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I went on another site visit recently. For this mission, I went first to Erbil, a city about 50 miles east of Mosul with a population of approximately 1,000,000. The entire city of Erbil is experiencing a construction boom. Among other projects, USACE is involved in the re-building of the Ministry of Interior government buildings, as well as the construction of the Erbil Police Academy. After spending the night at the office compound in Erbil, I went to Dahuk the next day. On the way to Dahuk, I visited a major electricy construction project in Akra. This USACE project involves the building of a power sub-station to receive electricity from Turkey and distribute it to transformers in various communities throughout the region.

After reaching Dahuk, I took a look at two sites for upcoming projects. The first is a road construction project, and the second is another well project. Gee insisted that we go see a palace after visiting the project sites. On the highest peak in the area, Saddam Hussein built a summer palace. Many families and villages were completely decimated during the construction of this palace. I don’t have any before photos. As you can see from the photo below, the palace didn’t hold up well against Allied bombings!

Part of the plan was for a cable car linking the palace at the top to a village at the foot of the mountain. This was one of three means of access to the top. The other two were the winding road and the heliport. Here’s the view from the cable car tunnel at the top.

The view is breath-taking. I wasn’t allowed to walk around on the grounds surrounding the palace because Saddam had the entire area covered with landmines. Due to the rocky terrain, it’s too dangerous to remove the landmines, so they are left in place with warning signs posted all around. Access to the site is completely restricted. But since my security escorts in Dahuk are Peshmerga, we had no problem getting in. Here’s the whole gang.