Photo By James Rawlinson | A small stretch is shown of hundreds of miles of canal that moves water from Dokan dam...... read more read more
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KIRKUK, Iraq—"So, what's the best job to have?" asked a Soldier from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, making small talk with a group of workers huddled on the ground in the shade, taking a break from their work in the 100-plus degree heat to speak with the visitors.
They looked at one another and briefly conferred. One spoke up with the implicit consent of the group. "Construction." The others nodded in silent agreement.
"What's the worst?"
Without missing a beat, A'anad Mohammed spoke up. "The worst job is to not have one." The others, again, nodded more eagerly in agreement.
A'anad is a member of the Civil Service Corps, an Iraqi program patterned after a U.S. depression-era job program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps, designed to put young men back to work, according to Lt. Col. Hugh McNeely, the deputy commander of 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. All of the CSC apprentices are former Sons of Iraq members who have contributed to the significant security gains in the Kirkuk province.
The SoI program, now solely the responsibility of the government of Iraq in accordance with the Security Agreement signed on Jan. 1, 2009, will transition 20 percent of the SoI into one of the Iraqi security forces like the army or the police. The rest are offered job training or other government jobs depending on the individual's level of education or particular skills. Experience and education levels vary widely. In the village of Omar Khatab today, the oldest is 56 and the youngest is 15.
These particular men are working in the remote village of Omar Khatab, small even by Iraqi standards and several hundred yards from a main traffic route with no paved road access. Residents lucky enough to have cars just bear down a dirt path to merge with traffic on the highway when they need to go somewhere.
Adil Khalil, the CSC coordinator in charge of this particular area, is a post-graduate, school-educated, English-speaking chemical engineer by training who manages projects in this and other nearby villages. "They get training in renovation, electrical wiring, some construction," he said of the 1-2 month training curriculum the workers attend.
"You know, they need food," he continued. "If they don't have food, they will do anything. There are no jobs in the Iraqi army or Iraqi police. There are no farms here. This gives them work."
Some of the projects include minor repair and upgrade of facilities of the al-Baab school in nearby Saad village. The school, which educates nearly 400 students in subjects ranging from history to geography to math, starts in kindergarten and moves through 6th grade. The building is being repainted, cracks in the walls holes are being filled and broken glass is being repaired.
Another project in particular need right now is in cleaning canals for farm irrigation. The canals are part of a network of water distribution that begins at the Dokan dam in the Kurdish regional government and is channelized into a concrete network where the water is distributed approximately every ten days to small farmers who continue to use flood irrigation to water their crops. Because of the distance involved in moving the water, any blockage or damage to one part of the canal network has cumulative effects in other areas. This is especially important because Kirkuk province is in the middle of a four-year drought that has resulted in consecutively lesser water available from rainfall from the previous year, according to U.S. Air Force weather data.
Second Lt. Jonathan J. Lent, New York, N.Y., native and Civil-Military operations officer for 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. says his squadron is working on six different canal revitalization projects in different areas. Each is expected to employ nearly 200 people for up to two months. Once those programs are near completion, they will find more canals to clean.
Work like canal cleanup is typically for the unskilled laborer, said Lent. Once they go through the CSC training they can move up to more skilled jobs like electrical wiring and plumbing.
"The goal of this program is to be self-sustaining," explained McNeely. "We want these men to have skills that will keep them employed long after we're gone. They've risked their lives for their communities and now they want to live in those communities and see them prosper."
| Date Taken: | 06.02.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 06.05.2009 13:26 |
| Story ID: | 34602 |
| Location: | KIRKUK, IQ |
| Web Views: | 117 |
| Downloads: | 97 |
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