Military reconstruction solves fishy problem in Iraq

British Military reconstruction and development teams are building a modern fish market in a small town in Iraq called Al Qurnah, where the staple food is fish. The town is well known for its biblical tourist attraction - a lone dead tree which is supposedly the tree of life from the Garden of Eden.

Fair in Iraqi holy city draws Turkish traders - AFP

Representatives from more than 60 Turkish companies gathered in Iraq's shrine city Najaf on Monday for a trade fair aimed at drawing foreign investment back to the war-torn country.

The exhibition, organised by the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and the Iraqi Exhibitions Company brought about 100 Turkish business leaders to a hall in the holy Shiite city's main market, according to organisers.

"The goal of holding this exhibition is to attract Turkish investment to Iraq," said organiser Emad al-Rubaie.

"More than 60 companies are attending, especially manufacturers of medium and heavy machinery, including electrical power plant."

Traders were expecting not only to sell their products but to set up investment deals with Iraqi companies.

One of the Turkish businessmen who attended was Ali Gugman, who makes wheelchairs and expressed strong interest in the Iraqi market.

"Our company is interested in meeting the needs of the disabled and the elderly with wheelchairs that will lessen the impact of their disabilities," he said.

Najaf has seen several exhibitions in recent months including a gathering of Iranian industrialists and Rubaie said he intends to organise similar events in the coming months in Baghdad, Basra, and Karbala.

Although security has improved dramatically in Iraq over the past two years the country is struggling economically because of low oil prices and the extensive damage to infrastructure left by decades of war and sanctions.

Basra farmers receive tractors, generators

Basra farmers associations received 40 tractors and four generators in Ad Dayr at Camp Sa'ad.
The ceremony, which benefitted the Al Qurna, Al Medina, Shatt Al Arab and Abu Al Khaseeb farmers associations, represents one of 10 projects funded by U.S. commander's emergency response program money for the Basra province agricultural program.

The total cost for the projects is $10 million.

"It used to cost us 75,000 dinars per day for one of these tractors, but after today it should only cost us for the fuel and the driver. I would like to thank (Multi-National Force) for that," said Abd Al Rahman Khalid, a Basra farmer, through an interpreter.

Other agricultural projects that are part of this program reach as far south as Safwan and as far north as Al Qurna and include green houses, irrigation systems and other necessary equipment to support the agricultural redevelopment in Basra.

Sheik Abu Qasay, the head of Basrah Province farmers association, Sayad Galy Muttar, Basrah Provincial Reconstruction Council Chairman and British Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon, the General Officer in Command of Multi-National Division Southeast all spoke at the ceremony.

"This is a wonderful example of a truly joint project where we work together as partners, listen to peoples needs and come together for the people of Iraq and your agricultural associations," said Salmon.

Farming is a traditional industry for southern Iraq and at one time employed up to 50 percent of Basra province residents. Many of the area's farmers currently rely on hand tools due to a shortage of agricultural machinery and power.

This investment in tractors and generators is expected to improve efficiency and the yield of local farmers, who are not presently able to compete with imported agricultural goods from neighbouring countries. The farmers have had little support over the last 25 years but, in the past, Basra was a very productive farming area that produced up to 70 percent of Iraq's, said British Royal Navy Lt. Alan Paton, a Civil Military Operations project officer with Multi-National Division Southeast.

"The idea was if we can help improve their efficiency by providing greenhouses, tractors, irrigation systems then we might be able to make them a little more productive, perhaps potentially stop the flow of farmers away from an industry that has been in southern Iraq for many years," Paton said.

Iraq eyeing WTO membership for boost to economy

Iraq, whose plans to rebuild after years of war have been undermined by a collapse in oil prices, could get a boost from joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a top official said.

"Iraq has all the components to be able to accede" to the Geneva-based multilateral body, Trade Minister Abdul Falah al-Sudany said in a statement after a meeting with U.S. officials in Baghdad.

Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government is increasingly alarmed about the impact of a drop in oil prices on plans to provide essential services and create jobs.

The price of oil, which accounts for more than 90 percent of government revenues, has fallen by more than $100 from a record $147 per barrel last July.

A steady stream of oil dollars will be key to paying police, paving streets, boosting power supplies -- all crucial to ensuring Iraq does not return to the horrific violence of the years since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

According to the WTO, Iraq applied to WTO membership in 2004, and the last meeting of a working group on joining it was held in April 2008.

In the pipeline

Reading-based Foster Wheeler Energy has been awarded a contract by the South Oil Company for the basic engineering of oil export facilities that will supplement the Al-Basra terminal in Iraq.

The offshore facilities will include new single point mooring tanker loading buoys, together with oil pumping, metering and pipelines, to achieve an export capacity of 4.5 million barrels per day.

The Foster Wheeler contract value for this project was not disclosed and it will be included in the company’s first-quarter 2009 bookings.

Foster Wheeler will prepare a technical definition package, plans and schedules for full project implementation and invitation-to-bid documents for the supply and construction of the offshore export facilities.

‘We have been working with the South Oil Company and Iraq’s Ministry of Oil on the upgrading of these export facilities and we are very pleased to have been awarded this basic design contract,’ said Michael J Beaumont, chairman and chief executive officer of Foster Wheeler Energy.

Suits follow soldiers in Iraq's south - BBC

By Jim Muir

As our Merlin military transport helicopter scudded over the flat dun landscape of southern Iraq, the rear gunner threw himself from side to side on the open tail-flap, peering down this way and that, ever on the alert for potential danger.

