American Businessmen Coming Back to Iraq!

Watch out: American businessmen are coming back to Iraq. That’s the message being passed around by Iraqi diplomats to their contacts in Europe.

A major delegation of business leaders from across the Atlantic are staying in Baghdad right now and are also supposed to tour the country’s Kurdish regions.

Until now, the Americans were omnipresent, even omnipotent, in Iraq’s military markets. But they had left the rest of the country’s reconstruction to European, Turkish or Korean companies. “Water purification, roads, cement plants — they weren’t too interested in that stuff,” admits a French businessman who’s been advised by Iraqi authorities of his American competition’s comeback. “But now the Americans don’t want to be left out of those markets.”*

The reconstruction of Iraq is valued at over $400 billion, and more than seven years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, much remains to be done — which obviously whets many appetites around the world.

* Editor’s Note: These quotes, accurately translated, could not be verified.