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BAGHDAD, June 19 (UPI) -- Al Herman is no diplomat. His choice words are frank, sometimes unprintable, and usually effective. As America's top adviser to Iraq's Electricity Ministry for the past 28 months, he's butted heads professionally with Iraqi ministers and the U.S. commanding general.
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On Friday, the Angel of Light, as he's been dubbed, turned out the lights of his office in Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace for the last time.
"When I believe that the minister and his people are capable of running their utilities in the most efficient way … then it was time for me to leave," Herman said in a recent interview in the second-floor room he shared with eight others who will stay on in the Iraq Transition Assistance Office's electricity division. "He and his people have reached that point, so now it's time for me to go. So as his adviser, I don't need to advise him anymore, quite honestly."
Demand for electricity is growing at a faster pace than supply, and a lack of security and needed infrastructure still plague the effort, but Iraq's power stations are generating record electricity. The minister of electricity announced this month a $480 million deal with General Electric.
"I'm pretty positive about it," said the 63-year-old with an often-used raspy smoker's chuckle. "There's a lot of activity going on. We would be setting records every day if the drought hadn't occurred last year," cutting power generation from the dams by 50 percent from last year.
Herman headed a handful-size team within the Iraq Transition Assistance Office, an evolution of the now shuttered Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, as the State Department's senior consultant on the electricity sector.
Early efforts to refurbish or build new infrastructure were too grand for Iraq's fragile system and led to wasted money. But the new plan led by ITAO and, until last week, Herman, is to build capacity to operate and maintain the infrastructure, allowing for growth.
"Most people don't realize the complexity of rebuilding a dilapidated, damaged system. The first people that came in from the States, while they were OK, really didn't have the knowledge of an active utility," said Herman, adding his contempt for government involvement in the utility business of Iraq.
He's taken his economist background to 36 countries, from projects in U.S. municipalities to Asia, Latin America and Africa, shutting down plutonium plants in Russia -- they're still operating, he honestly jokes -- and the Middle East, including Iraq in 1977. "It was beautiful here. (Baghdad) was beautiful, certainly a lot different today."
While the capital received nearly 24 hours of electricity under Saddam Hussein, the rest of the country was starved to varying degrees. Now what is produced is spread across the national grid more evenly. From 2003 to 2007, supply was at prewar levels. Demand, meanwhile, has doubled since 2003, according to official estimates, as the borders were thrown open to cheap, tariff-free goods needing to be plugged in. Last month Iraq averaged 97,000 megawatt hours of electricity a day, meeting about half of estimated demand but the most ever Iraq produced.
"You're talking about a massive, massive reconstruction effort," said Herman, who estimates $30 billion is needed for the reconstruction and expansion of the electricity sector, as well as tens of billions in related fuel infrastructure for the power plants. "It takes time to reconstruct."
That blunt explanation may not sit well with Iraqis, where in any given household in any given area there are complaints of receiving only a few hours a day of irregular electricity, at best.
"He's quite bombastic. I think he orally fires for effect," said ITAO's electricity law and policy adviser Terrence Barnich, adding, "I bet this is the best work he's ever done in his life."
Herman's personality earned him the title Prince of Darkness when he first arrived in Baghdad, as electricity delivery suffered in the dearth of swelling violence.
"Al has shown the kind of approach that we celebrate," said Gen. David Petraeus, the commanding general of coalition forces in Iraq, "a complete impatience for bureaucracy, a willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish a mission, tremendous initiative and capacity for independent action, and a selflessness that has led him to volunteer again and again to stay on to see the task to completion."
Petraeus said he personally experienced the gruff effectiveness of the Prince.
"I did," said Petraeus, who presented Herman with two commanding general coins for his work in Iraq, "and I told him to keep it up if it got things done."
Even Electricity Minister Karim Waheed Hasan didn't always take his advice. "All we do is advise, we don't tell him what to do. It's his utility, and we have to understand that," Herman said.
Their relationship, however, was effective. Herman criticized the former minister, Muhsin Shlash, for meeting with his team only five times in four months. Hasan and ITAO electricity meet regularly in and out of Baghdad.
"We have the best relationship with any minister in the country," he said. He criticizes the Oil Ministry for the lack of projects that would deliver needed fuel for the power plants.
As the power started to stay on a little longer over his more than two-year stint, Herman assumed the moniker Angel of Light, a tribute to the 19th century Elbert Hubbard poem "A Message to Garcia" on the quality of go-get-it-ness.
"I started seeing progress made. We're no longer in darkness. We've actually started to achieve measurable results," said Herman. Iraq is on track to average more than 103,000 megawatt hours this month, and even despite the maintenance season and half the dam production shut in, reached nearly 110,000 megawatt hours on a recent day.
Herman is now back home just outside Reading, Pa., catching up with his wife of 22 years, and dusting off the golf game and private electricity consultancy he put on the shelf when he came to Iraq.
"It's been a unique experience, being rocketed and mortared and car-bombed and shot at," he said at his desk in the middle of what is now his former office, fans pushing a warm breeze through the burnt orange glow from the sandstorm outside. A yellow tree air freshener dangles from a fly-strip hanging from a chandelier above. His computer wallpaper is a photo of his house; next to the computer is a picture of his wife with the jewelry, chocolate and champagne he bought her for their recent anniversary.
Despite the effort and success, and regardless of booming demand, Iraq hasn't been able to add 2,000 megawatts of generation to reach the 6,000 megawatt goal it was to meet nearly four years ago, which would still be more than 2,000 shy of today's demand.
"I do hope we hit that magic friggin' number that they put on my head when I got here of 6,000 megawatts. They're making progress," he added. "That's why I feel comfortable leaving."
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(e-mail: [email protected])
