(C) KIRKUK ROAD CONSTRUCTION HEADING NORTH

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KIRKUK 000138 SIPDIS SIPDIS BAGHDAD FOR POL, POLMIL, NCT, IRMO E.O. 12958: DECL: 8/15/2016 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PINS PNAT PREF ECON EIND ELTN KDEM, IZ SUBJECT: (C) KIRKUK ROAD CONSTRUCTION HEADING NORTH KIRKUK 00000138 001.2 OF 002 CLASSIFIED BY: Jim Bigus, PRT Leader, POL, Department of State. REASON: 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY: Kirkuk Provincial Council (KPC) member and Director of Roads and Bridges, Qasim Hamza, said on August 1 that poor security in southern Kirkuk was diverting road reconstruction projects to safer areas north of the city. He said that badly needed road and bridge construction in Hewija and its sub-districts had been halted due to security concerns. Hamza said his department was not responsible for internal roadwork in Kirkuk city and that this fell under municipal authority. His office was responsible for highways and bridges passing through Kirkuk Province and currently focused its efforts on linking Kirkuk with Chamchamal, Sulaymaniyah, and Erbil. Hamza claimed the Kurdistan Regional Government did not fund road construction in Kirkuk Province, and that private Iraqi contractors accomplished all road construction in the area. END INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY. (C) POOR SECURITY MAIN OBSTACLE TO PROGRESS -------------- ¶2. (C) KPC member and Kirkuk Director of Roads and Bridges, Qasim Hamza, told IPAO on August 1, 2006, that deteriorating security in the southern areas of Kirkuk Province had pushed reconstruction activities north of the city. He claimed poor security had halted construction on Hewija roads and that 9 billion Iraqi Dinar (ID) were set aside for much needed road reconstruction in the Hewija sub-districts of Zab and the Daquq sub-district of Rashad, but engineers and companies refused to go there due to security concerns. He added that smugglers and terrorists were using two kilometers of unpaved road between Kirkuk and Hewija because security vehicles had difficulty traversing these bad roads. Hamza said a major bridge project in Hewija that would permit traffic flow to circumnavigate the Kirkuk city had to be put on hold indefinitely because the security situation made the project impossible. (C) NO MATERIALS, NO SEWAGE SYSTEM, NO SKILLED LABOR -------------- -------------- ¶3. (C) Hamza said looters stole all of the equipment from the Kirkuk Directorate of Roads and Bridges after Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). He said as a result they had no bulldozers or other building equipment for projects and had to work through contractors. Before OIF, Hamza said, Kirkuk had its own asphalt factory; now the city had to bring asphalt from the Baiji and Dora refineries that frequently suffered sabotage attacks, and that this in turn affected construction projects in Kirkuk. He added that Kirkuk had no sewer and drainage system currently, and that this contributed significantly to surface degradation and to problems with paving and leveling roads. Hamza said his office had to depend on outside contractors for skilled labor because it had no in-house engineers, designers, or surveyors to outline urgently needed projects. He claimed current projects inside the city included reconstruction and paving of the northern Tabaqchi and Rahimawa bridges, and the Domiz bridge in southern Kirkuk city. (C) FUNDING AND PRIORITIES HEAD NORTH -------------- ¶4. (C) Hamza said for 2006 the KPC had delegated one-fourth of the total provincial budget, 33 billion ID, to improve municipal services in the city of Kirkuk, while the local budget for Roads and Bridges was set at 9 billion ID, with an additional 60 billion ID from the Project Contracting Office in Baghdad for highway construction. There were several highway projects underway currently, Hamza said, to link Kirkuk cities to the Kurdish areas. For instance, he cited work on the Erbil Roadway, stretching from Hamrin Mountain in southern Kirkuk Province to Alton Kopri, north of Kirkuk city. He also cited work on the Sulaymaniyah Roadway, from Hamrin Mountain through Kirkuk to Chamchamal. He said the Directorate of Roads and Bridges also was working on the road from Dahuk to Tuz Khurmatu. Hamza said his office had a plan for construction work from Kirkuk to Baghdad, but that this was slated for next year. (C) BIOGRAPHIC NOTES -------------- ¶5. (C) Qasim Hamza Ahmed al-Bayati: Current Director of Kirkuk Roads and Bridges (appointed in March, 2006); born in the mostly Turkoman neighborhood of Tissin in Kirkuk, 1959; member of the Turkoman Loyal (Wafa) Movement (TLM) party, founded in exile in 1977; Qasim occupies the KPC seat the TLM won in the January, 2005, elections as part of the Iraqi Turkoman Front bloc ticket; received a degree in Heritage Reconstruction and is KIRKUK 00000138 002.2 OF 002 a practicing civil engineer. (U) COMMENT -------------- ¶6. (C) Post has noticed local leaders increasingly have cited poor security in southern Kirkuk as the primary reason these areas have not received adequate reconstruction to date. It is worth noting that Hamza, as a Turkoman and a member of the Iraqi Turkoman Front bloc, did not cite alleged Kurdish efforts to use road construction to strengthen Kirkuk's links to the KRG. Rather, Hamza appeared very supportive of any reconstruction projects in Kirkuk and sought to accomplish these wherever possible, in his case the safer northern areas. This lends credibility to the notion that poor security is a genuine concern among all ethnic communities in Kirkuk, but is nevertheless working to the Kurds' advantage by permitting them to create political facts on the ground. JBIGUS