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A neglected Capital With Inefficient Officials

By: Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany

Sep 8, 2004

When you go to the city which is declared the capital of a country or a province, you expect to see an organised city with fluent traffic system, clean streets, lots of trees and green spaces, street squares decorated with flowers or monuments, neat shops and markets, well dressed police and modern traffic vehicles, a lots of museums and attraction places, good and clean restaurants which does not pose a health hazard, well equipped public buildings, schools and universities, running clean water and power supply. I'm sure that many of those officials who are running the affairs of Arbil, the capital of the federal region of Kurdistan, have been living for a while in Europe or at least visited those countries many times and have seen the features of its cities and if they had any common sense, they would have certainly thought to try introducing some of those features into Arbil.

When you watch the satellite television  stations broadcast from Kurdistan, which are the mouth piece of the governing regional government or governing political party, and you see the number of mini projects inaugurated or laying its foundation stones celebrated, for the sake of the cameras, or the number of new trees ( millions of them) planted every year, then you build in your mind an image of a green city, booming with new projects in public and private sector with every effort to build a new infrastructure or at least improve its crumbling old infrastructure, you would probably think that after 13 years of self rule, and after years of pursuing lucrative smuggling businesses and tremendous income from taxes levied at Kurdistan-Turkey border or the many hundreds of millions of dollars received from coalition authorities and now from interim Iraqi government as a budget for the region since liberation of Iraq, that Arbil did really achieve some progress at the hand of its (patriotic) officials.

The reality is shocking and is entirely different from the above deliberation, if it happened that you visited Arbil in the last few months or years, The streets are run down and full of craters, dust is covering the pavements and streets edges, sewage water is running openly in the streets with an unbearable stench, there are no markings on the streets, no lanes and no traffic system, every car is moving in a zigzag way, with the streets overwhelmed with thousands of new and very old cars, all ejecting immense exhaust fumes and every car is using its horn loudly without any meaning purpose. Most of the city districts have no running clean water, power supply cuts is very frequent, you don't see any green spaces or new trees, the public buildings are in miserable state, and practically the government occupies building built during Baath reign and rarely any new public buildings are seen. The market places are chaotic, filthy and primitive. the schools and university buildings have rudimentary old furniture, the hospital services are inadequate and chaotic, hospitals looking more like a bazaar with free smoking, whereby relatives, visitors, patients, staff are intermingled with each other in its filthy wards and receptions.

The question which raises itself automatically Why all of this? why is this neglect for Arbil, why is Arbil transformed into a big  chaotic village, where is all this money which is supposed to improve Arbil is flowing, is it ignorance? is it corruption? is it embezzlement? is it a dislike or contempt of Arbil or is it just lack of vision? is it incompetence? or is it disrespect for our Kurdish citizens? or is it possible that our (patriotic) officials think the real way to improve Arbil is to go on with building of their own luxurious Villas and leave the poor districts of Arbil perish under contagious diseases or from the stench of sewages or attacks of flies and mosquitoes. The Kurdish officials of Arbil must climb down from their ivory towers and do their job and their best for Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, I think they have now all full pockets and it's time to use the rest for the sake of Arbil. If you fail in Arbil then you are doomed to fail in other parts of Kurdistan. The people of Kurdistan can no longer accept this neglect.

Dr.Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany
Switzerland