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Totten: Kurdistan
probably the most pro-American place in the world
Michael J. Totten has written extensively on the
Middle East and the conflict in Iraq for outlets
such as the Wall Street Journal, TCS Daily, and his
own blog, michaeltotten.com. Totten just returned
from two weeks in Iraq, and for the next three weeks
he’ll be blogging about his travels there. Totten
spoke by phone with National Review Online's media
reporter, Stephen Spruiell, from Beirut, Lebanon on
Wednesday.
National Review Online: You’ve just gotten back from
Iraq and already posted a few stories on your blog.
How much more can readers expect in the coming
weeks?
Michael J. Totten:
I’m going to be posting stories on the blog from
Iraq for the next three weeks. I was there for two
weeks and gathered an amazing amount of material.
I’m going to be trying to go to Iran pretty soon,
but I’ll be blogging for three weeks and writing a
few freelance articles. Yet some of what I learned
won’t ever get out of my notebook. That’s how
experience-rich the place is.
NRO: Why did you limit your travel to
Kurdistan?
Totten: I
couldn’t go south of Kurdistan without quite a large
security detail. Nobody goes to Baghdad without
bodyguards. I raised enough on the blog to cover all
the expenses, plus a small profit, but if I’d have
hired bodyguards it would have been a whole other
story.
NRO: You don’t read a lot in the major
newspapers about Kurdistan these days. Did a desire
to tell that story factor in as well as security
concerns?
Totten: : It was
very much both. I have a pretty good idea what’s
going on in Baghdad — at least the bad stuff. It
does look like Baghdad is pretty much a bad place.
But I know the whole country isn’t like that, and
journalists tend not to go to the places that are
quiet. If I were reporting for a wire service where
I had to file every day, I would want to go to
places where things are happening every day.
But since Kurdistan is quiet, there are going to be
a lot of things happening there that can’t happen in
those other places. Things that are positive and
things that I didn’t know were happening until I got
there.
NRO: Such as?
Totten: Massive,
and I mean massive, reconstruction. In Sulaymaniyah,
there are 300,000 people living where three years
ago there were only half as many. Like all massive
urban immigration, most of the people are settling
on the outskirts. But unlike in the most of the
third world, the outskirts aren’t slums. They are so
nice, in fact, that you might not believe you were
in the Middle East. You would look at some of these
pictures and swear that this wasn’t the Middle East
at all.
The only exception is Halabja. Halabja still looks
like a third-world country. This is the city that
was gassed by Saddam Hussein. It was totally
destroyed and had to start over at zero.
NRO: Why aren’t we hearing more about this
kind of rebuilding in the U.S.?
Totten: The only
thing you can really do is feature pieces or
blogging. There’s not much wire-agency news that
comes out of there. If I were a wire reporter, there
would only have been one story I could have filed
during the entire two weeks I was there. That would
be the unification of the two Kurdish political
parties to form one. In Erbil you had the Kurdish
Democratic party, and in Sulaymaniyah you had the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They had parallel
governments, parallel administrations, and they are
merging together to form one unified government.
But that’s a pretty big reason you’re not going to
read about Kurdistan in the New York Times or
Washington Post. But you can get it in periodicals.
National Geographic had a terrific article about
Kurdistan last month. It’s places like that where
you’re going to get good reporting on Kurdistan.
NRO: Some people who were against deposing
Saddam Hussein are now discounting Kurdistan’s
success by saying, well, under Saddam, Kurdistan was
protected by the no-fly zone, so Kurdistan would
have been fine without U.S. action.
Totten: That’s
not true. What people say and what you just said…
and I didn’t realize that it wasn’t true until I got
there. Almost all this construction I’m describing
happened post-invasion. For two reasons. First, all
of Iraq, including Kurdistan, was under sanction.
The reconstruction was not economically possible.
The second reason is that nobody had any confidence
when Saddam was in Baghdad. Nobody could be sure
that he wouldn’t come back. And it should be noted
that not all of Kurdistan was protected by the
no-fly zone. The city of Sulaymaniyah was not
protected by the no-fly zone ever. Saddam could have
rolled back in there and no one would have been
there to stop him.
NRO: How would you describe the economy of
Kurdistan? Could it be described as a free-market
economy? How much does the government in Baghdad
play a role?
Totten: It’s
completely and utterly separate from the rest of
Iraq. It’s all regulated by the Kurdistan regional
government. Baghdad effectively doesn’t rule
Kurdistan. It’s almost a foreign capital, and it’s
treated as one. They describe themselves as a
free-market economy, which is sort of true and sort
of not true. The administration has its hand in most
of the economy. They don’t regulate it — they take
their cut, so to speak.
NRO: Is it corruption or is that just the way
the government works?
Totten: It’s
sort of both. Kurdish people describe it as corrupt
because the government takes a percentage of their
profits, but you could look at that as taxes because
there is no formal taxation in Kurdistan. It
infuriates a lot of the Kurdish people, but if you
think about it as corporate taxation, then it’s not
that different from other places.
NRO: What is the U.S. military presence like
in Kurdistan?
Totten: I saw
some off-duty soldiers at a hotel when I was
checking in. I don’t know what they were doing
there, but they were not working and I never saw
them anywhere else. There are only 200 soldiers
stationed in that entire region.
NRO: Is there still a lot of good feeling
toward the United States?
Totten: It’s
astonishing. It’s probably the most pro-American
place in the world. Certainly the most pro-American
place I’ve ever been.
Souce:
www.nationalreview.com
The Dream City of
the Kurds in Erbil By Michael J. Totten
Kurdistan: "South Eastern Turkey" is Northern
Kurdistan. "Western Iran" is Eastern Kurdistan.
"Eastern Syria" is Western Kurdistan. "Northern
Iraq" is Southern Kurdistan
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