Word: kurdistan
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...that could soon change--perhaps dramatically, according to oil engineers who have surveyed the region. Sheltered from the deadly mayhem around Baghdad, the economy of Kurdistan, the region that comprises the three northernmost provinces of Iraq, is already showing signs of vigorous growth. Turkish, British and Canadian oil companies have held talks with Kurdish officials in recent months to revive old oil fields and drill new ones. Oil has the potential to jolt Iraq's precarious ethnic balance by injecting sizable revenues and foreign investment into an area about twice the size of New Jersey. Much of the work...
Gusher or not, the region is booming. On the border with Turkey, about a half-hour drive from the DNO rig, Kurdistan has clearly become Europe's gateway to Iraq. Trucks from Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and the Netherlands are backed up for miles and carry goods from across the continent. Sea cargo from Dubai is diverted through Jordan, Syria and Turkey before reaching Kurdistan, where it is transferred to Iraqi trucks before proceeding to Baghdad. That route is the only choice: driving north through Iraq from the Persian Gulf is too dangerous...
...sole sign of war is the airport's security. Kurdish soldiers--or peshmerga, as they are known--sit in tall watchtowers posted on the perimeter, and civilian vehicles are kept outside the airport gates, where baggage searchers wear ski masks to hide their faces. Flights from the new Kurdistan Airlines and other carriers arrive directly from Istanbul, Frankfurt, Dubai and Beirut. Austrian Airlines will add a Vienna flight next month...
That's just the start. A sprawling $200 million airport is being built on the existing grounds and is scheduled to open next year. Its three-mile runway will be wide enough to land the new Airbus 380--or, for that matter, the space shuttle, boasts Zaid Zwain, Kurdistan's director of civil aviation. "Imagine, people used to fear the sound of jets because of the bombing," he says, standing on the vast, still unpaved runway...
Indeed, the sensation of not being in Iraq is a key factor in Kurdistan's boom. Almost no Iraqi flag flies, and fewer than 1,000 U.S. soldiers are deployed in the territory. In the lobby of Arbil's only five-star hotel, which is filled with American and European businessmen discussing prospects, the buzz in the crowd has one persistent theme: in the world's most dangerous country, foreign businesses can work safely by basing their Iraq operations in Kurdistan rather than 200 miles south in Baghdad. "For anybody wanting to do anything in Iraq today, the entry point...