[A-List] US imperialism: 'civilisation' comes to Iraq

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Washington Post / Kurdish burghers blaze capitalist trail / Peter S. Goodman
in Sulaymaniyah

This dusty town near the Iranian border does not yet have a McDonald's. But
it does have a MaDonal, as well as a Matbax, both of which sell
cheeseburgers and french fries using an unmistakably familiar pair of golden
arches.Sulaymaniyah is the only city in Iraq with mobile telephone service
and has dozens of shops selling electronics. It has liquor stores with
shelves full of Tennessee whiskey and Dutch beer, plus Internet cafes
offering espresso.

This ethnically Kurdish town in the mountains of northern Iraq has, in
short, a thriving private economy, albeit one not fully calibrated to the
finer points of international copyright. Its free-flowing, free-market ways
are the result of the independence it has known for the past decade from the
rule of Saddam Hussein.

Now, with Hussein gone and market forces beginning to seep into Iraq, the
Kurdish areas of the north seem likely to take the lead in the develop ment
of a private sector, serving as a sort of incubator for capitalism in the
rest of the country. Trading networks are already established here, with
merchants well versed in how to move products into Iraq from neighboring
Turkey and Iran. Goods have traveled overland the other way as well,
reaching Iran after transiting from the port of Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates, by way of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

"This place has been a very important place for transit," said Assan Hawrmy,
a local agent for an Iranian trading company. "In business, he who is strong
will remain so no matter who is in government. We will get the benefit of
these 10 years. We have connections and experience. Maybe the Kurdish will
be the leaders in the market."
Under Hussein, private businesses were largely discouraged. Those that did
pop up were taxed heavily and subject to random confiscation of goods. But
after the 1991 Gulf War, this area became essentially severed from the rest
of Iraq, ruled by the Pa triotic Union of Kurdistan, an ethnic Kurdish
Party, and protected by a no-fly zone that barred Iraqi military planes and
was enforced by the United States and Britain.

In the years that followed, hundreds of private businesses emerged,
encouraged by the local government and aided by the easy availability of
goods from Turkey. The firms have been constrained by the absence of a
banking system that has generally forced transactions to be in cash, but
they have also been nurtured by capital from Kurdish relatives abroad.

Sulaymaniyah today is a place that feels unlike the rest of Iraq, a place
where money can fetch what it desires and the traditional mores that prevail
elsewhere generally do not obstruct the selling of product. It is a place
that feels prosperous, as evidenced by Swiss watches on many a wrist and the
BMWs ubiquitous in the traffic.

At a cafe in the lobby of the Sulaymaniyah Palace Hotel on a recent
afternoon, patrons in well-tailored clothes sipped bottled peach juice  from
Turkey as they watched music videos on a large-screen television - Abba,
followed by an animated sketch featuring a pair of women in bikinis
exploring Miami in a convertible adorned with vanity plates: "Make Luv."

Down the street, Ismail Hama Amin attended to his framing shop, which was
full of posters of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair superimposed
on a map of Iraq. Nearby, a row of appliance shops offered hair dryers from
Germany, juicers from France, and vacuum cleaners and Sony PlayStations from
Japan.

Other shops offered pirated DVD movies, such as "Jaws" and "Raiders of the
Lost Ark," and a Charlie Sheen picture called "Hot Shots! Part Deux,"
featuring a cigar-smoking Saddam Hussein character as a villain.

Nearby, Mohamed Abdul Wahid piled ice cream bars from a factory in Iran into
a Styrofoam cooler, handing them off to a boy who would sell them in a
nearby market.
A block away at Renas Internet  Center, a largely unknown and illicit medium
in Hussein's day, satellite delivered the global computer network to men
occupying 15 cubicles. They stared at the same sort of content that attracts
most of the attention in other lands: One downloaded a photo of an Italian
soccer star, while another surveyed a German casino gaming site. A third
visited an "adult love line," taking in the sight of "blissfullgrl25" in her
underwear, next to her vividly detailed description of how she prefers to
pass the evening.

"They like to check e-mail, chat, then visit the sexy sites," said the
manager, Aram Omer. "Mostly sexy sites. But some sexy sites want MasterCard.
We don't have a bank in our country."

Lately, northern Iraq lacks a lot of other things, too. Though the war
hardly touched this region, sparing it the heavy damage inflicted elsewhere,
the conflict inspired Turkey to shut its borders, crimping the flow of goods
and raising prices. At his electronics shop, Khader Abdulla complained that
the same Samsung videodisc player he used to buy from a trading company in
Turkey for $23 now costs $48.

But the war has also raised the prospect of a unified Iraq, prompting
thoughts among successful merchants here of expanding their sights beyond
the region. At Sana Mobile, one of the two cell phone carriers in town,
there is now talk of expanding into the rest of Iraq. "We have the financial
ability and the technical ability," engineer Khalid Hasan said. "We have the
experience."

At Matbax, which opened four years ago, owner Ahmed Amin does not worry
about legal challenges from McDonald's, asserting that a small rectangle in
his logo that blocks the bottom of one of the arches makes clear that his is
a non-infringing operation. Moreover, he said, the name Matbax, is close to
the word for "kitchen" in Arabic, solidifying his legitimacy. He said he is
exploring plans to build restaurants in Kirkuk and Baghdad. His manager,
Amanj Mohamed, scoffed at the suggestion that their cross-town rival,
MaDonal, was competition. He warned against even setting foot in the place.
"Cheap quality," Mohamed said.

Amin even holds out the possibility of partnering with McDonald's, imagining
that the world's most successful hamburger franchise might wish to tap his
extensive knowledge of beef shwarma, which occupies a prime place on his
menu and a large chunk of his kitchen space as well: Two giant slabs of meat
rotate on skewers, grilling as they turn.

The Guardian Weekly 20-3-0605, page 33