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Yahoo!BASRA — Following service in Iraq and an honorable discharge last April, Lieutenant Samantha Blaine returned to Iraq to start a small construction company.
She is far from alone. The growth of the postwar economy in Iraq has proven so tempting that dozens of members of the U.S. military chose to remain in Iraq. Thus a region long associated with its citizens fleeing abroad has seen unprecedented volumes of immigration.
Seven years ago, Ms. Blaine had no experience with safety engineering or building codes but was sent to Basra to assist in the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. Today, her private contracting company is benefiting from a local building boom.
“For the first year of our business, most of the work was government contracts,” said Blaine, “but after the major infrastructure work was done and the Iraqi economy began to rebound, there was a surge in demand for new housing.”
Ms. Blaine met her husband, Ibrahim Khan, when he was hired to work as her translator during the war. It is a role he continues to serve as Ms. Blaine’s Arabic improves.
Ms. Blaine claims that it hasn’t been hard to adjust to life in Iraq. “I expected to have to deal with a lot of sexism. But until the invasion, this was a modern, secular society.”
Sergeant Rahim Rafiqi has also benefited from the new construction, opening an insurance agency that caters to the construction industry. Prior to joining the military, Mr. Rafiqi had worked at his father’s small insurance company. “I was able to get backing for what some would have seen as a risky investment, but we were in the black pretty quickly,” says Mr. Rafiqi.
According to the recent émigrés, the cultural adjustments that are necessary to move from the United States to Iraq are more than worth enduring to be a part of the new Iraq. “Getting sent to Iraq was the best thing to happen to me,” said Ms. Blaine. “I’m finally living the American Dream.”
he whole concept is nice in here… But this particular thing is overly naïve… No good, no matter how hard we try, can be brought from any amend to the war already done… Civil unrest will continue as an afterwave of the shockwave the invassion already was, whether it be directed at foreigners or at local minorities… Bush was a devil, but Hussein was a demon… Evil as evil gets… This is too naïve…
Comment on November 14, 2008 03:48 am