Boom!

السلام عليكم

Condé Nast Portfolio this month ran an excellent cover story about the oil boom in Iraqi Kurdistan and what it means for the Kurds who live there and Iraqi as a whole:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/portfolio/2008/02/19/US-Oil-Plans-in-Kurdistan#page1

What's so remarkable here is not so much the amount of development that is occurring in Iraqi Kurdistan, but the speed. Even with only a fraction of the Kurdish oil fields actively pumping, Kurdistan is witnessing a development boom reminiscent of that of Dubai in the early 1990's. Its not hard to imagine that 20 years from now Northern Iraq will be awash with glittering skyscrapers and new Ferraris. Not only that, the Kurds love us:

"And the Kurds love Americans. Love, love. Investors swarm in from all over the globe, and foreigners are common in Erbil, but if you mention tentatively and apologetically that you’re American, a shopkeeper or café owner is likely to take you aside and grip your arm and address you with the passionate sincerity of a drunken uncle: “I speak not just for me but all of Kurdish people. Please bring your United States Army here forever. You are welcome, welcome. No, I will not accept your money today, please take these goods as my gift to America."

Of course much could go wrong. The Kurd's are the world's largest ethnic group without a country of their own, and the border that divides Turkey and Iraq cuts Kurdistan neatly in half. As Turkey's Kurds peer over the fence and watch Iraq's Kurds get obscenely rich, it’s hard to imagine that they'll want to remain Turkish. In fact the open volleys of a nasty border war between Turkish troops and Kurdish separatists were exchanged in October of 2007 and continue daily. This won’t be a short-term conflict.
Additionally, as pointed out in a side piece that appears here: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/portfolio/2008/02/19/Beyond-the-Iraqi-Oil-Boom the Kurds are selling oil without the permission of the Iraqi government. All oil is supposed to be owned by the federal government in Baghdad, but I don’t think it’s going to matter in the long run. Any effort to force the combination of the Iraqi and Kurdish economies would impede the one thing in the country that’s going really well. I don’t think the government in Baghdad has the muscle to achieve it anyway, especially since – with an election coming up and gas prices rising – it’s not in the interest of the American overlords.