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Qubad Talabani discusses reconstruction
with Vandy students
15.3.2007
By Jared Allen |
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March
15, 2007
The son of the Iraqi president 'Qubad Talabani' came
to Vanderbilt University on Wednesday to talk about
bricks and mortar. Not surprisingly, he ended up
talking mostly about bombs and militias.
Qubad Talabani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani, as well as the representative of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the United
States, gave a guest lecture to the Civil and
Environmental Engineering Department on Iraqi
reconstruction efforts.
His lecture was the latest in the University’s Frank
L. Parker Distinguished Professor Lecture Series.
But before Talabani spoke about the nuts and bolts
of Iraqi reconstruction, he had to wade through
questions about the politics of Iraqi
reconstruction, the Iraq war and U.S.-Iraqi
international relations.
Talabani advocated for a continued presence of U.S.
troops in Iraq, who he said are of monumental
importance to helping Iraq become a country that can
stand on its own. |
Qubad Talabani is representative of the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) to the United States. |
“I sympathize with the American people about their
being in Iraq... But we must avoid a situation of
leaving prematurely before we can build something
that can be sustained,” he said, referring to the
Iraq government, which has come under scrutiny for,
among other things, being unable to quell the
sectarian violence throughout the country.
“The U.S. military should not leave Iraq now,” he
said plainly.
He also said Iraq is making “tremendous progress.”
“There has to be light at the end of the tunnel,”
Talabani said. “If we have a mindset of failure we
will fail.”
He pointed to Kurdistan – an area he has been
involved in politically since the Iraq War began –
where much of the infrastructure had been destroyed
even before the war, but has since been rebuilt.
“If we can do it in the north, we can succeed,” he
said.
Despite the political reality that accompanied
Talabani’s visit, Dr. David S. Kossen, the head of
the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department,
said he was delighted to expose his students to
someone truly invested in the physical
reconstruction of such a politically volatile part
of the world.
“One of the things we need to do in the engineering
school is expose our students to current events and
issues so they begin to learn how their education
and careers in engineering will affect those
issues,” Kossen said.
Qubad Talabani is representative of the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) to the United States. He
works with the U.S. government, the media and
research institutions providing information about
the situation in Iraq and the Kurdistan region.
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