The Al Rasheed Theatre Complex continues to be cleared by a crew of about 50 workers working for two separate foremen, one controlling operations starting from the top of the building and another working on operations from the bottom of the building. One group of workers is saving materials for use by the National Theatre, including desks, films, books, and newspaper archives that weren't destroyed by the fires. Another group of workers is starting from the top of the building and clearing the internal walls of the building in preparation for the iron workers who will need to dismantle the structure, from the top, floor by floor. A third group of workers has cleared the basement area and built the water & electric facilities for use by the guards and workers over the coming months.

From this picture, you can see the top few floors of the building have already been cleared of all their internal walls and debris and ash.

Workers on Sunday, November 23, clearing part of the fifth floor. Materials such as gypsum board, door frames and other re-usable materials are being saved for sale or stored in the basement of the building for re-use.

A seven story winch elevator has been attached to the front of the building on the outside to aid in saving archives and building materials.

There is still hope that the Al Rasheed theatre part of the structure can be saved, as the inside is in beautiful condition and could be used again if the surrounding superstructure is sound. One of the five television studios in the complex is also in great condition, but it is unlikely that it will be saved, as it is surrounded by heavily damaged structures.

Piles of debris and ash are gathered on the fifth floor where much damage was done to the steel structure. Note the bending steel columns at the top of the frame which have been warped by fire.

About 50 workers are on site at the 28 April Shopping Center in downtown Baghdad. Most of the work is being done by heavy equipment (2 jackhammer tractors, 1 bucket tractor, shovels and dump trucks), although teams of laborers are also needed to save the re-bar for resale, and to prepare the interior of the undestroyed building for clearing and re-use...

Supervisor Moamar, Iraqi Program Manager Sean, Foreman Omar, and Supervisor Maitham on a beautiful day in Baghdad, putting on their best grimaces for the camera.

Heavy equipment is a big part of the budget for this project.

Workers save materials for resale.

A crew of 28 April JumpStart workers.

The six building complex of Souk Thelatha has been cleared and is ready for re-use by the Ministry of Trade. At this moment, the cigarette "gangster" Fathel is continuing to expand his control over the mall. It appears he is not paying anything to the Ministry and is simply an illegal squatter, but who knows, for his work to continue unobstructed, it's possible he is paying off someone in the Shopping Center Division of the Ministry of Trade.

Regardless, it isn't all bad, as at least he is employing people who are actively involved in productive and profitable jobs, which is a more useful and commendable activity than the state of disrepair and looting that the Shopping Center people have let the malls throughout the city continue to fester in. Fathel's guards are nice people and, after the first few troubling days, didn't interfere with our clearing and cleaning work.

Ten workers last night completed the finishing touches, renovating a looted 30 sq meter building into a guard station with electricity and toilet. Today begins the Eid holiday, and on Saturday work begins on the Souk Monsur Shopping Center and the guard stations for two other shopping malls.

Before clearing...

Workers checking in in the morning...

Daily laborers with a long day of backbreaking work ahead of them... but happy to be working.

Clearing...

After clearing... walls and ceilings were scraped and cleaned in many areas to clear the smoke damage.

Valuable marble tiles were saved for resale by the Ministry of Trade.

After clearing...

After clearing...

The National Library project was completed after a month and a day of clearance and cleaning work with 13 large dump trucks of ash and plaster being carted away from the site on Friday, November 21.

The library has many halls and offices now ready for re-use and rebuilding. Structurally, the building is sound despite the tremendous loss of valuable books, records, microfiche and building materials.

A huge pile of scrap metal sits behind the National Library waiting to be sold by the Ministry of Culture.

The front face of the building was scraped using a sander to clean the smoke damage.

See the "before" pictures from 10/27!

The site foreman and the library's accountant.  

After clearance...

The stairway after clearance and smoke damage cleaning...

Clearing work will start at Souk Moustanzeria, Souk Monsur, and Souk Quadassea shopping centers after the end of Ramadan (December 1st). The centers, each of which would normally employ perhaps six or seven hundred people, were all destroyed by looting and burning after the war. Souk Monsur was also reportedly bombed during the war.

