|
As Baghdad grapples with Sadr City, Iraqi
Kurdistan busily builds 'Dream City'
7.5.2008
By Sam Dagher
|
|
|
The
Kurdistan Regional Government is briskly pursuing
oil and gas contracts and economic development, a
drive that is chafing Iraq's central government in
Baghdad.
May 7, 2008
Erbil-Hewler and Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan Region, 'Iraq',--
Shakir Wajid showed off his company's plans for
"Kurdistan Gas City" – a futuristic residential,
commercial, and industrial city that will run
entirely on natural gas.
"We believe there are huge gas reserves under the
ground in Kurdistan," says Mr. Wajid, an Iraqi Kurd
and executive with United Arab Emirates-based Dana
Gas, whose company is in the final stages of
negotiating over a 14.7 square mile plot of land for
the $20 billion project.
Dana Gas has already invested $650 million in Iraqi
Kurdistan to extract gas, build a liquefied
petroleum gas (LPG) plant, and transport the fuel to
new power plants in the region. "This area will
transform economically in a massive way.… It will be
a revolution," says Wajid from his office in the
northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah.
Further north in Erbil, the region's capital,
authorities are finalizing a deal estimated at $12
billion with a consortium of South Korean companies
that will give the energy-starved Asian country
access to several oil fields here in exchange for
investment in infrastructure projects in northern
Iraq.
Over the past year, the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) has briskly awarded oil exploration
and production contracts to foreign companies. The
roster now includes the likes of America's Hunt oil,
Austria's OMV, and Russia's TNK-BP. And all of this
is happening in defiance of the oil ministry and the
central government in Baghdad.
But as the government of this semiautonomous region,
home to about 4.5 million people, forges ahead with
its ambitions to transform this long deprived part
of Iraq, it must maneuver through many external and
internal challenges. |
The New Hawler development in Erbil is one of many
new projects under construction in Kurdistan region
"northern Iraq".
On the streets of Sulaimaniyah, where a Kurdish man
in traditional dress sells radios, not everyone is
feeling the impact of economic development in
Kurdistan region. Some Kurds say that the oil
investments are benefiting only an elite few. |
For average Iraqis, and some in the central
government, Iraqi Kurdistan's actions are nothing
short of its efforts to lay the foundations for
independence. In many neighboring countries,www.ekurd.net
particularly Turkey,
which is waging a war with its own separatist
Kurdish rebels, sometimes in Iraqi Kurdistan, this
is cause for alarm.
Last Thursday, the KRG held rare talks in Baghdad
with senior Turkish officials partly to allay these
concerns.
Even inside the region, discontent is rising among
many residents who see little benefit from big
projects and are starting to question the motives
and capabilities of the two main ruling parties –
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) the Patriotic
Union for Kurdistan (PUK) - that have had a grip on
power for decades.
Beyond the crumbling old buildings of Erbil's center
an entire district is in the making: New Hawler.
Cranes stretch into the sky as foreign laborers toil
on the building sites of hotels, office towers, and
gated communities with names like Dream City and
Italian City. Signs of wealth are everywhere. You
see it in the shopping malls and gleaming cars.
At Empire World, a $365 million housing and
commercial development being built by wealthy
Kurdish businessmen who have benefited from US
contracts in Iraq, manager Basma Azouz says villas
in the project that average $250,000 are being sold
at a fast clip. Many families of rich Iraqis and
Baghdad-based government officials have over the
past few years opted to live in the relative safety
of northern Iraq.
"Have you seen the other Iraq? It's spectacular.
It's peaceful. It's joyful. Fewer than 200 US troops
are stationed here," says a promotional campaign for
investment in the Kurdistan region.
During a recent interview, Prime Minister Nechirvan
Barzani spoke with passion about his vision for the
region, which he says can serve as a model for the
rest of Iraq and a "steppingstone" for investment in
the rest of a country that has some of the world's
largest untapped oil reserves.
"We just want to rebuild our region as part of Iraq,
that's it. We are not a threat to anybody. We want
to be a factor of stability," says Mr. Barzani,
denying that his region eyes secession.
His foreign relations adviser, Falah Mustafa, says
that while 97.5 percent of Kurds in the region
support the idea based on the results of an informal
referendum in 2005, it would be unrealistic. "It's
better for us to go for something that's achievable
and viable. We did not push too hard, we did not go
unrealistic."
Barzani says his government's decision to start
awarding oil and gas contracts to foreign investors
– before a much-delayed national hydrocarbons law
has been agreed on with Baghdad – is in keeping with
the spirit of the new Iraqi Constitution. He says
the heart of the dispute with Baghdad is that his
region is committed to a federal Iraq, which many in
Baghdad seem to be backing away from.
But Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani has
accused Kurdistan of signing the contracts "secretly
and without competition."
"It did not give Iraq the highest possible return,"
he says, adding that all companies that have inked
deals with Kurdistan have been blacklisted.
On April 22, Barzani said he was "very optimistic"
that an agreement would be reached with Baghdad even
though it "may take time" to work out oil contracts
and other sticking issues, such as the resolution of
disputed territories.
Although average Kurds admire their youthful-looking
prime minister, many see the new prosperity as
feeding corruption. Ari Harsin, an Erbil journalist
with the weekly Awene, says that members of the KDP
and PUK hold stakes in almost every development
project.
"In Kurdistan the politburos of the KDP and PUK
decide where the budget goes," says Mr. Harsin.
"There is no transparency. People do not understand
how these oil deals are going to benefit them.
Sometimes it's almost like a mafia state."
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
csmonitor com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 