By Dr Mohammed Salam
Imagine a man who opens a small business. He wants to make big money and tells everyone that the free market is the best thing. He says he has the right to be a millionaire. But then, the government sends him the bill for electricity and he gets very angry. He sees a small tax on his business license and feels like someone is stealing from him. At the same time, he is waiting for his son to graduate university so the government can give the boy a job. This is not because the man is a hypocrite. It is because of the history that is still living inside our heads.
For a long time, Kurdistan was part of Ba’athist Iraq. In those days, the government controlled everything. They decided the price of bread, who gets a job, and how much a house costs. You didn’t see the price of anything because the state just gave it to you. But it was also very cruel to Kurds. They made us depend on them while they were bombing our villages and treating us like enemies. They made us weak in our pockets.
When we finally got free in 1991, everything was broken. Saddam stopped the food and fuel, and the UN had sanctions on us. We couldn’t trade with the world. If you wanted to survive, you had to trade on the mountain roads at night. This was our first “capitalism”—it wasn’t from a book or an idea. It was just hunger. We traded because we had to eat, not because we loved the market.
After 2003, the oil money started coming from Baghdad. Suddenly, Erbil became a city of glass. We got big malls, luxury towers, and private schools. It looked like we were finally rich.
But if you look closely, the foundation was not real. Our money didn’t come from Kurdish factories making things to sell to the world. It was just oil money that the government used to pay salaries. By 2017, half of the people working in Kurdistan were working for the government. We became a place that only buys things from outside and makes nothing ourselves. When the oil price went down or Baghdad got into a fight with us, the whole system started to shake.
Now, our people have two minds. One side wants to be a successful businessman, own property, and have independence. But the other side still expects the government to give cheap power, easy jobs, and help for everything. When the government asks for tax or the price of electricity goes up, people don’t think “this is the market.” They think “this is an injustice.”
This is a circle that never ends. The government cannot give us services if they have no money. And they can’t get money unless they have oil or they take taxes. Baghdad doesn’t let the government to sell oil Properly. And we don’t want to pay taxes or fees because for fifty years, we were told the state provides everything. We still haven’t learned that in a real free market, if the people want a good country, they have to be the ones who pay for it.
In short, we want to benefits of socialism and capitalism, at the same time.