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Lion of Babylon -> NAJAF INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (NIA) coming soon! (2/27/2008 5:49:04 AM)
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Looks like Najaf will be the Jewel in Iraq's crown. If this project does indeed start then the opening of this airport will turn Najaf into the most prosperous city in Iraq surpassing Baghdad and Basra. Mabrook for all Najafis but the image of a control tower shaped like a minaret seems a big VEGAS to me. What do you think?
With Promise of Airport, Investment in Najaf Takes Off
Profit Potential Brings Private Funds to Shiite Holy City
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 7, 2006; A12
NAJAF, Iraq -- Just beyond the verdant scrub where women in colorful robes crouch to pick cucumbers, on a flat expanse bounded by a few miles of chain-link fence, is a smooth stretch of asphalt long enough to land a jumbo jet. If all goes according to plan, the tract on the east side of this Shiite holy city will be reborn in less than a year as the $73.8 million Imam Ali International Airport, its soaring control tower shaped like a mosque's minaret. The privately funded facility could begin handling flights on a trial basis as soon as next month, with a blue tent serving as a terminal until construction is complete. In a country starved for investment, the promise of Najaf's new airport, and a second one planned by the Iraqi government to the north, has helped spawn a wave of privately funded projects in various stages of development. Worth hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs if they reach fruition, they are establishing Najaf as southern Iraq's first boomtown, U.S. and local officials say.
"We have broken the barrier, and now the companies and their money are coming," said Munther Ajina, an Iraqi American who lives in San Francisco but returned to the city of his birth part time to serve as the provincial investment director in the office of Najaf's governor, Assad Abu Kalal. "This is a town that for 35 years Saddam Hussein fought to break down. Now we are on the rise."
The gold-domed Imam Ali shrine, sacred to the world's 120 million Shiites and also to Sunni Muslims, is believed to be the third-most-popular destination for Islamic pilgrimages after the Saudi Arabian cities of Mecca and Medina. It contains the tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. Shiites believe Ali to have been the prophet's heir. With most of what remains of the $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds for Iraq to be spent this year, development experts and government officials say private-sector investment must now drive the rebuilding of the country, whose infrastructure has been devastated by decades of war and neglect.
Najaf's near-limitless economic potential was recognized long before the fall of Hussein's government, which brutally persecuted Shiites here. Three million Shiite pilgrims flock here annually, most of them from Iran, other Persian Gulf states, India and Pakistan. But since the U.S.-led invasion nearly three years ago, Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, has remained poor, with most residents lacking the provisions of a modern city, including reliable electricity, potable water and a sewage system. The city's population is about 500,000. Tourism bloomed briefly when Shiite pilgrims flocked to Najaf immediately after the invasion. But an uprising by a Shiite militia, which clashed twice with U.S. forces in 2004, kept visitors away until a truce improved the security climate dramatically. Real estate prices have jumped tenfold in the Furat district, two miles from the new airport, to about $100,000 for a three-quarter-acre plot, according to Hazim Hussein, a local broker. Much of the land is being bought by Iraqi investors and Iranian Shiites intent on owning property near the city's shrines. Iraqis from areas where violence is more prevalent are also coming here. U.S. and Iraqi officials say there are no reliable figures on how much private money is being invested in Iraq. But they acknowledge that outside of the semiautonomous Kurdish region that has flourished in the north for a decade with the help of American money and military protection, Najaf has the greatest potential for prosperity.
"Obviously, Najaf wasn't secure for a while there, and now it has turned the corner, which encourages a different level of investment and type of investment," said June Reed, senior consultant for private-sector development at the U.S. Embassy's Iraq Reconstruction Management Office in Baghdad. "It has the makings of a nexus of economic development that can have spillover effects throughout its region."
But even here, severe challenges to private investment remain. Firms have struggled to raise investment capital to fund the projects they commit to building. And Western companies have been slow to join with local partners. Ajina said he had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Global Strategies Group, a London-based corporation that provides security for the Baghdad airport, to join the airport project here as a joint venture with an Iraqi contractor.
"Would we like to do it? Yes," Phil Jackson, development manager for Global's aviation business, said in December. "It has the opportunity to be the hub for the country."
Jackson said Global had not signed a contract out of concern that the Iraqi firm leading the project, Farhad al-Basra, could struggle to raise enough money to complete its end of the deal. "We've got to see a bit more of a detailed business plan," Jackson said. Employees of one South Korean company that planned to build a tourist complex south of Najaf were prohibited by their government from visiting the site. Some of the projects that the Najaf government is counting on may fall through said Hussein Uzri, who heads the Trade Bank of Iraq, a state-run institution that coordinates the country's imports and exports.
"It's one thing to have an agreement on paper, another thing to see the building complete," Uzri said.
Still, in a country where large-scale construction is rare, the scope of projects planned or underway in Najaf is striking. Munther said an analysis conducted by the province projected that the airport would bring in $500 million per year from visitors. "People will be able to fly directly here without ever having to go to Baghdad," he said. Kuwaiti and Lebanese firms have signed contracts to build a vast downtown development including a supermarket, parking garage and a pair of office towers, which at roughly 10 stories each would be the tallest buildings in the province. An Iraqi American developer is planning a hotel and residential site south of the city that will each cost more than $100 million. Local religious leaders are raising money for a $60 million memorial complex downtown dedicated to a slain Shiite cleric. It will include an Islamic university and a million-volume library of religious works.
Across much of Iraq, reconstruction projects have been delayed or halted by sabotage or skyrocketing security costs. An exception has been the Kurdish north, where large cranes dot the skylines of the region's main cities, Sulaymaniyah and Irbil. Meanwhile some provinces have seen little, if any, investment. The drastically different rates of development have sparked concern that a new economic fault line will emerge in a country already deeply divided by tribe, sect and ethnicity. "As long as the security situation is bad in some parts, the foreign money will never come there," Uzri said. "And as long as that happens, there will be inequality and resentment."
Local officials acknowledge that for investment money to continue to flow into Najaf, security must be maintained. American troops responsible for the city withdrew in August. Iraqi police and soldiers have since kept a tight grip, establishing scores of checkpoints on main highways leading into the city. Those investing in Najaf say they feel confident betting on its future.
"Najaf is different from the rest of Iraq," said Raifet Abbas Hamadani, 59, who was born in the city, moved to Jordan after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and runs several construction and other companies operating in the Middle East from his home outside Detroit. His holding company, Globe Enterprises, signed a contract in October to build a tourist complex just south of the city, complete with a five-star hotel, a man-made lake and 12 apartment towers. But so far he has raised just $10 million of the project's estimated $125 million cost from other investors.
"They are moving too slowly," said Ajina, the investment director.
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