Booting Up Baghdad: Tech Execs Take a Tour in Iraq

As the CEO of MeetUp,

* Illustration: Zohar Lazar * As the CEO of MeetUp, Scott Heiferman usually spends his days meeting with staff and brainstorming product strategy. But today the 37-year-old New Yorker, wearing a combat helmet and armored vest over a black business suit, is crammed into a battered C-130 transport plane headed for Iraq. Military and diplomatic personnel aboard are warily eyeing him and the others in his party, all similarly attired, as the C-130 begins its steep, corkscrew descent into the Baghdad airport. And Heiferman is thinking, "What am I doing here?"

It's only been a few weeks since he got an email from a State Department policy planner named Jared Cohen inviting him to join the first tech delegation to post-invasion Iraq. Now he's strapped in with eight other Silicon Valley executives, mostly in their thirties, from Google, Twitter, YouTube, Blue State Digital, WordPress, Howcast, and AT&T. When Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey got his invitation, "I just said yes," he recalls. YouTube's director of product management, Hunter Walk, had to go down to his basement to find a suit to wear, because Cohen insisted that the group dress like diplomats to show respect for their hosts. Others worked their spouses for approval, repeating Cohen's assurances that the security situation in Baghdad was much improved. Howcast CEO Jason Liebman's mother thinks he's on a trip to LA.

When the plane lands, Heiferman, Dorsey, Liebman, and the rest meet Tony, an ex-Marine straight out of central casting who will head their security team. "Is everyone's insurance paid up?" he jokes, then adds confidently, "I will get you out alive." He tells them that if a rocket bomb lands nearby, they should hit the floor with mouths open so the explosion doesn't shatter their eardrums.

Before the implications of that can sink in, the execs are aboard a pair of helicopters racing vertiginously 150 feet over collapsed buildings, desert-camouflage Humvees, and the muddy rivers that once cradled civilization. It's like being plunged into the dense, dizzying pixels of an Xbox game. Ten minutes later, the birds land in the US Embassy compound in Baghdad's Green Zone (officially renamed the International Zone), and the Americans find themselves in a windy parking lot, desert sand stinging their faces. Now they'll confront the question behind this visit: Can Iraq be saved by meetups, Web searches, tweets, blogs, and YouTube videos?

The previous evening, Cohen, the 27-year-old State Department tyro who dreamed up the trip, laid out the agenda over dinner at a restaurant in Amman, Jordan. Up to that point, his fellow diners had been told little more than this: We are looking to integrate new technology more broadly into our foreign policy objectives.

Cohen is a former Condoleezza Rice protégé now thriving under Hillary Clinton. Between puffs of flavored tobacco smoke drawn from a hookah, he explains that using technology to spread democracy has become a cornerstone of what diplo-nerds are calling 21st-century statecraft. Cohen chose this group for several reasons: to expose them to the changed reality of Iraq so they could spread the word back home, to inspire Iraqis to pursue capitalism with the fervor of a tech startup, and to initiate a few projects that will actually help Iraq rebuild. David Nassar, a VP at Blue State Digital—which handled online aspects of Barack Obama's campaign—is along to offer ideas on elections. Raanan Bar-Cohen, vice president of Automattic (the company behind WordPress), is an advocate for blogging and the open source movement. Richard Robbins, AT&T's "director of social innovation" (a title he invented), represents the big mobile firms. And there are three people from Google (including YouTube's Walk) because—well, because it's Google.

Cohen's fear is that taking a bunch of Web 2.0 suits into a nation shattered by war will be seen as an absurd boondoggle, mocked in the press as war tourism for Twittering geeks. The way to counter this, he says, is to produce "deliverables." In Cohen's personal word cloud, that's a noun set in 36-point type. "The technology that's second nature to you is going to be really important to countries like this," he tells the group. "You have a chance to contribute to this country in this early form of nation-building."

On one hand, it's ludicrous. What can makers of social networks and video sites do to fix an economy that's as broken as Saddam's statue? On the other hand, Silicon Valley types like to think they know how to make the world better. This trip isn't about profits or investing opportunities—as new markets go, Iraq falls somewhere between Antarctica and Somalia in desirability. They're motivated by a mix of curiosity and Obama-inspired patriotism. (If George Bush were still president, some of them might not have come.) There is also the guilt factor. "It's the least we can do for fucking up their country," Heiferman says.

