Prague, Aug 23 (CTK) – Czech experts have largely contributed to the “survival” of a 30-metre-high and 2000-year-old clay arch, a remnant of an ancient royal palace in Madain, a town near Baghdad, amid the continuing fights between the Iraqi military and Islamic State, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) wrote on Wednesday.
Four years ago, the Iraqis invited Avers, a Czech construction company with a branch in Iraq, to prevent the unique arch from collapsing.
“We firmed the arch and newly completed its dilapidated back part,” Avers’ co-owner Jan Koska is quoted as saying.
The Czechs had to cope with a construction material that profoundly differs from the material used in Europe.
“Our heritage monuments are much younger and mostly built of bricks and stone. In Iraq, they are built of clay originating from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers,” Koska said.
That is why Avers workers left for Iraq together with experts from the Czech Technical University (CVUT), who made analyses of the local material.
The following reconstruction works got complicated due to the worsening security situation. The workers were protected by security agents.
“However, no agency can protect you alone. You have to get on well with local people. If they accept you, they can protect you,” Koska said.
When the Czechs were ceremonially unveiling the completed project worth 98 million crowns, IS fighters were staying only few dozens of kilometres from Madain.
The fights finally did not harm the arch, though the complementing arrangements such as the pavements, benches, a park, a car park and the lighting system have been devastated, Koska said.
He said it is impossible for an European firm to succeed on the Iraqi market without help from the locals or Czech Iraqis.
The Prague-seated Avers largely owes its success to Imad Abuklam, an ethnic Iraqi who has lived in Czechia for 40 years now and who heads the firm’s Iraqi branch.
Abuklam came to study in the former Czechoslovakia and he stayed living there after “stopovers” in Algeria and the UAE, LN writes.
Now that the IS stronghold Mosul is conquered, Avers and other Czech firms expect the security situation in Iraq to calm down and they are looking forward to gaining further contracts in the country, LN writes, adding that a delegation of the Czech Chamber of Commerce visited the country recently.
“The Iraqi and mainly Kurdish entrepreneurs showed interest in Czech products, also because they know the good reputation they have or had in the era of communist [Czechoslovakia],” Borivoj Minar, the Chamber’s vice-president who headed the delegation, is quoted as saying.
