Lieutenant Colonel Brian Formy-Duval is overseeing the complex task of dismantling over 500 US bases in Iraq by the December 2011 deadline for full troop withdrawal. This involves packing up over 1.5 million pieces of equipment and non-essential items and shipping them out of Iraq via thousands of trucks each week. It is considered the largest and most difficult drawdown in US military history. Complicating matters is maintaining security for convoys while rapidly downsizing bases and infrastructure across the country. The goal is to leave the bases in better condition than when the US military arrived.

1. THE ENDGAME IN IRAQ
The Boston Globe
Mission: seemingly impossible
Dismantling war machine is final US campaign
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff / May 30, 2011
JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — From a wooden perch 20 feet above the sun-bleached sand of central Iraq,
Lieutenant Colonel Brian Formy-Duval is helping direct the most complex spring cleaning in American
military history.

2. A snaking, exhaust-spewing caravan of flatbeds and tractor-trailers, coiling around 34 acres of dirt and
dust, sputters and brakes and starts again in a slow-moving dance toward cargo that has been collected
from US bases across Iraq. Everything from truck parts to office furniture to Christmas decorations must
go, and Formy-Duval is funneling the accumulation of eight years of war toward Kuwait and beyond.
“What would one do in America if they had to take a state the size of California, pack up hundreds of
cities, place them into boxes, and send it across the ocean?’’ asks Army Major Angel Wallace,
spokeswoman for the 103d Expeditionary Sustainment Command, which helped keep the Army fed,
fueled, and functioning in much of Iraq.

3. All remaining US troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by Dec. 31. The mammoth job of collecting,
counting, and removing the 1.52 million pieces of government equipment and 1.48 million US-owned
“non-rolling stock,’’ such as gym equipment, tool sets, and office furniture, that remain in the country is
being coordinated from this sprawling American base, the biggest in Iraq.
“We call it moving the mountain,’’ says Formy-Duval. “People know if we aren’t moving this stuff, we
ain’t leaving.’’

4. Wooden storehouses, sheds, and makeshift guard shacks are being demolished. Millions of rounds of
ammunition are moving elsewhere. And even the Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Green Beans coffee shops
that give soldiers a taste of home are being shuttered.
There is the miscellany, from mouse pads to band-saws to disco balls that are officially expendable but
must be sent somewhere, if only to the incinerator. Beds are being broken down by the thousands,
metal desks are sized and shipped, and wall hangings are rolled up and re-routed for home.
“The sheer muscle movement, much of it unseen and unheard, is truly phenomenal,’’ says Army Colonel
Shawn Morrissey, a native of Methuen, who commanded 3,000 soldiers in the Third Sustainment
Brigade here. “It’s serious business.’’
Five thousand trucks rumble to Kuwait every week as part of a high-stakes relay in which the north-
south highways carry cargo out of Iraq, and then return with provisions for the 46,000 troops who
remain here.
Through February, the military had moved 14,000 containerized housing units, 1,088 generators, and
65,000 air conditioners. Since the beginning of this year, more than 338,000 pieces of equipment have
been shipped; some to Afghanistan, some to the United States, and some to the trash heap.
Formy-Duval sees much of the whirlwind from his crow’s nest, the thousands of shipping containers
stacked like mountains of LEGO blocks, the muscle and machinery that lift and load the material, and the
US soldiers and Iraqi drivers who keep the line greased and moving.

5. “If you think of Iraq as a body, this is the heart,’’ Formy-Duval says.
That heart, beating in the Sunni Triangle about 40 miles north of Baghdad, is racing to meet the end-of-
year deadline. During eight years of war, Iraq has become a second home for much of the US Army. And
just like a home, the 500 bases that once were here became living rooms and out-of-the-way attics for
the dangerous weapons and mundane bric-a-brac of a mammoth army.
The scale of the job is staggering.
“If you’re asking for a historical comparison, I’d like someone to show me,’’ says Brigadier General Mark
Corson, a burly, former Cold War tank officer who commanded the 103d from here. “Show me where
this has ever been done, lock, stock, and barrel.’’
Unlike World War II, which kept US forces overseas indefinitely, and the Vietnam War, when the
drawdown was more gradual, the American military is looking to pack up, move out of Iraq, and erase as
many footprints as possible in seven months.
“Everybody’s trying to get out of town on the holiday weekend,’’ says Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Lyle
Drew. “This is probably the most complex transition we’ve ever done. It’s a huge math problem.’’

