ENID — Former Iraqi minister of electricity and parliament candidate Aiham Alsammarae made a stop in Enid Saturday to endorse George Dillman’s candidacy for Garfield County Sheriff, and also to give some insight on conditions in Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops last December.

Alsammarae has divided his time between Chicago and Iraq since he came to the United States to study electrical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in the 1970s.

Alsammarae split from the Baath Party after Saddam Hussein’s rise to power, and continued on at IIT to become a United States citizen and earn a PhD in electrical engineering in 1983.

He remained active in the expatriate Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein until 2002, when then-President George W. Bush summoned Alsammarae and other Iraqi dissidents to begin forming a post-Saddam Iraqi government.

Alsammarae subsequently was appointed to serve under U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer as minister of electricity from Aug. 2003 to May 2005.

He inherited an electrical production and distribution system degraded by years of neglect and war, including damage incurred during the 2003 Allied invasion.

“There was no electricity in Iraq because it was destroyed by many, many wars,” Alsammarae said.

Following the invasion, Iraq’s electrical production had fallen to 3,000 megawatts (MW). When Alsammare left his post as minister of electricity in 2005, production capacity had been rebuilt to 5,500 MW. Within a year after his departure production capacity had fallen to 4,500 MW. Alsammarae estimated Iraq’s electricity capacity now at 4,700 MW.

Alsamarrae was the only member of the Iraqi provisional government to hold dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship, a fact he said did not endear him to his non-secular colleagues in parliament.

“They had been against me from the beginning, all the people who were of Islamic religious background,” Alsammarae said. “There were a lot of accusations against every minister under Bremer, and one of them was me.”

Alsammarae, a secular Sunni, resigned his post as minister of electricity after Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shia politician with purported ties to Iran, was elected prime minister in January 2005.

Alsammarae became a vocal opponent of what he saw as Iranian influence in the Iraqi government following the 2005 elections. He survived an assassination attempt in February, 2006 that seriously injured three bodyguards.

In October 2006, the sitting government brought formal charges of corruption and misappropriation of funds against Alsammarae.

He returned to Iraq to answer the charges, and was detained in the Green Zone.

“They told me I would be there for one night, and that one night became four months … that’s how Iraq worked,” Alsammarae said.

He was detained in an apartment adjacent to the Karadah-Miriam police station, where Dillman was working as an international police liaison officer to train Iraqi police.

Alsammarae said he was impressed with Dillman and his efforts to train the Iraqi police the first time he met him.

“From the beginning he is so honest, so straight, so frank … you always can read him right away,” Alsammarae said of Dillman. “There was a lot of corruption and cheating everywhere in Iraq, and he was trying to fix them to be good police.”

Dillman soon became familiar with the government’s case against Alsammarae.

“I explained to him everything and told him how I had come back to answer these charges, and I was an American, so of course he became more aware of what was happening to me,” Alsammarae said. “When he found I am an American, he felt there was no cause whatsoever against me, and he started to protect me according to the law of Iraqis under the umbrella of American law.”

Dillman began accompanying Alsammarae to court hearings, acting both as an American advocate and de facto bodyguard.

Alsammarae eventually was cleared of all charges, but still was detained in the Green Zone. During one return trip from court, the driver appointed to take Alsammarae back to his quarters attempted to leave the Green Zone.

Alsammarae surmised the driver was trying to take him outside the realm of American protection to kill him. Dillman stopped the vehicle at gunpoint, took custody of Alsammarae and returned him safely to his quarters.

“They tried to take me out of the Green Zone, and he was, in seconds, he stopped the car with a gun … he stopped those guys and said ‘Where are you going? This is not the way, it is over there. What are you doing?’”

Alsammarae credits Dillman with saving his life in that instance.

“Without him, I am not alive now,” Alsammarae said. “I am sure of that.”

Alsammarae later escaped the Green Zone and returned to his home in Chicago.

Alsammarae spoke briefly Saturday at Dillman’s campaign announcement at the Cherokee Strip Conference Center.

“If he is willing to sacrifice his life for someone he doesn’t even know, you know he will sacrifice his life for the people of his county, where he is from and where he was trained,” Alsammarae said of Dillman. “If he is sheriff, I am sure he will deal with everybody equally. Nobody will be able to buy him or make him use some interest … he is going to see the law is the law and it has to be applied to everyone. He is genuine, he is honest, he is straight and he is the guy to rely on if you are having problems.”

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In a separate interview, Alsammarae provided a view of an Iraq that is in many respects worse off than it was 10 years ago. But, Alsammarae remains confident the Iraqi people will rebuild their country and establish a strong democratic presence in the region.

“We, as Americans, definitely did something in Iraq, which was we got a democratic system there. But, it’s definitely not like our system,” Alsammarae said.

Measuring democracies on a scale from one to 10, with one being “very bad” and 10 being “very good,” Alsammarae said “Iraq is still a one.”

“We have elections, but it is a cheated election,” Alsammarae said. “Everyone gives money to buy the elections, from Iran, from Turkey, so the winners will be more loyal to the outsiders than they are to those inside. The Iraqis are probably worse off now than they were at the first election, especially since the Americans left.”

Alsammarae outlined a progression in Iraqi politics, since the invasion, that has gone from indifference, to corruption, to the threat of Iranian influence.

“The first election, we did not have many participate, because not many Iraqis knew democracy, but at least those who participated they participated right, because the Americans were watching. The second election, the Iraqi people learned elections mean power, they mean money, and they used power and money, everyone, to get elected. After the Americans left, the Iraqis who are in charge right now are somehow connected with the Iranian mullahs.”

Alsammarae said America still has a lot of work to do to ensure the success of Iraqi democracy.

“We taught them democracy, but we did not help them to know how to live through a democracy,” Alsammarae said. “Our dream was not just cleaning out al-Qaida or removing Saddam, but setting an example for the Middle East that ‘This is how you build a democracy,’ but if we fail and leave Iraq to the Iranians, the rest of the Middle East will say ‘Don’t go with the Americans.’ A lot of people like the Americans there, and we need to help our friends.”

If democracy does flourish in Iraq, its success may be measured in decades rather than months or even years.

 “The government is not functioning. It is like a chaos right now,” Alsammarae said. “But, it takes time to know how to run a country, and they don’t know how to run a country. You can’t just judge them on today. It might take 30 years to see progress … hopefully.”

Alsammarae said the path forward for the Iraqi people depends on their ability to overcome sectarian differences and establish a secular government.

“We need to get past all those religious fanatic parties,” Alsammarae said. “We need to get rid of them, and we need to get them out by election. My hope is the people are fed up, and they will get to the point they say ‘OK, church stays in the church, and let the government rule for everyone.’”

Alsammarae has high hopes for the 2013 Iraqi Parliament election.

“If we can get half the parliament voted in as good guys, we will start to see changes,” Alsammarae said.

For now, Alsammarae continues to run his Chicago-based engineering firm, KCI Engineering Consultants.

But, he soon plans to return to his native Iraq, in hopes of becoming one of “the good guys” in parliament.

He is throwing his hat back in the Iraqi political ring for the parliamentary seat from Saladin Province, his family’s native territory north of Baghdad.

“I am going to run there in 2013 for parliament,” Alsammarae said. “If I run, I win … everything I do is good there.”