Tuesday, March 18, 2008 – Sulaymaniyah-Irbil
I took a pleasant drive through the hills of Kurdistan today, taking in scenic Lake Dokan and marveling at how the Kurds have neatly divided their mini-state in half between Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party. (Sulaymaniyah is Talabani turf, Irbil belongs to Barzani. You can tell when you’ve passed from one side to the other by the posters at the military checkpoints along the way – no post ever has both leaders on display.)
As interesting as the two-and-a-half hour drive was, it wasn’t the trip I’d hoped to take.
The fastest of the two routes between Sulaymaniyah and Irbil is actually the southern road, via the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. Kirkuk is a city I’ve often written about, but only visited once, back in the summer of 2003, before the insurgency got into full-swing. The vehicle I was travelling in broke down, so I spent the better part of a day drinking tea with car mechanics who seemed more interested in finding about visas to Canada than in fixing my car.
This time, I wanted visit Kirkuk only long enough to perhaps meet with a contact of mine I knew was going to be in the city today.
Relatively quiet through early part of the war, violence in Kirkuk has shot up since in the past few years as debate over the city’s future has grown more heated. The Kurds want the oil-rich city and the surrounding Taamim province appended to their semi-autonomous region in the north of the country, while the central government in Baghdad is loathe to hand away all that black gold.
Kurds often refer to Kirkuk as their “Jerusalem” – arguing Kirkuk means as much to them as the city holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. But these days, they avoid visiting it if they can.
“Ha! Not with an ajnabi (a foreigner)” my driver Miran laughed when I asked him if we could take the southern road. Kind and generous, Miran’s the kind of guy who prefers to say yes to whatever you’re asking him for. Kirkuk, for the record, is only about 110 kilometres south of Sulaymaniyah.
“It’s too dangerous for you. It’s not just the terrorists – anybody with a gun can kidnap you and ask your family for money.” This wasn't advice, it was a stern no.
So up north we drove, just like last year when I was in Kurdistan and again asked Miran to take me to his Jerusalem.
Next year in Kirkuk? Perhaps.
