all need to know about. He’s taken the ugly Iraq “problem” and looked at how to begin to solve it from a different point of view. When he needs an extra boost as I’m sure he often does, tell him he’s doing some great work that is really making a HUGE difference!
listen he has done an amazing job over there id like to see you take you weak arse to the war and present some good work u lunatic