Hard experience
Seth Musgrove deployed to Iraq and was suddenly in charge of 15,000 people
BY Pat Caldwell
Argus Observer
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:53 AM PDT
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| Capt. Seth Musgrove, the commander of Ontario’s Oregon Army National Guard outfit, talks about his time in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 when he supervised a city of more than 15,000 people. Musgrove was a green, 23-year-old lieutenant when he deployed, but he soon found himself acting as a city manager for the city of Duquq. |
Ontario — When Seth Musgrove deployed to Iraq with Ontario’s Army National Guard outfit in 2004 he expected to face a number of challenges.
He worried about whether he would stand the test all combat leaders must undergo regarding leadership and endurance and confidence.
He thought it likely he would face a series of life-and-death decisions, that he could become a casualty or lose one of the members of his platoon.
Musgrove said he planned on tackling a number of different jobs while he served in Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry.
But, he said, he never expected to be a city manager.
Not for a village or a small town, and certainly not for a town of more than 15,000.
That scenario, though, proved to be one of the key job assignments Musgrove, then 23, was assigned when Ontario’s Guard outfit deployed into northern Iraq near the Kurdish city of Kirkuk. At the time of the 2004 deployment, the 3rd Battalion consisted of Guard units from Hood River, The Dalles, Hermiston, Pendleton, La Grande, Baker City and Ontario.
“I was barely commissioned (as an officer) for a year. I had no prior government experience,” he said.
At 23, Musgrove and his platoon of 15 or 20 citizen-soldiers found they were the new owners and operators of the city of Daquq shortly after they arrived inside the war-torn nation.
A new dimension of war making
In a sense, Musgrove’s experience as a young American officer working in Iraq is a microcosm of the Iraq conflict as it played out in more stable areas of the nation.
While danger was still a very real and often potent element to their tour in Iraq, many 3rd Battalion Guardsmen engaged in other tasks like nation building and peace enforcement. Often coalition soldiers found a nation with a shattered infrastructure, still wobbly after years of rule under a dictator and suddenly faced with the complicated equation of creating democracy.
Daquq was no different, Musgrove said.
When Musgrove and his citizen-soldiers arrived in late 2004, the city was barely functioning, he said.
“There was a resemblance of a government. It was working enough to stay afloat,” he said.
In a sense, Musgrove was the new sheriff in town, but the challenge he and his platoon faced were not so simple as an old West good-versus-bad-guy scenario.
A functioning City Council governed the city, Musgrove said, but getting things done was a huge task.
“They knew what they wanted to do but not how to do it,” Musgrove said of the City Council.
For Musgrove, a large segment of his mission revolved around creating a new mindset for the Iraqis on the council and in the various city government positions.
“We were trying to get them to think in a whole new frame of mind,” he said.
That proved to be difficult, he said.
One challenge, Musgrove said, was obvious from the start.
“They (the City Council) needed to put more effort into serving the people of Daquq,” he said.
Musgrove walked into the first council session with zero city government experience and said he relied on a tried-and-true mechanism to help him.
“I think a lot of it was common sense,” he said. “I took a snapshot of what they were trying to do to improve it.”
Plenty of room for development existed, he said, especially regarding living conditions and basic inequalities.
“They had an open sewer system. They piped it straight out into the street. A lot of people did not have running water. The rich had clean water piped into their houses. Villagers in rural areas drank from the canals and that meant a lot of cholera, birth defects,” Musgrove said.
Talking trash
One key improvement Musgrove and his team of area citizen-soldiers tackled was trash collection.
Garbage, he said, was everywhere.
“They were used to unwrapping something and throwing the wrapper in the yard,” Musgrove said.
So Musgrove decided to frame a trash-collection program. At first glance, he said, it seemed fairly straightforward.
Musgrove realized, he said, he had to start small. So he helped pave the way for the city to hire two men to use a city garbage truck to pick up garbage cans.
“It was a new concept. Bring the trash out in a vessel and they pick it up. But it was a concept,” he said.
The program even worked, sort of, for a while.
“Some did it (put the trash out to be collected), some didn’t. But they couldn’t convey those ideas to the people. So many of them said, ‘Why do it?’ ”
The program, he said, limped along in various stages of success.
“The frustration level grew. That’s how it worked,” he said.
Trash collection was not the only challenge the Guardsmen faced, he said.
“It was city revenue. It was land rights. For example, the Kurds wanted all their land back the Arabs took. So you would implement a program, then let them know how it worked out, and then next time there would be something else,” he said.
Musgrove also tinkered with the City Council.
“I implemented a policy where there was equal representation of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs. They got along, but there were roadblocks. The mayor’s tribe, you know, was more important than the city,” he said.
There were some ideas, he said, that simply would not take hold with Daquq’s leadership.
“The thought of serving the city as a whole was a concept they could not grasp. They were only beginning to grasp it when I left,” Musgrove said.
De facto City manager
Musgrove entered into a world where respect went hand-in-hand with age status. His youth immediately set him apart, he said.
“I replaced a much older officer. From their standpoint, I was young. They would try to bulldog me. The elders had no respect for guys my age in Iraq,” he said. “So I was already at a disadvantage.”
The city leaders, and it appears just about everyone else, also knew Musgrove was going to arrive.
“They somehow, magically, knew when a unit was going to replace another,” he said.
Musgrove’s height — he is 6-foot-5 — helped; and so did another common feature: honesty.
“I didn’t want to intimidate them, but earn their respect. I didn’t know all the answers, and I knew that,” he said.
When asked about his youthfulness by the Iraqis, Musgrove said he had a ready answer.
“I said my age is not measured in years, but in my experience,” he said.
Musgrove said he never promised anything, but he tried to work within the Army system to get the town needed items when possible. That diligent work paid off, he said.
“Once I was able to get some computers for the city government. I showed up with them and word spread. Word spread like crazy,” he said. Moves like the computers, and helping out with tasks like creating a kindergarten, paid dividends, Musgrove said.
“In Daquq, I had their loyalty. Another unit would go through there and get shot at. I was never hit by an IED in Daquq,” he said.
