Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08BAGHDAD2230
2008-07-18 02:51:00
SECRET
Embassy Baghdad
Cable title:  

IRAN PROFITING FROM KARBALA'S NEED FOR BRICKS

Tags:  PGOV PHUM ECON ETRD ELAB PINR IZ IR 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO0370
PP RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHKUK
DE RUEHGB #2230/01 2000251
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 180251Z JUL 08
FM AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8363
INFO RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 002230 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/17/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM ECON ETRD ELAB PINR IZ IR
SUBJECT: IRAN PROFITING FROM KARBALA'S NEED FOR BRICKS

Classified By: PRT Team Leader Don Cooke for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

This is a PRT Karbala reporting cable.

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 002230

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/17/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM ECON ETRD ELAB PINR IZ IR
SUBJECT: IRAN PROFITING FROM KARBALA'S NEED FOR BRICKS

Classified By: PRT Team Leader Don Cooke for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

This is a PRT Karbala reporting cable.


1. (S) Summary: Iranian companies are the primary
beneficiaries of Karbala,s need for bricks to rebuild. The
provincial government claims it wishes to foster a local
brickmaking capability and five brick factories have been
established here. During a visit to the site of the
factories on July 12, PRT officers found fully functional
facilities kept idle by lack of fuel oil due to political and
bureaucratic entanglements. They also encountered
impoverished families enduring harsh conditions in an attempt
to earn a living making bricks. End Summary.

Karbala Rebuilds...
--------------


2. (SBU) With public and private structures crumbling in the
wake of years of struggle and neglect, Karbala has a massive
need for bricks with which to rebuild. In response, the
provincial government has sought to develop a local
brickmaking capability by providing free land for factories
at a remote location some 40 miles northwest of the Karbala
City near Lake Razzaza. To date, five facilities have been
established at the site. According to public- and
private-sector contacts here, provincial officials promised
to provide the factories fuel oil with which to fire their
kilns at the same, subsidized rate the government pays for
the commodity, thus giving them the chance to compete with
producers from elsewhere in Iraq and abroad.

...With Iranian Bricks
--------------


3. (C) So far, however, Iran has been the primary beneficiary
of Karbala,s need for bricks. Generally speaking, Iraqi
masonry products are sturdy enough for load-bearing
applications. Iranian bricks, by contrast, have larger holes
and are less structurally sound; they are also shipped
shrink-wrapped in plastic to keep them from falling apart.
Although their utility in load-bearing applications is highly
doubtful, they are cheap; our contacts tell us this is

because Tehran heavily subsidizes the industry. Iranian
bricks are seen everywhere in Karbala and are easily
identified by their ochre hue. The bricks used to face the
pillars of FOB Husayniyah,s gates are Iranian, each bearing
a stamp (in FARSI) of the Kermanshah brick works.


4. (S) Contacts here ascribe the ubiquity of Iranian bricks
here to Governor Aqeel al-Khazali,s (Da'wa) well-known
affinity for Iran, where his wife was born and where he spent
a number of years. However, Provincial Council Chairman
Abdul al-Al al-Yasseri on a number of occasions recently has
bemoaned the dearth of Karbala-made bricks. Earlier this
month, for example, he told PRT officers that -- owing to
'technical difficulties' -- the brick factories here were not
yet ready to produce. Once they were, he said, Karbala
bricks would dominate the local market.

Visiting the Brick Factories
--------------


5. (SBU) PRT officers paid an unannounced visit to the site
of the five Karbala brick factories on July 12. Situated in
the open desert near Lake Razzaza, the factories and their
yards sprawl adjacent to pits from which the brick clay is
mined. A single irrigation/effluent canal cuts across a
parched landscape dotted with crude huts, derelict vehicles,
and the occasional camel. We were welcomed at the first
factory by workers and their families. All were dressed in
dirty clothes and many, particularly the children, exhibited
skin lesions that the elders claimed were from bathing in the
canal. Consumption of the canal water produces other health
problems, including chronic diarrhea, they said. The plant
manager soon appeared and led the group on a tour of the
facility.

No Oil for the Kilns
--------------


6. (SBU) The manager led the group through a yard stacked
with unfired bricks, which he estimated to number about 5
million. Under normal operations, he said, the bricks would
sit in the yard to cure for about three days before being
fired. However, the plant lacks the heavy fuel oil needed
for the kiln. Asked how long the bricks in the yard had been
sitting, he said 10 months, which was the last time the
facility received any fuel oil for its 30,000-liter tank.
According to the manager, the plant is required to request
fuel oil allotments via the provincial Office of Development,
which then passes the request to Baghdad.


BAGHDAD 00002230 002 OF 002



7. (SBU) Eager to show off the factory,s functionality,
workers started the (gasoline generator-powered) brickmaking
machinery. The facility is able to produce 100,000 bricks
per day. Asked the origin of the plant,s equipment, the
manager said it was German machinery that had been assembled
by Iranians. However, the PRT visitors noticed the devices
(featuring open belts and gears that appeared hazardous, an
observation confirmed when the manager showed a bandaged leg
and foot he said had gotten caught in the works) bore FARSI
and not German inscriptions.

The Competition
--------------


8. (SBU) The manager concluded the tour at the mud-lined
kiln, which was filled halfway with some 385,000 bricks
waiting to be fired. Queried about where Karbala was getting
its bricks while his factory (along with three of the other
five; one already has gone out of business) sits idle for
lack of heavy fuel oil, the manager said the competitors are
brickmakers in Baghdad, Diyala, and elsewhere in Iraq, and
especially in Iran. Bricks from Iran enter Iraq at Mahran
(Zurbatiyah),he noted.


9. (S) The second brick factory PRT officers visited was much
the same as the first, except that it featured more
modern-looking Chinese machinery. Although in operation for
only two months, piles of unfired bricks (totaling
approximately 3.5 million) lay stacked in the lot and the
shift supervisor who led the tour echoed the complaint that
the lack of promised heavy fuel oil made it impossible to
operate the kilns. He attributed the absence of fuel to
bureaucracy: Provincial authorities (he would not say who)
insisted on the brick plants being fully licensed in order to
receive the oil. Yet, although his factory and several of
the others were operational (a key licensure requirement),
the licenses were being held up for lack of required
signatures. The shift supervisor noted that, in his
factory,s case, the owners had been working the licensing
process for 18 months.

A Tough Way to Live
--------------


10. (SBU) As at the first factory, the workers at the second
were all from impoverished families. According to the shift
supervisor, a labor broker brought 15 families to the site in
exchange for 2.5 million Iraq dinars per week. The shift
supervisor said the rule is no children under the age of 14
are allowed to work, but -- with little else to do (there is
no school or recreation facility) -- the potential for abuse
of this rule is high. Although smiling and hospitable, the
children and the men (the women remained cloistered in nearby
huts made from stacks of uncured bricks) appeared dirty, wan
and malnourished. The shift supervisor appealed to the PRT
to help provide clean water and a schoolroom ("we will
provide the teacher!") for the brickmakers.

Comment
--------------


11. (S) Iranian brickmakers are the clear winner as long as
provincial officials here continue to talk out of both sides
of their mouths on facilitating the production of bricks in
Karbala. The losers, besides the owners of the factories,
are the Iraqi families whose lives are tied to the fortunes
of these enterprises. We plan to confront provincial
officials with what we learned during our unannounced visit
to the site and possibly to raise the licensure issue with
Governor Aqeel as well. Meanwhile, PRT members are drafting
QRF proposals to help improve the lives of the brickmaking
community in the desert near Lake Razzaza. End Comment.


CROCKER