Amanat Baghdad Clean Up Operation

Baghdad Invest - 05/09/2012 Baghdad.

Amanat Baghdad is planning to sign contracts with foreign companies for clean-up work in several neighbourhoods of the capital, officials said.
The move comes as part of a new strategy to privatise the cleaning sector.

According to Amanat media director Hakim Abdul Zahra, "This policy was adopted following the success of a pilot project with a Turkish company, which was awarded work cleaning up the neighbourhoods of Karrada and Rusafa."

In December 2010, Amanat Baghdad announced it signed a one-year, 31 billion dinar contract with the Turkish firm Akdeniz to clean the area extending from the University of Baghdad in Jadiriya through Karrada Dakhil, Karrada Kharij, Abu Nuas Street, Bab al-Sharqi, Palestine Street and up to Bab al-Muadham.

"The work was praised by several government bodies, such as the general secretariat of the council of ministers, the Baghdad Services Commission and residents who live in the areas that were cleaned," Abdul Zahra said, citing an Amanat survey on the company's performance.

"After evaluating the results of this project, the mayoralty found it necessary to continue to develop the initiative by providing the same opportunity for more foreign companies to compete to clean up larger areas of Baghdad," he added.

Officials invited a number of international companies to submit offers for clean-up work in Karkh and Rusafa municipalities, Abdul Zahra said, confirming that "several companies from Europe, the Emirates, Turkey and Jordan submitted bids."

"We are evaluating the offers and will choose the best one based upon the company's experience, reputation, its previous similar works and cost estimates of the work," he said. "When we are done with this phase, we will announce the winning bids."

Abdul Zahra said, "Privatisation in this sector will not mean the end of the municipal district clean-up services. Instead they will be sharing in the provision of these services [with public workers]."
"This step is also important for economic reasons, because the contracts make it conditional on companies to benefit from the local manpower and provide work for a big number of unemployed people," he said.

Privatisation to support municipalities

Meanwhile, Ghalib al-Zamily, deputy chairman of Baghdad provincial council's services commission, told Mawtani, "Privatisation will help us achieve progress in clean-up services in order to create a clean, civilised environment."

"We support the idea of allowing foreign investment companies not only to enter into this sector, but also to venture into other service sectors, such as water, sewage and roads," he added.
Al-Zamily said meetings were recently held with representatives from Italian, Swedish and German companies that specialise in clean-up services.

"These companies expressed eagerness to compete for available opportunities in the clean-up sector, and they presented us with numerous documents and pictures to show the clean-up projects they completed in several Arab countries," he said.

Wahda al-Jumaily, member of the parliament's services and reconstruction committee, emphasised the necessity of "attracting the investment companies that specialise in clean-up services to support the efforts of municipalities".

"It is also necessary to intensify the education process through media, seminars and posters to increase public awareness of cleanliness as a basic, civilised practice for a healthy environment," al-Jumaily said.

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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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Iraqi Lawyers face daily risks

Iraqi lawyer Ahmed al-Abadi put up with years of threatening phone calls for taking on sensitive sectarian cases but, after he narrowly escaped death when three shots were fired at his car last year, he could take no more.
Abadi had just finished successfully defending a woman accused of involvement in a sectarian killing and he thinks this was the reason behind the gun attack - but he decided against seeking legal redress.
"I did not go to the police station to report it. I knew it would not get me anywhere," he said, seated in the lawyers' room of Rusafa appeal court in eastern Baghdad. "It has affected me mentally and sapped my enthusiasm for work. I started to handle only easy cases which do not cause me problems."
After years of vicious sectarian strife between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, individual cases are increasingly coming to court. But justice suffers because lawyers are an easy target in a country where rule of law remains weak, tribal loyalties take precedence and sectarian armed groups still operate.
Abadi is one of many lawyers who have suffered constant threats and intimidation from relatives of the accused or the plaintiff. Lawyers come into contact with both sides of a case and they must appear in court, where everyone can see their faces. Lawyers say some judges treat them as if they were involved in the crime simply because they defend the accused.
"We are very sensitive about terrorism cases," the 55-year-old Abadi said, employing the term regularly used to describe sectarian cases in Iraq.
"After taking more than one terrorist case, I quit," he said as he removed his robe after attending the guilty verdict in a corruption case of two clients who worked in a government-spending watchdog.
RISING LAWYER DEATH TOLL
Sectarian warfare plagued Iraq in 2006-7, when death squads, insurgents and militias claimed thousands of victims.
Violence is no longer an around-the-clock menace but remains common. At least 116 people were killed and about 300 wounded in bomb and gun attacks on July 23 - by far the bloodiest day since U.S. troops withdrew in December, eight years after the invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
And tensions between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims still run high as politicians feud over power-sharing in government.
Practicing law is often a life-threatening profession.
Iraq's lawyers syndicate says 103 lawyers were killed between 2003-2008 but the actual number could be double that since not all cases are reported. The syndicate, which has 50,000 members, lacks figures on victims for after 2008.
Abadi defended a woman who was accused with her husband of kidnapping and killing her husband's friend, a Shi'ite, when he visited them in their home in a Sunni district of Baghdad.
The couple said gunmen had broken into their house and kidnapped the guest, but the victim's relatives accused them of the crime. Abadi, who was the woman's lawyer, won the case and his client was released from prison.
Shortly afterwards three gunmen in a BMW car opened fire at him when he was driving and three bullets whizzed past his head, shattering the window. He stopped his car, and they thought he was dead and drove away.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the judiciary faces enormous pressure in Iraq, particularly lawyers when intimidation, including threats through text messages, is a fact of life.
"The lack of security allows lawyers to be threatened particularly if they take on sensitive cases and those who make threats are able to do so with impunity," Samer Muscati, a researcher at the New York-based watchdog, said.
'SIR, LEAVE THIS CASE ALONE'
Thair al-Qassim, a Baghdad-based specialist in sectarian cases, said he has been threatened 32 times.
His son was kidnapped and beaten severely in 2006 and only freed when Qassim paid a $40,000 ransom. He was kidnapped briefly himself in 2009 after militiamen targeted his car, interrogated him and told him to stop covering certain cases. He managed to escape unharmed.

