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Halabja (Part II)
[Go here to read Part I.]Just outside the destroyed Halabja monument, we came across this PUK propaganda poster on the ground. We’d see it a lot in the next day or two. Above a picture of the monument in flames, the poster proclaims: “Yes, Halabja needs more services, but the people who burned the monument are not from Halabja and
Halabja (Part I)
I woke in Istanbul on March 17 with a New York Times printout on my pillow, a gift from my host, colleague and travel companion Yigal Schleifer. The article (available here, with a different and willfully misleading headline) reported that an anti-corruption demonstration in Halabja had escalated into a riot, and that a mob had burned and gutted the city’s
Picnicking in Iraq
In this admirably comprehensive dispatch, Sarkis Pogossian makes a passing reference to the Iraqi Kurdish authorities as “apparent clients of U.S. imperialism.” He writes: “The Kurdish militia armies controlled by these two strongmen [Barzani and Talabani], the peshmerga, openly collaborated with US Special Forces units in the campaign against Saddam’s regime in 2003.” I opposed the U.S. invasion, but you
Newroz
Even the spelling of this spring festival is touchy. The Kurds spell it with a “w,” the Turks with a “v.” One writer pointed out that there’s no “v” sound in Kurdish, and that every time Western news services write “Nevroz,” it’s an implicit victory for the Turkish authorities. The Kurds are not the only ethnic group in the Mideast/Central
No sleep ’til Suli
[Welcome to continuing coverage of my recent trip to Istanbul, southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Link below for previous posts.]Kurdish nationalists refer to northern Iraq as South Kurdistan, merely one part of a country-in-waiting that overlaps present-day Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. In a previous post I wrote that one could practically hit the Syrian border with a stone thrown
Oil, oil everywhere, but…
One of the first things you see as you drive through northern Iraq is the vibrant black market in gasoline. There’s pink fuel (left) and clear fuel; the pink is supposed to be better. It’s my understanding that most of it is smuggled from Iran. There are “legit” gas stations as well, but few actually have gas, and the ones
The border
[Welcome to continuing coverage of my recent trip to Istanbul, southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Link below for previous posts.] The border zone between Turkey and Zakho, in northernmost Iraq, is a bleak expanse of concrete and mud. Major renovations are underway—“they’re making it more like Europe,” our driver, Haji, says in Turkish—but First World conditions are a long way
Southeastern Turkey
[Welcome to continuing coverage of my recent trip to Istanbul, southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Link below for previous posts.]On the evening of March 19, my colleague Yigal Schleifer and I took a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Diyarbakir, a mere 90 minutes but seemingly a world away. The largest city in southeastern Anatolia, Diyarbakir has long been a