Prior to the middle of 2006, some state authorities also had the authority to gift land to civil servants as a reward for loyal service, after a certain number of years’ employment. A piece of legislation issued in June 2006 put a stop to this. However the practice appeared to have continued beyond that date. Further investigation revealed that some of the employees being gifted land were not actually even eligible for the reward of property. And an article in the weekly Haftana magazine reported that in some cases, mayors and council members had received gifts of land more than once. Some had been gifted land up to seven times.
Some locals have also criticised what they see as unjust distribution of land between foreigners and locals. Although there are far fewer foreign-sponsored projects, the gifted lands they’ve received amount to just over a fifth of all those allocated by the state to investment projects. However the investment board justified this because the foreign projects are worth more money, amounting to almost a third of total investments in the state.
As a result of all of the above, the gifting of lands to investment projects have become a kind of get-rich-quick scheme for some. Some individuals with a suitable investment project were able to lease land from the state authorities for between 20 to 25 years. After 25 years, the ownership of the land returns to state authorities. They then sold that long term lease to other contractors for more and made a quick profit. There’s nothing illegal about this obviously but it must be questioned as to whether this was constitutes a strategic investment.
The problems with the way that land is distributed are slowly becoming more apparent to the officials of Iraqi Kurdistan too. “Every new process has its shortcomings and mistakes, Farman Ghareeb, head of the city of Sulaymaniyah’s Investment Board, told NIQASH. “The commission intends to learn from the mistakes of the past and will organize its future work in a better way.”
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