Ali Abbas Iraqi Footballer

Ali Abbas - Dream come true for this Iraqi Footballer

 

Baghdad Invest - 28/09/2012 Baghdad.
An Iraqi refugee with a sweet left foot has completed a remarkable journey from the war-scarred streets of Baghdad to one of Australia's most glamorous football clubs.

 

Ali Abbas, a 25-year old midfielder was a member of Iraq's victorious Asian Cup squad that beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 in July 2007.

 

Four months later he was to take a decision that was to change his life. He and two Iraqi teammates sought asylum in Australia following an Olympic games qualifier in the city of Gosford 75km north of Sydney.

 

"In 2007 it was a really bad situation in Iraq. We came here and played against the Olyroos. After we lost I decided to stay here to make my life better than in Iraq," Ali explained to the BBC.

 

"Like any sportsman, actor or doctor, I couldn't do my job properly because there were too many bad people there. It is not the Iraqi people, they come from outside of the country and that is why I saw my future here (in Australia)."

 

Ali was granted refugee status and has recently signed a contract with Sydney FC, former winners of the Australian A-League, which has previously boasted within its ranks former Manchester United star Dwight Yorke and Brazilian maestro Juninho.

 

"It was a hard decision to make (to leave Iraq) and look now I'm really happy and playing for a big club in Australia," he added.

'Massively appealing'

 

The former Iraqi international's footballing journey at the elite level in Australia began in the industrial city of Newcastle with the Jets in 2009. He has gone on to impress some of the sharpest minds in the game with his tenacity and skill.

 

The midfielder was the first signing for new Sydney FC coach Ian Crook. The Englishman says Ali Abbas' technical ability and desire to succeed will suit his team's up-tempo style.

"He is technically very good, he's got lovely technical ability and he can beat people in one on-ones and deliver killer passes," Mr Crook said.

 

"To go through what he put himself through to come here proves to me that he is hungry and desperately wants it. To me that is a massively appealing thing," added the former Spurs and Norwich City mid fielder.

 

Australia has offered sanctuary to waves of Iraqi refugees, but the transition to a new country and a very different culture is not always easy.

 

But Dr Mohamed Al Jabiri, a former Iraqi diplomat who went into exile in Australia after being imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, says Ali Abbas is a tremendous role model for other migrants.

 

"He is very easygoing, very humble. He is a good person from a good background. He has adapted to Australian society and I hope he will not forget he was part of Iraq," Dr Al Jabiri told the BBC at his home in Sydney.

 

"The Iraqis, my goodness, are so fond of soccer and they are so happy to see their players are achieving fame all over the world," he added.

 

Asked whether Abbas has the professional qualities to succeed at the highest level, Dr Al Jabiri, a keen follower of the English Premier League, declared: "I think he is like a fine racehorse ready to go the race."

 

Sydney FC's new Iraqi signing will make his debut for the Sky Blues against the Wellington Phoenix in New Zealand in early October.

 

Ali's journey took another significant step forward on Australia Day this year, when he became a citizen of his adopted country.

 

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Baghdad Invest - Thank You

Iraq Investment - Our Video

Baghdad Invest has decided to have a bit of fun. We have good reason to celebrate as we have just reached over 1,000 fans on Facebook and over 68,000 followers on Twitter. We wasn't too sure how to share our excitement

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Baghdad Burger Boom

Baghdad Invest - 01/09/2012 Baghdad.

BAGHDAD'S embattled residents can finally get their milkshakes, chili-cheese dogs and buckets of crispy fried chicken - original recipe or extra spicy, of course.

A wave of new American-style restaurants is spreading across the Iraqi capital, enticing customers hungry for alternatives to traditional offerings like lamb kebabs and fire-roasted carp.

The fad is a sign that Iraqis, saddled with violence for years and still experiencing almost daily bombings and shootings, are prepared to move on and embrace ordinary pleasures - like stuffing their faces with pizza.

Iraqi entrepreneurs and investors from nearby countries, not big multinational chains, are driving the food craze. They see Iraq as an untapped market of increasingly adventurous eaters where competition is low and the potential returns are high.

"We're fed up with traditional food," said government employee Osama al-Ani as he munched on pizza at one of the packed new restaurants last week. "We want to try something different."

Among the latest additions is a sit-down restaurant called Chili House. Its glossy menu touts Caesar salads and hot wing appetisers along with all-American staples such as three-way chili, Philly cheesesteaks and a nearly half-pound "Big Mouth Chizzila" burger.

