Thread: Archive News - Iraqi Dinar Think Tank - 22/06/2010 - 04/10/2010

Support of private banks to do banking activities

Confirmed the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce Banks need to support the civil bank to carry out activities carried out by ministries and government departments.

A media source in the room to the reporter That the Scientific Advisory Committee in the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce meeting discussed the ways to support private banks and allow them to carry out banking Awalnchatat all of the projects undertaken by ministries and departments have And determine and restrict it to the government banks and the opening credits, and documents in foreign imports.

And to allow banks to open a current account civil and fixed deposits of the ministries and public corporations belonging to the state by financial talent banks of civil and ability to use these deposits to support the national economy.

http://al-iraqnews.net/new/economic-news/21977.html

Moving Into The Economic Recovery


It has been a busy week politically in Iraq, with both good and bad news emerging from the country:

The last American combat brigade left the country on Thursday morning, seven years after the US-led invasion; 6,000 support troops will remain until the end of the month, and a further 50,000 will stay until the end of the year in a purely advisory capacity.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has been blamed for several recent bomb attacks on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, has announced a ceasefire for the month of Ramadan.

The constitutional challenge to Iraq’s oilfield development contracts has reportedly been rejected by the Supreme Court on Monday.

Talks between Ayad Allawi and Nouri al-Maliki have broken down, and even the loose coalition between the Iraqi National Alliance and the State of Law parties is showing signs of strain. Vice-president Adel Abdul Mahdi is being spoken of as a possible compromise candidate.

But as even a basic read of this week’s news items will tell you, business is going ahead and plans are being made.

According to James Hogan, chief executive of UK bank HSBC in Iraq, “Iraq is at the next stage of development; we’re moving beyond security considerations and into the economic recovery”.

http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/201...omic-recovery/

Baghdad Chamber of Commerce calling on the government to review economic laws

Baghdad Chamber of Commerce called for the need to oversee economic commissions formed by the government on the projects and economic plans.

The An official in the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce reporter that the chamber Demanded during a meeting and included a number Economic commissions and the scientific advisory and business to consider many of the laws of economics and how to review and provide solutions for its amendment. demanded that many of the stakeholders the government on the need to oversee economic commissions formed by the government on the projects and economic plans in order to be able to modify some laws that concern the private sector, civil Which is regarded as the largest part of the national economy for that claim was Continuing participation in some room in the administration of laws Economic and reorganize and modify the laws of economics. which is mostly the result The former regime does not apply to the current situation in political free market

http://al-iraqnews.net/new/economic-news/21990.html

Iraq headed by the Arab summit starting next September

Is headed by Iraq beginning of the fourteenth of September next coming Arab summit to be held in Baghdad in March of next year, has described the Arab League political movement between blocks as positive.

The Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League Ambassador Ahmed Ben Helli told a news briefing that the political movement for the formation of the Iraqi government reached the final stages, hoping to form a government as soon as possible, noting that the university is in constant contact with Iraqi leaders.

Promised Ben Helli, the American role in forming the government a positive and essential, and he one of the solutions break the contract and contribute to the payment of the political process forward, stressing that the decision to hold the next Arab summit can not be abandoned, noting that the Presidency will be to Iraq from the Ministerial Meeting to be held on the fourteenth of next September.

The other hand, the Arab League announced that the interior ministers of Iraq's neighbors meet in Manama Sunday to discuss the security situation in the country. Ben Helli said that the Secretary-General Amr Moussa received an invitation to participate in this regular meeting, held another meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Mr Bin Costume that all the neighboring countries of Iraq is responsible for stability, and the Arab League looks forward to having this responsibility seriously, to be the target of holding these meetings is to work toward restoring stability in Iraq, and the respect for the border is responsible for all, particularly the neighboring countries.

http://www.uragency.net/index.php?aa=news&id22=10608

Oil Contracts Legal Challenge Dismissed

We recently reported on a constitutional challenge to Iraq’s oilfield development contracts, which was being pursued by a former member of parliament. The challenge centered on the Rumaila contract, signed with BP and CNPC in 2009, as a test case.

According to Iraq Oil Report, the challenge was rejected by the Supreme Court on Monday. The court also imposed fees of 3 million Iraqi Dinars (about $257,000) on the plaintiff, Shetha Musawi. Her lawyer had resigned from the case.

Ms Musawi reportedly moved from Baghdad to Erbil following a bomb attack on her home and increased death threats.

http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/201...nge-dismissed/

Iraq's oil - Hard to get out
Foreign oil companies are still finding Iraq a tough place to do business

THE besuited band of executives from an international oil company had expected a different reception when they arrived in Baghdad to sign a deal with senior government officials to develop one of the world’s largest untapped oilfields. Instead of being whisked through the airport, they were held for several hours by immigration officers who thought them “suspicious”. Eventually they were let go. But plenty of others have to wait even longer.

