By Dr. Bayad Jamal Ali
We always here the usual
literature about the greatness of any nation and its past glories, Kurdistan
and Iraq is no exception of that, even with its troubled history, yet it has
historical points that the nation is proud of, in addition being in the
Mesopotamian area which Iraqis are very proud of and mention on a daily bases.
The nostalgia is not only felt for the far history, but there are many
discussions that argue the country and the region were better 50 years ago in
the matters of management, social interactions, religious tolerance and many
other things.
While we are dreaming of our past
and can’t get over our nostalgic feelings, we notice that other countries that
don’t have considerable history, yet have surpassed us from being miserable
poor countries to highly educated technological and wealthy countries. An
example of such country is Singapore, which started as a country suffering of
poverty with a GDP per capita of less than $500 to a first world country with a
GDP per capita of more than $70,000. When a country can manage to increase the
average income of its citizen’s one hundred and forty folds in a scope of fifty
years, then this country has a success story and Kurds and Iraqis should be
able to learn a few lessons from Singapore.
History is a source of learning
but without proper actions about the future history will be useless. Kurdistan
had a good shot at being able to create an economic infrastructure with the
large amounts of money received from its share of the Iraqi government as well
as oil sales, but unfortunately lack of long term plans and solely depending on
one source of income crashed the economy by not having contingency plans.
In the matter of population and
size, Kurdistan and Singapore are similar in population size with around 5.5
Million for both, however in the country size Singapore is 719 km² whereas Kurdistan of Iraq 40,643
km² without the disputed area which together could form around 80,000 km². The
land and agricultural resources that are available for Kurdistan is not
available for Singapore yet they are managed poorly, it is important to keep in
mind resources and size will not matter if the education level as well as
economic productivity level is not utilized.
Singapore lacks the natural
resources of oil and gas and others resources, but that wasn’t an obstacle
against its strategy in putting itself as a significant center of finance and
logistics, in addition to focusing on high technology industries which resulted
in a huge leap in the country`s GDP. Thus, Kurdistan is much richer in the
matter of natural resources, but it became an obstacle against focusing on economic
reforms and the building of an economic system and strategy, but actually
became a victim of the Dutch disease.
On the other hand, one of the
challenges of Kurdistan is in its geopolitics that is creating many obstacles
toward many goals, and Singapore also was born out of a regional conflict
between Malaysia and Indonesia. And due to the difficult position of being
caught between those two larger and more powerful countries it was expected
that Singapore will not take long to fall, but the government was successful in
balancing its regional relations hand to hand in the internal economic
development and create plans not only to have a successful economy, but also a
strong army equipped with the best training as well as the highest
technological weapons.
Singapore
was born in the midst of severe economic challenges with no natural resources
along with massive political and social difficulties, yet it managed to create
a success story for other countries in just few decades. It is time for
Kurdistan to look toward the future and have a vision to the nation where we
want to reach and learn to overcome the challenges we face today, and we face
in the future.
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