Travels in Isis country: priests, Peshmerga and property developers

[flamingdem]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9293852/the-view-from-kurdistan/

rriving in Erbil, you don’t feel you are in Iraq, but another country altogether, which is what the Kurds would like. The city’s outer ring is shiny and new, a touch of Dubai in the smooth highways and glittering hotels. A London property developer told me he had made a 40 per cent return in Erbil. He was Jewish, too — might have been a different story in Baghdad. The Kurds are proud of their embryonic capital: open for business; tolerant of all faiths; you can even get a drink. But two weeks ago Erbil was seized by panic, the Islamic State almost at the gates. A diplomat told me the security forces were on the point of fleeing. The US airstrikes steadied nerves.

It’s been suggested the Kurds have been living off their reputation for military prowess. It is 20 years since they fought a serious battle, except among themselves. Peshmerga recruits are no longer hardy mountain boys who grew up with a rifle over the shoulder, said one commentator: they know weapons only from Call of Duty. In several towns where the Islamic State advanced into Kurdish territory, the defenders simply ran, officers first (including some with ‘quite famous names,’ according to my diplomat friend). One town, Makhmour, was recaptured after US airstrikes began. We watched the reinforcements taunting the townsmen with accusations of cowardice. Stung, the men shouted back: ‘We didn’t bend our knee to Saddam — and we won’t surrender to the Islamic State.’

During the Erbil ‘wobble’ the Kurds deployed a very capable Special Forces unit. Its commander, Polad Talabani, grew up in Beckenham, south London, with his brother Lahur, now head of Kurdish intelligence. Both greet you with a cheery Estuary English ‘All right mate’. Polad was training to be a motor mechanic at Bromley College before deciding to return to his homeland. He told me, though, that he had spent his early childhood in the mountains and that his fifth birthday present was a pistol. The new Iraqi prime minister, Haider Al-Abadi, also has strong British connections. The story is that he used to ‘fix the lifts’ at Bush House, former home of the BBC World Service. Not quite. He did a PhD in electrical engineering in Manchester and later joined the lift company that had the BBC contract. Still, a colleague swears she saw Dr Al-Abadi in overalls, tinkering with the lifts.

We leave Iraq for Syria, crossing the Tigris on a pontoon bridge put up by the UN. Little groups of exhausted refugees from the Yazidi religious minority wait to cross the other way. We’re all going through Syria from one bit of Iraq to another because the Islamic State has blocked almost every road. Once over the border, signs point the way in Kurdish, Arabic and Aramaic. A plethora of Syrian Kurdish armed formations are in charge here: the HPG, the YBS, the YPG and the group that used to fight the Turks, the PKK. All are scornful of the Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga. They say they fled leaving the Yazidis to their fate. The Iraqi Kurdish forces, meanwhile, are drawn from the erstwhile rivals, the KDP and the PUK. The Kurds are complicated.

[KoKo]

1. Iraq's 'American Dream' Gated Community Now Almost Empty--10 MIL/ Private Investment Arm of US Govt.

Iraq's 'American Dream' Gated Community Now Almost Empty--10 MIL/ Private Investment Arm of US Govt.

Who Could Have Known?

--------------

Iraq's 'American Dream' Gated Community Now Almost Empty
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Kurdistan's Capital Erbil has been the boom town of Iraq, with developers pouring billions of dollars into the city's real-estate sector in recent years. Now the threat of Islamic State has put these ambitious expansion plans on hold. Bloomberg's Willem Marx reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

A "private investment arm" of the U.S. government provided 10 million.

?list=UUUMZ7gohGI9HcU9VNsr2FJQ