While pundits, bloggers, politicians and hacks conjecture as to the contents of the Petraeus Report coming out tomorrow, I’m confident about what you won’t find. While progress has been made in al-Anbar which is sure to be the focus of the report (as President Bush’s recent visit to the region assured), the unsung success is that of the Kurds. After all, how many readers are familiar with the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) official tourism site?
Also, of all the 55 million dollar 5 star hotels going up in the world, would it surprise you to hear about one going up in Erbil funded by Lebanese investors? That’s on top of the massive new mall with thousands of shops this blogger visited during his visit in March. What about the American University of as-Suleymaniyah? How about the flights from Vienna, Frankfurt, Dubai, Istanbul, Amman, Beirut, Tehran, Damascus to Iraqi Kurdistan?
Here are a few pictures from my visit in March (yes yes, the official travelogue is coming…one of these days). The real question is: Why is the great success in Iraq the country’s biggest secret? Why hasn’t the US trumpeted it more?
Sidenote: The Economist has a fantastically thorough and well balanced article on Iraqi Kurdistan. Thanks to Chief Wiggum for the head’s up.
It is interesting that the bush admin hasn’t trumpeted the positives of the Kurdish region. Perhaps they’re afraid that any praise may give a boost to those who want to break the country apart?
completely agree with snow
You state-worshipers are always good for a laugh. Who cares that they built a strip mall in East Bumf@#k?
Is that what the US army, and more importantly, US taxes, should be doing?
The credit crunch and deflation will hopefully make such wasteful spending impossible.
How is commending development state worship? And I read “Lebanese investors” as the sponsors of the hotel, not US taxes. Please reduce the level of crazy in your comments.
As to the alleged credit crunch, there’s still lots of liquid capital floating around the world economy looking for something to invest in.
I, too, think snow’s on the right track. Though I’d add Turkey to the equation. A bit analogous to the Taiwan/China balancing act. If Bush trumpets the Kurdish success (the silver lining of the war, imo) he further excites both Kurdish separatism and the consequent Turkish alarm/action.
Interesting that Hunt Oil, a privately held independent US oil company, and the Kurdish regional government said Saturday that they had signed a production-sharing contract for petroleum exploration in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. I think this is the first significant US oil exploration company to break ranks and do a deal in ‘Kurdistan’.
Why do you assume that about the report?
Also, even if it isn’t American tax dollars going into those buildings, I don’t see why Americans should be enthused about how some place they are never going to visit has a bunch of new towers.
“I don’t see why Americans should be enthused about how some place they are never going to visit has a bunch of new towers.”
I suspect it’s both the infrastructure and the global connectivity that these new towers represent that we find exciting.
I think Americans should be enthused about these buildings because they are a tangible example of progress being made. While the rest of Iraq is being consumed by violence, Kurdistan is proving itself stable enough to be a place for foreign investment. A greater degree of stability there means that is just one less area American forces in Iraq have to worry about. Besides, I’m sure not many American’s visit Japan every year, but I doubt anyone would consider the peace and prosperity it experienced after WWII to be no big deal.
Let’s not forget that Iraqi Kurdistan’s “success” has been a much longer slog (1991-2007) than Iraq’s, and is rather tenuous.
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Probably because it’s insignificant in the scope of things. More troops are dying despite there being more of them. As said before, a couple of buildings doesn’t mean squat. Yeah, global interconnectedness, that’s adorable. Come back to reality, the one where Iraq is chaos.
One man’s “East Bumfuck”, as you so tactlessly put it, is another man’s New York or London.
Besides, some of us are just interested.
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Interestingly, most of this new investment is Turkish money. The KRG’s economy is built on two things: Turkish trade/smuggling/investment and oil money.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/85808B77-58B8-4C00-866C-7F38FEB253A7.htm
Zeki Fattah, a senior economic adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, the northern Iraqi capital, said: “If you want to see what’s really going on, go down to the border.
“At the border you’ll see a queue of trucks, stretching for over 20km, bringing with them all manner of goods from Turkey.”
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, business between these two former warring neighbours has mushroomed.
About 70 per cent of all government and private sector contracts issued in the KRG area have been to Turkish firms, according to the KRG’s Kurdistan Development Corporation (KDC).
Mia Early, the KDC’s head of investment promotion said: “At the end of 2006, the Erbil Chamber of Commerce had 385 active international companies registered.
“The majority of them were Turkish.”
The Kurdistan Region in Iraq ”“ as the KRG calls the three, predominantly Kurdish northern Iraqi governorates under its jurisdiction ”“ relies a great deal on this trade with Turkey.
“There are four to five million people here in the region,” Fattah said. “We do maybe $2bn to $3bn of trade with Turkey every year ”“ it’s our main partner.