U.S. helps restore key airfield in northern Iraq

A modern, glass-topped tower glistens through dust blowing across this dilapidated Saddam Hussein-era airfield, where commercial planes haven’t landed for nearly 15 years.

This December, U.S. and Iraqi authorities plan to use the new air traffic control tower to guide jets shuttling locals to Saudi Arabia for the annual Muslim pilgrimage -- jump-starting what they hope will be regular commercial air service to Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city.

The $13.2-million renovation of Mosul’s airport -- including the new tower and an enlarged, refurbished passenger terminal -- was directed by the Nineveh provincial council and funded by the U.S. State Department.

Not only would the airport allow Muslims to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca directly from Mosul -- avoiding the often treacherous roads en route to other airports in Baghdad or Irbil -- but it could also be a boon to the local economy. Mosul lies about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, halfway between Iraq’s seat of power and prosperous business ventures in Kurdish territory to the north.

“You’ll have a major hub for transportation and everything that brings -- tourism and commerce,” said Navy Cmdr. Jay Sebastyn, deputy leader of the U.S. State Department’s provincial reconstruction team in Mosul.

With about 2.7 million residents, Nineveh is Iraq’s second-largest province in area behind Anbar, and second only to Baghdad in population. Nineveh’s parched, rolling hills -- crisscrossed by the Tigris River -- are bounded by Syria to the west, and stretch up to snowcapped mountains in Kurdish territory to the north and east.

It is also the country’s most diverse province, with dozens of ethnic and religious minorities including the ancient Yazidi sect. Homeland of the biblical prophet Jonah, Nineveh contains many archaeological ruins and some of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world -- which officials hope could eventually lure thousands of foreign tourists each year.

The hajj flights have been a priority for Mosul authorities since last year, when 750 pilgrims from the area were stranded at the nearest international airport in Irbil, part of the autonomous Kurdish region just north of Mosul, and missed the annual journey altogether.

Hajj flights are chartered and paid for by the government, and faithful win participation through a lottery. This year’s hajj is to take place in late December, according to the Muslim lunar calendar.

Last year, the Mosul pilgrims had government permits to leave Iraq for the hajj, and it remains unclear why they were blocked from boarding planes. But locals here suspect ethnic bias by predominantly Kurdish officials in Irbil. Mosul is a mostly Sunni Arab city.

Nineveh’s provincial leaders vowed to avoid a similar row this year, and made the Mosul airport renovation one of the council’s top two infrastructure projects for 2007.

Originally built by the British during the 1930s, the airport has a 3,200-square-foot terminal that was added by Hussein in 1993. Commercial flights landed here for less than a year before the U.S.-enforced no-fly zone made such traffic illegal.

Since then, the government has continued to pay the airport’s 66 employees -- 42 civil aviation workers and 24 employees of Iraqi Airways, the country’s national airline -- who have sporadically shown up for work each day even though no nonmilitary flights land here, said R.C. Shackelford, provincial program manager for the State Department’s Iraq Transition Assistance Office.

Meanwhile, a U.S. military base has cropped up around the old airfield since 2003, and any visitors must pass through three security checkpoints before reaching the airport. Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters take off and depart almost hourly, along with some charter flights for military contractors and cargo.

The facility has an 8,600-foot runway, long enough for large commercial airliners bound for destinations throughout the Middle East and Europe, though not long enough for trans-Atlantic flights. With the upgrades underway to the terminal and the new control tower, the facility will meet international standards for commercial flights.

In April 2005, the Iraqi military hired Royal Jordanian Airlines to ferry Iraqi police cadets to Amman for training. Those limited charter flights could be a precursor to regular commercial routes, U.S. officials said.

“Right now it’s treacherous for someone from Mosul to get in a car and travel to Baghdad, but if we could get a couple flights in here . . . it’d be safer, and it would also allow access for provincial leaders and businessmen to connect to the central government,” said Shackelford. “That’s just plain practical.”

Though the bulk of reconstruction projects in Nineveh province are funded by Iraqi money, the airport revamp is paid for by two U.S. State Department sources: $10.3 million from the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund to pay for the new air traffic control tower; and $2.9 million from the Economic Support Fund for renovations to the terminal. The money is allocated to the provincial council, which applies it to capital projects it rates in priority. The council’s own capital projects budget amounted to $241 million in 2006 and $226 million in 2007.

Because the renovations are paid for by U.S. taxpayers, the construction is being done by a U.S.-hired Turkish contractor, with oversight from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And because the facility is located on a U.S. military base, American troops will remain at the airport even after Iraqi air traffic controllers are hired to guide commercial flights, Shackelford said. U.S. soldiers would be embedded with the Iraqi staff, to supervise operations at what would be known as a joint-use airport, he said.

After the renovations, the “life cycle” costs -- operation, staffing and maintenance -- will be paid for by Iraqis, Sebastyn said. Iraqi Airways and the Transportation Department’s civil aviation section have pledged to include such costs in their budgets for 2008, he said.

“The success here is in the potential. For people who want to do business, you’ve got to bring Kurdistan into the equation,” Sebastyn said. “Even for people who just want to travel -- there’s the potential to reestablish Nineveh.”