New Facility Pours Needed Water Into Baghdad
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, speaks to a crowd of more than 200 people at the official opening of the Sadr City Rusafa Water Treatment Facility in the Hay Ur neighborhood of Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, Jan. 21, 2009.
Photo by Army Maj. Michael Humphreys

Action in Afghanistan, Water in Iraq

Coalition forces detained nine suspected militants during an operation aimed at the Haqqani terrorist network in Afghanistan’s Khowst province on January 22, 2009, according to U.S. Air Force officials.

The operation in the province’s Khowst district, southeast of Kabul, targeted a Haqqani militant believed to facilitate attacks against local civilians and against Afghan and coalition forces.

Officials said intelligence also suggested the targeted militant has facilitated the movement of foreign fighters into eastern Afghanistan.

On January 21, 2009 in Afghanistan, coalition forces killed six armed Taliban militants and detained another during an operation to disrupt the Taliban’s foreign-fighter and roadside-bomb networks in Afghanistan’s Zabol province yesterday, military officials said.

In Daychopan district, northeast of Kandahar city, coalition forces targeted a suspected Taliban commander believed to have ties to the roadside-bombing network along Highway 1 and to recent attacks against coalition forces in Zabol province. He also is suspected of trafficking foreign fighters into the region.

As coalition forces prepared to search the compound, they instructed everyone to leave the buildings peacefully. Armed militants from surrounding compounds responded by engaging coalition forces with small-arms fire. Coalition forces returned fire, killing five armed militants, while protecting 23 women and 31 children.

During the skirmish, one armed militant left the building and engaged coalition forces from behind large rocks on a nearby hill. While taking enemy fire, coalition forces responded with precision air strikes, killing the militant.

A search revealed multiple AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons. Coalition forces confiscated the weapons.

Other good things are happening in Afghanistan as well. The members of agricultural development teams there are living examples of the symbol of the National Guard: a Minuteman with a musket in one hand and his other hand resting on a plow.

Army Secretary Pete Geren and Army National Guard Chief Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn spoke in Washington DC earlier this week about the capabilities these citizen-soldiers bring to development in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province.

The men were joined via video teleconference from Afghanistan by Army Col. Stan Poe, who leads a team from the Texas National Guard, and Sultan Huessen Abasyar, the director of Ghazni’s agriculture, irrigation and livestock office.

About 85 percent of Afghanistan’s population is involved in agriculture, and any way forward in the country must take into account the critical link between prosperity and farming, Geren said.

Security has not posed a problem for the teams to date, both Geren and Poe said, and members work closely with the U.S.-run provincial reconstruction team in Ghazni.

The teams have ties back to universities and organizations in the United States. The Texas team can call on state-of-the-art communications to contact world-class professionals at Texas A&M University in College Station. The A&M staff helped the Guardsmen with soil analysis and suggested crops that might succeed in the province’s arid conditions.

Water is the limiting factor in Ghazni, Vaughn said. “A lack of water is not the problem in Afghanistan,” the general said. “The management of the water is the problem.”

Mountain snowmelt runs out of the mountain ranges and off the land, with few catchments to stop the run-off and put it to work. Poe said his team has put in dams on some streams that lengthened the growing season in Ghazni by a month. The water-management activities also work to prevent floods and control erosion. The team also is working on micro-generators for farms and putting in place windmills and solar-power collectors to give Afghan farmers the current they need.

The team is looking to build jobs in industries that take their raw materials from farming as well, Poe said. Members are working with local government officials to put in a feed lot for cattle, and helping to construct a building that local butchers can use to slaughter animals. They are building a tanning facility for the hides and looking at methods to increase cold storage. They also are exploring the idea of a wool-washing facility. All of these projects will create jobs.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the infrastructure is continuing to be built.

About 200 people, including Baghdad Mayor Navet Al Essawi and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker, attended the January 21, 2009 ceremony at the Sadr City Rusafa Water Treatment Facility, located in the Hay Ur neighborhood of Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district.

The modern facility will help shape the future of Baghdad and Iraq, Crocker said.

“This is truly a strategic project,” the ambassador said. “It provides 96,000 cubic meters of water to Baghdad per day, and the United States of America is proud and pleased to have financed this project and to see it through to completion with our close friends and our partners in the mayoralty and the government.”

The $65 million facility, completed in October, took three years to build. It provides 4,000 cubic meters of fresh water per hour to northeastern Baghdad, to include 27 sectors of Sadr City.

“This project is the most important and probably the biggest project for Sadr City,” Al Essawi said. “This project and others like it will clear the path of terrorism.”

This is Sgt. Stryker signing out.

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