On a blistering day in the middle of the Iraqi summer, Najmaldin Karim, the provincial governor of Kirkuk, climbed in his armored car and went down to Republic Street, a small strip of fruit stands and shops in the heart of this dusty oil town north of Baghdad.
Give Kirkuk time, Karim says, and Republic Street will return to the way he remembers it as a boy: an oasis of tearooms and movie theaters where the melting pot of local ethnic groups mixed with ease.
A little over a year ago, Karim, 62, was a neurosurgeon with a thriving practice in suburban Washington, living with his wife in an expansive brick house in Silver Spring.
After 35 years in the United States, Karim, an American citizen, decided to return to Iraq after he saw that American forces and an entrenched local bureaucracy were making scant progress toward reconstruction. Unlike other Americans who rushed to help in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early days of combat, Karim is a new breed of returning exile who won the support of his countrymen on his own, without the support of the U.S. military — something that’s seen here as a plus. He has come back to right the shambles of his home town at a time when Kirkuk’s future is as clouded with uncertainty as Iraq itself.
