On a visit to a region plagued by war, a former military officer seeks out a different side to Iraqi Kurdistan that dispels the stereotypes common across America, finding a place paved with peace, from Christian monasteries to pristine waterfalls.
Warzones were not places to take a vacation. At least, that was the conventional wisdom. But I wasn’t on vacation. I was travelling. A semantic difference to everyone back home, but a crucial distinction for those of us who lived on the road. That distinction didn’t dissuade the concerned voices. Rightly so. The Department of State was actively warning against travel to several countries after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. Protests, anti-Zionist sentiment, and political tinderboxes all served as warnings to stay far away as an American. None of that mattered to me. I had been looking forward to travelling to the Middle East for over a year, and no regional war was going to stop me this time. Iraq was calling my name. I had been in the country once before, but that was in wartime as a military officer. I was a different person now, and Iraq a different country, and I was determined to discover the country’s unseen majesty.
It was nighttime when I touched down in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. My small plane was full of soldiers, government contractors, and international businessmen returning from time abroad. Several were received by a VIP greeting party and security detail at the bottom of the steps. Me? I was shuffled into the immigration line along with everyone else. Within minutes, I was in a taxi headed to the city centre. The entire process was so…normal. Visa checks, passport stamps, customs inspections, cash points, taxi services. It was like I had touched down in Marrakech or Cairo, not Iraq. Driving through town was even more disconcerting. High-rise hotels, sleek office towers, and huge, dazzlingly lit shopping malls created a skyline more akin to Las Vegas than the Middle East. Wasn’t Iraq supposed to be old, dirty, and stuck in the past?
Over the next two days, I discovered just how wrong these stereotypes were. My hotel was modern with daily cleaning and complimentary breakfast, Kurds enjoyed time with their children and loved ones in large public parks, and tradesmen enjoyed their meals crowded around food stalls on their breaks. To be sure, the city centre had the same old aesthetic as many historic city centres in the Middle East possessed, but outside of that, I couldn’t believe I was in Iraq. There were no rockets, no drone attacks, no military convoys patrolling the streets. Erbil was just another city, filled with history, culture, and people working to provide a comfortable life for their families. Maybe the rest of the region would be different? Maybe this city was just insulated from the almost twenty years of war that had plagued the country?
I hired a guide, Govand, for a three-day jaunt across Iraqi Kurdistan to find out.
In Govand’s SUV, we drove all over the Kurdish countryside. Govand took me to the region’s border with the rest of Iraq, where he told me of the battles that once took place there with Islamic State, the terrorist group that steamrolled across Iraq in 2014. The Kurds had stopped the terrorists in their tracks, and fighting only extended a few hundred metres into Iraqi Kurdish territory. It was difficult to process that a few years before, standing in that spot could have spelled death, but a two-minute drive down the road would have ensured life. Now, death wasn’t even on the table. The border was more a political contention between the Kurdish Regional Government and the Federal Iraqi government than anything else.
Govand spent our first day together taking me to religious sites. The Mar Mattai and Rabban Hormizd Monasteries were our Christian stops. Neither looked like they had survived centuries of warfare; both stood proud and golden-brown in the Kurdish sun. They were beautiful sights and engineering marvels. Parts of them were carved into the mountainside while others stood defiantly in the open air. This was the first time I noticed the region’s tendency towards war; the monasteries sat high on the hillside, the front staring down a deep draw and the rear backed into a mountain, a design intended to warn and defend against advancing militants. Even so, war hadn’t touched these monasteries in over a century. The same was true of Lalish, the most sacred Yazidi temple in all the world, which hadn’t been touched by armed conflict for as long as humans had kept records.
Maybe the Hamilton Road would be different? After all, its construction under British rule in the 1920s was wrought with tribal feuds and armed resistance to the British mandate. It wasn’t. It was an Iraqi tourism hotspot. Waterfalls fed large pools, providing summertime escapes from the oppressive Iraqi heat, mountainside resorts served as peaceful weekend getaways with beautiful views of the Kurdish plains, and skiers sought winter adrenaline in the Zagros Mountains.
Standing over the Rawanduz gorge, I couldn’t believe such breathtaking scenery existed. The city of Rawanduz sat proudly between two deep ravines, cut by the Rawanduz and Akoyan rivers flowing through them for thousands of years, the countryside glistening as the December dew covered the lush, green landscape. It was no wonder this was a popular hiking and resort destination. There were no wars here, no sectarian feuds, just peaceful nature and people enjoying it. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I could have sat in a camp chair overlooking the gorge for hours contemplating life’s greater questions.
Those greater questions swirled around my mind during my time there. What did “warzone” really mean? It was true that Iranian-backed groups were active in Iraqi Kurdistan, the American-led coalition maintained a large presence as they supported the federal Iraqi government, and the two were constantly clashing. But that didn’t seem to affect the vast majority of Iraqi Kurdistan, and I never once felt under threat. What of the monasteries? If they could survive thousands of years of conflict, why was religious belief receding in the Western world? Not to mention the pre-conceived notions of an entire country. Wasn’t Iraq a desert, Arab, Muslim country? Iraqi Kurdistan reflected none of these notions as Arabs and Kurds, Shia and Sunni, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Yazidis all lived peacefully under the unified banner of Iraqi Kurdistan. Govand summed it up perfectly: “It doesn’t matter [what religion I am]. I am Kurdish.” In my short week exploring the region, my entire conception of Iraq had changed.
As I headed to the airport for my flight out of Iraq, I wrestled with these questions and my experience there. What I had expected, what others had warned me about, hadn’t materialised. Iraqi Kurdistan was safe. There was no other conclusion. The Kurds were staunch American allies, having fought hard to secure themselves against foreign incursions. However, that didn’t mean there wasn’t an undercurrent of tension. The larger Kurdistan extended into three other countries, none of which were willing to cede the Kurds a similar level of autonomy as Iraq. Even then, the Kurds had taken their autonomy from Iraq by force in the 1990s. It was an important point to remember when telling others of my journey (and my intent to return). Nonetheless, that was in the past, at least for the time being, and Iraqi Kurdistan had secured its position as a safe place of refuge in a war-torn region. I hoped it would stay that way. The Kurds had earned that through centuries of fighting, and the world needed to see–and preserve–its rich history and cultural significance.
I hoped the same for Iraq as a whole. The country had suffered five wars in thirty years, and it deserved the break that seemed to be on the horizon. Iraq was the cradle of civilisation, a key country in the development of the three Abrahamic religions, and its rich history was arguably the most important in understanding humanity’s physical and spiritual past. What would it be like to visit Federal Iraq? Would Baghdad, Mosul, Babylon, and the Southern Provinces be as peaceful, picturesque, and life-changing as Rawanduz, Dohuk, or Erbil? Maybe I would find out someday.