On a recent afternoon, uniformed servers navigated a two-story dining room bustling with extended families and groups of teenagers. Toddlers wandered around an indoor play area.

The restaurant, located in the upscale neighbourhood of Jadiriyah, is connected to Baghdad's only branch of Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, a US chain concentrated in a handful of Midwestern and Southern states.

Azad al-Hadad, managing director of a company called Kurdistan Bridge that brought the restaurants to Iraq, said he and his fellow investors decided to open them because they couldn't find decent fried chicken and burgers in Iraq. He called the restaurants a safe investment for companies like his that are getting in early. He already has plans to open several more branches in the next six months.

"Everybody likes to eat and dress up. This is something that brings people together," he explained. "People tell us: 'We feel like we're out of Baghdad. And that makes us feel satisfied.'"

Baghdad's Green Zone and nearby US military bases once sported outposts of big American chains, including Pizza Hut, Burger King and Subway, but they shut down as American troops left last year. Because they were hidden behind checkpoint-controlled fortifications, most ordinary Iraqis never had a chance to get close to them, anyway.

Yum Brands Inc., owner of the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC chains, has no plans to return to Iraq for now, spokesman Christopher Fuller said. Burger King declined to comment on its Iraq plans, and Subway did not respond.

Dining out in Iraq is not without risk. Ice cream parlours, restaurants and cafes were among the targets of a brutal string of attacks that tore through Iraq on August 16, leaving more than 90 people dead.

Iraqis say the chance to relax in clean surroundings over a meal out is worth the gamble. For them, the restaurants are a symbol of progress.

"This gives you a feeling the country's on the right track," said Wameed Fawzi, a chemical engineer enjoying Lee's fried chicken strips with his wife Samara.

Baghdad's Mansour district is the heart of the fast-food scene.

At the height of sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, it was tough to find shops open along the neighbourhood's main drag. Militants targeted shop owners in a campaign to undermine government efforts to restore normality.

These days, roads are packed with cars. The traditional Arabic restaurants long popular here now find themselves competing against foreign-sounding rivals such as Florida Fried Chicken, Mr. Potato, Pizza Boat and Burger Friends.

There is even a blatant KFC knockoff called KFG, which owner Zaid Sadiq insists stands for Kentucky Family Group. He said he picked the name because he wanted something similar to the world-famous fried chicken chain. And he believes his chicken is just as good.

"In the future my restaurant will be as famous as KFC. Why not?" he said.

One of Mansour's newest additions is Burger Joint, a slick shop serving up respectable burgers and milkshakes to a soundtrack that includes Frank Sinatra. It is the creation of VQ Investment Group, a firm with operations in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.

Its Mansour store is outfitted with stylish stone walls and flat-screen televisions. Another branch just opened across town in the commercial district of Karradah.

The group also runs the Iraq franchises of Pizza Pizza, a Turkish chain, and is planning to launch a new hot submarine sandwich brand called Subz.

Mohammed Sahib, VQ's executive manager in Iraq, said business has been good so far.

Even so, running a restaurant in Iraq is not without its challenges.

Burger Joint's servers had to give up the iPads they originally used to take orders because the Internet kept cutting out, he said. Finding foreign ingredients such as Heinz ketchup and year-round supplies of lettuce is also tricky, and many customers need help understanding foreign menu items like milkshakes and cookies.

Health experts are predictably not thrilled about the new arrivals.

"The opening of these American-style restaurants ... will make Iraqis, especially children, fatter," said Dr. Sarmad Hamid, a physician at a Baghdad government hospital. But even he acknowledged that the new eateries aren't all bad.

"People might benefit psychologically by sitting down in a quiet, clean and relatively fancy place with their families, away from the usual chaos in Iraqi cities," he said.

Purveyors of traditional Iraqi specialties, who might be expected to oppose the foreign-looking imports, don't seem to mind at all.

Ali Issa is the owner of fish restaurant al-Mahar, which specialises in masgouf, the famous Iraqi roasted carp dish. He said every country in the world has burger and fried chicken restaurants, so why shouldn't Iraq?

Besides, he said, he and his family are fans of "Kentucky," the name Iraqis use for fried chicken, regardless of where it's made.

"Sometimes we need Kentucky. Not just fish, fish, fish," he said.

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Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi

Iraq's communications minister has resigned, accusing Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of refusing to stop "political interference" in his ministry.

Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, a member of the Sunni-backed Iraqiyya bloc, said he had submitted his resignation a month ago, but that it had only now been accepted.

There has been no word yet from the prime minister on the allegations.

Mr Allawi is thought to be the first member of the national unity government to resign since it was formed in 2010.

Last year, Electricity Minister Raad Shallal al-Ani, an independent who was nominated by Iraqiyya, was sacked after allegedly authorising £1.1bn ($1.7bn) of improper contracts for power stations with foreign companies.

Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's most senior Sunni Arab politician and a leading member of Iraqiyya, is meanwhile on trial in absentia, accused of financing a sectarian death squad targeting Shia officials.

'Conditions'

Mr Maliki's support of the prosecution led Iraqiyya to boycott cabinet meetings for more than a month, bringing the government to a standstill.

They accused the prime minister, who is a Shia, of trying to marginalise the country's minority Sunni community and cement his grip on power.

On Monday, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi told the AFP news agency: "I required certain conditions from the prime minister, to stop the political interference in my ministry."

"Otherwise, I told him: 'I am not ready to work at the ministry with this big interference.'"

"I told him: 'Either you fulfil those conditions or accept my resignation.' He decided after one month to accept my resignation."

In separate development on Monday, security officials said gunmen had shot dead a senior army officer outside the capital, Baghdad.

Brig-Gen Abdul Muhsin Khazal was killed in the town of Taji. One report said the assailants used weapons with silencers.

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Baghdad History

Baghdad was once the capital of an empire and the centre of the Islamic world, but at 1,250 years old, the Iraqi city is a far cry from its past glories after being ravaged by years of war and sanctions.
Construction of the city on the bank of the Tigris River began in July 762 AD under Abbasid Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, and it has since played a pivotal role in Arab and Islamic civilisations.
"Baghdad represented the economic centre of the Abbasid Empire, and it was used as a starting point for controlling other neighbouring regions to enhance Islamic power," said Issam al-Faili, a professor of political history at Mustansiriyah University.
"Baghdad witnessed a renaissance of thought through translation, which was usually mastered by Jews and the Christians, and became a destination for intellectuals, poets and scholars from all parts of the world, and a centre for craftsmen and a city of construction," Faili said.
"Baghdad today, after it was the capital of the world, has become one of the most miserable cities," he said.
British consultancy firm Mercer ranked Baghdad as the worst place in the world to live in its 2010 Quality of Living Survey.
The city has been conquered several times in its history, the first in 1258 when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad.
It was captured in 1831 by the Ottomans, in 1917 by the British, and in 2003 by a US-led coalition that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein but also ended up unleashing internecine violence that killed tens of thousands of people.
Baghdad was a modern capital known for its nightlife in the 1970s, but it has fallen into gloomy disrepair in the years of conflict since.
Saddam started a war with Iraq in 1980 that lasted for eight years, and then launched a disastrous invasion of Kuwait in 1990 only to be forced out in 1991.
Iraq was hit by a harsh regime of international sanctions over the Kuwait invasion, and later lived under an ever-present threat of bombings, assassinations, gun battles and death squad killings in the years after 2003.
Even now, government employees, including high-ranking officers in the security forces, are frequently gunned down in the streets.
Concrete blast walls still surround official buildings, hotels, and other structures that could be the target of attacks.
Despite its long history, there are only fleeting signs of historic buildings on even its oldest streets. Ugly, uninspired concrete boxes are far more common.
Checkpoints cause massive traffic jams, and security forces in the city are armed for war, with equipment including assault rifles, machine guns and armoured vehicles.
Baghdad's streets are often strewn with rubbish and riven by potholes. What public works projects there are move at a glacial pace.
Spider webs of power cables criss-cross many streets, linking houses to private generators -- a testament to the failure of the government electricity grid to provide citizens with consistent power.
The government is headquartered in a heavily fortified area known as the Green Zone, which is defended, among other things, by newly acquired US-made Abrams tanks.
Entry to the area requires passing through a Byzantine series of security checks, some of which are of questionable value in deterring attacks, and journalists' cameras are regarded with deep suspicion.
While Baghdad was once the centre of an empire, the Iraqi government has been paralysed by political crises for almost eight months, during which it has accomplished little.
"Baghdad today is like Baghdad of yesterday in terms of the luxury that was enjoyed by the caliph and his family in the days of the Abbasid era, while the people were in misery," Faili said.
Corruption is widespread, and while Iraq takes in billions of dollars a month in oil revenues, signs of it benefiting the general public are hard to find.
Iraq has made some efforts to return its capital to regional prominence, hosting a summit of Arab leaders in March and talks between world powers and Iran on the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear programme in May.
Preparations for those events cost around $1 billion, although the impact of that outlay for most Iraqis was limited.
Iraqi writer and journalist Rifaat Mahmud said that the "issue of restoring Baghdad to what it was is a difficult matter, and cannot be achieved in circumstances such as those in which the neglected city now lives.
"Baghdad needs what we can call a miracle to regain its form and heritage and at least a part of its past."

