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The Kurdish miracle
20.8.2007
By Zvi Bar'el |
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August
20, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
All the important people in Iraqi Kurdistan can be
found in the Charwa Chra hotel restaurant, in the
center of Erbil. The director-general of the new
airport; the communications minister, there with his
family; senior officials from the Kurdish
government; and some rich Iraqis who have found
temporary refuge in the hotel, until they decide
whether to invest in Kurdistan or continue on to
some European country. Rawand Darwesh, a senior
Kurdish official, and Hamin Hassan, who was partner
to the civilian social revolution in Kurdistan, are
among the guests.
Darwesh was a member of the first group of
outstanding students who received a Fulbright
scholarship to study for a year in the United
States. When he returned home, he quickly became
involved in government activity. Hamin Hassan helped
found the institute for human and civil rights in
Kurdistan, in 2002, and later went to specialize in
election supervision, in Jordan. |
Zvi Bar'el |
"Here the parliament has passed a law that
stipulates that any murder is a murder," Hassan
says. "There is no longer leniency for murdering
women in the pretext of preserving family honor.
This is not Iraq, where people who murder over
family honor enjoy special privileges under the law.
Moreover, our prime minister has called for setting
up a hotline at police stations for abused women."
The police academy has begun accepting female cadets
to assist women and victims of domestic violence.
"They have an address here," Hassan says. But when
he says "here," he is referring to the region of
Kurdistan, which so far has only three sub-districts
- Erbil, Duhok and Sulaimaniyah. Residents hope that
by next November, if and when a referendum is held,
another three sub-districts will join the district.
"This is not the Iraqi government," says Hassan. "I
am referring only to the Kurdish law."
This is the heart of Iraq's anomaly. The Kurdish
region is run as if it were a completely independent
state. The Kurdish flag flies over the huge
parliament building, not the Iraqi flag. At night,
lights in the shape of the Kurdish flag light the
streets of Erbil. The Iraqi flag cannot be seen
here, and people even decline to use Arabic, the
official language of the state.
"We studied Arabic at school, so we are fluent, but
I prefer to speak English," Darwesh says. "We are
tired of Arabic and the Arabs. We are like you, I
think. That is why we feel so strong a bond with
Israel."
A friend of Darwesh's explains that the Iraqis,
particularly the Shi'ites, still consider the Kurds
to be Israeli allies, even though Israel turned them
a cold shoulder more than three decades ago. "One
day, while traveling north from Baghdad, we were
stopped at a Shi'ite roadblock," his friend says.
"Three of the passengers said they were headed for
Mosul. The fourth said, by mistake, that he was
going to Erbil. The Shi'ite guard shouted out to his
commander: 'Three of them are okay. One is going to
Israel.' As you can understand, they consider Erbil
Israel, because it is the capital of the Kurdish
district."
At the table, laden with Kurdish delicacies, the
conversation returns to women and human rights. "We
still have a long way to go in this respect," Hassan
says. "We have to educate an entire nation to new
principles - particularly those outlying villages,
which have fewer western influences."
Hassan, who was a Peshmerga fighter and an announcer
on the underground Kurdish television network,
admits that even he sometimes finds it difficult to
live by all those new values he preaches. "If my
sister wants to marry someone of a lower standing,
less worthy of her, I'll try to persuade her,
perhaps pressure her, to accept my values. Our women
received freedom too quickly, as if in an
explosion," he says.
Two days later, Abdel Salaam Barwary explains the
problem. Barwary is one of Iraq's most influential
analysts, the former bureau head for Kurdish
Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, and
currently the director of the Kurdish center for
advancing democracy and human rights. "People want
to know whether democracy means we will lose all our
old values, if it means we will lose control of our
wives and daughters, if democracy means sexual
freedom," he says. "We still have a great deal of
work to do in this field, particularly given that
some of our ministers do not exactly understand what
we are doing and are not exactly convinced that this
is the best thing for the Kurdish state."
In my prior trips to Kurdistan between 1995 and
2004, there were no conversations of this type. The
excitement generated by the war and the victory over
Saddam Hussein, the relative quiet, the
still-"reasonable" number of dead for a war, and
especially the uncertain future all led to questions
and conversations about physical survival and
livelihood. This kicked off the gradual process of
commemoration and remembering. People felt the fight
was over, victory was assured and the Kurds were on
their way to a state of their own - or at least to
taking a healthy bite out of the Iraqi regime that
tried to destroy them.
Now, things look totally different. The signs of a
revolution are evident at the border crossing
between Turkey and Iraq. The long lines of trucks,
stretching for kilometers, are not waiting to enter
Iraq to smuggle out oil. Instead, they bear bags of
cement, building iron, food products, textiles,
electronics - everything a rehabilitating country
needs. These goods will not reach Baghdad or Basra.
