Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq,
April 28, (Reuters) - It's midnight and the restaurant on the top
floor of the Sulaimaniyahh Palace hotel, with its panoramic views,
is buzzing.
Seven stories below, the streets of the Kurdish city are still busy
and couples walk in the light of the full moon.
This is Iraq. But it's a world away from the claustrophobic concrete
blast walls and bloodshed of Baghdad far to the south.
Kurds boast that rents in Sulaimaniyah now outstrip London. Whether
it's true is hardly relevant -- the boast itself symbolizes the
vibrancy and optimism that separate most of Kurdistan from the rest
of strife-torn Iraq.
Sher Mohammed, 55, is typical of the new elite in Kurdistan. A
former peshmerga guerrilla, he fled for the safety of London in 1990
and made a small fortune with a Mongolian restaurant.
Now he has come back, with an eye to starting a Kurdistan wine
industry and luring foreign tourists to the stunningly beautiful,
soaring rocky mountains.
"Twenty years ago, people went to Europe, to the United States,
overseas," he said at his "Freedom Castle" mansion overlooking a
small hill where he once lived for months at a time in a cramped,
dirty cave, fighting Saddam Hussein's army and its chemical weapons.
"Now, in the three years since Saddam Hussein fell, they are coming
back and bringing their money."
STABILITY, SECURITY
Not only Kurdish expatriates are moving in. The Sulaimaniyah Palace
has been taken over by a Lebanese company; a Norwegian outfit is
looking for oil; Turkish, British, Chinese, Iranian and other
multinational firms are looking for bases here.
Kurdistan is selling itself as a safe and secure base for companies
that want to do business in Iraq but fear the insecurity and cost of
setting up in Baghdad.
"We have stability. We have security," said Omar Fatah, Kurdistan's
deputy prime minister and the prime minister of the Sulaimaniyah
sub-region, sitting in another restaurant overlooking the lights of
the sprawling city.
"Companies should come here and set up. We have good infrastructure.
Kurdistan is the ideal place for companies who want to set up and do
business in Iraq."
Kurdistan has enjoyed 15 years of relative calm and prosperity. It
has been semi-autonomous since a failed uprising against Saddam
Hussein in 1991 that led the United States and Britain to impose a
no-fly zone, keeping out the Iraqi army.
The region offers tax breaks to companies, profits can be
transferred out of Kurdistan and foreign companies can own land.
It also has oil. Norwegian company DNO announced this month it will
start producing oil next year near the Turkish border.
The Kurdish parliament will soon vote on a proposal to establish the
region's own natural resources ministry to deal with its oil and gas
reserves, marking a further step in economic autonomy from the Arab
south.
The main highway from Sulaimaniyah to the disputed oil city of
Kirkuk, just south of Kurdistan, is lined with new construction
sites and piles of new bricks.
But the prosperity driving Kurdistan's cities does not reach its
villages. The young are leaving the villages in search of work. Away
from the highway even moderately well-off villages have not a single
shop or roadside stall.
"We don't have enough food," complained Rashid Karim, an 80-year-old
former peshmerga in the village of Sekanian Sheik Bakh, a few miles
from Sher Mohammed's mansion and vineyards.
"Our life is getting better, but we don't have enough food. We don't
have a school, either."
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