Just how fucked up is Iraq? The executives get an overview in a series of briefings from State Department and military officials in embassy meeting rooms. Not all bad. Just mostly bad. Violence is down, but danger still lurks outside the Green Zone. The economy is a wreck. Electricity comes and goes.

"This is an analog society," says an Army major charged with expanding the communications infrastructure. Some high-speed fiber-optic cable was laid in the Saddam era, but there's no coherent network. One company received a contract to build cell phone connections throughout Iraq but absconded with the money. Corruption is rampant. Nothing can happen without complex permits and licenses. Very few homes have broadband, and personal computers are scarce.

Many Iraqis do have cell phones—62 percent today, up from almost zero in 2003. Heiferman and Dorsey begin imagining SMS versions of Twitter and Meetup. But coverage is spotty. Businesspeople and even embassy staff often list multiple mobile phone numbers on their cards, one for each wireless network. Most Iraqis use prepaid phones, because with limited banking infrastructure in the country, billing systems don't work. Neither do credit cards.

But Iraq's biggest high tech hurdle has nothing to do with a lack of twisted fiber or 3G networks. This is a country drained of entrepreneurial vigor. Decades of government control have smothered the belief that ordinary people can build a company or develop a product on their own. And although officials of the new government pay lip service to the idea of privatization, in practice the bureaucrats really haven't changed their thinking.

The National Investment Commission is reached by way of a dusty alley off a street in the Green Zone. The door opens directly into a room with a conference table and an old refrigerator humming in the corner. The host is Dr. Sami al-Araji, a husky man who refers frequently to a degree he earned at Michigan State University in the 1960s. His deputy, an older man with a whisk-broom mustache, solemnly distributes business cards. A woman in a head scarf delivers the tiny glasses of sugary tea that punctuate every meeting.

After introductions ("I'm Jack Dorsey from Twitter" ... blank stare ... "Tweeter?"), Dr. Sami opens with a brief speech. "Gentlemen, until recently, we were not positioned to accept foreign investment," he says without apparent irony. But now, Iraq's combination of talent, intellect, and natural resources present a wonderful opportunity for the companies represented at this table—especially, if Dr. Sami may say so, Google. He pauses. "Now we can open it up for discussions and proposals." There is a brief silence that Dr. Sami clearly had hoped would be filled by eager bids for business.

"Do you have examples of success?" asks AT&T's Robbins.

"Of course!" Dr. Sami says. Nothing completed yet, but he is about to close on deals involving a cement factory and a fertilizer maker. From outside comes the beeping of a truck backing up. A dog barks.

"Considering the problems with security, infrastructure, and even getting a visa, what could you tell a company that would lead it to invest here?" asks Ahmad Hamzawi, head of engineering for Google's Middle East operations.

"I say to the US, there are countries that are competing with you," Dr. Sami replies. "India and China could come in and get many of the opportunities. You might find yourself waiting for a long time."

Cohen cuts in to explain that the delegation has not come to explore specific investments but to offer their knowledge and experience. "How can we help you craft a message?" he asks.

"I want to work on a businesslike level," Dr. Sami says. "Do you have proposals?"

Even as the group is filing out, he calls after them: "I have a weakness for high tech. Come back with proposals!"

Embassy staffers have identified Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih as the government official most likely to mind-meld with techies. Salih is stuck in his native Kurdistan but agrees to a teleconference. After several tries, the call goes through and Salih's voice emerges, crisp even over a fuzzy connection. The line goes dead six or seven times during the meeting, and the number has to be redialed. "Everything is a challenge in Iraq," Salih sighs. "But that's also the biggest opportunity."

The deputy prime minister has done his homework on the Americans, and he is totally into deliverables: "I hope your delegation won't leave without solutions—even if it's how to roast a perfect chicken!" It's a reference to a popular Howcast video, and Howcast CEO Liebman instantly becomes Salih's BFF. Even modest projects could be models for a larger transformation, Salih says. "You have solutions that can be empowering for a situation like ours—don't let this just be a visit!" he urges, just as the line goes dead again.

