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Support of Kurds could be mutually
beneficial
22.9.2006 |
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In all the reporting on
the Iraq war it is too seldom noted that one region
of the country can tentatively be called a success
story. The northern portion of the country dominated
by Kurds, Muslims who are neither Persian nor Arabic
but a separate ethnicity with a long history, is
generally calm and beginning to show signs of
economic development.
Although most Kurds are grateful to the United
States for deposing Saddam Hussein, their success is
due more to the Kurds themselves. Saddam tried to
eradicate the Kurds in the late 1980s but failed and
eventually reached an accommodation that gave the
Kurdish region semiautonomous status. Aided by that
agreement, and the no-fly zone over Kurdish areas,
the Kurds developed their own reasonably democratic
political institutions and an increasingly viable
civil society.
On Monday, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, chairperson of
the Kurdistan Development Corp. and representative
of the Kurdistan regional government to the United
Kingdom, talked with reporters about the prospects
for further economic and political development in
the Kurdish region of Iraq. One of her missions was
to thank the United States for helping Iraqi Kurds;
the other was to introduce American investors to the
opportunities available in Kurdistan.
The Kurdish Regional Government is committed to a
free-market system and recently passed a law to
encourage foreign investment. It exempts investors
from most taxes and duties for five years and
permits 100 percent repatriation of profits. Kurds
hope foreign investors will help the region
revitalize agriculture — Kurdistan has in the past
exported wheat and barley before much agriculture
was destroyed under Saddam — and build facilities
like food processing and refrigerated storage
plants.
Olives and tomatoes also look promising.
Abdul Rahman did not conceal her dream, shared by
most Kurds, of an independent Kurdistan one day. But
she stressed that the most prudent course for Iraqi
Kurds now is to support a federal, democratic,
unified Iraq with the guarantees for regional
semi-autonomy contained in Iraq’s current
constitution. There are many Kurds in Turkey and
Iran as well as in Iraq, and even though Turkey is
currently the largest foreign investor in Iraqi
Kurdistan, both Iran and Turkey might become alarmed
if a Kurdistan fully independent of Iraq were
created.
The Kurds are probably the most pro-American people
in the region, and they began using democratic
governing procedures before the shaky experiment in
Iraq as a whole began under American occupation.
The Kurdish regions, therefore, might be the most
effective model for democracy with a chance to
influence the rest of the Middle East. If American
investors can help to hasten economic development
and make some money for themselves at the same time,
that could provide the kind of mutually beneficial
arrangement that others in the region could be
tempted to emulate.
portales-news com
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