Recently, we haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Iraq. When we do hear something, we hear about a prolonged and possibly rather disorderly process reflecting an incompetent or maybe recalcitrant embodiment of Democracy. There are, in fact, some interesting and reasonably democratic forces at play, along with some that are less so. In any case, the type of democracy they have is somewhat complicated, especially at the current stage they. The situation is sometimes represented as a competition between two guys, Iyad Allawi and his people, and Nouri Al Maliki and his people. We see Mr. Allawi insisting that he won, while Mr. Al Maliki is being a very bad sport, using all of the resources he can muster as the incumbent to change the outcome, so far without success. And, at some level, this is all too true.
But there are some significant, and quite reasonable players driving events behind the scenes. Read the rest of this entry »
I saw this great little video on GritTV today. When I visited Kurdistan, I saw that the women were strong and independent. Banaz, the female half of the couple who hosted me there, was a business woman who handled most of the business end of the schools. She received an award as Business Woman of the Year in Suleimaniya during the year before I met her.
This film tells a little of the tragic past and something about their way into the future. In Iran as well, Architecture is a popular career for women.
Some background: In the late 80s, and especially, 1988, Saddam Hussein accelerated what was already an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds to Genocide. The Barzanis were specifically targeted because Mustafa Barzani was a significant leader in the Kurdish struggle for independence. He was, and is, a great hero to most Kurds in Iraq, and some in Iran. His son, Masoud Barzani, is now President of the Kurdistan Region Government of Iraq.
August 10, 2009 at 2:24 pm
· Filed under KRG, Kurdistan, Oil
Here, the KRG is investing in the company that it is hiring to extract the oil. This way, they are taking ownership of the resource, while not having to build the infrastructure to run it. I am not sure of all the negatives and positives here, but this method of getting a return would be an improvement over the kinds of contracts the Baghdad Government has been encouraged to adopt, and which they clearly don’ t really want to adopt. Read original article: Read the rest of this entry »
There is still conflict in the system, but they are finding ways to work together that benefit everyone. The government of Iraq is in some ways strangled by the necessity of developing every action through laws created in an environment that is not unified. The KRG is not without problems, but they do have an established structure, and they have been more or less disengaged from the ongoing civil war, which has allowed them to focus on other issues of governance.
Although nationalized oil production would be a good thing, the Baghdad Government doesn’t have anyone competent to run it. They also don’t have a legal framework for it (other than the Saddam era laws), and they are under huge pressure to privatize. The result appears to be an administration too internally conflicted to come up with a constructive solution.
By successfully integrating the Kurdish Region as a Federalist State, they can take advantage of the Kurdish progress in this area to begin developing resources for all of Iraq. Read the article below: Read the rest of this entry »