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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, October 30, 2003

UH to help in rebuilding Iraq

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

The University of Hawai'i will play a role in rebuilding Iraq and its agriculture industry and higher education system under a one-year, $3.7 million federal grant that has the possibility of two one-year extensions.

It's one of only three grants awarded so far by the agency under the HEAD program — Higher Education and Development — as a result of a national competition among universities, and it will bring 15 outstanding Iraqi graduate students to UH for advanced training as early as the spring semester.

The grant goes to UH-Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and is being officially called the "Hawai'i-Iraq Partnership for Revitalizing Agricultural Higher Education and Development."

"The first focus is to train a cadre of graduate students with higher degrees to go back as up-to-date, state-of-the-art faculty," said grant project director Samir A. El-Swaify, professor and chair of the college's department of natural resources and environmental management.

Secondly, the grant will pay for 12 to 15 $20,000 research projects undertaken by Iraqi professors to advance knowledge in their fields.

The HEAD program calls for partnerships between American and Iraqi colleges and universities to modernize Iraq's institutions of higher education as well as stimulate economic growth and agricultural sustainability.

The other two grants went to a consortium that included the Research Foundation of the State University of New York plus Columbia University, Boston University and England's Oxford University; and a second group that included DePaul University and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy.

The money, from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is part of U.S. and international efforts to rebuild postwar Iraq. President Bush has estimated the cost at $66 billion for the first year alone for military, intelligence and rebuilding operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The UH role in these particular efforts to rebuild in Iraq will involve UH scientists establishing a Center of Excellence in agricultural education, research, extension and training at two universities in northern Iraq.

"With an economy primarily dominated by oil revenues, it is often overlooked that Iraq remains predominantly an agricultural nation," said El-Swaify, who envisions UH helping the war-torn country achieve self-sufficiency in food production and revitalizing education in the agricultural sciences.

The UH science team will work with the University of Mosul's College of Agriculture and Forestry and the University of Dohuk's College of Agriculture.

The primary objective is to strengthen the academic programs and extension training at both, and rehabilitate the research infrastructure and agricultural research programs, particularly at Mosul.

It means Hawai'i scientists will leave in the next month for two weeks in Iraq to get a sense of the facilities, people and resources, said El-Swaify. It will also mean that they'll choose the 15 graduate students to study at UH from a pool of at least 30 applicants.

El-Swaify said part of the grant will be used to establish a state-of-the-art streaming video link between UH and Iraq, as well as rebuild university libraries looted or destroyed during the war.

Located in northern Iraq's "breadbasket," Mosul is the second-largest university in Iraq and one of the most prominent research centers in the Middle East. Its focus areas are comparable to those of the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, with both serving multi-ethnic populations.

In addition to El-Swaify, UH scientists involved in the project include Catherine Chan-Halbrendt, associate dean for research; Ekhlass Jarjees, entomologist; Ali Fares, assistant professor of watershed and soil hydrology; and Sahar Zaghloul, assistant professor of nutrition.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.