Iraq’s bloody-minded and inefficient bureaucracy is one of several problems oil majors face. Many are still hopeful about the country’s prospects, but the euphoria of last year, when the government started auctioning large fields, has given way to caution. Increasing Iraqi oil production from 2.5m barrels a day to 12m, a quarter more than Saudi Arabia pumps now, will take more than the six to seven years that the government projects, not least because of Iraq’s continuing political violence.

In the past six months the oil infrastructure has become a focus for insurgent attacks. Pipelines are a favourite, as are refineries and oil-ministry offices. In response, a special police force that guards vital oil installations has been beefed up. That may not be enough, given the sector’s vast expansion. Police in the oil region around Basra have found weapons that were meant to be used to attack foreign companies. Papers found with the arms named specific targets, many of them British.

Insurgents are not the only unfriendly locals. Trade-union leaders have called for strikes over oilfield wages. And tribal associations are making big demands for compensation (one asking for $1 a barrel), on the ground that they have lost ancestral land to towering rigs. Iraq’s oil-rich marshes near the border with Iran are a particular flashpoint. Worried about meeting its production targets, the government has harassed its most vocal oilfield opponents and threatened to send in the army. Such conflicts, though limited so far, could quickly get out of control once the foreign-run fields start producing next year.

There is opposition to foreign oil companies in Baghdad too, especially in parliament. Several MPs, along with a former head of Iraq’s largest state oil company and Iyad Allawi, a potential future prime minister, have said recent oil deals should be reconsidered. Lawsuits financed by the oil companies’ critics are wending their way through the courts. An exasperated oil-ministry spokesman has asked party leaders “not to throw the oil sector into the middle of their political struggles”.

Logistics are the oil men’s most immediate problem. Importing vast amounts of equipment has swamped Iraq’s tiny port at Umm Qasr. Expansion will take years and could be complicated by the port’s proximity to territorial waters disputed by Iran. Security is bad too. Umm Qasr is a haven for Iraq’s smugglers, so many companies are loathe to store expensive equipment there; they may never see it again. Neighbouring Kuwait has talked of building a new border post in the desert so that companies can bypass the port and bring in rigs on vehicles, but it has set no date.

Meanwhile, many oilfields remain infested with landmines from wars fought by Saddam Hussein. Hundreds of specialists are needed to clear them. The Rumaila field, contracted to BP and China National Petroleum Corporation, includes an area ten miles long studded with mines. They may prove easier to extract than the oil.

http://www.economist.com/node/168467...46742&fsrc=rss

Came accross this. Posted today. Memories from 1961.

In exile from paradise
An excerpt from the memoirs of Iraqi-born writer and Israel Prize winner Shmuel Moreh

Memoirs from the pens of Iraqi Jews are plentiful on the bookshelf. Shaul Haddad, who is now more than 100 years old, Sasson Somekh and Salim Fattal are some of the authors whose names one can enumerate here. The differences in their approaches and tastes regarding the same matters could support an entire research project. Various publishers as well as organizations of Babylonian Jewry and their heritage centers pulse with initiatives for publishing memoirs, but also wrangling, as in the case of Fattal, whose book "An Idol in the Temple of the Israeli Academy," was published this year.

Writer, researcher and Israel Prize laureate Shmuel Moreh has published his memoirs in chapters, on the Arabic Internet site Elaph. An agile Arab publisher hastened to collect the chapters and publish them in book form, without the permission of the author, and has already brought out a second edition of the volume. Presented here is an adapted translation of one of those chapters.

I had completed my studies for a master's degree at the Hebrew University when my father arrived in Israel via Iran and Turkey ( (1961 . He expressed wonderment at this peculiar country, where everything is the reverse of what is usual in Iraq. It's a country that sends a student to learn Arabic language and literature, and whereto? To London, the capital of the Western world and of the empire on which the sun never sets!

"I can understand that they'd send someone to study chemistry, physics and economics," said my father. "But Arabic? What will they do with it here?" My father continued to think this way, with the worldview of an Iraqi merchant who asks every morning: What is the dollar exchange rate today? He bought shares on the stock market and purchased lands in Israel but nearly lost the money remaining to him from his savings in Iraq, which was smuggled to Israel via London.

