Meg Munn and Nadhim Zahawi letter in the Guardian

The Co-Chairs of the APPG have replied to this article in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/diaspora-returns-to-build-iraqi-kurdistan

27 March 2014

Orlando Crowcroft (Diaspora returns to build Iraqi Kurdistan into the ‘next Dubai’, 26 March) misses two important points. State employees were not paid for two months because the federal government in Baghdad blocked budget payments to Erbil. This is part of a dispute over the region’s oil and gas, developed from scratch recently, and exports to Turkey via a new pipeline. This flows from the second major omission: the Kurdistan region’s new and growing commercial relationship with Turkey, which was once on the verge of invading Kurdistan but is now its largest trading partner.

Neither was imaginable in 2003 as the region began to recover from decades of genocide, isolation and poverty. Both enable better public services and increased living standards. The need for further political, economic and social reform is widely acknowledged. A fuller picture of a region in transition is detailed in our reports on fact-finding delegations there.

Nadhim Zahawi MP, Meg Munn MP
Co-chairs, All-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq

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