This is a view of Souk Mustanzeria. All the shopping centers look pretty much like this...

Even the escalator stairs were looted!

The atrium of Souk Mustanzeria. The mall is three stories in most places, four stories in some areas.

JumpStart International met on Wednesday with the advisor to the Minister of Planning to discuss the clearing of the Ministry's headquarters building in Baghdad.

The 15-story building adjacent to the CPA/Palace entrance has some structural damage due to bombing and burning, but the Ministry has expressed an interest in having the site cleared and cleaned for re-use. This will be an ideal project for JumpStart as we plan to grow our Iraqi workforce from about 350 this week to as many as 1,000 one month from today.

There are a total of three buildings at that location, including the large 15-story building and two smaller 3- or 4-story buildings. Access to the structures may be difficult for the daily workers, as the site is located adjacent to the CPA Palace, a tightly controlled area.

A number of sites belonging to the Ministry of Higher Education (responsible for colleges, universities and technical institutes) were reviewed for possible work. We met with Dr. Mahmood Sh Abdulhusain, the President of the Foundation of Technical Education. His organization is responsible for the management of the Ministry of Higher Education Headquarters as well as a number of technical colleges throughout Iraq.

The Ministry of Higher Education building is a 11 story building (12 including full basement) in downtown Baghdad, adjacent to the almost identical Ministry of Education structure. Approximately 15,000 sq meters (150,000 square feet), the project will likely take about a month to clear and clean.

We also reviewed demolition and clearing and cleaning projects at Zafrania, which is a collection of 5 technical colleges about 5 miles east of downtown Baghdad, three of which have structures damaged by looting, burning, and/or bomb damage. About 20 buildings are involved in three colleges that need the most work. About 10 of the buildings require demolition or partial demolition, including libraries, computer centers, student centers, and classroom.

Most of the damage, and the most sensitive work, is involved in clearing the site of the accounting/business school. The school is not far from a munitions dump where 40 people were killed several months ago by large explosions that scattered ammunition, bombs and other materials near the school. Coalition forces have been through the area and have declared the area cleared, but RPGs are still present on the grounds surrounding the school, and we saw a few dozen anti-personnel mines and cluster bomblets in areas a few hundred yards from the accounting school. 5,000 students normally attend this particular business campus.

Regardless, looters continue to take materials from the schools, tearing out the marble tiles in all the buildings, looting bricks, doorframes and other materials from the site. About 20 families are squatting on the business campus, making this project difficult in that way as well.

A total of 70 workers are working on the the Ministry of Education project. The work is going faster than expected. We anticipate clearing the 150,000 square foot building down to the concrete structure and piping in about 30 days. We will expand the project to include the Ministry of Higher Education building, a theatre in between the building, the parking structure and the surrounding grounds. In a few weeks we'll probably have about 120 or so workers on the site.

The Ministry of Higher Education building is identical to the Ministry of Education building, both 11 stories above the ground (12 including full basement). The Ministry of Education is responsible for Iraq's primary & secondary schools while the Ministry of Higher Education is responsible for colleges, technical colleges, and research institutions.

The view from the roof. Fire damage is on all floors. Looting was so thorough that the only things of use remaining of use in the building is the concrete structure. Most of the valuable metal parts, glass, door frames etc., have been removed.

The auditorium and central services building between the two Ministries. A quick thinking building engineer flooded the basement so that the looters wouldn't steal the generators, air conditioning units, motors, and other central services parts that are now submerged below twenty feet of water. We will pump out the water after site security is re-established.

Ali, site foreman, directs some workers.

It's bigger than it looks.

Work began in earnest today (Sunday) at the 28 April Shopping Center in Kerkh, downtown Baghdad, just 1/4 mile from the North Gate entrance to the CPA's Palace headquarters, right across from the old Ministry of Information building.

For the previous week, security concerns had halted the work, as JumpStart International has a policy of not employing any workers who carry guns, and the Ministry of Trade's Shopping Centers Department, which required guards on site, did not immediately provide the guards. Looters continued to loot the building even up to the day after we arrived on site. One was caught red-handed with a large section of electrical wiring, although he fled once our workers encountered him.

