Raad Kubba has presented the US Army with the mother of all soft drinks bills.
The manager of the Kufa beverage factory 140 km south of Baghdad is claiming US$250,000 for drinks taken and damage done by US soldiers who commandeered the plant in the Iraq war.
That's just one of his problems. The difficulties facing the factory, the only one in the country producing canned drinks, says a lot about running any business in post-war Iraq.
Kubba is struggling with rampant crime, an unreliable electricity supply, fuel shortages, trouble with the dinar currency and a surge of imports from competitors.
With 110 employees, the factory producing cola and other drinks is just the sort of medium-sized business that will need to thrive if Iraq is to move from poverty to prosperity.
And Kubba is optimistic his company and others will blossom in the long term now that Saddam Hussein has been ousted and the international sanctions which stifled the economy have gone.
"I think Iraq will have a very good future," he said. As for the post-war chaos: "I think it's something temporary."
The plant, boasting modern German machinery and colorfully designed products which would not look out of place on Western supermarket shelves, had been open only a few months when the war began. Managers shut it and retreated to their homes.
When the US Army arrived in the town of Kifl in late March after a battle that killed hundreds of Iraqis, the factory with its large walled parking area seemed an ideal base.
Commanders decreed soldiers could help themselves to the thousands of pallets of drinks cans, which quickly appeared in the backs of Humvee military vehicles swarming all over this area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river.
After weeks in the hot desert drinking little but water, the troops were delighted to crack open cans of Kufa. One officer described the occupation of the plant as "the score of the century." Many assumed it was owned by Saddam's government.
But the business was part of an empire belonging to the Kubba family. It says it had nothing to do with Saddam, although Iraqis believe few firms could survive during his rule without at least paying kickbacks to his family.
When workers returned to the plant in April, they needed a month to get it up and running again.
"We saw gates that had been blown up by dynamite. Office furniture had been destroyed," said Mahmood Adbulhussein, a technician on the factory floor as drinks cans slid along the production line.
Managers say the troops took a total of 240,000 cans of Kufa products. They compiled their compensation claim by adding the value of the drinks to damage they said had been caused by the soldiers, equipment that went missing and business lost because of the war.
The company may be aiming on the high side. The US is not going to start compensating every firm in Iraq for loss of business due to the war. But it has paid US$13,000, says general manager Kubba.
He is hoping for more but, in the meantime, is now selling drinks to the US forces stationed in the area.
The US military did not respond to requests from Reuters for comments on the case.
The company has big plans, hoping to strike a deal to make Pepsi cola. It is the dominant soft drink in Iraq, sold by every roadside -- but produced domestically only in bottles, not cans.
For now, though, it has to cope with more immediate problems such as widespread lawlessness. The firm imports empty tin cans from Jordan but bandits roam the main road from the border.
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