Pointing to Stability, Kurds in Iraq Lure Investors
"Iraq"06/27/2007
By KIRK SEMPLE
NY Times
Published: June 27, 2007
ERBIL, Iraq — It is a measure of soaring Kurdish optimism that government officials here talk seriously about one day challenging Dubai as the Middle East’s main transportation and business hub.
The Kurdistan Regional Government is betting that it can, investing $325 million in a modern terminal at the Erbil International Airport to handle, officials hope, millions of passengers a year, and a three-mile runway that will be big enough for the new double-decker Airbus A380.
“We’re not saying Kurdistan is heaven,” said Herish Muharam, chairman of the Kurdish government’s Board of Investment. “But we’re telling investors that Kurdistan can be that heaven.”
As the rest of Iraq has plunged into a downward spiral, Kurdistan has enjoyed relative political stability and suffered limited violence, in part owing to a sectarian and political homogeneity lacking elsewhere in the country. The Kurdish region has enjoyed de facto autonomy since 1991, when the American military established a no-flight zone there, a status formalized by the new Iraqi Constitution. Although many Kurds would prefer to secede, Kurdistan, with a population of about 4.2 million, has its own army and virtually total control of its territory.
Kurdistan’s rising fortunes have been nowhere more apparent than in the wave of building and investment that has swept the region in the past four years. Iraqis and foreigners alike have poured in billions of dollars, defiantly wagering that the region will remain relatively peaceful, even as the rest of Iraq slips deeper into civil war.
Where explosions and bomb-scarred buildings have been a defining symbol elsewhere in Iraq, construction cranes are now a common feature on the Kurdish landscape, tugging hotels, shopping centers and office and housing complexes from the ground.
While public infrastructure is still suffering from chronic underinvestment, the regional government has approved more than $4 billion worth of mostly private development projects since August, when the Board of Investment was created. Billions of dollars worth of other projects were already under way.
Much of the money is coming from overseas, including the United States, Europe, the Persian Gulf countries, Iran and Turkey, officials say.
The Kurdistan government has placed special emphasis on attracting investors from the United States and Britain, unleashing a slick advertising campaign in English called “The Other Iraq,” which includes television commercials featuring romantic shots of Kurdistan’s mountains and waving, cherubic children. “It’s spectacular, it’s joyful,” intones a narrator in one 30-second spot. “It’s not a dream. It’s the other Iraq.”
The government has also hired lobbyists in Washington to help promote its development agenda, urging the State Department to change its travel warning for Iraq to distinguish Kurdistan from the rest of the country. Iraqi officials regard the travel warning as an impediment to investment and tourism.
Even with the negative travel advisory, development has been booming. Contractors have been clearing savanna and brush here in the capital of Kurdistan to build suburban residential complexes that go by names like English Village Five.
One development — Dream City, advertised as “the most elegant square kilometer in Iraq” — will include about 1,200 houses priced $180,000 to $700,000, as well as three schools, a supermarket, a restaurant, recreation areas, a casino and a mosque, according to Amer Ibrahim, the project’s manager and architect.
The principal partner in the Dream City project is also building an American-style megamall and four office towers downtown. It is a few blocks away from the ancient citadel, one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the world.
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