The Final Reveal - Country # 1

I'm back safely in the United States.  I got back on Friday and am pretty jet lagged so it took me a little longer than I planned to do my final reveal.  Thanks everyone for playing along.  There were a couple of correct guesses along the way although all were followed by either, "but would you really be there?", "if you went there you're even crazier than I thought" and "mom's going to kill you if you're there"  I thought I would explain some of the clues, some of which were designed to be difficult and others which were a bit easier.  My mother got the first clue pretty quickly which made me a bit nervous because this was all designed so that I didn't tell her where I was going so that she didn't worry.  In my first post I said that my return date of the July 20 was not negotiable.  With a little help from Google and my sister my mother figured out that Ramadan started then and I didn't want to travel during the holiday because a lot of places were closed. 

Genocide Tourism:  There were a lot of guesses once I wrote about being in a place which had suffered a genocide.  It was pretty depressing to see the guesses and think about just how many genocides and massacres there have been in recent history.  I was able to visit two places which memorialized genocide in this country.  The first, the Red Security building was in the city and it was a place where people were taken to be questioned and tortured and never seen again. 


 Tanks at the Red Security Building


Example of Torture at the Red Security Building



Memorial at the Red Security Building (made of 5400 lightbulbs and 182,000 pieces of mirror representing the number of villages destroyed and number of people killed)

The second place I visited was the village of Halabja - a village that on March 16, 1988 underwent attacks using chemical weapons by their own government. 



Memorial at Halabja



The names of those killed at Halabja - the lines divide families.  The green square is the name of a baby who was thought to have been killed but was recently found living in Iran



A survivor I met standing next to his picture from an interview he did days after the attack

Learning about the genocide was by far the most moving part of the trip.  While I do have some memories of watching news stories about it as it happened, it's not something that I was all that aware of before I traveled here. 

Internationally known hiking

I also wrote that I visited a place that was internationally known for its hiking but that I didn't have time to hike too far because I had to be back at work in September.  Well, these trails aren't just known for their beauty but for the fact that some of the last Americans who hiked them ended up spending a couple of years in an Iranian prison.  The Ahmed Awa Waterfall is very beautiful and a very popular tourist destination but beyond the waterfall is the Iranian border.  After hiking there myself, it was hard to understand how the Americans "accidentally" ended up in Iran - it seems like they made some pretty stupid decisions as it was very obvious that the trail (which was filled with little shops and tea houses) pretty much ends beyond the waterfall.  I thought it was pretty clear that we shouldn't travel beyond the waterfall.



The Country within a country - or where the heck was I anyway?

The "in a country but not really in a country" clue was the one I got the most reaction to.  I applied for a visa to a country but was denied.  That was probably a good thing as I was having second thoughts about going there.  There is however a region of the country which has its own regional government and gives 10 day tourist visas for the region so while technically I was in the country that denied me a visa if I were to try and leave the region and go elsewhere in the country I would have been arrested.  The majority of the population in this region is of a different background than the rest of the country which is why they suffered from various attempts by the government to destroy them. 

So where the heck was I anyway?  Well, when I left the US, I flew to Amman, Jordan and from Amman flew to Sulaymaniyah which technically is in Iraq ( a technicality I'm not sure my parents have forgiven me for yet!)  In reality though I was in Kurdistan - a region which encompasses parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. 



The Kurds have been persecuted for a number of years and in Iraq Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party attempted to destroy them in the 1980's.  Most residents of Iraqi Kurdistan identify themselves as Kurds, not Iraqis and hope eventually for an independent Kurdistan.  Most viewed Americans as liberating them from the oppression of Saddam Hussein which is why being an American opened so many doors for me there. 

Safety

Because Kurdistan is partially self-governing they do not rely much on the Iraqi military for protection but rather have their own security force made up of the Peshmerga - those who fought against Saddam and his government.  They are well trained and well armed and maintain a very safe environment.  In the 5 days I was there I went through at least 25-30 security checkpoints run by these forces.  Every time my guides told them I was an American I was waved right through.  My passport was only checked once at these checkpoints and I think it was more because they were curious to see an American passport than anything else!  The continual presence of these forces made me feel very safe. 

We did drive by a prison which had been used by the Americans to hold Al Qaeda prisoners.  The prison is now controlled by the Peshmerga and was pretty creepy to see.  There were parts of the area which needed to be avoided because they were unsafe, most notably Kirkuk and Mosul.  We were able to drive around the outskirts of Kirkuk but it is a disputed city claimed by both Kurds and Arabs - likely because of its oil reserves so we could not actually enter the city.  Actually my guide said that even if I gave him a million dollars he would not enter the city!  It will be interesting to see what happens to this city over the next couple of years.



All in all Iraqi Kurdistan was definitely an interesting place to visit.  I learned a lot about an area that doesn't get much world attention.  In the capital city of Erbil they are already building 5 star hotels and shopping malls so I think if the security situation remains stable there will be huge growth in tourism over the next couple of years.  I'm glad I saw it before that happens because it will change tremendously in the next five years.