The trucks will stop at the new stores in the
Kurdish district, at Erbil's glittering New City
commercial center, or by the cranes building the
"Italian colony" or the "English village" -
single-family homes slated for rich locals or
foreigners.
Traffic at the crossing moves quickly and
efficiently - so long as the computer does not break
down for an hour (like when we were supposed to get
a stamp allowing us to cross into Iraq) or if the
clerk does not take another hour-long lunch break.
That, after all, is acceptable in Europe, and a
country that aspires to be part of Europe must
ensure its clerks have a suitable lunch break.
We finally receive our two stamps, and a minute
later, we cross into Kurdish Iraq. We hear the same
questions we heard last time: "How can we visit
Israel? Is there work for us there? Do only Jews get
entry visas to Israel?" The transit station director
has friends in Israel, immigrants from Duhok. He
would very much like to visit them, but does not
know how to get a visa. Here, Israel is considered a
land of dreams. We later learn that not only Israel,
but also the Israelis - at least the Jewish Israelis
- are viewed here as superior entities.
Economic boom
The trip from the border crossing to Erbil takes
three hours. The temperature outside is above 40
degrees Celsius, but our air conditioning is
effective. We sit back, watching the small
commercial centers that have sprouted up over the
past two years in the town of Zakho , on the way to
Duhok. Shomal, a customs employee who drives me
along Duhok's main road, explains how prices have
risen. Three years ago, a dunam plot in Duhok sold
for $1,000-$5,000. Now, 200-meter apartments can
sell for $150,000, while private homes cost as much
as $300,000.
Rich Iraqis fleeing the war and Kurds from abroad
are buying these houses, Shomal says. But there are
also local residents who have earned a lot of money
in this economic boom, and can afford the houses,
too. The growth is evident on the outskirts of
Erbil, where new clusters of single-family homes
have popped up. "All of the houses were bought
before the building began and now people are
searching for new plots to build on," says Darwesh,
who bought a large apartment in one of the beautiful
towers next to the Italian Colony.
The buildings in this neighborhood are not yet
finished. There are many building foundations and
frames, stylized steel balustrades, and a few
touches of finishing. But the purchasers are not
worried. The company has promised that the
apartments will be ready in a few months. This
economic boom becomes even more amazing to behold
when one remembers that in Kurdistan, like the rest
of Iraq, there is no such thing as a mortgage or a
bank loan. Everything here is bought in cash. Iraqi
dinars that are worth 1,200 to the dollar - houses,
cars, trips, furniture. You cannot pay by check,
credit card or bank order.
It is hard to say how prices compare here. A new
Land Cruiser sells for a mere $30,000, but the New
City supermarket has European-level prices. Ice
cream costs $1, but a meal at a middle-class
restaurant can cost as much as $25 per person -
almost five times more than it did three years ago.
Erbil district governor Nawzad Hadi Maulud says the
main problem facing his region is electricity. An
electrical engineer by training, the governor
finishes work at 9 P.M. Some of the region's
electricity comes from Turkey, which sometimes cuts
the current on a political whim. Other suppliers
include small stations set up by the government, but
these are too small, and too far from the city. Most
of Erbil's electricity comes from private
generators.
People do not pay for the state-supplied
electricity. "How can I charge money for a bad
service?" the governor says. "After all, I can
provide electricity for only a limited number of
hours per day. First I have to prove that I can
provide excellent service, and only then can I begin
collecting money for it. The main problem is that I
have to deal with the memories of the Saddam Hussein
era. His administration provided very good services
for free or cheap. Now, if I provide a service that
is not very good, people will compare it with what
they had during that period, and conclude there is
no good reason to pay for it."
All municipal services - medical services,
university education, water, sewage and more - are
free. However, in this state where the government
provides everything for nothing, there are no
welfare services or national insurance. There are
also no health maintenance organizations. But most
of all, there are no bank fees - because there are
no banks. Life is carried out in cash, and
businesses use banks in Turkey or Jordan.
"We do not have a real infrastructure for business,"
says an adviser to Barzani, the regional president.
"There is money but there is no strategic thinking.
We aspire for a well-balanced and independent
economy, and the Kurdish region has adopted an
excellent investment law. We have a great deal to
offer investors, especially security and tranquility,
but meanwhile, everything is being conducted in a
tribal fashion, with written notes."
If the building impetus one can see here is the
result of written notes, one could imagine how far
Kurdistan could get with an organized
administration.
haaretz com
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