Iraqi Kurdistan faces a deepening economic crisis as unpaid wages pile up

By Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, City St George's, University of London

Public sector workers in Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq, have endured irregular and delayed salary payments for more than a decade. Many of these people are owed staggering amounts of money – US$50,000 (£38,700) on average, and as much as US$120,000 for higher-level employees.

The region’s 6.5 million inhabitants have been caught in the middle of an unresolved political and financial conflict between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad.…

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