The delegation's first look at the Red Zone—the real Baghdad outside the protected area—is through the tinted windows of armored Chevy Suburbans. The Americans are wearing oversize combat helmets. Tony's instructions for sorties outside the Green Zone include a ban on Twittering upcoming locations. But aside from the presence of red-bereted Iraqi soldiers and some buildings half-reduced to rubble, Baghdad doesn't feel like a battleground. Customers line up at shabby food stalls; small cars scuttle by tooting their horns. A few fast-striding pedestrians would not look out of place on Dupont Circle. Others—kids in T-shirts, mustached young men in soccer warm-up jackets—offer stony, hateful stares.

After a 15-minute ride, the convoy arrives at the Iraq National Museum. As the visitors wander through the recently reopened building and gawk at 16-foot-high friezes from the Assyrian age, Dorsey hovers over a display of credit-card-sized slabs bearing messages in cuneiform—civilization's first stab at Twitter.

After the tour, a curator quietly describes the museum's plight while her guests sip yet more sweet tea. "We do not have a security system. We do not have a fire alarm system," she says. "We would welcome any idea, any kind of help."

"Do you have a Web site for the museum?" Blue State's Nassar asks.

"Under construction," she says.

Another potential deliverable: a full-featured Web site for the National Museum.

Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology is a stately building in an advanced state of disrepair. Cohen has pleaded with the minister that a planned "symposium" be informal, allowing plenty of discussion. Fat chance. The group shucks its body armor and marches into an auditorium filled with poker-faced men in suits or clerical garb and women with covered heads.

A dozen or so functionaries are seated on the dais. "We have invited speakers to express their success stories," the moderator announces. As success stories go, this isn't exactly Apollo 11. The minister of industry and minerals shows a slide detailing a slate of "historical achievements," like installing an antivirus application. Not everyone focuses on heroic feats: A turbaned cleric lectures the Americans on how they've screwed up the country and how much more things will be screwed up when they leave.

Only one speaker represents the private sector, a man named Aziz. He sees a bright side to the financial meltdown that has smacked the US. "This is good news for us, because maybe now you will be more sympathetic," he says. "We have no economy." Before Aziz gets to his suggestions on how the delegation might help, the moderator cuts him off. Symposium over.

The government dysfunction bothers Google's Kannan Pashupathy. As the guy who sets up the company's offices all over the world, he's used to grilling officials and has taken the role of lead questioner in the meetings. He has a talent for asking questions that require numerical answers, making them harder to duck. "These are classic government types," he says. "I didn't get the impression that they were very ready to listen."

The first encounter with students is at a get-together at the al-Rasheed Hotel in the Green Zone. A show of hands indicates that the young people are skilled users of YouTube, Google, and Facebook. But when Heiferman asks what they want for their future, no one envisions creating wealth and innovation in the private sector. Instead, they want to work for the government. They want job security and pensions. This makes the Silicon Valley group crazy. "You should think of yourselves as social entrepreneurs!" Heiferman says.

"Our society is not mature enough to supply this freedom," one student says glumly.

Automattic's Bar-Cohen tries to explain that they can use off-the-shelf software tools to create companies on a dime or code open source projects from here in Iraq, but the concept does not compute. As one student explains, starting a business "is not something I talk about with my friends—no one ever thought of doing anything like that." In any case, she adds, "I can't talk freely about it; I can't let everyone know I meet Americans, because of the security issue."

During a visit afterward to the University of Baghdad—which resembles an American state college after a 20-year strike by maintenance workers—the executives learn that Iraqi universities have largely stopped conferring graduate degrees in computer science and that most top professors have left the country.

Almost imperceptibly, the Americans have shifted from listen-and-learn to activist mode. Some of this is undoubtedly due to Cohen's emphasis on deliverables, but mostly it's a natural reaction to the constant, desperate pleas for help from honorable, educated people. The intransigence of the government and hopelessness of the economy hasn't discouraged the group—on the contrary, it has energized them. "I had no idea what to expect when I came here—just what I'd seen on TV," says Howcast's Liebman. "Now that we're here, I feel we have a responsibility to help out." Liebman, Cohen, and a few others work into the night drafting an email to the deputy prime minister. Subject line: Tech delegation deliverables for Dr. Barham.

