| Photos: Don Eberly |
East Hempfield Township resident Don Eberly, wearing a helmet and bullet-proof vest, stands with a group of local Iraqis at a bombed-out sports complex in Baghdad shortly after his arrival in the Iraqi capital. |
 East Hempfield Township resident Don Eberly meets with President Bush in the Oval Office. |
Rebuilding Iraq
'What in the world have I gotten myself into?'
East Hempfield resident Don Eberly helps United States rebuild Iraq
First of Four Parts
BY JUSTIN QUINN
Editors Note: Don Eberly, an East Hempfield Township resident, has lived in Baghdad since March
as part of a team sent there to rebuild the country. Eberly recently talked about his experiences
during a lengthy telephone interview from a United States military compound. Today's story, the
first of four, chronicles his arrival.
Within a week of Baghdad's fall, coalition forces
flew Don Eberly into one of the most volatile regions on Earth. Under cover of darkness, the former White House staffer landed in Baghdad with 23 other senior government officials, who would serve as the temporary cabinet of Iraq for at least the next four months.
"We were thrust into the situation in Baghdad weeks or months before it was actually expected," Eberly said, speaking via central command telephone from a palatial military compound that once belonged to Saddam Hussein. "Those first two or three weeks are almost indescribable."
Bombs were still falling. Buildings were burning. Looting was rampant everywhere, and gunfire punctuated the mayhem.
"Almost all the government buildings had been hit," Eberly said. "It was chaotic and it was lawless, and we realized that we had to get an entire country back on its feet. It was an unbelievable vertical climb."
It's especially unbelievable considering that just two years earlier the mild-mannered East Hempfield resident was working as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush moved Eberly into the role of international policy coordinator for civil society.
"My portfolio included developing new presidential initiatives, reforming government and building strong nongovernmental organizations to meet human needs," Eberly said. "After 9/11, the focus of that came to be on the Arab world."
As the second Gulf War loomed, Eberly found himself tied more and more to planning and discussions about Iraq. Just prior to assembling a team that would implement an interim government in Iraq, U.S. military officials approached Eberly and asked him to be a part of it.
"There was little time to discuss it with my family and even less time to think about it," Eberly said. "When I moved to the international side, I developed a top-secret clearance. Anybody who served on this team had to have that clearance."
Besides his clearance level, Eberly also was picked because of his status as a presidential political appointee.
"They wanted not just technicians, but people who could reflect the president's policies," Eberly said. "I never went into the international work thinking I would wind up in Baghdad. That thought never occurred to me."
In the end, Eberly signed on and was whisked away to a military training program where he took a seven-day crash course on how to handle a 9 mm handgun, quickly don a nuclear-biochemical suit and detect booby traps and snipers.
"That's the environment we were thrown into," Eberly said. "We had to take lots of shots, too, for anthrax, malaria, smallpox, you name it. It was the kind of thing that once you signed up for it, you said to yourself, "What in the world have I gotten myself into?' "
Eberly left for the Persian Gulf during the first week of March, when the war erupted. He first was sent to Kuwait City to wait for the fall of Baghdad.
"I had no idea how long I'd be in Kuwait," he said. "It began as a state secret, but it became known pretty quickly. We went through all the drills and all the daily air sirens. It was an interesting and completely new experience for me."
Then it happened. Baghdad fell.
"All the great dangers that the U.S. government worried about and had planned for -- refugee crises, ecological disasters -- none of that happened," Eberly said. "What did happen, which nobody I'm aware of had calculated for, was Baghdad falling overnight. What that meant was that it was over, and we had to go in."
At first, military leaders wouldn't let the U.S. bureaucrats into the country.
"They said it was "not a permissive environment,'" Eberly said. "That was the technical term, but what it meant was that it was too dangerous for us to go in. There was no way to assert authority."
As international political pressure built quickly, Eberly said he knew he would be heading into Iraq's capital sooner rather than later.
"General (Jay) Garner told us that we were going to be thrown into Baghdad long before Baghdad was ready for us," Eberly said. "And he was right."