After meeting with the Chief Officer of the Ministry of Trade, security guards were quickly arranged for, and a crew of about six JumpStart workers constructed an on-site security post and foreman's office at the site, in about 6 days.

An overhead view of half of the April 28 Mall. The two-story building, plus full basement, was flattened by fire and structural collapse. Different reports indicate that there may be many dead Fedayeen (feared/special soldiers) underneath the rubble, because half of the people seem to think the building was bombed rather than looted and burned. We'll see when we get there. Two jackhammer machines are working their way into the mall from the edges. The remainder of the mall was simply looted and burned.

The roof and the cooling tower of the April 28 mall.

Inside the non-flattened structure. We'll be clearing it and then structural engineers will look at it to see if any of the building can be re-used.

Ash, black and gray are the colors of the day. The second ceilings will be removed by hand and with oxygen torches to recycle scrap metal and prepare for possible re-use.

Work began Thursday at Souk Thelatha mall with 20 workers. Friday, the squatter Fathel ordered our crews not to work... an authority he doesn't have; however, he does have guns. Today we resumed the work with approximately 70 workers at Souk Thelatha.

Exterior, Souk Thelatha mall. About 300,000 square feet of looted & burned buildings.

Souk Thelatha is in the best shape of all the Baghdad malls. The structural damage is limited. It may well be the first mall to resume service in Baghdad (although of course there are many private markets throughout the city).

Souk Thelatha used to be a government run mall that offered the finest products from around the world at subsidized prices for employees of the regime, 7 days a week. On Tuesdays (hence "thelatha", which means Tuesday), regular Iraqis could shop there. This "tuesday market" program was discontinued in recent years, and so only regime employees could shop there.

About 70 workers are on site today, Saturday 11/8.

Scrap metal and ceramic tiles will be saved for re-use or sold.

This morning at 7AM when we arrived at the Souk Thelatha mall to begin work on the clearing of the project, we were stopped at the gate by a rogue group of armed "security guards" who, under the direction of Fathel, a cigarette distributor, had taken over the mall as if it was their own personal property. They will not let us begin the clearing and cleaning work and threatened to shoot our workers if we tried.

The Al Rasheed Theatre complex, a collection of buildings that previously served as a complex of television studios, a nine story office building, a 600 seat theatre, etc., will begin demolition in the next few days. Approximately 200 Iraqis will be directly employed in the demolition of the complex, for between 2-3 months, insh'allah. Most of the buildings will be coming down, completely to the foundation. A new building is currently being designed to take its place, although the new building will be only 4-5 stories.

Rear view of the destroyed Al Rasheed Theatre complex, adjacent to the Ministry of Information, near the Tigris river in downtown Baghdad. The steel structure is too mangled from fire damage to be able to be saved.

Baghdad has eight large shopping malls, all of which are owned by the Ministry of Trade. All eight of these malls were extensively looted and burned after the fall of Baghdad in April of this year. Most people from Baghdad and the surrounding region shopped regularly at these malls. Until now, these malls, which are probably about 300,000 sq feet (30,000 sq meters) each have continued to sit in ashes and rubble.

The manager of the Shopping Centers for the Ministry of Trade authorized JumpStart to begin work on clearing and cleaning these damaged and/or destroyed malls.

Tomorrow we begin work on the Souk Thelatha mall and the 28 April mall. Both will have small crews to plan the clearing process in the first day, then we will scale the projects up to about 100 workers on each mall in the following week.

Many of the malls are being continually looted for spare parts and other materials such as bricks and scrap metal. Here, a child pries up stones from the walkways surrounding the Al Qadassea shopping center in October.

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Al Quadassea Shopping mall.

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Another view of the Al Quadassea shopping mall, which was four stories including the basement.

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The Mansur mall is mostly destroyed by fire.

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The Mansur mall is in a nice section of Baghdad.

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 Most of the Mansur mall was individual shops, as opposed to other malls where the entire mall was one state-owned department store that sold everything.

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Another view of the 28 April mall.