There is no secret behind the success of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region on the economic and service levels. The region endured, until 2003, extremely tough security and political circumstances that affected its infrastructure and left these cities far behind other Iraqi cities. However, since 2003, the region has made a huge leap forward on all levels and has wisely invested money in the right places. Meanwhile, money has been terribly squandered in all of Iraq’s other regions.
Today, there is no comparison between the cities of the Kurdistan region and other Iraqi cities. Kurds have managed to traverse the economic-transition process by way of a budget amounting to 17% of the federal Iraqi budget, while the remaining 83% of the Iraqi budget was misplaced.