It was the most unruly environment Eberly could ever have imagined.
"We were brought into the presidential palace that first night," Eberly said. "Because all the electric generators had been bombed out, it was pitch black. For the first couple of nights, we could only find our way around by flashlights and candles."
Dead bodies peeked out of trucks that had been destroyed by explosives and buried by falling rubble.
"We didn't go seeking them out, but they were there," Eberly said. "The first part of the mission was to get those bodies out of there. International law governs how those things are attended to, but it was beyond anybody's idea exactly how to do it."
A hot dusty wind greeted them in the days that followed, along with stray lions and bears that had escaped from a zoo belonging to Hussein's son, Uday.
It soon became evident that disposing of more than 60,000 tons of waste would be the top priority for Iraq's nation builders. Eberly said Garner asked him to head the sanitation team.
"For the first four or five days, all I did was deal with sanitation for a city the size of Chicago," he said. Trash lined the streets, piled high on bombed-out tanks. Eberly and an Australian colonel went to Baghdad.
City Hall and tried to organize city officials to help with the cleanup.
"How do you move stuff when you have no equipment and no workers?" Eberly asked. "All the trash trucks and cleanup equipment had been burned out or stolen. You had nothing to work with."
Finally, a few sympathetic Iraqis driving pickup trucks assisted the effort in exchange for American money.
"At first, the only thing that mattered was bottom-line services like electricity, water, food, sanitation, medicine and security," Eberly said. "We still struggle with security."
The day of his interview with an Intelligencer Journal reporter, Eberly learned two civilian affairs officers were killed while escorting U.S. bureaucrats around Iraq. They were bureaucrats just like him.
"Two people died today in a convoy attack," Eberly said. "There are 3,000 army reservists and civil affairs officers who provide security for us everywhere we go. They're part of the convoys."
The soldiers who died were close friends of three military civil affairs officers assigned to Eberly's team. "It's a huge loss to that unit," he said. "The particular unit that I work with has really taken some hits."
Eberly said intelligence officials warned the nation builders about a month ago that "things would heat up and get hotter during the month of July." They weren't talking about the 115- to 120-degree temperatures.
"We have suffered significant losses every day now for the past week," Eberly said. "It certainly affects our lives."
Nevertheless, Eberly said he doesn't worry about his own safety.
"Not in the sense that I feel consummate or imminent danger," he said. "Largely because I stay inside the compound. This place is extremely heavily guarded. There are guys with guns everywhere you look."
It is an ever-present reminder of the high costs of rebuilding a nation ravaged by war.
TOMORROW: Eberly explores Baghdad.
On to the next story in this series >>>
"We were thrust into the situation in Baghdad weeks or months before it was actually expected," Eberly said, speaking via central command telephone from a palatial military compound that once belonged to Saddam Hussein. "Those first two or three weeks are almost indescribable."
Bombs were still falling. Buildings were burning. Looting was rampant everywhere, and gunfire punctuated the mayhem.
"Almost all the government buildings had been hit," Eberly said. "It was chaotic and it was lawless, and we realized that we had to get an entire country back on its feet. It was an unbelievable vertical climb."
It's especially unbelievable considering that just two years earlier the mild-mannered East Hempfield resident was working as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush moved Eberly into the role of international policy coordinator for civil society.
"My portfolio included developing new presidential initiatives, reforming government and building strong nongovernmental organizations to meet human needs," Eberly said. "After 9/11, the focus of that came to be on the Arab world."
As the second Gulf War loomed, Eberly found himself tied more and more to planning and discussions about Iraq. Just prior to assembling a team that would implement an interim government in Iraq, U.S. military officials approached Eberly and asked him to be a part of it.
"There was little time to discuss it with my family and even less time to think about it," Eberly said. "When I moved to the international side, I developed a top-secret clearance. Anybody who served on this team had to have that clearance."
Besides his clearance level, Eberly also was picked because of his status as a presidential political appointee.
"They wanted not just technicians, but people who could reflect the president's policies," Eberly said. "I never went into the international work thinking I would wind up in Baghdad. That thought never occurred to me."
