Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S. visits San Diego

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published July 2, 2008 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

The Iraqi Ambassador to the United States will be in San Diego later today to meet with members of San Diego's large Iraqi community. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The Iraqi Ambassador to the United States will be in San Diego later today to meet with members of San Diego's large Iraqi community. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Samir al Sumaidaie was named as Iraq's Ambassador to the United States two years ago, but this is his first visit to San Diego.

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Many of the more than 20,000 Iraqis living in San Diego are Kurds from Northern Iraq. Raving Barwari, with the Kurdish Human Rights Watch in San Diego, says the Iraqi Ambassador's visit is an historic event for the community, which has not had access to a sympathetic Iraqi government agency for decades.

Barwari: because for a Kurdish family for example in the 80s the Iraqi embassy was not a place you could go to for help, it was the opposite because it was the Baath government, their embassies were used for spying on communities for Kurdish people out here so for Kurdish people it is a major turn around that now there is a sense of hope

Barwari says many Iraqi expatriates in San Diego still own land or property in Iraq and have relatives there. He says they hope an effective Iraqi embassy in Washington will make it possible to resolve transactions left in limbo because of the ongoing political uncertainty.
Alison St John, KPBS news.

The Iraqi Ambassador will host a public meeting at the Ronald Reagan Community Center in El Cajon this evening at 5:30 p.m.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.