He used to say, gritting his teeth: "By God, I don't understand this upside-down country. May the Lord have mercy on Iraq. There we knew how to calculate our steps. Open your hand a bit, slip a few dinars into the official's hand in order to grease the process of your request a bit and everything will fall right into place. Here there is no bribery, there is no cronyism and there isn't the magical religious saying: "Do it for the sake of God! Do it for the sake of the Prophet Mohammad!' Here everything is according to the dark law of the inhabitants, a law I don't understand."

My father obtained from the deputy director of the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, Mr. Nahum Pessin, authorization to receive medical care whenever necessary. This, after he donated a considerable sum to the center. The certification was supposed to have enabled my father to be admitted in an emergency at any time, even if it was not the turn of this hospital, which he preferred, on the night duty roster. In this way my father felt protected, and took pride in the thought that modern medicine would protect him from old age and exhaustion.

But apparently he had ignored the Arabic proverb: "Since when is the apothecary able to repair what time has ruined?!" If he fell ill, my father would hospitalize himself in the best room at the hospital, and the man responsible for donor relations, Mr. Pessin, would come visit him with a basket of fresh fruit and reassure him. He also enjoyed the ministrations of the prettiest nurse in the hospital. They knew of his love (or weakness ) for beauty and the years did not change his taste and his admiration of the fair sex. He would become angry if they were tardy in examining him. I would comfort him and tell him there are lots of traffic accidents and emergency situations in the country because of the instability on the borders.

My father did not suffer from the cultural and psychological shock suffered in Israel by immigrants from Iraq and the countries of the East. In particular, he did not suffer from not knowing the Hebrew language or from the differences in customs and traditions. He did not suffer from the change in the role of the father - that is, the collapse of patriarchal sovereignty in the oriental family, with support of the family getting passed along to the daughters and sons who began to work and support their parents. The trait that helped him acclimatize was his mastery of six languages. Back in the time of the Ottomans, he had learned Turkish, French, English, Arabic and Hebrew. During the period he was in Persia in the 1920s, when he was an agent for the British automobile manufacturer Ford, he spoke and read Persian well. He had enough money to enable each of us to complete his studies abroad and to help each of his four sons buy a home and a car, after helping with the weddings of my two sisters.

He was not a burden to us. He had a strong will and pride in himself, and everyone respected him for his intelligence and his insistence on his dignity. He was not superstitious and he even donated some of his body parts to be taken from him after his death for medical research. He assumed people around him respected him because of his strong personality.

He attributed no importance to the smiles he received from doctors, officials and realtors when they heard his heavy Iraqi accent, which was obvious when he spoke Hebrew. He did not try at all to imitate the Ashkenazi accent but pronounced the letters bet, resh, ayin, qof and the soft gimel, as though they were Arabic consonants.

"And why not?" - he would say. "After all, Hebrew, as you know, is a Semitic language, and you Europeans messed it up and transformed the aspirated het into a guttural khet, the ayin into an aleph, the tet into a taf and the resh into a ghesh. Give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good! What do you want? For me to talk in a garbled and foreign accent? My accent is the correct Semitic accent and the Hebrew language is, after all, Arabic's twin sister."

He enjoyed speaking Arabic with the Arab doctors, pharmacists and patients at Shaare Zedek hospital and volunteered to translate for the Arab patients so the doctors would understand what was troubling them. He was happy to sit with Israeli Arabs and tell them about Iraq, life there, the island in the Euphrates in summer, when the current was weak and slow, the moonlit nights and the various kinds of grilled fish.

He would tell them: "You are impressed by the fish in the Kinneret? By the life of Allah, in Iraq every fish is the size of a whale. And what you call rivers - are those rivers at all, the Jordan and the Yarkon? If you could see the length and width of the Euphrates and the Tigris, then you would be impressed."

God's paradise

He spoke often about Iraq, and he didn't permit criticism or mockery of it. "There aren't any better dates than those in Iraq, or melons and watermelons, or grapes and oranges and there are no tastier lemons and apples. The size of a flower in Iraq is like the size of a tray. The soil in Iraq is so fertile that the watermelons grow there on both sides of the asphalt roads."

His Arab friends from Abu Ghosh and the hospital would say to him, "Tell me, if so, then Iraq is God's paradise."

To which he would respond: "Why not?"

And then they would ask him: "So why did you leave Iraq if it was paradise?" He would shake his head and say to them in despair: "It was paradise before the Ba'ath Party destroyed it. Everything is in the hands of God, everything is in the hands of heaven. Maybe it is punishment for those who massacred the Jews in the farhud [the pogrom of Baghad, in 1941]."

