But that isn't very interesting. The main questions in Iraq now strike me as what internal political constellations are going to form around which actors and what US policy is going to be. Neither of which are very interesting to me personally, being not particularly enamoured of either Iraqi or American domestic politics. Better leave that to the horde of bloggers who are obsessed with one or the other and the handful with real competitive advantage, as my days of direct involvement in Iraq are now largely over.

However, in reading The Washington Post article, Shiite Militias Move Into Oil-Rich Kirkuk, Even as Kurds Dig In, I thought I might reflect on a deal I worked on relatively recently involving Iraq. The entire thing fell through a bit back and is dead as a doornail, so I think I can share something, although I will be obscure about certain facts.

As part of the financial transaction, which touched on some major Iraqi financial assets, there was a fairly inadquate due diligence package on assets and proposals that the Iraqi financial assets intended to invest in or finance in some manner. One that sticks in my mind (recall this is all in Arabic with only English summaries, the main actors in the transaction engaged me to review the materials to check how well the two sets matched - here's a nice business lesson for emerging markets, they did not. Don't let the other side of the deal feed you translations. It may be cheaper, but it is fucking stupid.) is what purported in the summary provided to be a "social investment" to provide and expand housing in the city of Kirkouk. A funny thing, as a dug through the underlying proposal in the original Arabic, the deal transformed itself from a social investment including housing, pre-planned villages and the like, to the Regional Authorities investing in pre-planned communities for the Authorities security forces and others.

I shan't cite the number of units involved or other detials, but the numbers were large to my reading (although lord knows given the transparency of it all, there was doubtless layers of brown envolopes disguised as costs). I immediately realised as I read this thing that the nice, warm, fuzzy social investment - Islamically compliant - for improving housing in the city was much less warm and fuzzy. Pity, the fellows who hired me had really gone for the concept (it did sound nice in summary and could have gotten some nice EU, USAID, etc. support - social housing, planned communities and all those jolly putting a nice suburban face on this), but anyone looking at this closely, and pulling up some descriptions of Kirkouk and some maps had to come away with the sinking sensation that financing this thing would in fact be financing some form of ethnic cleansing / power grab. Not the front end, but the amenities post- facto as the Regional Authority in question was of course the Kurds, and those security forces without doubt Pechmerga.

I can't recall whether I bothered to point this out, other issues rather more fundamental to the deal rose their ugly heads and like every other Iraqi deal I have had the small pleasure to be involved in, this sank into the dry sands of endemic violence, corruption and escalating cost.