The Dedication

Posted by mauer

Posted: February 4, 2007 - 7:16 am

ERBIL, Iraq, Feb. 1 — A state department public affairs officer called the other day to offer a tour to the new reconstruction effort in Erbil, one of the provincial capitals of the Kurdistan region.

The C-130 is readied for the ambassador's arrival.

I leaped at the opportunity. Sure, it sounded like a junket, but I’d been cooped up in Baghdad for a week. Besides, I’ve wanted to see the Kurdish region, a place with its own language and national pride.

The Kurds occupy the three northeast provinces of Iraq and the cross-border regions of Turkey and Iran. And they’ve been making political inroads in adjacent Iraqi areas, like the oil town of Kirkuk. One of their divisions is being sent to Baghdad for the Iraqi security plan, though it’s unclear how that will work. Few Kurds speak Arabic, and many have said they would desert rather than leave their region.

Representatives of four media outlets were going to take the trip, but when we met near LZ Washington, the big helipad in the Green Zone, it was only me and Courtney Kealy of Fox News.

Rooftop flying to the airport.

Well, it was going to be a good-news-in-Iraq story. What do you expect?

The drive to the airport from Baghdad is so dangerous that we were going by helicopter. Two Black Hawks touched down. I went in one, Courtney and her cameraman in the other. You realize there’s room for about a dozen passengers in each. A few state department staff and an Army reservist from Virginia joined us too, but there was plenty room to stretch out.

We scooted fast over the rooftops, each one with a summer patio. Gunners manned open doors on both sides of the helicopter. Since insurgents have been shooting down U.S. helicopters, even flying can be nerve wracking.

Blackwater guards wait for the ambassador in Erbil.

At the airport, a C-130 transport was waiting with its ramp down. A C-130 for two reporters? This really is crazy.

Kealy whispered something about the ambassador. I turned to our State Department minder, Susan Phalen, who fessed up: The press was the extra baggage on this trip. The real passengers were U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and his retinue.

Khalilzad, his party and a crew of fairly rugged Blackwater security guys took one side of the plane. We were on the other. When Khalilzad gets back to New York to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, if he’s confirmed, he’ll probably fly on planes that don’t require earplugs and don’t have canvas seats.

Tour bus.

The flight took 50 minutes. We landed at Erbil International Airport. That’s not a joke. By every measure, the Kurdish region is the most peaceful in Iraq. Tourism may be an adventure, but it’s possible.

But even here, we couldn’t get outside the fence. The base for the Zaytun Division starts adjacent to the airport and runs over the brown hills outside of town.

We were met by 1st Lt. Hyung-Soo Kim, a public affairs officer in the Korean Army. The Zaytun Division, I learned, is a Korean force, one of the few remaining allies still in Iraq in force. The Koreans still have 2,400 troops here.

Susan Phalen of the State Department and Zaytun Division's 1st Lt. Hyung-Soo Kim.

The big event was the dedication of the Kurdistan Regional Reconstruction Team, the 10th such team to be inaugurated in Iraq. The teams are the civilian component of President Bush’s last chance in Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress in January they would work to strengthen provincial governments and encourage them to meet the needs of their people. Bush said the U.S. was ready to apply another billion dollars in aid for the effort.

The Koreans were in charge of the Kurdistan team. The Korean ambassador to Iraq, Chang Ki-Ho, joined Khalilzad and the Kurdistan prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, on the stage of a community hall for the dedication.

The Zaytun Division Band entertains at the opening ceremonies.

Khalilzad is tall and distinguished and has the presence of rock star. Before and after the ceremony, he was mobbed by people wanting to take their picture with him. When he spoke, though, his voice was thin and reedy.

Koreans is a model for Kurdistan and Iraq, he said. Korea was in ruins after World War II, and needed a massive injection of U.S. help to recover. Now, the Koreans and the Americans are doing the same in Kurdistan.

“There will come a day when the Kurds and Iraqis will be helping others,” he predicted.

After the ceremonies, Khalilzad went one way and Kealy and I another — to tour earlier aid projects by the Koreans, a vocational school and a hospital.

Kurdistan leader Nechirvan Barzani, left, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, right, are mobbed after the dedication.

The school has graduated more than 1,000 students since it opened in 2005. All are guaranteed jobs by the regional government. The Koreans were also thinking ahead: the mechanics classes work on Kias and the appliances classes with LG refrigerators, washers and air conditioners. They will surely build the market for their products.

As safe as Kurdistan is, the regional reconstruction team won’t have an office in Erbil itself, just behind the fences and checkpoints of the Zaytun Division a couple miles away. The State Department staff who work in Erbil live in a guarded compounded, their own Green Zone. Mario Crifo, an enthusiastic attache here, is bound by state department rules to not enter the city on his own.

I thought of an news wire report from Jan. 11 in which Rice discussed the reconstruction effort: “Rice said a key element of the new strategy will involve getting US diplomats out of the isolation of the heavily fortified Green Zone that surrounds the US embassy in Baghdad and into the countryside. ”In total, we seek to deploy hundreds of additional civilians across Iraq to help Iraqis build their nation,” Rice said.

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