When Emma Sky, an intrepid young British woman, volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussain, she had little idea what she was letting herself in for. It was only supposed to last three months but instead spanned a decade.
As the representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Kirkuk and then the political adviser to the United States Army General Raymond T. Odierno, Sky was valued for her outspoken voice and different perspectives that she brought due to her knowledge of the Middle East.
Since the invasion in 2003, Sky has been a tireless witness to American efforts to transform a country traumatised by decades of war, sanctions and brutal dictatorship, to insurgencies and civil war, to the planning and implementation of the surge and the subsequent drawdown of US troops, to corrupt political elites who use sectarianism to mobilise support, and to the takeover of a third of the country by the Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
Sky provides unique insights into the US military, and the complexities, diversity and evolution of Iraqi society. With sharp detail, tremendous empathy and respect for those who served — “The Unravelling” is an intimate portrait of how and why the Iraq adventure failed despite the best and often heroic efforts of its young men and women on the ground.
Sky is now a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute and lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
The title of your book — “The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq” — makes it clear you view the West’s involvement in the country since 2003 as a grand failure but also a preventable one. What were the biggest mistakes?
There has been a series. The whole experience of Iraq is a rollercoaster and those who didn’t watch it closely just assumed it was going to be disastrous because of the way we went in. But there was that period in the middle — the surge from 2007 to 2009 — and those of us who spent a long time there, we saw things really improving. By 2009, we thought — and the Iraqis thought — that the country was going in the right direction.
The big mistake of the Barack Obama administration was in 2010, after a good election, not helping to broker the formation of the government and deciding to keep Nouri Al Maliki in power despite him having lost the election. Everything from then started to go downhill again and it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening now.
It could have been very different?
Al Maliki went after all his rivals, pushing them out, and things just started to unravel. So watching that you think, more than 150,000 Iraqis lost their lives, almost 200 British soldiers, 4,500 American military. All that sacrifice, we hoped to leave Iraq in a better place. So it’s awful to watch it now.
Although a British civilian, you were the political adviser to General Odierno from 2007 to 2010 — you’ve been described as “the most influential Brit in Iraq” for almost a decade. Is that how you felt?
When you are working so hard, you don’t sit there thinking, “Oh, look at me, I’m so important”. But in the role I had, I felt I was able to influence the general. He valued the different perspective that I brought.
Full credit to him, because they always tell you that you must surround yourself by people who are different to you, but people never do. General Odierno told me he wanted somebody to tell him when he was making mistakes. So I thought, “Oooh [rubs hands together], what a great job! Nobody ever asks you to tell them when they’re screwing up.”
When you told the Iraq inquiry — also known as the Chilcot inquiry — how you ended up in Iraq, they scarcely believed you. Can you explain?
Well, I was working for the British Council and I volunteered to go to Iraq in 2003. The British government said it would be for three months, before we handed the country back to the Iraqis. I was against the war and I thought this would be penance: I can go and apologise to everybody and help them rebuild.
I’d spent a decade working Israel-Palestine, so I’d got experience in conflict mediation and institution development, and I thought I’d be useful. I didn’t know what my job was going to be, but when I arrived in Kirkuk, I was told: “Great! You are now the governor coordinator, you are in charge of the province.” It was a slightly embarrassing position to be put in.
Did you feel at all qualified?
No, not at all. And in my first week, insurgents came to the house where I was living and blew the house up with me in it. I survived, but I had nowhere to live. I went to see a US colonel to ask for accommodation and he said: “We’re going to hunt those people down!” And I was: “No, no, no, they were attacking me because I’m a symbol of an illegal occupation.”
So I went back the next day with a download of the Geneva conventions and said: “Colonel, sit down. If I find you violating any of these articles, I’ll take you to the Hague.” For him, suddenly he’s got this woman with a British accent, feisty, telling him off, he thought, “Hey, this is kind of cool.”
You had an unusual upbringing: your parents separated when you were one month old and, because your mother worked as a matron, you spent a lot of time in basically all-boys schools. Did that help when you worked with the military?
Yes, being with the military was familiar. And my childhood experiences had given me a taste for adventure, but also being a woman in a very male-dominated world. People ask me questions such as: “When you got blown up in your first week, why didn’t you go home?” All these “why didn’t you go home?” questions.
But never did I ever think of going home. When you’re in boarding school, you don’t have a choice, so the resilience is built up. You get used at a very young age to coping with bullying, of being the outsider, of being different, or just having to knuckle down. I’d only ever played boys’ sports and I’d only ever seen the world in a very boy’s way until I was a teenager.
In the book, you mention a strained relationship with your mother. Did that mean there wasn’t a strong pull back to England?
A: I didn’t have this idea that there was a safe, warm, loving sanctuary called home to go back to. But that was the career I’d chosen and I think a lot of people who work in development are escaping from something. Whether it’s their broken relationships or broken homes, they find purpose and meaning overseas. It’s a type that ends up doing these jobs. It’s not the happily married.
You are working as a lecturer at Yale University at present. Is life less exotic these days?
A: I struggled when I left Iraq. All that effort and to watch it unravel, I thought, what’s it all been for? How am I going to find meaning in life now? But at Yale I get five months holiday a year, so I travel a lot. Since leaving Iraq, I’ve been to Sudan on holiday, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Myanmar. I go to weird places on holiday.
You don’t hear of many people going to Sudan on holiday...
That got me into trouble with US customs when I came back. They said: “Ma’am, you’ve been to Sudan.” And I said: “Yes, I’ve been on holiday.” And they said: “Ma’am, nobody goes to the Sudan on holiday.” So I got taken off for hours in the special room.
But no plans to return to work in Iraq?
It’s time for me to move on to the next thing. I feel I’m changing — I don’t know which way I’m changing but I’m not running off to the next conflict zone, and that’s probably a good thing. I’ve never looked for stability, because I see that as being in jail. But now for the first time I feel I’m in an ivory tower and it’s quite nice. Nobody’s shooting, nobody gets killed — I’m learning to find that nice, even if it’s not something I ever sought or wanted.
–Guardian News & Media Ltd
