Initial Problem Set: Chişinău, Moldova
Welcome to the Initial Problem Set.
Below, you will see a map indicating where you are currently at in the story. It is written as a multi-path adventure, more commonly known as a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” When we consider the future, the choices we make will impact the consequences we face.
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Travis Craigen swiveled his head and eyes rhythmically, taking in every detail of his environment like a predator searching for prey. Standing 6'3", he possessed a heavily muscled frame and perpetual glowering frown that deepened the creases in his bald head and weathered face. There weren’t many people on the streets at this early hour, but those few made room for the big man striding purposefully down the Chişinău sidewalks.
Something about this deployment seemed wrong. He'd been an operator long enough to learn to pay attention to warning signals, and these were off the charts. Craigen couldn't shake the sense of disaster hovering in the background of his mind like a veiled threat from an invisible menace.
It didn’t really bother Craigen that he was only fifty kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Twice before, he’d traveled to Ukraine to visit the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kyiv. But since the Russian invasion, it was just too hot for US relief workers to safely travel there anymore.
So now instead, he was here in Moldova, a country he’d never visited. It was, in all honesty, a place he’d never really thought about. Craigen hadn’t known what to expect when he boarded the bus in Bucharest bound for Chişinău, the capital. As a veteran of countless deployments to disaster zones throughout the world (mostly to developing countries), he'd assumed that he was heading for some sort of bleak industrial center filled with dull gray Soviet-era architecture. Instead, he was surprised to find a modern city with amazing food and the best prices for beer he’d seen in Europe.
It wasn't the city of Chişinău that had Craigen spooked, so it had to be something else. He was able to quickly walk from the Albert Thomas Hotel to the UNHCR office on Strada Alexei Mateevici. He arrived early for the UN Humanitarian Country Team “Cluster” meeting. Despite the novelty of the Moldova location, everything else at the Cluster meeting bordered on routine. While he didn't know the individual people, the agencies they represented were familiar enough. There was a rep from USAID, UNOPS, Catholic Relief Services, an elderly man representing Samaritan's Purse, a handful of other agencies, and the Red Cross, of course. All the usual suspects, Craigen thought to himself.
Because this was the first meeting since Moldova had called upon the UNHCR for assistance, the members attending the Cluster meeting took turns explaining who they were and what they brought to the effort. When his turn came, Craigen tried to make his well-worn introduction as short and sweet as possible; “Good morning, I’m Travis Craigen, a Response Team Leader with the Parousia International Relief Agency (PIRA). I've got four trucks en route from Bucharest carrying shelter kits consisting of ten-person tents. We've also got smaller kits that can be customized, including tarps and tools and other things depending on what you need."
Maybe it was the scope of the disaster they were confronting. There were already as many as two million people displaced by the Russian invasion, many fleeing across the 1,300 kilometer border Moldova shared with Ukraine. A lot of these were refugees from the coastal city of Odesa and the region surrounding it.
Maybe it’s because there's so much at stake this time, he finally decided. Unlike all his other deployments, Craigen knew the situation in Ukraine could escalate into a crisis that engulfed the whole world. He couldn't predict how it would turn out. All he knew for sure was that there was a lot of work to do.
Four hours later, Craigen sat with members of his Response Team around some outdoor tables set up beside the Bonjour Café patisserie next to the central park. He'd unrolled a laminated map and oriented his team between much-needed sips of the strong coffee.
“Look, it’s getting crazy out there.” Craigen tried to convey a sense of the magnitude of the information he’d learned at the Cluster meeting. His intuition had been correct; something was terribly wrong. “Putin’s using artillery to destroy the cities. He’s not even bothering to go in and try to conquer them. He’s just surrounding them and bombing the civilian populations into submission while his main forces are bypassing the urban areas to seize strategic objectives.”
Into the hushed silence that fell on the table, Craigen asked his team, "Any of you ever seen what a high explosive artillery detonation can do to people?"
Only Nick Jones nodded. Jones was a tough guy, prior service military, and the team's newest member. He was assigned as Diesa "Dee" Bolanger's apprentice.
"So you know what I'm talking about." Craigen looked deeply into the younger man's eyes, sizing him up.
Jones just nodded again, his mouth set in a thin, tight line.
Craigen held the gaze for another heartbeat and then continued. “Right now, we’ve just got refugees streaming across the border. We know that drill. Get in there, do the assessment, and distribute whatever we’ve got before going back for more. What’s different this time is the potential for massive civilian casualties unlike anything we’ve ever seen or are prepared to handle.” He let that sink in.
Now the rest of the members of the team were nodding too. “Where are they sending us Rattle?”
Craigen was the Response Team Leader, the RTL, so they called him the 'Rattle'.
“They’ve given us two possible locations to support depending on our assessments, Curly.” Raquel Kedzierski was the oldest member of the team. Everybody called her “Curly” because nobody seemed to be able to pronounce her last name. Adding to the moniker was that on the infrequent occasions she pulled her graying auburn locks out from beneath her PIRA ball cap, they tended to tumble out in a disheveled heap. So the nickname stuck.