The schedule is packed: a boardroom meeting in the offices of mobile carrier Zain, where executives continue their presentations without missing a bullet point when a power failure darkens the lights; a platitudinous audience with President Jalal Talabani; a suburban-style cookout at the home of Iraqi general Nasier Abadi, on a lawn grown from American grass seed—the illusion of normalcy spoiled only by helicopters from a nearby military hospital flying low enough to flap shirt sleeves.

Everyone is exhausted on the final Red Zone foray, a long, winding drive past an oil refinery and through the mean-looking Karrada neighborhood to the University of Technology, known as Iraq's MIT. The cars stop alongside the main university building, a brick structure with the charm of an industrial-park warehouse.

As was the case at the University of Baghdad, there seems to be no place for students with entrepreneurial urges. Hearing this frustrates the Americans. "Google was built in a garage by students just like yours," Heiferman says, his voice rising. "The future Googles will come from your classrooms!"

The professors are unimpressed. "In America there is support for those things," one replies. "Ask me five years from now. Maybe it will be better."

The meeting is interrupted by Tony: We must leave now. The visitors quickly retrieve their body armor and pile into the Suburbans. An elaborate lunch planned for the group is scrapped. Later, Tony explains that the hasty exit was to avoid a possible suicide vehicle intended to blow them to pieces.

The next day, a bomb goes off in Karrada, leaving dozens dead and wounded.

__Barham Salih,__the deputy prime minister, is back from Kurdistan and has invited his new friends to his Green Zone villa on their last night in the city. "A year ago we would not have been able to sit in this garden," he says. "We would have been hit by rockets." Outside the villa walls, evening prayers are being chanted. Tieless in a gray suit, Salih resembles Harry Smith of The Early Show. His iPhone rests on a tray table beside him.

Salih wants pledges that planned projects will really happen. First is a reciprocal task force of Iraqis that will visit Silicon Valley and coordinate tech plans for Iraq. The Americans worry that it will be dominated by government foot-draggers, especially since Salih has invited some familiar bureaucrats—hello Dr. Sami!—to this meeting. Could Salih lead the visit himself?

Bar-Cohen suggests a program to encourage Iraqi students to participate in open source projects. "How can we make it happen?" Salih asks. Jack Dorsey has another request—will Salih sign up for Twitter? More proposals are chewed over. Would the US pay half the cost to outfit Iraqi students with $100 laptops? An embassy official indicates that Uncle Sam might lay out some funding. By the end of the meeting, Salih has a notepad full of action items.

The guests leave the villa on a high. This had been the kind of meeting they strive for back home. But when they share their excitement later at press conferences arranged by the State Department, a reporter watching the video feed back in Washington remarks, "My God, they have a lot of Kool-Aid over there, don't they?"

The big question is left hanging: Would anything actually come of this? In the weeks after the trip, some answers emerge. No, YouTube, Twitter, and the rest haven't saved Iraq. But the techies have a Google spreadsheet full of modest, plausible projects. "The Iraqi museum is a no-brainer—we can do a really cool job," Jason Liebman says. The US may grant funds for a programming contest in the spirit of Google's Summer of Code. The travelers have gotten their companies involved, too. None are about to open an office there, but Iraq now figures in Google's recruitment and deployment efforts in the Middle East. "Iraq wasn't on the plan before," Pashupathy says. "Now we're thinking about it.

"I don't care what the Iraqi government thinks—we were there to sell the Internet," Heiferman says. "If we raised the consciousness on that even a little, maybe it can help the people self-organize." The biggest deliverable of all, of course, is the transformational, bottom-up power that the Internet offers—if people are inclined to take advantage of it. For evidence that they might be, look to Iran: In the wake of the disputed election in June, Iranians took to Twitter and Facebook to communicate with one another and the outside world. A few days after the vote, Jared Cohen reportedly asked Jack Dorsey to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown of Twitter so the Iranians could continue tweeting.

If nothing else, the delegation to Iraq has already logged one indisputable deliverable: Salih is now on Twitter. His first effort, tapped out the day after the Americans left: "Sorry, my first tweet not pleasant; dust storm in Baghdad today & yet another suicide bomb. Awful reminder that it is not yet all fine here."

Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy @wired.com) wrote about Googlenomics in issue 17.06.

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