While some Iraqis cannot wait for US troops to leave their country, Qahtan Karim wants them to stay for a simple reason -- they provide him with a thriving business.
Karim buys all manner of disused items for peanuts from the nearby American base, then sells them at an empty lot just outside Tikrit, an irony in that the central city is the hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein.
"They are not expensive, and are of high quality," he said of his products, unfazed by the sound of occasional gunfire as American soldiers test-fired their weapons before leaving nearby Contingency Operating Base Speicher.
As tens of thousands of US troops have left Iraq in recent months, millions of dollars of equipment has been disposed of -- from reconditioned military humvees for Iraqi security forces to fire extinguishers and water jerry cans.
It's the likes of those less exotic items that Karim's business, Al-Shefar ("The Blades" in Arabic) has targeted since being set up shortly after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam in 2003.
And his location is a veritable gold mine, sitting between Speicher, one of the US military's largest remaining bases in Iraq, and the highway connecting Baghdad with the main northern city of Mosul.
From treadmills to televisions, Al-Shefar sells everything.
His slogan, printed in English, hangs over the entrance to the lot where he displays his wares and says it all: "We have what you need and, if we don't, we'll get it."
Karim concedes, though, that some of the items on sale, generators and industrial-sized vacuum cleaners among them, may require minor repairs from being exposed to the brutal Iraqi heat and dust on a daily basis.
He used to work for his family's textiles business, but after Saddam was overthrown, he went to Speicher to ask officers if he could handle their garbage disposal.
Initially, he sold only scrap metal and would send plastics to a recycling plant in the autonomous northern Kurdistan region.
But business in post-invasion Iraq has not been simple. In 2006, he was held hostage for nine days by militants and was only released after paying a 60,000-dollar (47,250 euro) ransom.
Unsurprisingly, Karim's face bears the strain of a man who looks much older than his 38 years.
More recently, his company has grown at a breakneck pace.
It now counts 430 workers and 260 trucks that collect the waste from Speicher and other US military camps across central and western Iraq and, if it is re-sellable, deposit it at one of Al-Shefar's four locations.
Karim has also signed a four-million-dollar deal with a company in Michigan to build his own recycling facility in Tikrit.
Since late 2008, when Iraq and the United States signed a pact calling for all American troops to leave by the end of 2011, the volume of Karim's supplies has soared and his clients have become more numerous, and more diverse.
Rather than dealing solely with scrap metal dealers, he now counts shop owners and private citizens searching for generators, televisions and air conditioners among his customers.
Karim notes that many of his clients are put off by the number of Chinese-made products available, preferring instead goods with a "Made in USA" label, seeing it as a guarantee of quality.
Aside from plastics and wood, which he takes for free, Karim pays 55 dollars per tonne of material -- whether crockery, refrigerators or air conditioners -- he receives from the US military.
"I sell everything for a 25 percent profit -- everybody wins," he said, grinning widely, while sitting in his office, covered by photographs of him proudly standing alongside US officers as well as medals and certificates awarded by the military.
And Hamid Ibrahim, a 28-year-old customer, agrees. He bought a generator for 8,000 dinars (less than seven dollars) in a country where a brand new one would cost 40 times as much.
"I'm happy to have found good quality products," he said. "I hope the Iraqi army sells its old equipment too, rather than hanging on to it like they used to under Saddam."
That has Karim worried. He is unsure where he will source his products once the US military leaves at the end of 2011, and hopes Iraqi security forces will be similarly co-operative.
Relations with local forces, though, are good, he said, noting that he donated 300 beds and 300 cabinets to police early this year.
Karim said, with a straight face, that he plans to expand his business into Afghanistan, where the US military has a larger troop presence and no definite plans for withdrawal yet.
For now, though, his customers are happy with the products on offer.
Standing beside a Polaris two-seater all-terrain vehicle purchased for 250 dollars, 25-year-old Ali Hussein happily said he had previously "only seen ATVs in the movies."
"Now, they are a hit in Tikrit. All the young people want one.
"Thanks to the Americans!"
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