“I’m going to send your duet down here,” Craigen pointed to a small town at the extreme southeast of Moldova, “It’s called Palanca. I’m giving this one to you Curly because it’s over100 klicks away and right on the border. In fact, it’s surrounded on three sides by Ukraine like a peninsula in the sea. There’s no room for navigation error, and you’re the best with a map.”
In response, Kedzierski pulled out her cell phone and dialed up the GPS feature, her head craning sideways to get a better look at the charts spread before her.
“I’ve got an oddball assignment for you, Dee.” Craigen glanced up at his newest duet lead. While not exactly a rookie, this was Bolanger’s first assignment as a lead instead of just an apprentice. She’d worked hard on previous assignments and proven herself. But Craigen got the sense that she was still insecure in her new role, especially with a battle-hardened soldier like Jones for an apprentice.
“What do you got for me, Rattle?" she asked confidently.
There was just the slightest gleam and a crinkling at the corner of Craigen’s eyes. “I need you to go to the border of a country that isn’t a country.”
"Please excuse me," Craigen's cell phone was buzzing in his pocket. The Cluster members were well into their second hour of the morning's meeting. "I've got team members arriving. I've got to take this."
Craigen waited in Chişinău while his duets rented local cars and drivers to take them to their assessment areas. Meanwhile, his job was to attend Cluster meetings and prepare to link up with his convoy of shelter kits and other relief supplies. A part of him longed to be out in the action, finding and fixing problems. But he knew that his team needed him here now, the anchor for the deployment, coordinating operations.
Ricky Thibido was anything but subtle, and he'd been blowing up Craigen's cell phone for the last ten minutes. Craigen stepped out into the hallway and swiped the keypad to answer the call. "Howdy Rattle, I made it to town, and I'm hongry!" Thibido's deep Cajun accent flavored every conversation with a laid-back, informal, comfortableness. Despite having his meeting interrupted, talking to Thibido felt like coming home to family.
“It’s about time, Scooter.” Craigen chided. Thibido drove trucks and managed convoys, so they called him Scooter. Everybody on the Response Team got a nickname sooner or later. “Thought you got lost!”
"You know I never get lost."
"You never admit you get lost," Craigen corrected, grinning. "Let's get you parked, and I'll buy you lunch. I'll go over the two locations we're looking at."
"Welcome back, Dee. What did you find out?" Craigen met Bolanger the next morning when her duet returned to Chişinău. He drank copious amounts of hotel coffee and took extensive notes while she gave her report. Kedzierski’s duet linked up later that afternoon because she had further to drive. With the entire Choir once again reassembled, they went over every scrap of information they had, frequently pulling out their cell phones to fill in the details. But in the end, tough decisions always had to be made with limited information.
“No way we can cover both locations,” Craigen concluded. “Gonna have to contact OPS and make a hard call.”
Craigen pulled out his satellite phone and began dialing the number for the PIRA Operations Center. They were expecting his call.
“What’s the situation?”
“Hey Chief, the Cluster wants us to cover two separate locations: The first is 113 clicks away over pretty decent roads in the town of Palanca.” Craigen had already sent an email with all the details. “Palanca is right on the border, and they’ve got a checkpoint there that is backed up for miles with vehicles trying to escape up the main road from Odesa. There's a robust relief presence there already, but the problem is they are being overwhelmed. Cars are breaking down or running out of gas. They've got thousands on foot, especially women and children. Palanca is tiny and growing numbers are outdoors, exposed to the elements. They are trying to get buses to carry the refugees to secure locations, but there aren't enough vehicles to meet the need.”
“Understood. What about the second location?”
"The second location is strange." Craigen glanced over at Bolanger, who nodded silently. "There’s a breakaway autonomous region in Moldova known as Transnistria.” Craigen struggled with the correct pronunciation. “This place is a pure throwback to the old Soviet Union. It’s populated with a large percentage of ethnic Russians, and they even have a couple thousand Russian troops stationed there.”
The voice on the other end of Craigen’s sat phone sounded bewildered. “They have Russian troops stationed in Moldova?”
"It's an autonomous region," Craigen explained. "They had a bit of a civil war back in 1992, and now it's set up a separate security zone. Transnistria views itself as a separate nation even though it has never been recognized by any other country.”
“What’s the humanitarian need like?”
“Much less than Palanca. Mostly ethnic minorities crossing over into Moldova proper to escape persecution as tensions in the region increase. Plus, it’s less than fifty clicks away so we could make a lot more runs back and forth with supplies. We're probably better positioned to respond to this one, Chief. They want us to set up in a tiny town called Varniţa just outside of a checkpoint in Bender.”
“Does Russia plan to annex Transnistria as part of its Ukrainian campaign? What’s the risk level involved?”
“Above my pay grade, Chief," Craigen responded grimly. “My assessment team reports that everything is calm right now, but this is a dynamic situation. We can’t support both locations. We’ve only got enough resources for one. I need you to make a call. Which location do you want me to commit to; Palanca or Varniţa?
You are the Chief of the PIRA Operations Center. You make the call:
Choose Option 1: Minimize risk to your team (the Choir). Support Palanca.
Choose Option 2: Accept risk and make the best use of the Choir: Support Varniţa.