Navy Seabees build school for Iraqi nomads

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 26, 2005 7:05 AM PST ∞

NAJAF, Iraq ---- On the desolate northern frontier of this city of 600,000, along a lonely strip of blacktop the U.S. troops call "California," a group of industrious Navy Seabees have helped local nomads stake a tiny claim on the future of Iraq.

The 25 U.S. sailors, most from Mississippi but a few from San Diego, have helped local men construct a six-classroom school for 250 very poor Iraqi children outside the city of Najaf, Iraq, about 100 miles southwest of Baghdad,

It will be the first school for this community of about 500 nomadic Bedouin tribesmen who said they settled in the desert near Najaf to escape the shifting dangers of the war. Bedouins are desert-dwelling nomadic tribes.

The troops said the modest brick structure is a dividend of several months of peace ---- an example of the kind of project Marines and sailors of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been able to accomplish under peaceful conditions in and around Shiite-dominated Najaf.

In more volatile regions of Iraq, such as in the Al Anbar and Northern Babil provinces, Marines have had to concentrate on killing insurgents and staying alive. Many of the community projects that might serve to win the favor have often remained on paper or have barely gotten off the ground.

But in Najaf, Marines with the unit battled militants in August, struck a peace agreement, and then turned immediately to repairing property and mending relationships. Since the fighting stopped, troops have worked to rebuild the city and reconcile the damages caused by the violence.

In the city itself, Seabees and local contractors paid with the Marines' reconstruction funds have erected markets, built schools and patched up neighborhoods that were pitted and charred by the brutal urban fighting between Marines and local militants.

The Seabees said the little schoolhouse they helped build for the Bedouin children outside the city, while small compared to many of the brightly painted new schools and markets in town, is special.

Navy Ensign Majeed Awad, 26, the Arabic-speaking Seabee overseeing the work, said it gives this tiny community a foothold in the future if the Bedouins care to stick around.

The school and adjacent structures were being built by members of the community, who have been pounding nails, pouring concrete and stacking bricks for the first time, he said.

Through an apprentice program, the Seabees taught several men from the community ---- ranging in age from 15 to 67 ---- how to use the tools and build the school.

"We're teaching them basic skills: block work, masonry, carpentry, a couple of them learned electrical," said Awad. "It gives them a bit of the full spectrum."

The school, built of the ubiquitous beige bricks found throughout Iraq, is a prominent feature in the otherwise bleak, monotonous desert that surrounds Najaf.

Short scratchy scrub, stones and thorns are the bitter bounty of the land that supports the Bedouin by giving their herds of mangy sheep and hardy camels some meager nourishment.

Seabee commanders who recently stopped to check on the community said the people here quit their traditional wanderings and squatted on the land here because of the war.

While the community built some semi-permanent structures beyond their traditional canvas tents, the settlements resemble refugee camps or shanty towns and have no school.

The children have to walk or hitch rides several miles into town to attend class when there is no fighting going on, Awad said.

With the new school, he said, the children will soon have the chance to attend regular classes taught by teachers from the new ministry of education, and their fathers will have new skills and better chances to earn a living in town.

"They definitely want to pursue this afterwards," Awad said proudly of his workers, who are expected to finish the school in a few weeks.

"They did it, really," said the soft-spoken native of Bahrain, another Arab state in the Gulf with a strong Bedouin past. "We just showed them how."

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at dmortenson@nctimes.com.

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