In the end, Eberly signed on and was whisked away to a military training program where he took a seven-day crash course on how to handle a 9 mm handgun, quickly don a nuclear-biochemical suit and detect booby traps and snipers.
"That's the environment we were thrown into," Eberly said. "We had to take lots of shots, too, for anthrax, malaria, smallpox, you name it. It was the kind of thing that once you signed up for it, you said to yourself, "What in the world have I gotten myself into?' "
Eberly left for the Persian Gulf during the first week of March, when the war erupted. He first was sent to Kuwait City to wait for the fall of Baghdad.
"I had no idea how long I'd be in Kuwait," he said. "It began as a state secret, but it became known pretty quickly. We went through all the drills and all the daily air sirens. It was an interesting and completely new experience for me."
Then it happened. Baghdad fell.
"All the great dangers that the U.S. government worried about and had planned for -- refugee crises, ecological disasters -- none of that happened," Eberly said. "What did happen, which nobody I'm aware of had calculated for, was Baghdad falling overnight. What that meant was that it was over, and we had to go in."
At first, military leaders wouldn't let the U.S. bureaucrats into the country.
"They said it was "not a permissive environment,'" Eberly said. "That was the technical term, but what it meant was that it was too dangerous for us to go in. There was no way to assert authority."
As international political pressure built quickly, Eberly said he knew he would be heading into Iraq's capital sooner rather than later.
"General (Jay) Garner told us that we were going to be thrown into Baghdad long before Baghdad was ready for us," Eberly said. "And he was right."
It was the most unruly environment Eberly could ever have imagined.
"We were brought into the presidential palace that first night," Eberly said. "Because all the electric generators had been bombed out, it was pitch black. For the first couple of nights, we could only find our way around by flashlights and candles."
Dead bodies peeked out of trucks that had been destroyed by explosives and buried by falling rubble.
"We didn't go seeking them out, but they were there," Eberly said. "The first part of the mission was to get those bodies out of there. International law governs how those things are attended to, but it was beyond anybody's idea exactly how to do it."
A hot dusty wind greeted them in the days that followed, along with stray lions and bears that had escaped from a zoo belonging to Hussein's son, Uday.
It soon became evident that disposing of more than 60,000 tons of waste would be the top priority for Iraq's nation builders. Eberly said Garner asked him to head the sanitation team.
"For the first four or five days, all I did was deal with sanitation for a city the size of Chicago," he said. Trash lined the streets, piled high on bombed-out tanks. Eberly and an Australian colonel went to Baghdad.
City Hall and tried to organize city officials to help with the cleanup.
"How do you move stuff when you have no equipment and no workers?" Eberly asked. "All the trash trucks and cleanup equipment had been burned out or stolen. You had nothing to work with."
Finally, a few sympathetic Iraqis driving pickup trucks assisted the effort in exchange for American money.
"At first, the only thing that mattered was bottom-line services like electricity, water, food, sanitation, medicine and security," Eberly said. "We still struggle with security."
The day of his interview with an Intelligencer Journal reporter, Eberly learned two civilian affairs officers were killed while escorting U.S. bureaucrats around Iraq. They were bureaucrats just like him.
"Two people died today in a convoy attack," Eberly said. "There are 3,000 army reservists and civil affairs officers who provide security for us everywhere we go. They're part of the convoys."
The soldiers who died were close friends of three military civil affairs officers assigned to Eberly's team. "It's a huge loss to that unit," he said. "The particular unit that I work with has really taken some hits."
Eberly said intelligence officials warned the nation builders about a month ago that "things would heat up and get hotter during the month of July." They weren't talking about the 115- to 120-degree temperatures.
"We have suffered significant losses every day now for the past week," Eberly said. "It certainly affects our lives."
Nevertheless, Eberly said he doesn't worry about his own safety.
"Not in the sense that I feel consummate or imminent danger," he said. "Largely because I stay inside the compound. This place is extremely heavily guarded. There are guys with guns everywhere you look."
It is an ever-present reminder of the high costs of rebuilding a nation ravaged by war.
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