Qassim has endured hand grenade attacks, threatening phone calls and text messages and a letter thrown into his garden.
"All that because I defend Sunnis against Shi'ites or Shi'ites against Sunnis," Qassim said.
"When I defend a client who is from the Sunni sect...someone from the other side, the Shi'ite side, calls me and says 'Sir, leave this case, otherwise you will face regrettable consequences' - and vice versa."
But Qassim said he did not abandoned these cases because this is how he earns his living.
He was part of the defense team for an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush in December 2008. He received a phone call from someone telling him to drop the case or he or his family would be killed.
It proved an empty threat - but it sticks in his mind.
Apart from the threats, lawyers say they are often prevented from meeting clients, who undergo lengthy interrogations. The Iraqi legal system is especially slow and bureaucratic.
According to Iraqi criminal law, arrested people should be presented to a judge in 24 hours, but this rarely happens in practice, lawyer Farhan al-Bighani said. "They should not stay at the mercy of a police officer for a month or longer just because he wants to extract a confession."
Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council, said lawyers could present their complaints and the council would take legal procedures in such cases.
Lawyers complain some judges are under political pressure, make decisions based on sectarian or tribal affiliations or are corrupt, charges rejected by the Supreme Judicial Council which says judges are independent, and not politically affiliated.
In one of Iraq's most high-profile and contested cases, Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni politician in the Iraqiya bloc, says he is being targeted in a legal investigation partially because of sectarianism.
Hashemi fled Baghdad in December when the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought his arrest on charges that he ran a death squad.
Hashemi has said he is ready to face trial, but not in a Baghdad court, which he believes is under the sway of Maliki in a judicial system tainted by political bias.
Maliki's allies say the Hashemi trial is not political. But many Iraqi Sunnis say they see a sectarian hand behind the case, accusing Maliki of shoring up his position at their expense.
Lawyers and Human Rights Watch criticized a government campaign in November to arrest Baathists and former military officers who authorities maintained had plotted to oust Maliki one month before the departure of U.S. troops.
Maliki said more than 600 people had been arrested on evidence that they sought to undermine security in Iraq.
"We have spoken to lawyers and the families of detainees who said they would not take on these types of cases because it would put the lawyers at risk," HRW's Muscati said.
For lawyer Abadi who dodged the bullets, the lawyers syndicate is not doing enough to defend his profession. He even laments that lawyers cannot be armed to defend themselves.
"The lawyer is in the courtyard, fighting alone," he said.

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Indonesia Investment in Iraq

Baghdad Invest - 03/07/2012 Baghdad.

Iraq is calling on Indonesian companies and professionals to help build the fledgling nation, its deputy prime minister for energy, Hussain Ibrahim Saleh al-Shahristani, said in Jakarta on Monday.

“The Iraqi deputy prime minister stressed that the situation now is relatively safer and they will welcome Indonesian companies and professional workers in participating in their development process,” Yopie Hidayat, the spokesman for Vice President Boediono, said after the latter had met with Saleh.

Saleh said Iraq’s development needed professionals in construction and in services such as finance and logistics. There were also good opportunities in the energy sector, he added.

Yopie said that according to the Iraqi official, “Indonesia should have the biggest opportunity in entering those fields, not only focused on energy but also its supporting services.”

The two countries are currently discussing ways to overcome visa problems that continue to be an obstacle to bilateral exchanges.

“The vice president directly asked the deputy foreign minister to follow up this demand. The facilities and ease to get visas, including official and diplomatic [visas], is currently starting to be addressed,” Yopie said.

He added that the Iraqi government was offering various investment opportunities for Indonesia.

The 30-minute meeting between Boediono and his guest was also attended by Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik and his deputy minister, Mahmuddin Yasin, as well as the deputy foreign minister, Wardana.

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