Tigris-fun

The Tigris River in Iraq flows from Turkey and Syria in to Iraq and all the way to Basra on the coast. Throughout this conflict it has played a significant role. Bridges crossing the river have been blown up by both sides over the last few years, initially to halt the advance of IS and more recently by IS as they have sought to halt the Iraqi army progress.

As areas on the western side of the Tigris were re-captured, the various military forces have put in temporary pontoon bridges to allow access from the east to west initially, and now freedom of movement in both directions. These bridges are few and far between, and single file. They are quite a bottle neck for all of us trying to work on the western banks. Due to security concerns, until recently, agencies have been reluctant to have staff staying on the western side. The bridges have pretty early curfews, making it fairly impossible to get out and across to the east in an emergency. As the western banks have been obliterated by conflict we are talking about areas where there are no functioning hospitals, no clear system of security – lots of different militias are still present, no electricity, water shortages etc, etc. So you can see why we didn’t want to face a situation of stranded staff.

More recently things have improved, and we have made the decision to allow expats to overnight in the area in the week. Travel times are a bit insane and so it means that their working days are currently fairly short. However, in order to get to this point we needed to identify a suitable house, and make the necessary safety upgrades – things like putting in CCTV, raising walls, hiring guards, creating a safe room for staff to retreat to in an attack etc.

Meanwhile, we have been having a LOT of rain. This is excellent for the farmers, less good for those people living in tents, and fairly difficult for us. Pontoon bridges don’t cope that well with significant rises in water levels. Over the last couple of weeks we have had many frustrating days where we have either heard in advance that the bridges have closed, or have got all the way to the bridge to find it closed. This has massively impeded our ability to operate smoothly, we have had to delay assistance to families simply because we couldn’t reach them.

The rain has stopped now, but yesterday we heard that the water in a big dam up-river just north of Mosul city is dangerously high and so the military are planning how to open the dam to allow the water to flow out. Of course this is a potential nightmare. Either they release the water quite quickly, with the bridges removed before hand to avoid damage, but cause some flooding; or they release the water slowly and leave the bridges in place risking damage and periodic closures. So yesterday we started to make contingency plans. Despite it being a weekend the team pulled together marvellously. We have a huge number of ‘critical relief item’ kits (think mattresses, blankets, stoves, kitchen sets, hygiene items) which we are planning to distribute to some newly displaced people on the west bank. On the west bank we have a warehouse but the contract was ending today. So we quickly decided to move our kits from our warehouse this side to our warehouse that side and pay for an additional month of storage. If the bridges close again we won’t be able to get the kits trucked over. The team worked in to the night last night loading up the trucks and today they successfully delivered the kits to our warehouse on the west bank. This is no mean feat when it also involves multiple check points and various different permissions letters.

Today I went with the team to the west bank to do what we could to get our new guesthouse (for which we literally just got the keys) up to a good enough standard for expats to camp in it for the odd night or two if the bridges close again. This meant taking fire safety equipment with us and installing it, changing all the locks, purchasing locally a load of things like foam mattresses, blankets, drinking water, dry snacks (there’s no kitchen in the house yet to cook), toilet paper etc etc. We also rapidly hired 3 temporary guards and trained them in their roles. The other safety upgrades will be done in the next week or two, along with kitting the house out with proper furniture and equipment. We also agreed to try and hire a boat in order to move staff across the river in an emergency. There are a number of fishermen in the area so we found a contact and went to see his boats and test them out – checking where the boat will dock each side of the river (I say dock, it’s really just wedging it on to a muddy swamp area). We quickly contracted his boat to move our staff from one bank to the other whenever needed. The hunt continues for lifejackets and/or life floats – these are fairly unusual items here.

We had a mere 4 hours on the west bank today, so I’m coming away pretty chuffed with what we achieved. Should the bridge close again tomorrow, we’ll now at least be able to continue our activities without further delays. Days like today remind me that there is no other job as varied, as crazy and as fun as this one. Now we just need to provide some wellies for the staff using the boats so that they can squelch through the mud from car to boat J

Enjoying 'testing' out the boat