BARCELONA, Spain – The Kurdistan Region is undergoing a facelift that is sometimes compared to Dubai’s incredible economic boom. Shopping malls, luxury hotels, high-rise buildings and even Kurdistan’s own airline have many Kurds hoping that their autonomous enclave is emerging into the next Dubai.
But not all Iraqi Kurds like that idea.
“I find their (Kurdish leaders’) attempts to emulate Dubai worrying,” said Taban, a 28-year-old Iraqi Kurd who was brought up in Britain and now works in the Gulf emirate. “Dubai itself hasn't achieved anything. It has merely imported buildings and people. Its own society has not modernized,” the UK-educated Kurd told Rudaw. “I fear that Kurdistan is heading in the same direction,” she added.
The innumerable forest of construction cranes that years ago covered Dubai’s skyline are now converging over Kurdistan’s main cities, with the same gusto that put Dubai on the map.
Last October, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) kicked off the nearly $3 billion “Downtown Erbil” project, which is set to transform the Kurdish capital with a slew of five-star hotels, apartment towers, shopping malls, schools and healthcare facilities.
And last month in Sulaimani the biggest and newest five-star hotel, the 28-story Grand Millennium Hotel Shary Jwan, threw open its glittering doors to become the new icon of Kurdistan’s second city.
“Kurdistan should not strive to a Dubai-style rush into a consumer megacity,” thinks Dilan Roshani, a civil engineer educated in Sweden and Britain.
“Kurdistan needs to invest in its reformed values to sustain a better future for generations to come,” said the 45-year-old, who was born near the city of Khanaqin in Iraqi Kurdistan, and returned to Kurdistan in 2011, after arriving as a refugee in Sweden in 1983.
“Education must be the real investment for our ambitions to create a modern state,” he added, and must include the “idea and measures of preserving Kurdistan’s cultural heritage.”
Unlike Dubai, which had little culture to preserve because of its nomadic past, Kurdistan rests in the “Cradle of Civilization.” Iraqi Kurdistan has a rich heritage of 3,000 known archaeological sites, with the Erbil Citadel the jewel in the crown.
Some Kurds watching old buildings being razed to build new malls or office towers, fear this is being done with little regard for preserving Kurdish heritage.
Erbil is recognized as the world’s longest continuously-inhabited city, dating back some 8,000 years, and efforts are underway to have it included in UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.
“Kurdistan's quest for modern status should carry footprints of its historical cultural heritage and should not copy Dubai as a model,” insisted Roshani.
Taban, who did not want her full named used, noted that Dubai is not all luxury and comfort for everyone. She pointed to the poor treatment of Asian laborers, who do everything from construction work to driving taxis in the emirate, as representing the rich emirate’s “darker side.”
“Dubai has the facade of a sophisticated place. Living and working here you see that this facade doesn’t come into place and that Dubai has a very dark side in the very poor way they treat South Asian workers, and the same is starting to happen in Kurdistan,” said Taban.
But she acknowledged there are things Dubai has accomplished that Kurdistan, too, should strive for, such as the ability to attract talent.
“In Kurdistan people need to be related to somebody important to get somewhere, but in Dubai they use the money to pay the person who will do the job better,” she pointed out.
Kurdistan’s foreign direct investment (FDI) stands at $5.5 billion, according to senior Kurdish officials. Kurdistan also has adopted a free market economy and open-door trade policy for neighboring countries, and offers a stable gateway to the rest of Iraq. Erbil has been named the Arab Tourism Capital of 2014.
The Kurdish government is envisaging luring seven million visitors through a strategic plan for 2013-2025, with anticipated earnings of $2.17 billion in tourism revenues.
There is another important parallel with Dubai in the way that Kurdistan is developing: Dubai benefitted immensely as a stable gateway in the 1980s and 1990s for war-torn and volatile neighbors, including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.
As the only stable and safe portion of violence-torn Iraq, Kurdistan, too, is benefitting from the instability in the rest of the country.
Kurdistan’s success story began 22 years ago, with the establishment of the “no-fly zone” over the region that placed the Kurds out of reach of Saddam Hussein’s deadly air force.
Now, the Kurdish enclave is waiting for development to take off with a bang, once serious rows with Baghdad are resolved and Erbil can export its own oil and gas through pipelines to Turkey.
Instead of opposing independent oil and gas exports from Kurdistan, Kurdish officials say, Baghdad should copy what the Kurds have accomplished as a model for the rest of Iraq.
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