Sulaimani’s Wealthy Residents: From Gentlemen Rich to Rich G

[Aslan]

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Sulaimani residents speak nostalgically of the days when the city’s wealthy men used their riches for charity, and funded public projects. Those men are still remembered in city street names such as Ali Naji, Ali Kemal and Ali Boskani.

These three men – and some others -- returned much of their wealth back into the city, building public hospitals and schools in the 1970s and ‘80s that still bear their names, some city residents and writers say.

According to statistics by the Kurdistan Board of Investment (BOI), there are 2, 580 millionaires in Sulaimani, and the wealth of each exceeds $5 million.

But Kamal Nuri, director of the city’s Education Department, says that “in the past 20 years only two schools have been built by the wealthy people of Sulaimani.”

Recently, a non-governmental organization organized an investment conference and invited millionaires and investors in Sulaimani to encourage them to support public service projects.

“Only five of all the investors and millionaires invited even bothered to show up,” Nuri explains.

According to Mustafa Baram, project director at Sulaimani’s Department of Health, businessmen have built only two hospitals in the city since the Kurds gained autonomy in 1991.

But he adds, “Sulaimani needs around seven more hospitals,”

Yasin Rashid, president of the investment board in Sulaimani, said that some of Kurdistan’s ultra-wealthy were as rich as the rich in Gulf countries, but gave much less than their Arab counterparts.

They may not have built schools or parks, but Kurdistan’s newly rich have shown a passion for building mosques: Fifty-five have been built over the past two decades, and seven more are under construction, according to Ako Hassan, director of Sulaimani’s Religious Endowment.

Author Mustafa Salih Kareem says that, for their charitable deeds, the city’s former patrons “became the symbol of generosity in Sulaimani, and people will not forget them.”

Jamal Abdul, a prominent education expert in Sulaimani who chaired the Ali Kamal student fund four decades ago, told Rudaw, “Ali Kemal and the others were not even millionaires, but they loved their city and were loyal to its people.”


Comments


2 2 kurdo | 8 hours ago
Unfortunately, greediness and lack of intelligence will lead south Kurdistan down to a arabic inferno. We have so many millionaires but they only think about their pockets. We have so many foreigners in our country doing what they want, building houses with their own identity (like "libanese" or "american" village...") that our culture and identity is vanishing. We put too little money on education. We need to be 100% self independent and self developing. We need to have our own food supply, our own military technology and so on. But the Barzani/Talabani gangs (I still admire Mustafa and Masoud Barzani, but they are not fit to lead a country, only a people in war!) are destroying the country. What we need is: - More education and definitely better education than todays (They are a joke)! - Better infrastructure and self developing, regarding electricity, water and food. - More military power (do not think that the enemy are still our friends, they are not and will backstab us when they get the chance!) - More money on our culture and identity. - More unity, both as people but on our dialects. But our people still haven't learned its history. We will be called the dumbest people on earth in history books.

[Anthea]

Greed is the worst of all sins - let us hope that the system changes soon and more money is put into hospitals and education

Kurdistan has grown a lot in the last few years - but everything takes time - there is no quick fix - the foundations of a great nation are still being built - the rest will come given time

It would be a good thing if some of the wealthier people sponsored hospitals and schools - but it is their money and their choice

10 years from now Kurdistan will be a truly prosperous Independent nation