Mohammed Taha is a member of an endangered species - a wealthy businessman still living in Baghdad. But it isn't the risk that bothers him so much as being cheated. "In Iraq we have the worst corruption in the world. After the invasion and the Americans came, I dreamt we would have a new country.
Now we face the reality," said Taha, who owns one of the largest food import and distribution firms in Iraq. "The country is being run by people who don't know what they're doing and they want to run it like Saddam Hussein," he said, referring to the system established by Iraq's toppled leader that gave almost all commercial power to the state.
A former minister was arrested in connection with a graft inquiry in August and a warrant was issued for his successor. But corruption is rampant at every level of government and is skimming billions of dollars a year from state coffers.
The coalition government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says it wants to boost the private sector to trim an almost total dependence on oil revenue. But corruption adds a heavy cost to doing business on top of dire security conditions.
Taha said he was earning quite nicely until $5 million of frozen chicken got stuck at the border last year, after Iraq declared a selective poultry import ban because of bird flu.
He says the ban should not have applied to his shipment, but was imposed to benefit politically well-connected Iraqi poultry farmers, who cashed in as shortages sent prices soaring.
HOSTAGE:
Such frustrations add to the constant danger of kidnapping for ransom in Baghdad and the need for round-the-clock bodyguards, which are as common as cellphones for big Iraqi businessmen.
Taha, whose family was one of Iraq's largest wholesale food importers before fleeing Saddam's rule in the 1970s for Kuwait, returned after the invasion, spent $17 million building warehouses in Basra and Baghdad and is now hostage to his investment.
"We have to stay here because we've spent a hell of a lot of money," he said.
Ziad al-Bisha knows the feeling. As general manager of HMBS, which claims to be the oldest family-owned firm in Iraq, he runs 30 factories with 6,000 staff. Owned by the al-Bunnia family, it processes food and has distribution, construction and electronics operations.
Business conditions vary but are better in Kurdistan, the relatively stable autonomous northern region where the electricity supply is reliable and key plant managers can go to work with little fear of death or kidnap.
Baghdad is different.
The HMBS factories in the capital operate for barely an hour a day because of power cuts, while machinery parts don't arrive and workers are often too scared to leave home.
"You are in a war zone. Security is extremely difficult. You can barely manage to operate one shift a day. But you need to continue," said Bisha, speaking from the company's headquarters, which have moved to Amman, capital of neighbouring Jordan.
"You can't just stop life. People are depending on these jobs to support their families," he said.
PROFIT MARGIN:
Efforts to foster private enterprise are also being stifled by soaring inflation, almost 70 percent year-on-year in July, which is crimping profits badly unless producers can pass on the higher costs to consumers.
Ice-cream parlours used to be hugely popular in Baghdad and although the daily pattern of bomb blasts and shootings has hurt demand, customers still drop by al-Ballut in the city centre.
But manager Wail Zuhair says the soaring cost of raw ingredients has had a drastic impact on profits.
"We used to pay 20,000-25,000 dinars ($13.5-$17) for 12 kg of powder milk, now we pay 60,000 ($40) for the same amount," he said. Other costs are also up, and the parlour's peak income has halved, to around 750,000 dinars ($500) a day, he said.
In the end, businesses have stayed in Iraq because owners are betting that conditions will eventually improve. Meanwhile Iraqi entrepreneurs exist in a peculiar state of semi-captivity, rarely venturing forth and running operations at arms' length.
"As a businessman I should spend at least five hours every day out in the markets, seeing what is selling, working with my customers," said food distributor Taha. "Instead, I sit here and wait for my people to report back to me. And I hate reports."
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