Irbil lies in the heart of the semi-autonomous Kurdish area,
a safe haven for Iraqis seeking fun and a break from the almost daily attacks
that still hit most of the country more than eight years after the US-led
invasion.
The province’s capital city, also called Irbil, boasts a top
designer-label shopping experience in one of its many malls and is home to the
Citadel, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world.
“It’s like an independent Iraq,” said Ahmed, who lives in
Tikrit, the home town of former dictator Saddam Hussein who was toppled by the
2003 invasion.
“Other parts of Iraq have no electricity, no water. Just
bombs,” she added, while sitting with her husband and daughter at the foot of
the Citadel, enjoying a cool spray from one of the many lit-up fountains dotted
around the area.
Her 14-year-old daughter, Rasan, agrees.
“It’s much better here. We are more free, we can walk, go
anywhere. In Tikrit, my day involves going from school to home, studying and
then sleeping,” she said. “Here I like to shop and go to the amusement park.”
The Kurdish region has been virtually autonomous for 20
years and was little affected by the country’s most recent war. Foreign
investment has been steady, allowing for the development of chic shopping
malls, five-star hotels, fitness centers and even an indoor ice-skating rink.
Over the 3-day Eid Al-Fitr festival last week, 152,000
people visited the Kurdish region, of which 99,000 went to the province of Irbil,
according to Mawlawi Jabbar, director general of tourism in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Jabbar said 143,000 of the 152,000 were Iraqis from other
parts of the country while 9,000 came from Iran or Turkey.
“The capacity of hotels and motels in Kurdistan is about 50,000
beds. Due to the heavy flow, we had an unprecedented number of visitors who
were processed and accommodated in tourist camps set up in Shaqlawa, north of
Irbil, and in Irbil itself,” he said.
One of Irbil’s main appeals for war-weary Iraqis is security.
The city last witnessed a bombing in May 2007 and is a far cry from the blast
walls and checkpoints scattered around Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.
Iraq is still building its police and army to battle a Sunni
Islamist insurgency and Shiite militias as US forces get ready to leave by
end-December. The Kurdish zone also has peshmerga security forces.
The mountainous borders of Kurdistan have recently been the
target of airstrikes from Turkey and shelling from Iran, both aimed at Kurdish
guerrillas in the area fighting for a separate Kurdish state.
But Irbil, a few hours drive away from the border, has not
been affected by the assaults.
Irbil’s blend of old meets new, from its mosques to a fun
park with a roller coaster and a carousel, appeal to both the young and the
old.
“We came here for pleasure,” said Shaheen Ahmed Khalid, an
assistant medic from Kirkuk who brought his family to Irbil to celebrate Eid.
“Irbil is safer and it’s better for tourism. There’s more to
do.”
Some Iraqis said regional turmoil had also prompted them to
change their travel plans to neighboring countries.
A wave of pro-democracy protests across parts of the Middle
East and North Africa this year sparked a civil war in Libya and a violent
crackdown by Syria’s government has killed 2,000 people, the United Nations
says.
“Sometimes we go to Turkey and to Syria, but in Syria there
is bad security, so we changed. Instead of going to Syria, we came here,” said
Aziz Abbas, a 50-year-old Higher Education ministry employee from Samarra who
was visiting Irbil.
Iraq itself has not been immune to protests. Demonstrators
took to the streets earlier this year over jobs and poor services.
Rallies in Sulaimaniya by protesters who said they were
seeking an end to corruption and authoritarian rule were met by a big show of
force by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Protests in Irbil were small.
