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Czech-Iraqi relationship and nowdays Iraq
Khalid, Ahmed Mohamed ; Jeníček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Voráček, Emil (referee) ; Gombár, Eduard (referee) ; Krepl, Vladimír (referee)
This work cover the topic of bilateral cooperation between two countries with different political-economic and cultural-historical characteristics, that is the Republic of Iraq as developing country and the Czech republic on the other side ,which is classified by the OECD as advanced ,industrialized country. It focuses on the often debated issue, namely how to consolidate and streamline both an economic and political cooperation of the Czech Republic with the newly formed society in the Republic of Iraq. Despite a long tradition of joint relations, nowadays the Czech Republic is not a major player in the development of Iraq, but it has its potential to thrive in partial aspects of the transformation of Iraqi society such as agriculture and the environment, energy, transport, but also active in the field of counseling institutional transformation of the country such as government and regional institutions, human rights, etc. serves as a type of connecting link in this effort. This can be presented as an international development cooperation, which may very well continue to the long tradition of Czech-,resp. Czechoslovakian -- Iraqi relations. The scope of development assistance is both Czech and world-level expectations, particularly in terms of volume, but you can talk about it as a precursor of a deeper economic cooperation The total amount of development funds arising from the Czech Republic in Iraq represents a considerable amount, for example, between 2003 and 2005 it was 78 million USD. In the same period, the trade exchange was only 17 million USD. It should be noted that much of the development funds can be described as a humanitarian (building hospitals). In addition, it must be pointed out that the solving of development and humanitarian projects in Iraq is very problematic. It is necessary to use local co-workers, who often choose between work and cooperation with international organizations for which they can get a wage, thereby they face the pressure from the local environs that suspect them of cooperating with those who destroyed the country and who occupy it. These attitudes of local people slow down many development objectives and overall reduce the sustainability of development activities. That is why international organizations are focusing on the supply of capital equipment, in which they may engage private capital and thus open the way to Iraq to companies, which would be financially beneficial to both parties, i.e. the Iraqi citizens. To penetrate the Iraqi market with a new product or service, however, means not only to face competition from local products, but also the recently mentioned increasing activity of the neighboring Islamic countries, especially Turkey and Iran, but other producers of cheap goods from South and Southeast Asia. In this respect there is rather a chance for the Czech Republic to approach wealthier clientele, which will be (with economic growth and wealth of the Iraqi people) looking for higher quality goods for which it would be willing to pay.
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