Replies

If anyone finds something, save it, because it will disappear.

Well, here's an email that ISN'T posted on the NickBeg.org website. It is of interest relative to Dolphy's post #1584. It also has some pretty detailed info about the towers at Abu Ghraib.

From: Nick Berg [mailto:climbing_hand@hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 11:36 AM
To:
Subject: The long-awaited, wordy, impersonal e-mail log from Prometheus Towers/Berg Subject: The long-awaited, wordy, impersonal e-mail log from Prometheus Towers/Berg

Hello folks. I hope everyone is staying warm over there. From what I've been able to pick up on shortwave, it's ridiculous cold in the Northeast. I guess I shouldn't say that it's been averaging around 17 (Celsius) over here, and this last week I was in Diwaniya (in the South-Central) where it probably broke 25 (Celsius). We did have a wicked sand storm last Tuesday, probably about three hours of really intense dust blowing around everywhere.

I was in Baghdad at the time so I wasn't able to get the best view of it. The night before, while on a 328 meter tower near Abu Gharib (see below), it went from the usual dead calm to a pretty stout 20 knot blow from the West.

That night it rained pretty heavy, and the whole next day was pretty windy. Other than that there's been essentially no weather.

TOWER STUFF FOLLOWS:

I guess it's been a busy time since my trip to Mosul and the great quest to locate Uncle-In-Law Moffak. The week of 4 Jan 2004 was very busy as there were several RFQ's (requests for quotations) due by the end of the week, most only announced Monday. This gave us little time to respond to some very appropriate bid requests. The other big news was the announcement Friday morning (9 Jan 2004) that the Harris/Al-Fawares/Lebanon Broadcast Company consortium had finally been awarded the new IMN contract. With out getting too technical, this is a one year (at least) contract to operate and rehabilitate the former Ministry of Information, Minister Naji's turf.

The reason this is good news is that we were announced as Harris's approved tower sub-contractor about two days before the award, and we have been working with Al-Fawares since I met one of their guys in early December.

Practically, this means we should be involved with quite a bit of tower work as part of the reconstruction, repair and new construction of the statewide Iraqi Media Network (something like PBS/NPR in the US). There are other private broadcasters being licensed, and there are folks like the VOice of America and the CPA operating small stations, but when it comes to existing broadcast, IMN is it. So we're fairly happy about this development.

Following this news, I set out to expand my knowledge of as many of the existing tower sites as possible. So between the 11th January and the time of writing, I have been on six major sites, inspecting towers and cataloging the extent of looting/sabotage damage. Most of the destruction was intentional looting or even sabotage on the numerous (at one time twenty-six) tall towers in Iraq. There are twenty-two left, and at least ten have some major problems. The worst site I have been on was the Abu Gharib I tower, a 320 meter (1040') guyed tower in the main broadcast complex for Baghdad, near the Abu Gharib political prisons. This complex had 26 towers in it for everything from Microwave to Shortwave to FM and VHF. There are two tall towers (I & II) and the shorter of the two (I), is ready to come down. These are massive structures with 10' faces, 1-1/2" guy wires, and 12"X12"X1" angle legs. Abu Gharib I is missing a guy wire, has three frayed guys, and has had most of the diagonal bracing at the base removed, by torch and by shear force (i.e. Land Rover and cable). The missing guy wire was probably due to nearby shelling, the rest is due to looting. While the two main broadcast antennas are intact (probably the looters got tired of climbing) the main transmission lines (mostly 6-1/8" flexible coax) have been stolen.

This is a common MO, these guys would cut out a long section of hanging transmission line and let it fall to the ground. One out of three would get caught up in the tower (where they remain today) looking like a hundred foot coax-pretzel. We're going to have our hands full just getting these sections free of the tower.

LESS TOWER STUFF:

At any rate, I've also been in the South a little, two sites near the small farm towns of Ash Shomali and Al-Diwaniya. For those interested, these are about 180 kilometers, (115 miles) south of Baghdad, along the main road to Basra and Kuwait. My three days in the SouthCentral was by far the most pleasant time I've spent in Iraq. The Shomali site is one of tallest towers in-country, and sit's out in the middle of a fairly peaceful, flat, irrigated farming area. From the top of that tower (which is in excellent shape and currently broadcasts on UHF) I sat and watched a few farmers with donkeys, the little town area of Shomali (about four blocks long and mostly dedicated to Petrol/Benzine stations) and mostly a lot of open space.

