February 2006

Alum Plays Role in Afghan Rebuilding

In August 2001, when Geoff Nordloh, MBA ’99, went to Central Asia for a friend’s wedding, he had no idea he’d be back in the area within the year. But after 9/11, his friend started a company in Uzbekistan to make modular buildings for the U.S. military. He asked Nordloh, a former Air Force officer who was then an investment analyst in Pasadena, to join him.

“When I first got involved I thought this would be something exciting and interesting for me to do,” Nordloh said in a phone interview from Kabul. “I like to travel. I like languages. And there was a patriotic element to it: working primarily for the U.S. government, supporting what we were trying to do in Afghanistan. That element still remains. But I think what has become stronger is wanting to be a part of getting Afghanistan back on its feet after 30 years of warfare and bad times for everyone here.”

Nordloh eventually left Uzbekistan to start up the Mesopotamia Group in Afghanistan. The company is involved in a variety of enterprises, all with a training component—teaching Afghan army recruits how to prepare and store food, maintaining medical equipment in Afghan hospitals, and installing and maintaining security systems at U.S. government installations. “We have experienced technicians, but we’ve hired local people to learn how these systems work and how to maintain them,” Nordloh said, “and when we have to hire trained people for technical jobs we’ve tried to hire Americans of Afghan descent.” The company, which has about 45 employees, all but eight of them Afghans, also is trying to manufacture products that Afghanistan imports, like cement, and develop exports, like pomegranates, that may one day take the place of opium poppies in Afghanistan’s economy.

“The idea is not just to do business and make some money, but to find things that will contribute to the commercial and economic development of the country,” Nordloh said. “Although we are an American-registered company and people perceive us as an American company, our intent is to become more and more an Afghan company over time.”

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