6. Much of the job is new for the more than 7,500 officers and enlisted personnel at Balad. After the US
invasion in March 2003, Corson says, “we were essentially building an airplane in flight’’ to support the
military effort as quickly as possible. “Now, we’re deconstructing an airplane in flight.’’
US troops are nearly all restricted to their bases as the end of the mission approaches, but those
facilities are constantly shrinking. Joint Base Balad, which once held 50,000 troops and civilian workers,
is now about one-third the size. From a high of 500 US bases in Iraq in 2007, only 66 remain.
“The whole infrastructure is going to collapse in on us,’’ says Air Force Captain Daniel Connors, who is
based at Balad. “All the creature comforts at this point are wasteful. We’re just taking the blinders off
and looking in every closet, every container.’’
But complicating the task at Balad, a sprawling base of more than 15,000 people spread over 10 square
miles, is a delicate balancing act. While the base remains home to US aircraft that provide countrywide
protection for convoys and other missions, soldiers are carting away televisions, sorting old wires and
cables, and moving in with roommates after living alone in what resembles a gargantuan trailer park.
“Every step we take to make things harder is a step closer to getting home,’’ says Air Force Captain Jim
Forbes, who has helped coordinate airfield improvements. “It’s now very real. Everybody on base is
seeing the impact.’’

7. That impact extends to an army of US contractors and third-country employees. “We have contracts for
just about anything that you can think of,’’ Forbes says. “There’s portable toilets; there’s tree-
trimming.’’
So, when a contractor is ordered to move from a container home with a shower to one without water or
a toilet, the financial rewards of working at Balad are tested. For many contractors, Forbes says, the
reaction is, “Here’s my paperwork. I’m out of here.’’
So far, the United States has made $500 million in improvements to the base, Forbes says, where 2,000
members of the fledgling Iraqi Air Force might find a home. Along the way, the drawdown plans have
been revised five times, says Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dede Halfhill, whose portfolio includes
housing, food, recreation, accounting, and educational opportunities here.
As the downsizing continues at a base where nearly every building is ringed by 12-foot blast walls,
enemy shells still trigger alarms a few times a week. President Obama declared on Aug. 31 that the
combat mission had officially ended, but Iraq remains a war zone to the soldiers who live here.
“While it is much better than it used to be, there will always be security concerns,’’ Corson says. “You
have to do due diligence.’’
The diligence extends to the transportation of high-priority equipment, such as weapons and armed
vehicles, that makes the 400-mile trek to Kuwait with protection from US soldiers. A network of Iraqi
truckers, usually without a military escort, carries low-sensitivity cargo such as uniforms and office
furnishings.
In a wood-paneled amphitheater at Balad, where maps and video screens line the walls, soldiers sitting
in tiers of seats monitor the satellite-tracked, real-time movement of trucks, cargo, and supplies
throughout Iraq.
Attacks on convoys have declined dramatically in recent years, but supply lines continue to be plagued
by roadside bombs and small-arms fire about two to three times a week, Morrissey says. Although that
number is minuscule compared with the constant danger of several years ago, the colonel says, “it’s a
bad day if it’s you.’’

8. Many of Iraq’s 660,000 soldiers and police have been trained by US military and civilian advisers, but
some observers do not consider them capable of defending the country’s borders. If that concern leads
to a request to keep US forces in Iraq, the accelerating stream of departing troops and materiel would
need to be slowed, stopped, and reversed in a complicated and time-consuming maneuver.
As of now, the mission continues to be to leave Iraq, and to leave American bases in better shape than
they were found.

9. The landing facilities at Balad, once the busiest Defense Department airfield in the world, have benefited
from $1.9 million in improvements. The best incinerator complex in Iraq, built by the United States,
burns trash here around the clock. And a state-of-the-art waste-water treatment plant, also American-
constructed, pumps clean, treated water into a nearby irrigation canal.
Even a mosque that remained from the Iraqi Air Force under Saddam Hussein has been renovated for
$90,000.
Air Force Technical Sergeant Renaissance Henry, a native of Hingham, watches Balad’s evolution from a
sparsely developed base to the largest US facility in Iraq. “I’m really hopeful that they’ll take care of it,’’
says Henry, an M-16 rifle slung over her shoulder, as she rides past an electrified fence on a perimeter
road that once was so dangerous that troops called it “Sniper Alley.’’

10. Christopher Sullivan, a civilian from Carlisle who works for the Defense Department, gazes around the
base he has called home and looked ahead to the end.
“I’m not going to be sentimental about Iraq or anything,’’ Sullivan says. “When the end comes here, it
will be me and a suitcase.’’
MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com.

11. © Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
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