Is it Safe?

Folks always ask me if its safe here.  If you wanted safe, then this is not the place to work.  Its all about calculated risk and frankly a numbers game.  For those that don’t go out of the walls, its pretty safe with lots of security features and guards keeping a constant eye out for bad people.  If you travel in the Green Zone to one nearby Ministry, your risk goes up a bit for the walk, and a bit more if some errant guard decides that you are a target.  For those of us who go outside the Green Zone to one of the many other Ministry sites, the risk goes up appreciably commensurate with the vehicle you ride in. Bad people are actually out hunting for us. It happened last week to one movement.  We didn’t go out that day, but a few other colleagues did in a well-equipped armored MRAP convoy.  A bad guy rammed his sedan into one MRAP and fortunately it didn’t go high order.  They arrested the driver and cleared the car of the 150 lbs or so of high explosives.  My fellow advisors came back to camp with a story and a dilemma.  Poor detonator placement meant the difference between a fender bender and a tragedy.  It’s a numbers game, as the more you go out, the higher the risk.  I’m at over 70 movements so that puts me at higher risk than those with a dozen and less than those with a few hundred.  You can’t worry about it.  You prepare, get your head in the game and make the call on whether to move that day or not.  As for one of the Advisors in the convoy, he was in one of the other two MRAPs.  He was also in the second helicopter that did not crash into our camp in October.  Not sure how one man can go through two close calls like that and ask himself whether he is just lucky or just teasing fate.