Distraught, Doctor Shakhawan Kheilani cannot spend too much time on the phone. For the past week, the Emirati Hospital in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG), which he directs, and which treats patients of Covid-19, has been full. “We will not accept any new patients until we can release them.” This surgeon has only a medical team of ten people, who is divided between the two rounds, morning and evening, to treat 90 patients, some of whom are serious.
Also read: Oil still burns in Iraq
Exponential progression
Since the end of Ramadan a month ago, the Covid-19 epidemic has grown exponentially in Iraq and the Kurdish autonomous region. Cases so far have only been in the tens, thanks to containment measures undertaken in mid-March. Iraq now registers more than 2,000 new cases a day, including around 200 in Iraqi Kurdistan. The autonomous region currently has more than 4,700 cases of Covid-19, at least 130 dead and 1,500 healings.
We have never seen a crisis like this. Neither during the referendum in 2017, nor during the years of struggle against Daesh!
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In the governorate of Erbil as in the rest of Iraqi Kurdistan, hospital beds are filling up quickly, but that is not what worries most. “The real problem is human resources,” complains Dlovan Jalal, head of the Directorate of Health for the province of Erbil. “We are short of nurses and medical personnel and, in addition, we are constantly afraid that those we have will go on strike, as is already the case in Sulaymaniyah.” The Kurdish health system is under pressure because it cannot afford staff. In the Sulaymaniyah province, bordering Iran and home to the virus, health workers have now been on strike for almost two weeks to denounce the non-payment of their wages for almost two months.
The oil-for-finance system stuck
The Kurdish economy is on the verge of bankruptcy. The slowdown caused by the pandemic coincided with the collapse in oil prices in February. Black gold, which constitutes 90% of the budget of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, has been the subject of disputes between Erbil and Baghdad for years. The quarrels have resumed all the more since the fall of the courses. According to the 2009 Federal Budget Law, Iraq must pay 12.7% of its budget to Iraqi Kurdistan in exchange for 250,000 barrels of oil per day. But Erbil never sent them, and Baghdad ended up stopping payments in April. Until recently, Iraqi Kurdistan had always been able to rely on revenues from the sale of oil abroad. This time, with the value of crude divided by two and the production cuts decided by OPEC, money is sorely lacking. In particular to pay salaries in the public sector, which represents the vast majority of jobs in the region.
Also read: Falling oil prices: several countries threatened with collapse
Baghdad agreed to make a one-time payment of $ 336 million (€ 299 million) pending an agreement. The Kurdish government has declared that it has used almost 140 million of this sum to pay off its debts. The rest should be used for salaries. That is three times nothing, if we consider that the monthly allowance of $ 384 million which arrived from Baghdad represented approximately half of the wages of the public sector of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Diversification of the economy
At the beginning of June, the government tried to reimpose a total curfew to prevent the increase in the number of cases. In less than 48 hours, the wave of protests was intense across the four provinces, forcing the authorities to back down. “People couldn’t take it after two months of lockdown, they have no more money and need to work, ”admits Dr. Kheilani.
Backed by the scale of the crisis, the KRG announced a diversification of the economy in agriculture, industry and tourism. But many experts believe that it is the wrong solution at the wrong time: “You cannot diversify when the price of oil is so low: it takes money to invest in different sectors, and Iraqi Kurdistan n ‘has none,’ says Mohammed Husein of the Iraqi Center for Policy Analysis and Research (ICPAR). According to the latter, the only solution would be to implement structural reforms against endemic corruption, unmotivated spending by the administration, which has at least 250,000 “ghost employees”, according to Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani.
Meanwhile, workers and employers despair. Sevar Dleir, managing director of an oil service company, never thought he would ever have to cut wages or lay off workers. And yet, in May, he thanked 15 of his 80 employees: “We have never seen a crisis like this. Neither during the referendum [pour l’autonomie du KRG] in 2017, nor during the years of struggle against Daesh! ”
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