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IRAQ: Clearing the road to recovery

Construction work on a major new highway linking Erbil and Sulimaniyah had to stop when labourers found a buried stockpile of mortars.

MAG's warnings informing the local community in Dokan about contamination.

Lake Dokan in Sulimaniyah governorate.

[Photos: MAG Iraq]

"When the labourers were digging the land, they found mortars so we decided to stop the construction work to avoid accidents," said Ali Hussain from HGG Construction Company. "I informed MAG right after the work was suspended." 

As soon as the company reported the stockpile to MAG's operations base in Sulimaniyah, a Community Liaison team was sent to investigate. The task was deemed a priority, so a Conventional Weapons Disposal response team deployed to Dokan to safely remove and destroy the stockpile of eight 60mm mortars.

Following further investigations, MAG declared the area a high priority. A Mine Action Team cleared 50,850 m2 of contaminated land, safely removing and destroying 127 Valmara-69 anti-personnel landmines and one 60mm mortar.

The highway construction work then restarted. It is believed that more than 500 vehicles will use this highway – which links Erbil and Sulimaniyah governorates – every day once it is completed. The Kurdistan Regional Government began implementing the road project in January, in response to the development of the area.


View Dokan, Sulimaniyah in a larger map		  
   

Your donation to MAG helps us to move into current and former conflict zones so that communities who have suffered from remnants of conflict can continue to rebuild their lives and secure their livelihoods.

Due to its strategic importance, Lake Dokan was tightly secured by the former Iraqi regime in the 1980s. A man-made water reservoir, created by a dam with a hydro-power station, Dokan is the largest power station in Iraqi Kurdistan region, and is connected to the national power grid.

The Iraqi military was heavily present in the area, with its artillery branch defending the lake and the dam from the Iranian military during the Iraq-Iran war, as well as from the Kurdish Pershmerga forces.

Many people from Dokan and surrounding areas were displaced by the former regime, with families forced to move to nearby collective towns while the military battalion was conducting training in the area to prepare soldiers for war.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the area began to recover economically. Displaced families started returning to their homeland, rebuilding their destroyed houses.

"The Iraqi military displaced all the people from areas around the military base and all the houses were destroyed," says Khalil Othman, the mayor of Dokan. "After the invasion in 2003, more than 200 families returned to Dokan to rebuild their houses around the old military base. Some families also live inside the old base."

As well as lessening the threat of death and injury, MAG's work is helping to further increase the social and economic potential of communities in Iraq.

Images from MAG's programme in Iraq:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR. Photos: Sean Sutton / MAG.

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1 September 09

The Conventional Weapons Disposal response team and Mine Action Team in this article were funded by the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, U.S. Department of State [www.state.gov/t/pm/wra/ – MAG is not responsible for the content of external sites].