Best,
L
I agree with some of the comments about the overall culture, but a lot of that doesn't apply to Iraq. KSA is quite different in that, as the article mentioned, Saudis don't really work; they have indentured servants running the infrastructure, the service industry, etc. I've seen the same in Kuwait and Dubai. KSA is also very strictly Muslim, whereas Iraq has been largely secular for decades and that has permeated the social fabric.
Iraqis do their own work. Here, they do grow stuff, make stuff and build stuff (as the article put it.) The lack of concept of "maintenance" was also mentioned and we are engaged in a large country-wide effort to provide on-the-job and classroom training for operations and maintenance activities on all aspects of infrastructural facilities such as water and sewage treatment plants, oil production facilities, power plants, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, airports, etc. Keep your fingers crossed for us (I am directly involved in this effort) because maintenance is a whole new thing for the Iraqis.
The writer had me somewhat skeptical right off the bat by using Jill Carroll as an example. Of course she met the lowest of the low. She was kidnapped and he;d hostage. While I'm glad she was released and is OK, she was boneheaded to do what she did. She was gallivanting around Baghdad during the worst days of the war in soft vehicles and no security detail. I cannot even imagine such stupidity.