Every so often, the juddering craft jolted even more as a bunch of flares were sent arcing down through the sky.

At our destination, an installation that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, we hovered and landed in a whirlwind of brown dust that ravaged washing-lines strung between mudbrick houses nearby.

A small crowd of curious locals turned out to watch what was clearly something of a novel event, as out clambered an odd mixture of British military personnel in combat fatigues and civilians in dark suits awkwardly crimped by flak jackets and topped by ill-fitting helmets.

For this was not a combat mission. Those are few and far between nowadays for the 4,000 remaining British forces in southern Iraq, who are preparing to leave.

Already, since late last year, the primary focus of their mission has been formally changed from security to promoting good governance and economic development.

As part of that revised mandate, here they were ferrying a delegation of Japanese economic officials around the south, where Tokyo is pumping in hundred of millions of dollars in soft loans.

Warm welcome

As their guide and escort, the Japanese had no less a figure than the top British officer in Iraq, Lt Gen John Cooper, who retires shortly as deputy commander of all Coalition forces in the country and is also a former commander of the British troops in the south.

We had landed at the Basra oil refinery, where the visitors were given a warm welcome by director-general Tha'ir Ibrahim and his staff.

"Now that security is so much better, we're launching projects to increase the refinery capacity by about 35% and to upgrade the product specification," said Mr Ibrahim.

"The tank farm [oil depot] here was 60% destroyed during the war with Iran in the 1980s, and then hit again by the Coalition during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990."

"Now the Coalition are helping us rehabilitate the plant. That's life!"

'Big change'

The Japanese delegation were as delighted as their hosts at being able finally to visit projects which they have been involved in from afar for years, without being able to see them on the ground for security reasons.

"I really feel the big change over the past year, and I feel really safe here," said delegation leader Hideki Matsunaga, who heads the Middle East department at the Japanese International Co-operation Agency.

"Of course there are still risks and some incidents and so on, but that's the same all over the world."

"Maybe it will take a little bit more time to change the perception of private-sector people, but maybe first public-sector people like us will come more frequently, and demonstrate that people can now do business as usual."

The Japanese are pledging as much as $1.5bn (£1.05bn) in soft loans (0.75% interest over 40 years, with a grace period of 10 years) and projects will be open to international tender, not just Japanese companies.

Companies cautious

So far, the British forces have helped show 19 companies around the south, where $9bn-worth of investment possibilities have been identified.

But despite the money and lives that it has cost the British to maintain their presence in the strategic, oil-rich south, British companies have been slow to show interest in exploring the investment opportunities.

That's something Lt Gen Cooper would like to see remedied.

"I think there is sufficient potential here, in what is the third largest oil reserves in the world, for British companies, and indeed any others, to come here," he said.

"This may currently be in commercial terms quite high risk, but it is also very high reward, and I would certainly encourage any British company, whether it be in the oil industry or any other part of industry, to get involved in southern Iraq, because the potential is really quite significant."

Militias defeated

Back at the Coalition Operations Base at Basra airport, huge energy is being poured into a co-ordinated effort involving British and American diplomats, development agencies, the military and the Iraqi authorities, mainly focused on bolstering the huge recent security gains by promoting effective regional government and projects that provide benefits and jobs for the people.

The provincial elections on 31 January passed off without a single incident, to the huge relief of Coalition and Iraqi officials.

"The time is now," said one British official.

"There is a significant window. But there is no complacency, because there is still danger."

"The threat now is if the provincial council should fail to deliver, especially in the realm of creating jobs."

Security in Basra and elsewhere in the south was transformed last spring, when the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki threw the Iraqi army into a campaign, codenamed Charge of the Knights, to root out Shia militias which had plagued the area.

With Coalition help, the militia - mainly Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army - was heavily defeated.

Officials estimate that there may be around 200 militiamen still underground in Basra, which is controlled by up to 30,000 Iraqi army forces and police.

Nobody can rule out a return of militia rule if the momentum of the state should falter.

That explains the sense of urgency behind the efforts for political and economic development.

Most of the remaining 4,000 or so British troops will end their mission in May and be out of the country by the end of July.

An estimated 400 will stay behind to help train the Iraqi navy and provide other support for the Iraqi forces.

Basra's streets once ran with blood. Now they bustle with shoppers

By Ian Kirby (words) & Brian Roberts (pictures), 16/11/2008

THE constant blip, blip of a checkout scanner heralds big change at the al-Ameray supermarket on Basra’s main market street, as young Iraqis snap up nappies, magazines, ready meals and the latest perfumes.

Five months ago this street was shuttered and empty, the silence broken only by the whoosh of rocket-propelled grenades and the clatter of an AK47 assault rifle. But today business is booming.

'We'll beat Dubai!' brags Uday"

Read the full story on the News of The World website

Basra calm offers better future

In late August Mike Sergeant from BBC News visited Basra.

For most of the past five years, Basra was more of a battleground than a business centre. After many false starts, British and Iraqi officials say they are finally seeing signs of change.

While here in Basra the BBC and FT travelled with a British businessman Michael Wareing, who is also the co-chairman of the Basra Development Commission - the body overseeing reconstruction efforts here. Find out what the BBC and FT made of the trip:

For the full article click - Basra calm offers better future
The FT also visited - read their article and see pictures of the trip
For the media ops video cast on www.youtube.com/basrablog