Posted on 03/06/2005 9:53:00 AM PST by TexKat
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq - The contrast between Iraq's Kurdish provinces and the insurgency-wracked cities to the south is evident in the 100 or so laborers gathered at the main square of this Kurdish town, looking for work.
They are among many Iraqi Arabs who have come from unemployment-stricken Baghdad and other cities to earn $10 for eight hours of work in a relatively safe environment. That they are Arabs among historically hostile Kurds suggests that ethnic coexistence is not dead in the new Iraq.
What draws the laborers, some as young as 14, as well as legions of investors, is a Kurdish economy that is flourishing on investment and capital that has been driven out of the insurgency areas.
"We expect terrorism to continue for another year or two," said Mohammed Karim, director of the Board for Promoting Investment in Sulaymaniyah. "We don't hope for this to happen, but if it does continue, the economy of the north will continue to flourish."
He said foreign investment, Iraqi capital and laborers continue to flow in.
In contrast to the rest of the country, hotels, offices, villas and high-rise apartment buildings are going up at a frenzied pace. An international airport is up and running in Irbil — its first flight took Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia — and Sulaymaniyah's airport is to open this spring.
Sulaymaniyah, a city believed to have more than half a million people, has big plans for a free-trade zone with offices, hotels and motels for foreign investors.
The advantage for Iraq's three Kurdish provinces is their 13 years of semi-autonomy under Western protection, during which time they have gained political and diplomatic savvy, economic knowhow and a semblance of democracy.
The two main Kurdish groups — the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — ran their territories under their own governments under a joint parliament.
The Kurds, allies in the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, won enormous influence in postwar Baghdad and received the second-biggest vote total in the Jan. 30 election. Their two parties also have decided to merge into one power-sharing administration based in Irbil.
"For Kurds, it's only been getting better," Kurdish columnist Hiwa Osman said.
The PUK administration in Sulaymaniyah offers free land leases for big projects and the right to take all profits out of the country.
Its Board for Promoting Investment, set up 10 months ago to provide investors with security and guide them through red tape, has overseen the signing of 59 projects worth $500 million, Karim said.
Thirty of those projects are in the service sector, eight in industry, six in agriculture and four in housing construction. More than 2,000 apartment and office building projects are being undertaken by investors from the United Arab Emirates, Karim said.
Land prices have quadrupled, and most factories have been rented to foreigners, including British and Dutch companies, said Shilan Khaneqa, the board's head of public relations.
Kurds are returning from exile, and Arabs are moving in from the rest of Iraq, many of them professionals seeking escape from being targeted for kidnapping and murder.
The result: "We have a housing crisis," Khaneqa said.
The industrial projects include a cement factory managed by Lebanon's GRD company and financed by European banks, with a production capacity of 4,000 tons a day.
American investors are building an electricity generator that will boost output in northern Iraq by two-thirds of the current amount.
To the west, Turkey is the gateway for Kurdistani exports to Europe. To reach the rest of Iraq, traders turn east, shipping goods such as marble and fruit through Iran to bypass the insurgency areas.
"Because of the security situation, business in Baghdad is dead, so we provide them with goods," Karim said.
The Kurdish provinces still have a long way to go. Despite the present boom, roads and basic services are poor, and corruption pervades senior levels of government.
But to the laborers waiting for prospective employers at Misgowtif Gawra Square, a job in Kurdistan is better than staying home.
"There's no work in Baghdad because the situation is no good there," said Dhafar Qassem, 26.
A woman glances a luxury car in a recently opened shop that sells brand new models of cars in downtown Irbil, northern Iraq Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005. Until recently, people in Iraqi Kurdistan couldn't buy anything except secondhand imported cars, but now the Kurdish economy is flourishing - thanks to a violent insurgency that has disrupted business in much of Iraq and driven investment and capital from Baghdad and other commercial centers to the Kurdish north. (AP Photo/Sasa Kralj)
Their people paid in blood for these privileges.
The Islamics who took their lives are now paying in dollars and lives for their part in that slaughter.
Boy am I glad to see that. The Kurds are GREAT people and have been under the boot for so long. It's good to see them getting ahead.
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