The Race to Tap The Next Gusher

By Vivienne Walt / Tawke

For most of his life, Khadir has honed the occupation he learned as a child: fighting in the Kurdish militia against Saddam Hussein's forces. He has been jailed seven times since he was 14 and has seen a favorite uncle executed. Now, at 32, he is perfecting an entirely new skill, which could change this region as much as the wars in which he has fought have: drilling for oil. Since late November, he has toiled about 30 ft. aboveground on the first derrick erected in Kurdistan in decades, by a Norwegian outfit using a Chinese rig, of all things. From the top, there is a panoramic view of the hills around his tiny village of Tawke, where 30 families eke out a meager living herding sheep. It hardly looks like the location for a major economic boom. "We are poor," he says, sitting on his bunk during a break between shifts last month, when TIME was invited for a rare visit to the oil operation. "We have nothing."