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2008-01-08 issue:

Hesston grad defuses Middle East crisis

Sadi Othman, civilian contractor in Iraq, awarded for role in Iraq-Turkey conflict

by Dave Osborne

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Sadi Othman, a civilian contractor in Iraq since 2003 and a graduate of Hesston (Kan.) College in 1993, has received a Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service by the U.S. Army for his role in defusing a dangerous regional situation involving Iraq and Turkey.



The award, given on Nov. 26, 2007, states that Othman, Senior Advisor to General David Petreaus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, “was personally responsible for the safe return of eight Turkish hostages from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) back to the Turkish army and as a result potentially diffused [sic] an international armed conflict.”

The eight Turkish soldiers had been seized Oct. 21, 2007, in a cross-border ambush by the PKK guerrillas, who seek a homeland in southern Turkey. Shortly after the PKK ambush, which also killed 12 Turkish soldiers, Turkey’s military began massing troops on the Turkey-Iraq border in preparation for military action inside Iraq.

Othman says he was part of a group that included U.S. military and civilian leaders, Iraqi central government officials and leaders of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which worked intensively to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible.

Othman was asked by General Petreaus to take over the contacts with some of the key leaders, particularly those in Iraqi Kurdistan, the northern region where Othman worked as a linguist and adviser for a year back in 2003 and 2004.

According to the award’s citation, Othman “began a relentless campaign of engagements with Iraqi leaders, the KRG and Kurdish Peshmerga (military) generals.”

“During that week,” says Othman, “I got maybe only one or two hours of sleep each night.”
The award cites Othman’s efforts as “resulting in successfully getting all parties to agree to terms to release the Turkish soldiers. Additionally [he] engaged both the KRG President and KRG Prime Minister about using the positive outcome of the hostage crisis as a catalyst to bring a permanent solution to the PKK issue.”

“It was a team effort,” Othman says. “It took trust on the part of everyone involved to gain the release of the hostages.”

A Palestinian-American, Othman’s U.S. residence is in Queens, N.Y. As senior adviser to Petreaus, Othman is in his fourth civilian assignment in Iraq in which he has served as linguist and adviser to top U.S. military leaders in that country.

“The type of contacts we made under the leadership of General Petreaus to resolve this hostage crisis is the sort of thing we do day after day here in Iraq,” he says. “We work hard at making improvements in the situation at all levels at the grass-roots level, at the national level and at the regional level. It’s an extremely demanding and exhausting task. But I continue to do this work because I want to help the Iraqi people.”

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