Shakir Abdul Aziz Abdulla, Iraqi Governmental Affairs, Advisor
Dr. Shakir began his career as a professor of Physics at the University of Baghdad from 1967 to 1972. After serving as a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research Science of Iraq from 1978 to 1981, he joined the Astronomy and Space Research division of the Science Research Council of Iraq as the Head of the Department for Electronic Wave Propagation from 1981 to 1987. From 1987 to 2001, Dr. Shakir served as the Director General for the Meteorological Society of Iraq; and from 2001 to 2003 as the Director General of Iraq's only legal internet service under the former regime, State Company of Internet Service. After the US led coalition instituted the Coalition Provisional Authority, Dr. Shakir was appointed the Secretary General of the Ministry of Communications from May to September, 2003. Dr. Shakir earned: a BS in Physics at Baghdad University in 1967; an MS and PhD in Atmospheric Physics from Reading University, England, in 1973 and 1978, respectively.

Michael D. Kauffman, Advisor
Mr. Michael Kauffman is a retired US Army Middle East Foreign Area Officer with extensive in-region operational experience and Arabic language capability. Prior to Babtel Mr. Kauffman served as a liaison official to Iraqi government ministries on behalf of The Louis Berger Group, Inc. under DOD/USAID contracts. Previous to that, Mr. Kauffman worked in Kuwait as a consultant to Bechtel Corporation, training its field employees on geo-political, economic, security, religion, customs and culture issues and providing analytical products for other clients pertaining to Arab media reaction to U.S. policies and initiatives in the Middle East. He also worked as Business Manager and Director of Finance of the Saudi Academy (the Saudi government's secondary school in Alexandria,VA, USA), where he managed a multinational staff of 1600 in the areas of finance, administration, human resources, contracting, community/government relations, facilities management, construction, security and transportation. He served as the academy's senior American interface with local communities and county, state, and federal agencies. Mr. Kauffman's career also included multiple diplomatic posts in various Arabic countries where he typically was responsible for assessment of political risks, US policies and interactions with the defense ministries of the foreign countries. Mr. Kauffman holds a BA Degree in Political Science/International Relations from Rockhurst College, Kansas City, Missouri. He also studied foreign intelligence, military sales, and security and counter-terrorism at a number of US Defense and Military Colleges. Mr. Kauffman speaks Arabic and holds the US security clearance level TS-SSBI.

Hamid Awni Al-Nakashli, Site Acquisitions, Advisor
Mr. Al-Nakashli, Babtel's Site Acquisition Advisor, is an Iraqi national who started his career as a maintenance engineer in the Iraqi Airways in the 1960's. In the 1970's he worked in Kuwait as co-founder (together with well-known businessmen, Ahmed Wahidi, Suleiman al-Qathi and Dawood al-Mussalam) of a fiberglass factory manufacturing: water tanks, boat hulls and roof structures. Subsequently he moved on to manage a company that promoted educational television programming and became the sole representative and distributor of programming for several internationally known establishments, namely; Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Transtel, NHK of Japan, Granada Television, Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation, New Zealand TV and several small TV programming units. He graduated from the College of Aeronautical & Automobile Engineering (Chelsea-London 1962 to Graduation 1965) with a Diploma in Aeronautical Engineering.