Posted on: Sunday, June 26, 2005
Hawai'i troops find ally in mayor
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
AIRPORT VILLAGE, Iraq — The mayor of this town of about 3,000 people, about evenly split between Sunni and Shiite Arabs, is a busy man.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser Tahur, 53, wears a navy suit with a white shirt and striped tie, gets cell phone calls regularly, and drives a black BMW. He appreciates what America is doing for Iraq, and is willing to risk his life to work with U.S. forces.
"Everybody knows Americans, they come to this country to liberate us from Saddam's regime, a regime that assaulted us with 35 years of suffering," Tahur said through an interpreter.
He's the type of Iraqi who gives Maj. John Rau hope, and the type of individual whom insurgents want to kill.
"I think when you meet people like the mayor of Airport Village, that allows you to have some optimism," said Rau, a Hawai'i National Guardsman who lives in Mililani. "Some of the other people you meet, you are less optimistic when you meet them. But he (Tahur) is looking out for the welfare of the people."
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser The civil affairs group works primarily on rebuilding, and is expected to finance nearly $1 million in improvement projects in Airport Village, so-called because French workers who had construction projects at the airport previously lived there.
The village is now practically surrounded by the U.S. military bases that ring the airport.
Tahur is among a large segment of Iraqis who want prosperity for their country and are willing to work with Americans to achieve it.
Doing so, however, has become a life and death challenge. In May, more than 600 civilians — excluding Iraqi police and soldiers — were killed in the country, the Defense Department said.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser And there's a new threat: His family now is being targeted.
"Four days ago, they tried to kidnap my uncle," Tahur said in Arabic as interpreter Jimmy Samo, who works on contract for the battalion, translated. "Thanks to God, he protected him and he escaped being kidnapped."
Rau, a geologist with Clayton Group Services, an environmental consultant in Kailua, meets regularly with Tahur.
The civil affairs soldiers also have other areas that they work in, like Iraqi Family Village, an enclave formerly occupied by widows and orphans of Republican Guard soldiers between Camp Victory and Baghdad International Airport.
The village now is occupied by 5,000 to 10,000 squatters.
The most progress is being made in middle-class Airport Village, where a memorandum of agreement was just signed with an Iraqi contractor for $97,500 to replace a 25-year-old security fence around the village.
Other projects will include upsizing a 4-inch water line to eight inches, building an above-ground water storage tank, and constructing a daycare center so the space used for that now can be turned into a secondary school.
Water supply is a big issue. The village is at the end of a water line, and often suffers shortages.
Insurgents last week also blew up a water main, cutting supply to half of Baghdad. As of recently, Airport Village was getting no water through its pipes, and a water tanker was being brought in daily to meet needs.
Capt. Grant Maeshiro, 35, from Makiki, has the job of figuring out the water supply system for the village.
"It's pretty crazy because they never really documented anything," said Maeshiro, who works as a project engineer for Island Signal and Sound, an electrical supplier on Sand Island Road.
Corruption and confusing bureaucracy are other challenges for the Guard soldiers.
A new mayor's office was built next to the existing one by an Iraqi company called Sozek, but it's not clear who the company, which may have changed its name, performed the work for.
The work, done for some agency other than the U.S. Army, is completed, but the building was never turned over and remains locked.
"So we've been telling (Tahur), 'Just get a locksmith,' " Rau said.
The Hawai'i Guard soldiers never go outside the base with anything less than five armored Humvees, and as the civil affairs soldiers met with the mayor in the school and daycare building, with a several-foot-high teddy bear, rabbit and smiling children painted on the outside, remaining soldiers set up a security watch in the parking lot.
Tahur, who's worried about his safety, wanted help in getting a weapon through a nearby road checkpoint without it being confiscated.
Bushra Ahmad Amin, another city council member for the Mansour District of Baghdad who attended the meeting, said the Army should provide a bodyguard for Tahur.
The mayor said since U.S. forces took over in Iraq, "everything right now is improving, and things are getting much better than before."
With U.S. help, the village now has a clinic and an improved sewer system, he said.
"I don't think progress and prosperity are going to stop because of the (insurgents)," Tahur said. "Most people are working with the U.S. Armed Forces. There are lots of them — even though many people lose their lives, there are more people who come who want democracy."
Thadit Tahur also sits on the city council for western Baghdad, works at the airport, and plans to run for the Iraqi National Assembly.
Mayor Thadit Tahur, interpreter Jimmy Samo, and Mansour district city councilwoman Bushra Ahmad Amin met recently with members of the 2nd Battalion, 299th Infantry Civil Affairs Team to discuss Airport Village.
Rau, 42, and a team of civil affairs soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 299th Infantry have a job separate from the base security and patrol duties that most of the more than 600 Hawai'i National Guard members perform at Camp Victory near Baghdad International Airport.
Airport Village mayor Thadit Tahur likes what America has to offer.
Tahur has had dozens of attempts on his life. He has to change cars every few months so he's not easily recognized on the road.
Hawai'i National Guard members Capt. Grant Maeshiro, rear, Sgt. Thomas Odoardi, and Maj. John Rau spoke recently with Airport Village Mayor Thadit Tahur and interpreter Jimmy Samo.