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Baghdad Property Investment

Baghdad needs 750,000 new homes to make up for a massive housing shortfall, Iraq's investment commission chief said on Sunday as he called for bidders for a new property development project.
Iraq is aiming to build one million new homes in the coming years, including a vast construction project southeast of Baghdad that officials hope will provide new housing for 600,000 people.
"Baghdad now needs 750,000 more homes," Sami al-Araji told reporters.
Araji called for bidders for a new housing development project at a former Iraqi army military camp known as Al-Rasheed in southeast Baghdad.
The area is currently home to a small Iraqi army base, as well as a refuse dump where poor families have built make-shift accommodation.
Araji hopes that up to 70,000 apartments and 5,000 independent houses will eventually be built there, along with sports and entertainment facilities, shopping and medical services.
After decades of war, sanctions and under-investment, Iraq is experiencing a major housing shortfall, and the difficulty in finding a home was one of the reasons protesters demonstrated nationwide last year.
Around 57 percent of Iraq's urban population lives in "slum-like conditions", according to a report published by the United Nations in 2011.
The report noted that 13 percent of houses in urban areas have more than 10 people living in them, with 37 percent holding three or more people per room.

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Generator Man - Baghdad Electricity

Baghdad Invest - 20/06/2012 Baghdad.

What is life really like in Iraq?

Filmmakers: Rashed Radwan and Carmen Marques

Nine years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's national grid struggles to provide more than six hours of electricity a day - so a new form of entrepreneur has sprung up, the 'Generator Man'.

For a price, he will fill the gap.

Hadi is a 'Generator Man', who owns two generators but finds that being on call for hundreds of people, all desperate for power, means that his life is no longer his own.

Witness follows him as he wanders the backstreets of Baghdad to talk to some of his customers for whom power - or the lack of it - has become the most important fact in their day-to-day-lives.

Of the many ironies of post-conflict Iraq this is perhaps the starkest: how a country afloat on a sea of oil and in receipt of $5bn of US investment since 2003 cannot yet guarantee power for its people.

Filmmaker's view: Rashed Radwan

They say the war in Iraq is over. But is it really?

George Bush declared it over when he was president and Barack Obama did the same. But ask ordinary Iraqis and they will tell you that a new war is just starting in a country where the most basic of infrastructure has been destroyed.

In the summer of 2010, I spent two months filming in Iraq.

It was during that summer that I first met Bakr, a 12-year-old boy from Sadr City; a child carrying the soul of an adult.

He told me about the death of his brother, a victim of an American apache, as though it was something that could not have been avoided; an almost inevitable part of his destiny as an Iraqi.

And, when asked about his dreams, Bakr revealed that he had just one: to have electricity so that he might have a fan to keep him cool in summer and a heater to keep him warm in winter.

It was an unusual conversation to have with a child. After all, aren't their dreams usually filled with the more remarkable, with the less mundane?

In the comfort of my hotel, power outages were only a problem in the few minutes between the national grid going down and the lights coming back on - triggered by the huge and noisy generator behind the building.

But Bakr had opened my eyes to a problem I had not been aware of. I began to notice the tangled mess of wires hanging from buildings all over the city. And for the first time I understood why I had met so many people wearily climbing the stairs of Baghdad's general hospital with their sick children in their arms, trying to reach a doctor on a higher floor: without electricity, elevators do not work.

When I spoke to doctors, they told me of patients who could not visit the hospital because they were too weak to reach the higher floors. In these tales, I thought I had found the starting point for this story - but I soon came to realise that doctors and patients are too afraid to talk about their daily struggles in these hellish conditions.

For the past nine years, two words have been at the forefront of Iraqi minds: kahraba (electricity) and amn (security).

Security has improved markedly, although only to the levels that many of those who proclaim this war over would consider murderously dangerous in their own countries.

