212 AMERICAN SPYThe ethnic Albanian manager of the Grand Hotel, who remembered
me from my official TDYs in the early 1990s, dragged me down to the
hotel’s basement to show me a recently abandoned Serb communications,
interrogation, and torture center. Navigating the stairway down was tricky
as we had to step over and around a dozen or so temporary Serb com-
munications cables the size of garden hoses that ran up the stairway. The
grimy walls of the dimly lit basement were stained with bloody handprints,
and victims’ sandals were scattered across the garbage-strewn floor. The
filth reminded me of the mindless devastation the Serbs had left behind in
other parts of the country.
But not all was grim during this trip: besides enjoying the sense of
freedom that permeated Kosovo for the first time in recent memory, I was
also able to roam for free on the Serbs’ still-functioning cellular network,
the appropriately named MobTel.
My “temporary” war zone humanitarian project evolved over the next
few years into a successful for-profit business, not for me but for my client
and for others on the ground in Kosovo who developed and grew the
venture. One of the project’s key local employees went on to become
Kosovo’s ambassador to the United States. It turned out this particular
business was ideally suited to conflict zones that experienced bloody
transitions from authoritarian rule to freedom and independence—an
unusual niche, but a niche nonetheless. Although the idea for the initial
wartime project was mine, the postwar business in Kosovo was managed
by and belonged to others.
In addition to doing the good it was intended to do, this successful
Kosovo project served as a model for my Iraqi start-up four years later. The
key difference being in Iraq I would own and operate the business myself.
I expected to enjoy a “first-in” competitive advantage in Iraq, since other,
more risk-averse companies in that industry would not likely enter the Iraqi
market until after the situation had stabilized. I was hoping for a three-to-
six-month head start before the competition felt safe enough to enter the
huge and promising Iraqi market. Because of the deadly insurgency, my
competitive advantage ended up lasting for many years. This unusual busi-