Word: kurdistan
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...When I first traveled to the Kurdish North in August of 2004 to escape the heat and violence of Baghdad, the so-called "Switzerland of Iraq" was disappointing in just one respect: summers on the high plains of Erbil are almost as scorching. Otherwise, Kurdistan was a refuge. In Baghdad, journalists had begun hiring security entourages and erecting guarded compounds. Up north in Erbil, as a visiting American, I was practically given keys to the city. I did my reporting by foot or hailed taxis from the street, spent my evenings in beer gardens or pizza parlors, and slept...
...Since then the differences between Kurdistan and Iraq proper have become even more dramatic. The plains around Erbil-once a glaring semidesert wasteland-are exploding with luxury housing developments, such as a "British Village" that looks like a gated California suburb, and Dream City, which will supposedly have its own conference center, supermarket and American-style school. The Turkish developers of Naz City, a high-rise condominium complex, are trying to sell house-proud Kurds on modern apartment living. An American company wants to build Iraq's first ski resort in the mountains near the Turkish and Iranian borders. While...
...Kurds' most important achievement has been to keep their region free of Iraq's insurgency and sectarian warfare with their army of 70,000 peshmerga soldiers. Not a single American soldier has been killed in Kurdistan since the start of the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in Erbil since June...
...Take a walk, however, in any one of this city's safe and prosperous neighborhoods and you'll quickly see that the other Iraq isn't so far away. Some 150,000 displaced Iraqi Arabs have taken refuge in Kurdistan from the conflict in the central and southern parts of the country. Kurdish officials require Arab Iraqis trying to enter Kurdistan to have a Kurdish resident vouch for their character. As a result, the Arab refugee population is largely middle class, with a glut of doctors, lawyers and other professionals. But as the number of newcomers swells, tensions are rising...
...Kurdistan's tenuous relationship with Arab Iraq is even more evident some 75 km south, in Kirkuk. The city is less than a two-hour drive from Erbil, but the road trip into the other Iraq is a spooky one. To the left, there's a chain of forts left over from the Iran-Iraq war, crumbling masonry monsters that look like they were built according to World War I specifications. The Hamreen mountains to the right are practically deserted save for a series of sentry posts silhouetted along the ridgeline. And waiting straight ahead at the gates of Kirkuk...