Economic integration in the Levant — in the form of a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) that eliminates tariffs, lowers investment and nontariff barriers, and waives visa requirements — could increase the average gross domestic product of the Levant nations by 3–7 percent. This economic expansion would likely create at least 0.7 million to 1.7 million additional new jobs
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Iraqi diaspora mobilization and the future development of Iraq – authored by Dr. Oula Kadhum, explores Iraqi diaspora mobilization before and after the 2003 invasion and fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. It looks at the ways members of the diaspora sought to help in the rebuilding of their country of origin, at both the elite and grassroots levels, as well as investigating
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Why stability in the country is critical for all of the Middle East As it is beginning, the Biden administration has an opportunity to refocus US attention in the Middle East, and in one key country in particular—Iraq. But this region is not the only critical policy focus for the United States. Given the critical role that Iraq’s stability plays in the security of the wider
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Official estimates are that Iraq’s proven reserves of conventional natural gas amount to at least 3.5 trillion cubic meters (tcm), or about 1.5 percent of the world’s total, placing Iraq 13th among global reserve-holders, with around three-quarters of this figure comprising associated gas that is found in the same reservoirs as oil. The International Energy Agency, though, esti
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Economists who studied the reasons for the low per capita growth of GDP in developing countries that rely on revenues from abundant natural resources, (called ‘resource curse’), found it was actually caused not by high exchange rates, but by wrongly conceived economic policies over a long period of time. We will visit this point again at the end of the paper. Meanwhile, and unt
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