Soldiers become citizens

For some, the shortest path to American citizenship is through Iraq. At least that was the case for the 178 foreign-born service members sworn in yesterday at Balad Airbase, about 70 miles north of Baghdad—in the largest naturalization ceremony to have taken place in Iraq to date.

Balad was once home to Iraq’s air force academy, and the place is enormous. From the landing zone it was about a 10-minute ride to Sustainment Theater (the base’s cinema), where the ceremony was held. Twenty thousand soldiers live and work here as part of the 316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, alongside about 7,000 local Iraqi staffers. And it even has its own newspaper, the Anaconda Times.

 
Exhibitors at the Kurdistan show

It’s hardly surprising that a trade show in a country steeped in violence, where most banks cannot make electronic transfers, is, um, a little different. So it is on the outskirts of Sulaymaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdish city hosting this week’s Kurdistan 2007 business exchange. Held in a yellow, warehouselike exposition hall, it’s the place to go if you want Iranian elevators, gleaming Turkish kitchen equipment or just a good show of eclectic entrepreneurship. The Czech arms dealer opted to display photos of his Kalashnikov rifles rather than bringing the real thing. But a uniform maker did bring some samples, including Chinese knockoffs of U.S. Army togs, complete with digitized camouflage.

Then there was an entrancing booth run by the Kurdish regional ministry of the interior at which an enthusiastic captain displayed handcuffs and thick nightsticks to a group of high-school girls in navy blue uniforms. “They are for saluting your superiors, not beating people,” he told the girls (though they looked like they could do the beating job too). A ministry video showed plainclothes cops firing blindly at criminals hiding in a shadowy courtyard and then trying to blast them out with high-pressure fire hoses. Nearby, some South Africans promoted a new line of mine-resistant vehicles. For the peckish, most of the more than 200 merchants had candy dishes to entice the crowds; a food company offered free pickles.