BAGHDAD – As the first bombs rocked Baghdad March 20, 2003, a military base north of the city sat empty, abandoned after more than a decade of looting and neglect.

            Pipes had been ripped from the concrete walls, tile torn from the floors and copper wires pulled from its plastic sheathing. 

            The only remains were carcasses of buildings scarred by thievery.

            Today, the base bustles with activity as thousands of new Iraqi Army recruits flock here from across the country to learn the basics of soldiering and survival.

            Gunfire from the weapons range provides a sporadic break to the desert silence and camouflage clad Iraqi soldiers march in lock step formation down the streets of the revamped base.

            “When I came here and saw this base in the fall of last year, it was nothing; no water, no sewage, no electricity,” said an Iraqi contractor working at the base.  He asked that his name not be used for fear of being killed by insurgents who may discover he is working on the American-led reconstruction effort. 

            The contractor is one of many who feverishly began renovating the base days after Baghdad fell in the early stages of the war.   Yugoslavian contractors had built the base to near completion in the late 80s, but walked off the job after the former regime defaulted on payments in the months before Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

            Left with only skeleton buildings and acres of littered training area, the contractor and his team began breathing new life into the base in July 2003. 

            There were no blueprints, no drawings and no one who had lived at the base. 

            “It was trial and error,” he said.  “You see all these manholes here?  I checked each one of them to locate the water and sewer system.  We repaired the broken pipes and made this Yugoslav system work again after 14 years of nothing.”

            As clean water and sewer service were restored, emergency electricity generators were placed at each barracks building. 

            Lights were on, water flowed and sewage was treated.  It’s a dream of most of Iraq , but like the rest of the country, it comes at a cost.

            The hum of the emergency generators pulls nearly $400,000 from the coffers of the Iraqi government every month to pay for fuel and maintenance.  A multi-million dollar project is now underway to replace the ad hoc system with a permanent system.  It’s slated for completion later this year.

            Despite the cost and the forecasted delays due to the impending Arabic holiday of Ramadan, training here continues and more Iraqi soldiers fill the ranks of the new Iraqi Army.

            The cost is little compared to that of the sacrifices being made by the contractor who commutes daily to the project site with pistol in hand.

            “I have worked here for more than a year, and I only get to see my wife and kids once a week for one day.  It’s something hard,” he said.  “But I think that I am doing something good for my country.  I feel since Saddam Hussein is gone, this is our country now, and we need to push it.”

            Pushing it, he said, means boosting security across the war-torn nation and taking control of the “vandals and terrorist” who work to debunk the reconstruction efforts.

            “Don’t think that these are Iraqi people,” he said.  “These are terrorists from other countries and people of the former regime who now have nothing.  They have nothing to live for now; they have no reason to see us succeed.”

            While there is no real census on terrorist population in the country, the U.S. military and the Interim Iraqi Government only define the forces opposed to progress here as anti-Iraqi forces, a conglomerate of former regime elements and foreign fighters.

            It’s those anti-Iraqi forces, the contractor fears as he makes his daily commute to the military base.  With pistol in hand and foot on the accelerator, he ventures through the chaos on the streets, constantly scanning for weapon-totting militia members.

            It was only days ago during the trek to the base he witnessed an accident that fatally wounded a U.S. Soldier.  As he came upon the accident, he saw a group of bystanders cheering and laughing.

            “These are not my brothers.  These are not Iraqis,” he said of the assembled group.  “These are terrorists.  These are the people who make security such a problem.”

            Despite the violence, he said he will not falter in continuing his work on reconstruction at the military base.

            “I feel that by working here and rebuilding this base, I am supporting our country and supporting our country’s security,” he said.  “Security is priority number one.”

            Security challenges are nothing new to the country, which has been ravaged by war, dictatorship and terrorism for decades.

            Under the former regime, the contractor was constantly harassed about joining the Baath Party.  The recurring hassling drove him to flee the country to work in nearby countries for nearly half a decade.

            Armed with a civil engineering degree from the Iraq University of Technology, he traipsed across the Middle East serving in Syria and Libya before returning to Iraq in 2001 to his family.

            “I came back because my family; my father, my mother, my brother … I missed them very much, and it was sometimes very hard without them,” he said.  “We were thinking Saddam would stay on his chair for a long time, if not him certainly his sons or grandsons.

            “So now of course it is better.  Now it’s my country; it’s the people’s country.”

            It’s that sense of pride in country and ownership that the new Iraqi government is counting on to spread throughout the more than 25 million people who call Iraq home.  As more Iraqis take ownership for the country and its future, the more successful it will become.

            “I think security must come first then you can do water, sewage projects,” he said.  “The entire country could be like this base.  Look at this: we have water, sewer and electricity.  You know why, because we have security.  Reconstruction and security may overlap and help each other, but security is priority number one in my opinion.”

            Security continues to be the driving force behind military operations across the country, as more and more reconstruction projects begin and terrorists are apprehended.   

            “The Iraqi Army is key to the security of Iraq ,” said Brig. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Division, an agency charged with overseeing construction across the country.  “The Iraqi soldier can’t train and win unless they have first-class facilities like this.”

            Iraqi and U.S. engineers are currently renovating six military bases across Iraq .

Editor’s Note: Photos are available.  Requests should be directed to Mitch Frazier at (540) 665-5339 or via cell at 0-790-192-5105 (Iraqna). Email requests can also be made to mitchell.frazier@tac01.usace.army.mil.  For more information on the Corps in Iraq , visit www.grd.usace.army.mil.