Visiting Kurdistan

So, I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time, so here goes.

In the last week of March me and my parents went to visit relatives in Kurdistan, Iraq.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been an autonomous region since the early nineties thus it’s fairly safe and open to western influences. Before this trip me and my mother hadn’t been to Iraq since 1986 so it was a trip back in time as well. My dad on the other hand travels to Kurdistan roughly once a year.

Anyhow, I’m going to try and share some of my experiences from the week I spent in and around Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî).

It all started with me flying Berlin-Copenhagen to meet up with my parents in Malmö from where we were supposed to fly to Erbil International Airport which is located in Ankawa just outside of Hewlêr (Arbil), the capital of the Kurdish region in Iraq. Arriving in Malmö became somewhat of an anti climax as my father informed me that our evening flight had been postponed, indefinitely, due to a sandstorm that was passing over Kurdistan at the moment. The airline was unable to say when the flight would take off.

So we spent the evening in Malmö, and the next day the flight was on again.

I must say that the feeling when boarding a Dubrownik Airlines airplane headed for Iraq wasn’t really the same one I usually get when I’m about to fly… but after a 4h30min flight we landed – at the break of dawn, in Iraq. Touching ground, exiting the airplane, passing the heavily armed airport guards was almost overwhelming. Our goal was Sulaymaniyah, about 150 kilometers away, and since our flight was initially cancelled, and we didn’t know when we’d be in Kurdistan – nobody came to pick us up. So after being transported out from the airport, past at least three guarded gates, we came to the entrance and took a taxi. I was taking some pictures of the airport gate, and this was my first encounter with a heavily armed guard telling me I was not allowed to do that…

Aerial view of Arbil and ERI entrance

Back in the eighties, my dad lived in Arbil, and so did we for a couple of months, so we asked the driver to drive us around a bit. The city has about 1.2 million inhabitants, and given that it mostly consists of buildings with one or two floors, it’s huge, and it’s ancient. It’s history traces back to the 23rd century BC. The city scape is dominated by the old city wall in the center of town, a huge elevated platform surrounded (and build upon) walls.

City wall and a mosque

As daytime was approaching, it became time for us to drive to our final destination. The landscape was what I expected (and vaguely remembered from my early childhood); sandy, dusty and dry. But as we drove closer and closer to Sulaymaniyah the landscape changed – mountains, green trees, fields of colorful flowers and other beautiful sceneries seemed to line up for us. Arriving in Sulaymaniyah was to say the least chaotic. Everywhere you look there’s construction going on; roads, houses, shopping malls – everything. Truly a city in motion (and let’s not mention the traffic, please…).

We arrived and had a magnificent time with family, relatives and friends of the family. Great time!

I had said, already when we were planning this trip, that the prupose of this trip, at least for me, was to get to know the country, the culture, and the people. I had made somewhat of a plan of what I wanted to see and told my father to set things up. So day two, one of my uncles took us on a ride to the mountains surrounding the valley in which Sulaymaniyah lies. Driving up to peaks at well over 1500m was…interesting. There are roads taking you up to the top of the peaks. We drove around, saw farmers harvesting grapes that would be turned to raisins in the sun, and huge newly build communities which mostly consisted of summer homes (the majority of them being quite a lot bigger than the average European villa). We spent the rest of the day walking around at the bazaars and sightseeing in the city. It is a huge city, and business seems to blooming just around every corner. This is a country were people can get rich fast, and loose it all even faster. Walking around the neighbourhood where we stayed, some of the homes had heavily armed guards sitting outside – these were the homes of the filthy rich (and there were quite many of these).

Silemani McD - city center - graffiti - views of the city from ~1500m

Day three we went to Halabja, the scene of the gruesome poison gas attack in 1988. Driving the distance to Halabja took about two hours, and yet again, the country was showing of it’s finest scenery. Fields of green, snowy peaks in the distance and tremendous weather. The north eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan is extremely fertile, allowing farmers have up to three crops per year. As we came nearer and nearer to Halabja, the mountains came closer and closer. Halabja is at about 1000 meters elevation with even higher (2000+m) mountains in the direct vicinity of it, a magnificent landscape. And definitely not what “westerners” expect of a country in the Middle East.

In Halabja you see that history has healed some wounds, not all though. There were still piles of gravel that once were houses throughout the city. There were the mass graves at the cemetery (which had a very distinctive message to all those allegiant to the Ba’ath party), and there was the complete and utter lack of infrastructure in those parts of the city that had been hit hardest. We visited the memorial, which has been a very controversial matter; spending money on a memorial instead of helping the survivors tends to create tensions. Our guide for the day was an old friend of my dad who came to Kurdistan from London when he heard that we were coming, he had some old acquaintances in Halabja which we visited. An older, traditional, Kurdish gentleman and his family. We heard stories about their lives and how they had survived the “incident” twenty years earlier. After this visit we went just outside of the city and enjoyed the view, truly magnificent. I was in awe. After some hours in Halabja we drove back home.

Halabja scenes from the road - hospital - cemetery entrance - mass grave (one of four) - city - view

One of the nights, we decided to try out the club life in Sulaymaniyah, which is, lets say, a bit different from what I’m used to. The better part of the family went to one of the members only country club that a couple of my uncles’ families are members at. This was a huge restaurant with a surrounding park. I’d say that the men-women ratio was better than in many of the clubs in Sweden or Germany I’ve visited. Everyone was having a good time, eating and drinking and just enjoying ourselves. Then, when going home, everyone took their cars and drove back. This was not something I had anticipated – most people have had their fair share of ouzo, but to be honest, having seen how people in Sulaymaniyah drive during daytime, I don’t think they’re worse off being intoxicated behind the wheel.

Silemani sheep heads - Olof Palme memorial park - baking bread - traditional clothes

We spent a couple of days enjoying ourselves in and around Sulaymaniyah, and the last day the whole family decided to go to Dukan for a big bbq. I wasn’t really expecting that about 20 000 other people had decided on the same thing, at the same place. Around Dukan there are holiday resorts, and this kind of family outing resorts where you lease a spot in a park (with a little “house”) and have your outing there. There was at least 25 of us, all ages – aunts, uncles, cousins, friends etc. At Dukan lake, there is Dukan Dam. A water plant providing electricity for almost all the region, since there has been a drought for the last couple of years, the dam closes up for a couple of hours every day to save water for electricity during evenings and nights. This has led to an industry of third-party electricity providers (for those who can afford), which in effect means that you have two sets of power plugs in your home – one setup for the electricity provided by the state, and one for the private ones.

Dukan view - hotel - river bank - dam - view

After this full day of socializing it was time for us to go to the airport. Only problem was that our driver, the same person who had taken us to Halabja, was not familiar with the road. Since we had gone to Dukan, we were not on the main road, and had to take a set of smaller ones.
When driving in the countryside in Kurdistan, every so often, you run into armed and guarded toll booths where you have to state who you are, where you are going, why, etc. So after having driven for a couple of hours, and not passed any of these for some time we finally passed one where we decided to ask for directions to Arbil. The military personnel looked at us and started laughing quite loudly – apparently we had taken a wrong turn somewhere and were within viewing distance of the Iranian border.

After getting proper directions, we were again on our way to Arbil, Malmö and eventually Berlin.

This was probably one of the best traveling experiences I’ve had, one thing’s for sure: it’s not going to be twenty three years before I go back again. I really believe that this part of the Middle East is going to be the one that opens up the region for the rest of the world.

A further selection of pictures from the week in Kurdistan can be found on these links: