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Iraq's reconstruction and development

Baghdad Tajiyat stadium 60k capacity
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Karbala exhibition centre
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Karbala,feminist culture centre.
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Babylon provincial councel.
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Kirkuk municipality
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Baghdad Iraqi commission for computers and informatics, approved
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Baghdad set to get first female mayor | Middle East Eye

Zekra Alwach is being seen as a highly-skilled technocrat who has worked at Ministry of Higher Education

Baghdad is to get its first ever female mayor, a government spokesman said on Saturday.

Zekra alwach, a civil engineer and director general of the ministry of higher education, will become the first female to be given such a post in Iraq when she begins work tomorrow, a government spokesperson said.

Alwach will be the only female mayor of any Arab League capital.

As mayor - the most important administrative position in the capital - Alwach will deal directly with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and will have similar prerogatives to that of a cabinet minister.

The role, however, is a difficult one. Alwach will take office at a time of rampant corruption, economic difficulty and conflict with the country currently struggling to fight off Islamic State militants who control vast swathes of western Iraq.

Alwach, who holds a doctorate in engineering, is seen as a technocrat and is not regarded as having any political affiliation, in an otherwise highly fraught political climate.

"Abadi sacked the [former] mayor Naim Aboub and named Dr Zekra Alwach to replace him," government spokesperson Rafed Juburi said.

Aboub's removal was not designed as a punishment, Juburi added, although Aboub was regularly accused on social media and by Baghdad residents as incompetent, the spokesman added.

He made headlines in March 2014 when he described his city, beset by brutal sectarian violence and rife with corruption, as "more beautiful than New York and Dubai".

"Aboub is a clown. Abadi should have sacked him from the start," Yasser Saffar, a Baghdad baker, told AFP. "All his statements were ridiculous."

Alwach's appointment is a breakthrough for gender equality in Iraq, where human rights groups have long complained of widespread discrimination and violence against women.

According to a UN report last year, at least a quarter of Iraqi women aged over 12 are illiterate and just 14 percent enter the workplace.

While the constitution reserves 25 percent of parliamentary seats for women, only two ministers out of the country’s 29 are headed by women.

- See more at: Baghdad set to get first female mayor | Middle East Eye
 
Iraq signs contract to build $11 billion petrochemical factory in Basrah. Investment by shell. Expected to produce in $1 billion a year in profit.

Also, one of the worlds largest sugar factory has opened in Babylon, producing 900k tons of sugar per year. Enough to cover Iraq's growing demand.




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Baghdad. Building for technology and information
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Karbala, school for orphans built by the Imam Hussain administration.

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Najaf mall and hotel.
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Hanwha wins additional $2.12 billion construction deal in Iraq

Hanwha Group, the nation's 10th-largest conglomerate, said Monday its building affiliate has clinched a $2.12 billion order to build infrastructure for a new city in Iraq.

Under the agreement with Iraq's National Investment Commission (NIC), Hanwha Engineering & Construction will build the social infrastructure ― including some 300 schools, hospitals, police stations and firehouses ― in Bismayah in southeast Baghdad.

This follows from a previous deal the company made in Iraq in 2012, when Hanwha Engineering won the $8 billion Bismayah New City Project, the biggest urban development project in Iraq.

The Bismayah construction project is expected to be completed in 2019, according the company.

"Hanwha Engineering has won over $10 billion worth of orders from the Iraqi project alone, taking the lead in rebuilding the war-torn nation," said a company official in a statement.

Kim Seung-yeon, Hanwha Group chairman, has been sparing no effort to make the project a success. Since the construction started, despite the sporadic civil wars in Iraq, Kim has visited the Middle Eastern country three times.

Dr. Sami R. Al Araji, the NIC chairman, was quoted in a statement saying he thanked the company's workers who faithfully honored the construction project instead of fleeing the nation.

Based on mutual trust built during the current construction projects Hanwha Engineering will be well positioned for more business opportunities in Iraq, which plans to build more new cities like Bismayah.

Hanwha wins additional $2.12 billion construction deal in Iraq

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Baghdad Shiite pilgrimage draws record crowd

A record crowd of more than 10 million Shiite worshippers visited the shrine dedicated to Imam Musa Kadhim in Baghdad over the past week, a spokesman for the site said Thursday.

The annual pilgrimage climaxed with mass prayers Thursday after a week that saw millions of faithful march to the northern neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, where the shrine is located.

"The number of people this year exceeded 10 million over a period of five days to a week. This is the highest number, it is unprecedented," Amer al-Anbari told AFP.

Kadhim, the seventh of 12 revered imams in Shiite Islam, died in 799 AD. The commemoration has in recent years turned into a huge event that brings the Iraqi capital to a standstill for days.

The Arbaeen pilgrimage marking the death of another imam, Hussein, drew 17.5 million people to the southern city of Karbala in December, according to official figures.

Baghdad Shiite pilgrimage draws record crowd: spokesman | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR
 
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Nouri al-Maliki (C) attends a ceremony honoring fighters of the group who died during their fight against the Islamic State, in Baghdad, Feb. 21, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Ahmed Saad)

Iraq’s missing money
Iraq is passing through a dangerous phase. There is a lot of waste and corruption and little transparency in state institutions. The security situation is deteriorating. And lately, there has been negative information about Iraqi officials responsible for the oil revenues during the last years. This has led to the dangerous situation that Iraq is [now] in.

Summary: Amid the deteriorating economy and the drop in oil revenues, a huge chunk of the federal budget seems to have disappeared, most of it reportedly lost under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Author Walid Khoudouri Posted May 19, 2015
TranslatorRani Geha
Original Article اقرا المقال الأصلي باللغة العربية

It was shown that during the first week of May, the Iraqi parliament received, all at once, the final accounts of the eight years of the rule of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the 2006-13 period to “review and approve them.” This means that the previous years’ accounts had not been reviewed or approved. And parliament is now being asked to approve them all at once after Maliki lost the prime minister post. The move to approve all the past years’ final accounts is considered an illegal act according to the norms of parliamentary systems and traditions. The main role of the legislative branch is to review and approve the previous year’s accounts, and then approve the new year’s budget submitted to parliament by the government or the executive branch. This is already provided for in the Iraqi constitution.

Earlier this year, parliament member Magda Tamimi declared that she was preparing studies indicating that hundreds of billions of dollars are missing from the state’s annual budgets during Maliki’s reign. Tamimi has access to state financial figures because she has been a member of the parliamentary Finance Committee during the current and previous sessions. She is conducting a study on corruption in state institutions.

State budgets for the years between 2006 and 2013 were submitted, but not the budget for 2014. This is not strange, since the parliament at the time did not agree on the 2014 budget. And there was no budget for that year, which means that it is not possible to calculate and audit the budget of that year.

Now there is fear that the major political blocs in parliament would agree to approve at the time all the final accounts for the past years and issue parliamentary resolutions in this regard. Sabah al-Saadi, a former member of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee, reportedly said that the budgets of the past years “have been spent but there is no reconstruction of infrastructure, no investments, no fixing of the electricity, no housing, and no solution to the water scarcity or other problems. ... The budgets that were spent from 2006 to 2012 amounted to $614 billion. That is in addition to the 2013 budget, for a total of $727 billion. This is enough money to build a completely new Iraq.” It is also noteworthy that the Iraqi parliament has failed to approve the 2014 budget and has returned it several times to the Council of Ministers to make amendments because of the presence of many irregularities.

The loss of hundreds of billions of dollars a year — in light of the extreme poverty that the country is still suffering from — is a major scandal. According to statements by current senior officials, there were many “spacemen” during Maliki’s rule. “Spacemen” are individuals that get registered as employees in the civil and military institutions but who do not show up for work or perform any work in official bodies while getting paid their monthly salaries. The top official in the state and the commander of the armed forces throughout this period was Maliki.

This information raises many questions, including: Will the chairman of the finance committee in parliament, Ahmad Chalabi, seek to obtain the approval of the parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri to start an investigation into this matter? Will the matter be discussed in public hearings of the finance committee and in the presence of media and civil society organizations? In the absence of transparency, who is the ultimate beneficiary of these billions of dollars? Are they only Iraqi politicians, or was a large part of the money transferred to neighboring countries — especially Iran and Syria — to help those two countries bypass the international embargo imposed on them?

If the money were sent to only some politicians, this means local politicians have accumulated huge funds, which they can use in future political campaigns to return to power. If the money was transferred to neighboring countries, it means that the previous government paid for its survival throughout the period by helping Iran spread its regional influence and by helping the Syrian regime stay in power.



Read more: Iraq’s missing money - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
 
Today in Mesopotamia
Daily commentary on Iraqi affairs and the surrounding neighborhood by an Iraqi in Washington

Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Federal Oil Ministry includes KRG exports in January figures

Something is different. The Federal Oil Ministry today included oil produced and exported by the KRG via Ceyhan in it's production and export figures for January. The addition brought the total production figure to a nice and juicy 4,775,000 bpd! This was not the case in previous statements since the collapse of the last oil/budget agreement. Last month's statement, for example, stated that: "Oil exports via Ceyhan port are suspended because the agreed amounts have not been delivered by the Kurdistan Region Government"

Could this mean that a new deal has been struck? Or is Baghdad just messing with Erbil?
 
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Dismay, poetry as home of Jew who helped found modern Iraq is destroyed
Tourism Ministry, historians and a poet decry demolition of 100-year-old villa of Sir Sassoon Eskell

BY JTA AND DOV LIEBER August 12, 2016, 10:47 pm

Sir Sassoon Eskell (center, in fez) sits directly on the left of King Faisal I of Iraq (with dark beard) in Baghdad in a photo from the 1920s. (Wikimedia Commons)

The 100-year-old home of Iraq’s first finance minister, Sir Sassoon Eskell, has been bulldozed, even though it was earmarked for preservation as a historical monument.

The 19th-century villa of the respected Jewish minister was destroyed so that the site could be handed over to a developer, under the authority of the Baghdad municipality.

An official in Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities slammed the move as a “violation” of the law, and several Iraqi intellectuals decried the demolition of the historical building as indicative of corruption under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Eskell, who was born into an aristocratic Baghdadi Jewish family in 1860, was instrumental in founding the Iraqi government’s laws and financial infrastructure.


Sir Sassoon Eskell, a Baghdadi Jew who served as Iraq’s first finance minister and was a key player in the founding of the early kingdom. (Courtesy: wikipedia)

Eskell, who died in 1932, is held by many in the country in high esteem as a patriot and an accomplished civil servant.

“Seen in the context of the urban history, heritage and architecture of Baghdad, the demolition of the Sasson residence is a catastrophe,” Adel al-Ardawi, a historian specializing in Iraqi heritage, was quoted by Israel’s Maariv newspaper as saying on Thursday. “If the rule of law were a reality, the people responsible for changing Iraq with such actions would’ve been harshly punished.”


Rubble of the destroyed home of Sir Sassoon Eskell (AlMada TV screenshot)

The villa, located on a desirable riverbank street, was sold to a developer who had it torn down to make room for a high-rise apartment complex, according to Maariv.

Nabil al-Rube’I, an Iraqi historian specializing in the history of Babylonian Jewry, told the newspaper that “the news of the demolition was received [in Baghdad] with great sadness,” adding: “Every Iraqi intellectual, or even just anyone interested in the country’s past, knows who Yechezkel Sassoon was.”

He sarcastically added: “I would like to thank our country, our government and its institutions for its honoring, with the demolition, of Sassoon’s great contribution as a devoted civil servant who acted in good faith and honesty with public funds.”

Heritage sites of all stripes have been neglected and plundered in Iraq since the overthrow in 2003 of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, who had ruled the country since 1979. But “this is especially true for Jewish sites,” al-Rube’I said.

The demolition moved a young poet, Mohammed al-Rakabi, to write a protest poem, which was shared online.

“Sassoon, your abode is in our heart. Love remains and will not die in chains. He you been born in a country that recognizes its founders, it would not have given rise to ignoramuses turned masters,” reads the poem.

Iraq’s tourism ministry blamed the municipality for the demolition, which the ministry said the city approved illegally.

Eskell, who is buried in Paris, attended the Alliance Jewish high school in Ottoman-ruled Baghdad until his father, lawyer Ezra Sasson, sent him to Istanbul to complete a law degree. He spoke Greek, German, French, Latin and English and served as an interpreter for the Baghdad district administration, landing a senior position at the water administration service before his election in 1908 to the city council as an alderman.

Favored by the Ottoman rulers of Iraq, he served for two terms before he was appointed a special advisor to the agricultural and trade ministry and later, when he was 61, as finance minister. He died 11 years later, while still presiding as the chairman of the local parliament’s finance committee. His private library was at one point one of Iraq’s finest but it was plundered and the collection was lost after 2003.

The Baghdad municipality, announcing the imminent demolition of his home a week ago, said in a press release that it was “not a heritage site according to the book of the heritage department.”

“The home was constructed 100 years ago on Rashid Street, in central Baghdad, and is presently granted to a citizen to invest in,” the statement continued, stressing that “the investment is done in accordance with the law.”


Sir Sassoon Eskell, a Baghdadi Jew who served as Iraq’s first finance minister and was a key player in the founding of the early kingdom. (Courtesy: wikipedia)

But Sa’id Hamza, head of the investigation department of heritage sites within the ministry, accused the municipality of “violating the law” by giving away the home for investment.

“Who in Baghdad’s municipality considered the home to not be a heritage site?” he asked.

Hamza added that Eskell’s home was composed of two parts: one that was meant to be handed over to the Finance Ministry, and another that was supposed to be returned to his scion Albert Sassoon Eskell.

Eskell, who was knighted by King George V in 1923, was a key figure in the founding the Iraqi state in 1920, and served five terms as the country’s finance minister. He also served as the deputy for Baghdad in the first parliament of the Kingdom, and was reelected to all successive parliaments until his death.

When Winston Churchill convened the Cairo conference in 1921 to discuss what would become Iraq, Jordan and Israel, Eskell was one of two Iraqis sent to determine the fate of his country and choose its king.

Eskell was so well-regarded for his strict managerial ethic, with employees, officials and even King Faisal, that his last name has been transformed into a verb meaning “to be strict in holding people to account for their actions,” Assabah al-Jadeed reported.

The famed English writer Gertrude Bell wrote admiringly of Eskell’s personality and political talents.


Photo taken at the 1921 Cairo Conference. Seated: from right: Winston Churchill, Herbert Samuel. Standing first row: from left: Gertrude Bell, Sir Sassoon Eskell, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, Jafar Pasha al-Askari. (Courtesy: wikipedia)

“The man I do love is Sasun Eff. [Eskell] and he is by far the ablest man in the Council. A little rigid, he takes the point of view of the constitutional lawyer and doesn’t make quite enough allowance for the primitive conditions of the ‘Iraq, but he is genuine and disinterested to the core. He has not only real ability but also wide experience and I feel touched and almost ashamed by the humility with which he seeks — and is guided by — my advice,” Bell wrote in 1920.
 
BISMAYAH: IRAQ’S LARGEST DEVELOPMENT PROJECT


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Ten kilometers southeast of Baghdad, just off the Baghdad-Kut highway, a whole new city is under construction. 100,000 residential units are planned to accommodate around 600,000 Iraqis in the biggest development project Iraq has ever seen. The project has received praise from numerous Iraqi figures, including former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who described it as a “dream” which “reflects our hope to provide housing units for all the Iraqi people who were deprived of their right to live in decent housing.”

The National Investment Commission (NIC) of Iraq is developing the Bismayah New City Project, with design and construction being handled by one of Korea’s leading engineering and construction companies, Hanwha E&C Corporation. A host of companies have been delegated different roles on the project. A gas-fired, 3,000-megawatt plant is currently being built by the Turkish Enka Insaat company, with the company’s chairman Sinan Tara quoted as saying that it would be financed by Mass Global and some Iraqi lenders. Hanwha E&C are currently building 14 sub-plants for the production of different construction materials including precast concrete.

The city will come equipped with all the necessary amenities, including schools, law enforcement and sports facilities . Bismayah is spread across a total area of 1,830 hectares, and will contain a sprawling infra-network, which will include a good supply of electricity and water, and a water & sewage treatment plant. The new city will also have a well-constructed road network, which will be linked to the nearby highway, connecting Bismayah to the nearby capital. Residential units will come in two types: traditional (living room is independent of the other rooms); and modern (kitchen and living room are interconnected). The units will also come in three different sizes: 100m2, 120m2, and 140m2. The price per square meter is uniform across the units at 630 USD/m2.

Most aspects of Bismayah project are unique in Iraq, including the availability of financing. Smaller scale housing projects have been built across Iraq, especially in the north, but had traditional Iraqi financing – one hundred percent cash. Bismayah is different, offering western economy style mortgage options. Take the 100m2 unit as an example. The unit costs 63,000 USD. Iraqi consumers will have the following four options for purchase:

These financing options make it affordable for citizens to purchase their own home without having to go through the traditional route of borrowing from friends and family. Given that the banking system in Iraq is maturing at a slow pace, mortgages are not yet available and so this is an attractive option.

The first 10,000 units are expected to be completed towards the end of 2015. However, while Hanwha appears to be on track to meet its targets, the Iraqi government, which is tasked with building the utilities infrastructure, including electricity and water, appears to be falling behind. Bismayah represents a crucial test of Iraq’s ability to successfully coordinate and implement a major infrastructure development project.
 

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