Snapshots of the everyday in Iraq

Author: Ben Salkowe

Sitting at a table in The Grille, Former Marine Civil Affairs Gunnery Sgt. Heidi Schuerger lays out several photographs of Iraq: A young boy giving a toothless smile from behind a stack of produce in the market. A girl posing in a field of camels, wearing bright pink leggings that clash playfully with her dark blue burka. An older man masking a grin from behind mounds of colorful spices.

"It's not about the war," Schuerger says of her photography. "It's just some things that I observed and was able to bring back with me."

Since returning several years ago to the United States, and to her job as the College's database administrator, Schuerger's personal snapshots of her six-month tour in Iraq have become a traveling photography exhibit featured at galleries across Vermont. And through her pictures and her presentations, the 41-year-old Vermonter has offered her own unique observations of the everyday people in the country that the United States invaded.

"I decided I was going to take advantage of the opportunity I had," says Schuerger about her experience. "I traveled to Baghdad a couple times. I had lunch in a cafe. I bought a bicycle and rode around. I didn't actually hear of the green zone until I got back."

Schuerger served in Iraq in a Civil Affairs group - one of the military units responsible for rebuilding infrastructure, promoting municipal governments and businesses and cleaning up the damage of the war. Her responsibilities included working with children who needed medical services, managing crowd control at pension distributions and working to distribute international funding to local organizations.

"Civil Affairs units are predominantly reservists," says Schuerger. "In their civilian capacity they are doctors, lawyers, bankers."

In her own civilian life Schuerger now manages infamous Middlebury database systems like BannerWeb course registration - a job she chose over the military permanently after returning to the United States in August 2003 and learning that her unit would be called back to duty in November.

"I think it's absolutely crazy that they aren't calling people up, letting them stay two years and then let you go home," says Schuerger. "When I came back it was really rude to hear that I would be expected to go back in three months."

And so, after ten years on duty, Schuerger made the difficult decision to let her contract expire only four months short of retirement.

"I decided I needed to commit to one career," she says, referring to her job at the College. "But I have a lot of guilt associated with not going back."

Although she left the conflict before the insurgency reached its current state, Schuerger says Iraq's problems today stem from things that were happening early on - including the U.S.'s early failure to secure borders and control who comes and goes. Iraq's international borders, she says, are largely unprotected, and within Iraq, the borders of provinces are porous enough for insurgents to leave when the U.S. clamps down on a region, and then return when the U.S. moves out.

"I never saw it under control," she says of the area she was stationed at in Kuwait, just outside Iraq before the start of the invasion. "The Iranians did a good job of keeping the Iraqis out, but the Iraqis didn't do a good job of patrolling their border."

That lack of security, Schuerger says, has made it difficult for infrastructure work to progress.

"If they had locked down borders in the beginning I don't think they'd be having this problem," says Schuerger, referring to problems her unit struggled with, like looting and theft of power lines that slowed efforts to restore power. "Security, basic police functions are why things aren't getting fixed."

While debate in Washington has focused on President George W. Bush's troop surge plan, Schuerger says the military's emphasis should be on providing resources and training, but holding the Iraqi's accountable to actually get things done.

"The number one rule is don't do anything for them, just facilitate," says Schuerger. "Just because they're not getting it doesn't mean we should keep spoonfeeding them."

Schuerger gave an example from her own experience in the Marines, distributing funding from international organizations to Iraqi firms and businesses. Walking into one office with filthy facilities and poor business plans, Schuerger turned them down and walked right out.

"I said you're not getting the money," she explains. "You have to be harsh - no handholding."

While Schuergerger continues to e-mail some of the Iraqis she worked with, she has no idea what became of the people and places captured in her photographs, now almost four years ago."I don't like to think of it too much," she says.

And while Schuerger's photography leaves unanswered questions about where her subjects are today, it also leaves unanswered questions about where they would be without the invasion: better or worse?

The photos are not the unreported successes that the mainstream media is criticized for overlooking, but they are also not vivid portraits of a war-torn country. Her photography is people doing business, making jokes, passing time - living. While other photography portrays a prolonged and violent engagement, Schuerger's snapshots present a place she visited, helped and left.

"When I was there I told the Iraqis: you have to take responsibility," says Schuerger, "because I'm not going to be here forever."