BAGHDAD'S LADY MAYOR

BAGHDAD mayor Thikra Alwash has ambitious plans for her city.

The Mayor of Baghdad wants to revive her war-torn city, fix its decrepit infrastructure and twin it with PARIS - another female led metropolis.

Thikra AIwash, a 60 year old civil engineer and only woman mayor of a Middle East capital, faces a mountainous task.

She has given herself 10 years to revive the city, heart of the Abassid Caliphate and the centre of  Arab and Muslim civilization for five great centuries.

AIwash has prioritised repairing war-scarred infrastructure and restoring the city's heritage - but to do so, she needs to find the money.

''When I took up my post in 2015, the municipality was bankrupt. I was told that I had to find the financing myself,'' she said. ''They choose a woman because we know how to pay attention to expenses.''

Elegantly dressed with a red head scarf at her expansive city centre office, she said  Baghdad was heading in the right direction.

''I am not saying that the services we offer the population are enough, but we are on the right track,'' she added.

A  former director general at  Iraq's  higher education ministry. AIwash was appointed by  Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

She said her her budget drawn from various taxes, fines and private investment, is  110 billion dinars {$90 million}.

That is set to increase, thanks to a new law under which the finance ministry will pump extra tax revenues into the municipality.

The budget  ''needs to double to make basic services available and to work properly,'' AIwash said.

Baghdad's  infrastructure was laid to waste by a  13-year  international embargo against the regime of late dictator  Saddam Hussein, the 2003 United States led invasion that toppled him-

And the subsequent years of sectarian violence, culminating in the blood soaked  rise and fall of the militant Islamic State group.

today, it has more than  seven million  inhabitants, up 45% since 2015, a year after  IS seized a  third of Iraq and triggered a rural exodus.

[AFP].