In his eyes, everything in Iraq was better: The people were more dignified and respected one another, they honored the elderly, the Iraqis were generous and hospitable. "There is no one like the Iraqis" - he would say. "For this I love them." Then he would sigh and say: "It is a pity about those vanished days. When the Muslims used to see how efficiently I managed my businesses, they would be amazed and say: "Ibrahim Efendi, ya Abu Jacques - it's too bad you are a Jew. Why don't you convert to Islam and we'll call it quits?!"

Then my father would remember Yehezkel, who remained in Iraq, converted to Islam and changed his name at the Interior Ministry to Haki, lived with a Muslim woman as his common-law-wife, took pride in being her companion, eating and drinking at her place and sleeping with her. She kept him on such a short leash that he couldn't move without her agreement.

One night "Haki" felt like rebelling and going out with his friends to the island in the Euphrates, with a quarter of a bottle of arak, a grilled fish, grilled onions and tomatoes, seasoned with hot Indian curry, warm esh tanur [Iraqi flatbread ], "genuine Indian mango pickle" and mezze - appetizers including salads and everything else he he longed for.

Yehezkel stayed out until after midnight and returned home in an elevated mood, humming Arab muwali songs and wobbling like a drunk with a bottle of Zahlawi arak in hand. When he arrived, he was unable to find the keyhole, banged on the door and continued in his attempts to find the keyhole, until his patience gave to and he started to shout: "Hey woman, open the door, I'm tired. Where are you, you ... ?"

The door opened slowly and when he stuck his head in to see who had opened it for him at long last, he immediately felt a stunning blow on his pate. It was the long heavy stick for pounding the bulgur for kubbeh. He fell to the floor, bloodstained and in a faint.

"You Jew son of a b***h," shouted the woman. "How dare you leave me and go to your whores? Are they more beautiful than I am or is their bottom larger? You stinking Jew villain."

After this knockout blow, and even though he prayed and fasted, in accordance with the religion of Mohammed and the Koran, he was fed up with the violent aspects of Iraqi society. He fled to Tehran and from there he came to the promised land, changed his name back to the kosher Jewish name Yehezkel. In so doing of course, he forgot his prayers and fasting as a devout Muslim and cursed his mistress, the woman of contention and strife, who had treated him like a contemptible slave.

My mother passed away at Hadassah hospital in Ein Karem, not at Bikur Holim, where both my parents had volunteered to help the nursing staff for many years. One day I received a call from Hadassah, telling me to come see her as she breathed her last. I went to Hadassah with my wife Karina. The nurses said nothing when we arrived, just nodded their heads to indicate the direction of the door to her room. My mother looked sunken in a deep sleep, her cheeks were still smooth and unwrinkled and her face was calm. She lay on her right side with her charming legs folded and looked so small and helpless. This was the first time I saw her without that effervescent flow of vitality that beat in her heart.

When I had visited her a week before that terrible day, the Yemenite woman who shared her room had asked me: "Which of her sons are you? Are you Sami? She called out for you the whole time. Apparently she remembered only your name. Is it true that all of you teach at the university? After all, it's clear you turned out that way because she had a sharp mind and had a way with words. She had the doctors twisted around her little finger. She could turn a phrase that left the hearers dumbfounded. What a mother you had! Her aristocratic appearance impressed everyone."

My father was a donor to Shaare Zedek hospital and he loved it. Ultimately, however, he passed away at Herzog geriatric hospital, near the Har Hamenuhot cemetery in Jerusalem. He died at a ripe old age, at 94. We did not tell him our mother had passed away quietly. However, when he saw us after an absence of several days, he suddenly asked us: "Wenni Momo?" ("Where is Mother ?"). We replied she wasn't feeling well and she was still at the old age home. He looked at us, unconvinced: "My heart is telling me something bad has happened to her, so this is the end!"

http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/week...adise-1.309189

Iraqi Bishop : It is difficult to live in a place where the law is absent and there is no government

The aide said Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, Bishop Wardoni as saying today we see the negative consequences of the war, said the late Pope John Paul II and current Pope Benedict XVI said that the war destroyed everything and do not benefit anything, comment on the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

In an interview with Vatican Radio said the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, it is difficult to live in a place absent the law and there is no government, so we must above all having a stable government and a law governing the country, because the terrorists today are moving in the country freely, and not only see the cars Bomb and suicide attacks and other manifestations of violence, he said.

The bishop and Wardouni that foreign forces left the country, it is bound to leave behind peace and security, and continued asking all men of good faith cooperation conscience, so that puts God at the center and not their own interests, and added we do not want nothing but peace and security.

