Otak
takes its expertise to Iraq
Iraqi brothers at local engineering firm see
opening, despite risks
By NEVILL ESCHEN
Portland-based engineering firm Otak Inc. is bound for war-torn Iraq, opening
two offices to handle transportation, water resources and other reconstruction
efforts.
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The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Nawzad
Othman, who is from Iraq but has lived here for 40 years, says the offices “will
be run by Iraqis and for Iraqis as they embark on the important work of rebuilding
their country.”
He could not be reached Wednesday because he was in Iraq.
Othman’s brother and partner, Mahmoud Uthman, will oversee the two offices
in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, in the region ruled by Kurds,
according to an Otak news release issued Wednesday. The brothers spell their last
names slightly differently in English.
Otak spokesman John Mangan says Othman
is Kurdish and still has friends and family in the region.
Othman says the
two new offices will hire all Iraqis and provide such services as infrastructure,
transportation, development, planning, architecture, environmental engineering,
water resources and community building.
Otak’s expansion to the Middle
East is particularly risky now.
Iraqi civilians are among the casualties of
combat and the near-daily deadly bombings in Baghdad and throughout the country.
An independent monitoring group called the Iraq Body Count Project estimates 9,200
to 11,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the U.S.-led war. More than 800 U.S. soldiers
have died since the March 2003 invasion, according to the Web site military.com.
Civilian experts have become targets for kidnapping and execution by terrorist
insurgents, as was the case with the recent slaying of businessman Nicholas Berg.
Otak spokesman Mangan says Othman has “private security in place.”
Portland State University political science professor Dave Kinsella says international
companies working in Iraq have to gauge the risks and payoffs of being there.
“I guess the payoffs are potentially pretty big to get in so early in a new
market like that,” Kinsella says. .
Othman is scheduled to give a presentation
to the World Affairs Council of Oregon on June 15. It’s scheduled for 7 p.m.
at the University Club, 1225 S.W. Sixth Ave. It’s $5 for members, $10 for
guests. Reservations are required; call 503-274-7488.
From:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=24665
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