But the single most crucial ingredient in the country's reconstruction - electrical power - continues to lag far behind the country's needs.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, forty pallets of cash were loaded onto a truck that delivered the money to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C. The money was then transferred to a C-130 transport plane. The next day, it arrived in Baghdad. That was the largest shipment of currency in one single day in the history of the NY Fed. But it was not the first shipment of money to Baghdad. For more than a year, $12bn taken from Iraqi oil revenues - in other words, belonging to the Iraqi people - was delivered for use in reconstruction. At least $9bn has gone missing.

Iraq is swimming in oil, which generates revenues of nearly $2bn a week, but Baghdad's 7,216,040 million people are reliant on private generators. And the private generator is a luxury most people cannot afford. Fuel prices are too high for many and the poorest are literally living in the dark.

Those who are fortunate enough to have their own personal generator must either spend hours waiting in line to buy fuel or pay the steepest premiums on the black market.

The generator man - owner and operator of the neighbourhood power plant - is the solution for the vast majority of the Iraqi population. Iraq depends on the generator man to survive. They are the country's umbilical cord, bringing power to hundreds of thousands of homes and shops.

I wish I could tell all of the stories hidden behind the headlines declaring to the world that the war in Iraq is over. I wish each of you could know the suffering and despair that has been left behind and how Iraqis must live huddled in dark houses, sleeping outside during the summer months because the heat inside is unbearable, afraid that they may be hit by a stray bullet from somewhere in their neighbourhood.

I have covered the war in Iraq since 2003, and if there is one thing that I can say for sure, it is that beyond the tragedy lies the triumph of the human spirit as ordinary people fight to preserve their dignity.

I wish I could tell all of their stories - the stories of the children dying from strange diseases never seen before the war or of the army of women awaiting the return of their missing husbands and sons. But Generator Man is a simple story about common people - people who will probably never find a place in the history books. These people are the real witnesses to the reality behind the headlines that the war is over.

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Czech Companies Iraq

Baghdad Invest - 20/06/2012 Baghdad.
Czech companies to ink more deals in Iraq

With deadly attacks and political violence threatening to wreck a hard-won power-sharing agreement in Iraq, business is booming in at least one part of the country, and Czech companies are positioning themselves to take advantage of the thriving investment opportunities.

In the relatively peaceful and semi-autonomous northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan, foreign ventures and soaring oil exports helped drive a remarkable economic growth rate of 8 percent last year.

A delegation of businessmen, led by Industry and Trade Minister Martin Kuba (Civic Democrats, ODS), has just completed a high-level visit to Kurdistan that culminated in the announcement of plans to build a new steam-gas power plant in the region, with an output of 980 megawatts.

The project will be designed by Czech company PSG International, and will be built with the help of Turkish and Kurdish companies over the next few years.

The power plant is being financed by the Czech Export Bank in a deal that will hopefully attract further foreign and domestic companies, the Kurdish Globe reported June 9.

"I am pleased to represent the first Czech bank to organize financing support to this kind of project. There is a strong desire among Czech businessmen to be more engaged and present in Kurdistan," said Tomáš Uvíra, CEO of the Czech Export Bank.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kuba said he was impressed with Kurdistan's continued economic growth and stressed the importance of strengthening bilateral ties with the Kurdistan regional government (KRG).

"Today, a number of our companies are doing good business in Kurdistan; however, there are many more opportunities for further engagements, and we are here to explore those opportunities."

Kurdistan's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, highlighted the recent progress the KRG has made in electricity and energy production.

"We are continuing our efforts to achieve more progress; we are taking steps to further modernize the electricity sector, and we will continue these efforts until we can provide all the necessities of our citizens in this sector throughout the region," Barzani said.

The Czech delegation, comprising 24 businessmen and three representatives of the Confederation of Industry, also traveled briefly to the Iraqi capital Baghdad to participate in another forum and to meet with representatives from government ministries.

"It was a very successful exercise. We are hoping to welcome a Kurdish delegation to the Czech Republic very soon, perhaps as early as this year," said Olga Zuláková, the international relations manager of the Confederation of Industry, after returning from Iraq.

In March, Iraq was named one of 12 "priority" countries for the Czech Republic's export strategy 2012-20.

However, Zuláková concedes that while Kurdistan remains an attractive destination for business, trade in other parts of Iraq such as Baghdad is considered too risky for many companies.

Czech trade with Iraq sank some 40 percent to 1.54 billion Kč last year after previously experiencing growth.
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