Kurdish Towns Benefit From Iraq Insurgency

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/kurds_boom_times


They are among many Iraqi Arabs who have come from unemployment-stricken Baghdad and other cities to earn $10 for eight hours of work in a relatively safe environment. That they are Arabs among historically hostile Kurds suggests that ethnic coexistence is not dead in the new Iraq.


What draws the laborers, some as young as 14, as well as legions of investors, is a Kurdish economy that is flourishing on investment and capital that has been driven out of the insurgency areas.

"We expect terrorism to continue for another year or two," said Mohammed Karim, director of the Board for Promoting Investment in Sulaymaniyah. "We don't hope for this to happen, but if it does continue, the economy of the north will continue to flourish."

He said foreign investment, Iraqi capital and laborers continue to flow in.

In contrast to the rest of the country, hotels, offices, villas and high-rise apartment buildings are going up at a frenzied pace. An international airport is up and running in Irbil — its first flight took Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia — and Sulaymaniyah's airport is to open this spring.



A woman glances a luxury car in a recently opened shop that sells brand new models of cars in downtown Irbil, northern Iraq (news - web sites) Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005. Until recently, people in Iraqi Kurdistan couldn't buy anything except secondhand imported cars, but now the Kurdish economy is flourishing - thanks to a violent insurgency that has disrupted business in much of Iraq and driven investment and capital from Baghdad and other commercial centers to the Kurdish north. (AP Photo/Sasa Kralj)

[meganmonkey]

1. See, we're helping their economy!

:eyes:

[Blue to the bone]

2. This story is pure propaganda. n/t