As to the question of democracy he drew Patriarchal Assistant that we must nurture democracy first, we must grown and not imposed, and added that opening a large dam suddenly occurred only great flood, and we have been here in a big prison, what happens if the prison has been opened Suddenly, too?, so we should know that democracy does not just talk about it. He concluded by saying that those who talk about democracy, they should come to walk the streets of Baghdad.

http://www.ipairaq.com/index.php?nam...itics&id=29268

Iraq is the Arab Summit in Baghdad, in recognition of his role in the Arab framework

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi decision to hold the Arab summit scheduled for next March in Baghdad that is a recognition of the role of Iraq in the Arab framework.

Zebari said in a letter addressed to the employees of his ministry in the first anniversary of the targeting of the Ministry of terrorist attack the decision to the Arabs to hold the next Arab summit in Baghdad in March, the culmination of hard work and recognition of Iraq's role in joint Arab action and the capacity of Iraqi diplomatic move in different circumstances beyond the obstacles that stand in its way.

Zebari said the Iraqi diplomatic not be affected by those attacks and did not waver role in working towards Arab and regional levels but also increased the breadth and depth, stressing that the terrorist attack did not stop the work of the ministry nor the one minute did not disrupt the utmost diplomacy and play a role in the implementation of Iraq's foreign policy and walk in all the ways that lead to Iraq to get rid of the burden of international resolutions.

He noted the Iraqi foreign minister to Iraq's development of its external relations, particularly the appointment of Iraqi ambassadors in various countries around the world in Asia, Africa and North America and Latin America.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry , who, on Aug. 19 last year to a terrorist attack, a truck bomb killed and wounded hundreds more and destroyed a large building of the right of the ministry.

http://www.nakhelnews.com/pages/news.php?nid=1495

Chronology of U.S. forces in Iraq since the entry into Iraq

The United States is headed fast pace to reduce its troop levels in Iraq to 50 thousand by August 31 but there are doubts about the ability of President Barack Obama can deliver on his promise to withdraw all U.S. troops by end of 2011. They will train the remaining forces after August 31 , consisting of 50 thousand soldiers of the armed forces and police units in Iraq.

The following is a chronology of U.S. forces in Iraq since 2003:

March 20, 2003 - US-led forces invaded the United Iraq from Kuwait and the ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
- There were about 125 thousand U.S. and British troops and Marines in Iraq. By the end of April, the United States said it will add 100 thousand others -led invasion force.

April 9 - U.S. forces captured Baghdad and the disappearance of Saddam.

May 1 May - U.S. President George W. Bush declared the end of hostilities.
- Between March 20 and the first of May, killing 138 American soldiers.

Dec. 13 - U.S. troops arrest Saddam near Tikrit.

February 22, 2006 - The bombing of the shrine of Imams Ali al -Hadi and Hasan al-Askari in Samarra sparked a sectarian struggle and created widespread fears of a civil war.

February 14 , 2007 - launch of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki's security crackdown , backed by the United States to keep Iraq from the brink of civil war.
- The five combat brigades sent to U.S. troops by supporting the equivalent of 30 thousand troops to Iraq between February and mid- June 2007. In addition to the reduction of violence, the U.S. wants to create " breathing space " to Iraq's leaders to make progress in the laws seen as vital to the consolidation of national reconciliation.

June 15 - The U.S. military did he rally his own forces or increase the size of the force to 160 thousand soldiers.
- From April to June 2007 that killed 331 U.S. soldiers to become the period in which the greatest number of deaths during the war in the ranks of the U.S. military.

September 10 September - recommended that the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, troop cuts by more than 20 thousand by mid-2008.

July 22 , 2008 - The U.S. military said another battalion within the five extra combat brigades sent to Iraq in 2007 pulled out , which means that troop levels in Iraq is less than 147 thousand U.S. troops.

November 17 - Iraq has signed an agreement with the United States requires from Washington to withdraw its troops by the end of 2011. This agreement gives the Iraqi government is on the U.S. mission for the first time solving this Agreement replaces the authorization granted by the Security Council of the United Nations for the American forces. Iraq's parliament approved the agreement after 10 days of the signing after the discussion.

The first of January January 2009 - entry into force of US-Iraqi security agreement , putting the 140 000 U.S. troops under the authority of Iraq.

February 27 - The new U.S. president at that time, Barack Obama's plan to end U.S. combat operations in Iraq by 31 August 2010 , but said he would leave up to 50 thousand troops to train Iraqi forces.

June 30 - the withdrawal of all U.S. combat units from Iraq's main cities and their redeployment to bases abroad.

June 4, 2010 - The U.S. military said there were 88 thousand troops in Iraq.

August 18 - A senior administration official said that troop levels in Iraq to 56 thousand troops.
- The army said the 4419 U.S. military personnel killed since the invasion in 2003

http://www.babnews.com/inp/view.asp?ID=26473