The air was clean (er), and when I'm climbing these towers I even get to go a few hours without some awkward "Americai?" question. (The answer to which is usually "Sawa" - as you like). I have been taken for "Turkiye" a few times, and this can be very handy as it shuts people up real quick, most Iraqis not speaking Turkish.

So Shomali was nice, and I managed to rescue some of the light-bulbs from the top beacon of the tower, which hadn't been replaced since 1997. I guess the no-fly zones in the North led all the broadcast engineers here to forget about tower-lighting for a while. We feel this is a big problem, now, as there are hundreds of tall and medium-height towers in some very flat places, many of which are frequented by the usually-low-flying helicopters of the Coalition. Just last week a Coalition helicopter ran into a short utility tower in the North near Mosul, knocking out one of the main 400 kV lines.

The other site I visited in the South was Diwaniya, a larger town with some big grain silos and two universities. It's also home to Camp Santo Domingo, one of the many non-US military bases. I actually had to meet An American CPA guy who worked there and so I got into the base - it was full of Dominican soldiers. So here, in the heart of Babil Province in the biblical land of Babil, where most CPA guys don't speak Arabic or Spanish, and none of the Dominican's seemed to speak English, and most of the rural Iraqis of the area don't speak English (and none speak Spanish), we were all truly confounded. It was really a very humorous situation in fairly calm area of the country. The other interesting thing about this area is that, for some reason, there are supposedly a good deal of Iranian spies who wander over and sneak about. This actually became quite relevant to my stay in Diwaniya. Isn't this starting to read like a mystery novel...

So this last Thursday afternoon I had the bright idea of running down to Diwaniya to inspect this temporary tower which was built by the former FPS (something like the Secret Service). This is one of many portable sites which were set up in strategic areas to beam the message out. Most have been abandoned, but the tower in this case is still in good shape. SO anyhow, Thursday about 1200 I left Baghdad and enjoyed a beautiful sunny afternoon and a peaceful bus-ride to Diwaniya (about two and a half hours).

I get off the bus in this little town and set out to find this site, on the outskirts of town. As usual, the directions are something like - go to Diwaniya and get on the main highway. On the way out of town, there is a tower. It's across from Al-Qadisiyah (which turned out to be a University and thus a good landmark. Without knowing too much Arabic, though, one can't tell what Al Qadisiyah is - a street, a house, a person, a sheep...).

So I finally find the site at around 1900, it's dark and I can barely make out the tower. But I found it and learned what I needed to know. I make my way back to the Garage Baghdad (which is where the service-taxis leave periodically throughout the day). By this time I had missed the last public service-taxi to Baghdad, so I started to negotiate with a throng of taxi drivers (none of whom had a car - that's kind of an afterthought to actually winning the negotiations). I've got one down to 30,000 ID (about $20 at the time) when the IP (Iraqi National Police) swings by on patrol. It seems they had reports about unknown Iranian people infiltrating their town, and at night they can't see much of my face. Anyhow, the story ends in a rather anti-climatic fashion - the police collect me and take me off to the Lieutenant who is more worried for my safety than about me being an Iranian spy. By the time the story get's told and re-translated a few times, they've got me being picked up at the sheep market amidst a bunch of Turkish truck drivers. So I am invited to spend the night in Diwaniya (which I do) and the next morning after hours of waiting and re-telling the sheep story I get on my way back to Baghdad. The sad part is I didn't really have a great desire to return to Baghdad - it's so much nicer out in the country.

But I didn't come prepared to stay in Diwaniya and I had a meeting I needed to attend.

Other than that, we're trying to wrap up our preparations here so I can get back to the US. I think our interests will be well taken care of while I'm gone. I've found a very competent and fairly reliable commercial Manager here. He's actually been living in Philadelphia the last twenty years and just came back - so he's similarly a bit out of his element. Imagine coming home to a country so different form where you grew up. We're right now at an office near the sporting club where he played European Football as a kid.

Since then it's been destroyed, rebuilt, run by Oday, son of Hussein, and finally privatized. The fact alone that he and I are just now sitting in a free and open internet shop is unbeliveable to most Iraqis. Even a year ago he would have been arrested upon his return. Neither of us would be seeing the un-restricted internet. At any rate, Aziz will do us well I think, and I'm happy I finally found someone I can strategize with.

So I'll be back soon and I hope everybody's doing well. Take care to all.

Sincerely

Nick Berg
Prometheus Towers
Mobile: 484.883.4772
Office/Fax: 610.696.8873
climbing_hand@hotmail.com

Source