First Dispatch
The State of the Fractured Nation

        Every time I return to Iraq, it’s the same story. Things are worse, and they’re strange.

        I began my trip in Erbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. This has always been the most stabile part of the country, having been remarkably free of car bombs, IEDs, and US military action. Security is tight at the checkpoints, but once inside, it feels nothing like Baghdad.

        One can walk down the street without fear of violence, and not only is there reconstruction going on, but lots and lots of new construction. Being one of the only major cities where business is possible in a country into which billions are being poured has its advantages. Most of my time has been spent working on a feature film that’s funded by the Kurdistan Ministry of Culture, if that’s any indication. There’s even a small population of immigrants from the Sudan and Philippines that will work for sub-poverty wages, a sure sign of prosperity in our globalized world. If it wasn’t for the power always going off, one might forget they were in Iraq for a little while.

The Qalat, an ancient village high atop a city; depopulated not by war, but by peace.

        An interesting and ironic development that shows how things can change when relative peace comes to a city is the Qalat, also known as Erbil Castle, or the citadel. Towering over the city center is a great mound of dirt, with a large fortress on top. It was always nice for me to walk the steep road to the top in past visits, because of its remarkable history, and because so many people still lived there. I’ve seen many ancient ruins, but this one was different. It had warmth. There were children playing and parents going about their business in the maze-like alleys. The Qalat is arguably the longest continually inhabited site in the world, and since it’s been surrounded by war almost the entire span of modern archeology, it’s never been excavated.

        Now that the city is more stable, archeologists have understandably fixed their gaze on it, and the digging is about to begin. The only problem is that about 700 families lived there, so they were recently forced to leave, even though they are part of what makes the site unique. A pittance of a settlement and some bad land without infrastructure was all that was offered. Part of the movie I’m working on is being filmed there, so I’m not stopped by the armed guards at the entrance, and am allowed to walk wherever I want. Last year, it was a bustling lively village. Now it’s a haunting, desolate, empty place with sparse photographs, letters, and clothes scattered on floors and in streets. Thus, stability as well as instability makes refugees out of Iraqis.

The empty streets of the Qalat, not long ago populated by over 700 families.

        There are some cracks forming in the reputation of Erbil as a safe Haven. Last month, the first major suicide bombings in two years occurred, among other signs of rising tensions. Most of these signs point to sectarian struggle that threatens to get a lot worse; not Shia Arab against Sunni Arab, like in other areas, but Kurds against all Arabs, and it’s timely enough to be what the movie on which I am working is about.

        At checkpoints on the roads leading into Erbil, Arabs are often turned away, even if they’re traveling for medical care no longer available in other cities, due to the violence. Mosul, further north than Erbil, has never been safe. The violence is creeping further and further north. A law also passed to kick the Arabs Saddam introduced into Kirkuk back out. Kirkuk is Iraq’s Jerusalem: everybody sees it as theirs and won’t give an inch.

        To add to this, Turkey has amassed tens of thousands of troops on the border with Iraq, and are threatening to cross. They want to attack the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group from Turkey that has thousands of guerilla fighters in the mountains of North Iraq, along the border with Turkey and Iran. Iraqi Kurds don’t want Turkish soldiers on their soil, and there is much tough talk going back and forth. Turkey and Iran just coordinated their militaries to shell in tandem, over the border, into Iraq. This is disturbing at the very least.

A guerilla fighter in the hidden mountain camps of the PKK.

        Iraqi Kurds have been autonomous for years, and like it that way. It is an understatement to say that the vast majority see themselves as Kurds first, and Iraqis second.

        I visited the base of the 1st Battalion of the Iraqi National Guard, located in Erbil. Kurdish fighters, called peshmerga, have traded in their traditional fighting clothes and adopted the light brown camo uniforms of the ING, but they’re still peshmerga to the bone. They don’t see themselves as having anything in common with their Arab counterparts. Sometimes this is helpful, as it keeps them above the fray of other Iraqi infighting, but it makes places like Baghdad no less deadly. It was big news when this battalion of peshmerga were sent into Baghdad.

On a searing hot day, Kurdish members of the Iraqi National Guard return home
from a tough stint in Baghdad.

        Families were waiting outside the base when I arrived, and 1400 of them were just returning home from three hard months in the nation’s capital. They looked tired, and happy to see their loved ones. An ING officer told me that 5% of them had been killed, and 20% wounded. He was visibly frustrated about what happened when they turned control of the area they were patrolling back over to those who had it before. Just as they are Kurds first, and ING second, many of the Baghdad police and ING have close connections with Shia militias, and they started killing Sunnis before the peshmerga even left.

A Kurdish Iraqi National Guard soldier.

        A few days before I was to fly from Erbil to Baghdad, an important Shia shrine between Baghdad and Erbil was bombed, taking down two minarets. This was the same shrine (Samara’s golden dome) whose bombing last year sparked the worst of the sectarian bloodletting in and around Baghdad. All flights were cancelled, and over three days of round-the-clock city-wide curfews were put into effect to try to keep retaliations in check. I rescheduled my flight. By the time I arrived, people had driven cars in front of three Sunni mosques and a large Shia one, and had blown themselves, the buildings, and many innocent people to pieces.