Iraq emerging

Eight years after the American-led invasion of Iraq, the country’s business climate seems to finally be showing some substantive improvements. Granted, the essential quality for the country to re-emerge as a target for investors is physical safety and stability, and on that score the numbers at first sight don’t appear encouraging; the level of violence in Iraq in March more than doubled compared with February. According to statistics from official Iraqi sources, in March, 136 civilians and 111 Iraqi police and soldiers died in attacks across the country; in Baghdad alone, 79 civilians and 31 security personnel were killed: more than twice the previous month’s total. The current level of violence is, however, still far below what Iraq saw during the sectarian warfare peak of 2006-2007; and a suggestion as to why the violence grew recently is that relaxed security forces, over-confident that the situation is calm, are making their