A Lesson in Giving

By P.J. O'Rourke

'Tis the season for giving. And it's better to give than receive, we're told.

But you have to be careful... as I learned in March 2003, eight days into the Iraq War. Giving can be difficult, even dangerous.

U.S. troops had pushed to within 60 miles of Baghdad. But humanitarian relief for Iraqi civilians had only gotten as far as the towns across the border from Kuwait.

I traveled from Kuwait City to one of these towns, Safwan, with an aid convoy from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society – the Muslim world's counterpart to the American Red Cross. We had a semi-tractor-trailer filled with food-donation boxes and a minibus carrying Red Crescent volunteers.

The tractor-trailer parked in a field on Safwan's outskirts. The British soldiers set up a security perimeter. And I climbed on to the roof of the trailer to watch the food distribution.

A large crowd of Iraqis gathered behind the trailer. The Red Crescent official in charge of the relief convoy, Dr. Mohammed Al-Kandari, explained that the truck contained plenty of food for everyone. And he explained how the aid recipients should form ranks.

Dr. Al-Kandari was a forceful explainer. He resembled a taller, more beneficent version of Bluto in Animal House.

The Iraqis looked patient and grateful, the way we imagine the recipients of food donations looking when we're writing our holiday-season charitable checks.

Then the trailer was opened, and everything went to hell...

A couple hundred Iraqi men and boys shoved, shouldered, kneed, kicked, and grabbed at the boxes of food.

Red Crescent volunteers handed the boxes gingerly to the mob. The white cardboard cartons were about the size of orange crates. Four or five belligerents grasped at each carton and pulled them in multiple directions.

Everyone in the mob seemed to be arguing with everyone else. They couldn't decide whether to push themselves forward or pull others back, so they ended up going in circles. A short, plump, bald man sank in the roil. A small boy, red-faced and crying, was crushed between two bellowing fat men. An old man was trampled trying to join the fray.

Dr. Al-Kandari marched through the donnybrook and slammed the trailer doors shut. He harangued the Iraqis. They lined up again. The trailer was opened. And everything went to hell.

Dr. Al-Kandari waded in and closed the trailer doors again. He swung his large arms in parallel arcs at the Iraqis. "Line up!" he thundered – the Arabic-speaking doctor speaking to Arabic speakers in English, as if no phrase existed in Arabic for "wait your turn."

Dr. Al-Kandari took a pad of Post-it notes and a marker pen from his lab-coat pocket. "Numbers!" he said, still speaking English. "I will give you all numbers!" A couple of hundred shouldering, shoving Iraqi men and boys grabbed at the Post-it notes.

The doctor gave up and opened the trailer doors.

The Iraqis were snatching the food as if they were starving, but they weren't starving or they wouldn't have had the energy to snatch so hard. Most looked fully fed, some were plump, and they were all expending a lot of calories at noon on a 90-degree day.

Looking out from my perch, I saw plenty of irrigated patches in the desert. The tomatoes were ripe. Nannies, billies, and kids browsed between garden plots. Goat bolognese was on offer, at least for some locals.

There was no reason for people to be clobbering each other. As Dr. Al-Kandari had said, the truck held enough food for everyone there, even if each man and boy were the head of a family with dozens of wives, small children, and aged grandmothers.

Something psychologically or sociologically unpleasant was going on. After 24 years of brutality from Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party thugs, a different kind of society had developed.

The aid riot had a certain brutal order to it. The Iraqis didn't climb into the tractor-trailer or try to break through its side doors. Red Crescent volunteers, coming and going from the back of the truck, were unmolested.

Once an aid box was fully in an Iraqi's control and had been pulled free from the commotion, no one tried to take it. I saw a seven-year-old boy guarding four boxes.

I watched a confident gray-haired man push toward the trailer gate. He had wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He dove for a box, his glasses flying, the cigarette embers burning various ghutra headdresses and dishdasha skirts of the people around him. He disappeared for the better part of a minute. Then he came out on the other side of the throng, the box under one arm and the glasses somehow back on his face (but minus the cigarette). The gray-haired man looked around and delivered an open-handed whack to someone who, I guess, had indulged in a late hit.

I stared at the rampage for an hour. Now and then, I'd be noticed on the trailer roof. Whenever I caught someone's eye, I was greeted with a big, happy smile. The Iraqis were – in their own way – having fun.

But worse fun followed. We were out in the countryside because the first aid convoy to Safwan, two days before, had gone into the center of town and was looted in a less-orderly way.

I left the truck roof and interviewed Dr. Al-Kandari (or I tried to). He was still being importuned for worthless numbers on Post-it notes. "We almost get organized," he said, a bit too optimistically, "but then gangs will come from downtown."

They were arriving already, in anything they could get to move – taxis, pickups, ancient Toyota Land Cruisers, bicycles, Russian Belarus tractors, a forklift, a dump truck.

The men from town climbed right into the truck. They threw boxes to their buddies. The Red Crescent volunteers fled. In minutes, one squad of looters had 17 aid boxes.

The box-throwers were dancing and singing in the back of the tractor-trailer. A reporter friend who came with me on the convoy and covered the previous one said, "I saw these same guys." He pointed to a wolfish-looking fellow who was pulling the tail of his ghutra across his face. "You can tell the really bad thugs," the reporter said. "They have shoes."

Dr. Al-Kandari ordered the driver to start the truck. The truck drove off with the trailer doors flapping open and looters still inside. The other looters gave chase in their miscellany of vehicles.

Men stood on car hoods and in pickup beds, trying to catch boxes being thrown from inside the trailer. Boxes fell, spraying fruit, rice, and powdered milk across the pavement. A flatbed truck passed us, piled with scores of aid boxes. The men standing on the bumpers wore shoes. Horn-honking, chanting, and other noises of celebration could be heard in the distance.

As we drove toward Kuwait, boys ran alongside our minibus, jeering and begging at the same time. My reporter friend tossed a bottle of water to one boy. Potable water was hard to come by in Safwan. The boy looked at this gift, decided it was paltry, and threw it at my friend's head.

Giving can be difficult. It can even be dangerous. You can't control how people react when stuff is free for the taking, and the result is often far from what you anticipate. I hope America's politicians are keeping this in mind. They promise voters all sorts of "aid." I've been on that convoy before...

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke