The best, brightest, wealthiest fleeing Iraq in setback to reconstruction

[struggle4progress]

Posted on Wed, Nov. 24, 2004
BY LIZ SLY
Chicago Tribune

AMMAN, Jordan - (KRT) - When the kidnappers who had just released him in return for a $105,000 ransom called his home to ask for an extra $50,000, Shafiq Noori made a decision he never imagined he would make.

He would pack up, get out and leave Iraq for good.

He hired armed guards just long enough to make the necessary arrangements. Then he gathered his wife and children and headed for neighboring Jordan, joining an accelerating exodus of wealthy and middle-class Iraqis that augurs ill for Iraq's attempts at recovery.

"I'm going to stay here," said Noori, 34, who left behind a date-farming business in Baghdad and last month purchased a $200,000 apartment for his family in Jordan's capital, Amman. <snip>

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/10262242.htm