[NCDXA] Iraq Photo

[Alfred Laun]

I apologize, I recently incorrectly identified Diya as Z81B.  He is indeed
Z81D.  Z81B is IZ0EGB.

PVRC member Ken Clairbout K4ZW, a VOA engineer,  has occasion to travel to
South Sudan on VOA business and knows Diya well.  Fred, you would enjoy
chatting with Ken about Diya, I am sure.

73, Fred, K3ZO

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 5:16 PM Fred Matos via NCDXA <ncdxa at ncdxa.org>
wrote:

> Hello NCDXA,
>
> I believe that I have repeated my Iraq story a few times.   That happens
> with old age.  But this time with a photo.
>
> I am attaching a photo of myself and Diya Al Asadi, YI1DZ, (now Z81D)
> having tea at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad.  I was the national telecom
> regulator, so I went to the Canal Hotel to talk to the United Nations World
> Food Program (WFP) communications director (Robert Kasca, S53R and YI9R,
> now T6AA) to see what was going on; and to meet with Diya who worked for
> the WFP.  Diya was also the director of the Iraqi Amateur Radio Society.
>
> Diya and I planned on an amateur radio conference where all amateurs would
> be invited.  It would be both business and social, with the business part
> including developing recommendations for modern regulations, licensing, etc.
>
> But the Canal Hotel was truck bombed a few days after my visit, so we
> called off the conference.  Furthermore, the WFP/Baghdad Director was
> killed in the blast, and the WFP withdrew its food assistance program from
> Iraq.  Several of the communications staff were injured, requiring medical
> evacuation to hospitals in Germany.
>
> One wonders about the motivation for the blast that impacted a major
> humanitarian effort of providing food to the needy.  There were numerous
> countries and U.N. agencies involved in the nation building efforts.  The
> terrorists wanted the nation building efforts to fail so they could
> eventually point out the overall failed effort so they could take over the
> country.
>
> In a somewhat related incident, a few weeks later I had business at the
> Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad where I was intervening for some Iraqi
> spectrum managers to obtain visas so they could travel to Jordan where they
> could obtain visas at the U.S. embassy so they could travel to the U.S. for
> some training courses. (There was no U.S. Embassy in Iraq at the time.)
>
> The Embassy meeting went well, but I tell this story because the Jordanian
> Embassy was truck bombed about a week later.
>
> I was sharing living quarters with an FBI man who was investigating the
> bombings.  He jokingly said "Maybe we should follow you around.  Wherever
> you go gets bombed."
>
> And another related story.  I gave a seminar in Tel Aviv a few years
> before my Iraq days.  There was a great restaurant there with great Italian
> food, with great ambiance, outside dining in palm trees, etc.  I asked for
> a copy of the menu so I could attend when I returned.   I returned home,
> and I was watching the evening news a week later.  There was a news story
> that immediately caught my attention.  It was "Busy Tel Aviv restaurant is
> bombed by a bomb left in a bag on the patio.   Six people killed."  Yes, it
> was the very same place.
>
> 73
>
> Fred
> W3ICM
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phillip Barsky via NCDXA <ncdxa at ncdxa.org>
> To: NCDXA <ncdxa at ncdxa.org>; PVRC Digest Submissions <pvrc at mailman.qth.net
> >
> Sent: Tue, Apr 27, 2021 4:53 pm
> Subject: [NCDXA] NCDXA Weekly roundtable will be tomorrow Wednesday April
> 28, 2021 at 0730 PM EDT
>
> Phil Barsky,  K3EW, NCDXA Treasureris inviting you to a scheduled Zoom
> meeting. Sunspots or no sunspots always an informative and
> lively discussion about past week'd propagation and upcoming forecasts.
>
> Topic: NCDXA Weekly DX Roundtable
> Time: This is a recurring meeting occurring every Wednesday Evening at
> 0730 PM Local time Eastern.
>
> Join Zoom Meeting
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