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Kurds Displaced in Effort to Preserve
Ancient City
5.2.2007
By Ivan Watson
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Ebil, February 4,
-- In Kurdish-controlled Kurdistan region (northern
Iraq), Kurdish authorities are trying to turn a
historic landmark into a United Nations-approved
World Heritage Site. According to local historians,
the ancient citadel in Erbil has been the site of
human habitation for more than 7,000 years.
The Sumerians built a town on the flat Mesopotamian
plains here they called "Ur Bilum." Civilizations
came and went. Each wave of new inhabitants —
including Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans -
built on top of the other. Today, a crumbling brick
citadel looms over modern-day Erbil on a giant
man-made hill.
"It's the oldest continuously inhabited place in the
world," says Sami Al Koja, who serves as an adviser
to the citadel's board of renovation.
Many scholars contest this claim. Al Koja says that
the mountain upon which the citadel sits has never
been excavated or studied by archaeologists, due to
decades of conflict and isolation.
Within the fortress' massive walls, an entire city
of sagging, brown-brick houses is divided by a
labyrinth of winding, unpaved alleys. Until
recently, this was a ghetto that reeked of raw
sewage and housed thousands of Kurdish refugees.
They moved here during the '70s and '80s after
Saddam Hussein's army destroyed their villages in
the countryside. |
Erbil's crumbling citadel still dominates the
skyline of the city. Local officials want to
renovate the ancient structure and turn it into a
cultural and historical center for tourists |
Out of the Old City and into the New
The citadel's once-lively ghetto has been
transformed into a ghost town. Last month, local
authorities evacuated all but one of the 828
families living in the city. Each family was given a
plot of land and $4,000 for new homes. They've been
relocated to a barren plain about 25 miles east of
Erbil, where an entire new neighborhood is under
construction. The homes there are made of gray
cinderblock, but that hasn't stopped them from
naming their neighborhood "the New Citadel."
The old citadel, however, is now empty. Doors were
left wide-open, and forgotten belongings — a woman's
shoe, a child's schoolbook, empty packets of
cigarettes and garbage — are scattered on the
ground.
The one family allowed to remain in the city is
responsible for tending to the water tower, which
supplies the city below. Aziza Kadr lives with her
husband and children in the tower's shadow.
"I feel lonely here," she says. "It was very sad
when all our neighbors left."
For Preservation's Sake
Lolan Mustafa, a local historian, has mixed feelings
about the evacuation order. But he believes it will
ultimately protect the history of the place.
"When the houses are rebuilt, the idea is to bring
back people but under the regular and control of
antiquity," he says. "They should take care of the
house, preserve the house. So it should be a living
city again."
Two years ago, Mustafa opened a textiles museum in a
renovated two-story house near the citadel's main
gate. He's trying to preserve the traditional art of
Kurdish carpet-weaving, which nearly died during
Saddam's scorched-earth campaign to pacify the
Kurdish countryside. Over 400 pieces are on display
in his museum.
Not far from the textile museum, classical music
echoes from another renovated mansion, where a
Frenchman named Mathieu Saint-Dizier runs a European
cultural center. It presents free Western art
exhibits to the public. But the public, as it turns
out, isn't very large.
"The problem is the place," Saint-Dizier says. "The
citadel doesn't attract a lot of people. The citadel
had in the past a bad reputation. Many poor people
were working there."
Erbil city government adviser Sami Al Koja wants
UNESCO — the U.N. Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization — to help guide the city's
rebirth. He sees potential in the crumbling brown
bricks on top of the mountain - for archaeological
discovery and for tourism.
npr org
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