IRBIL, Iraq: Even at night, on a busy thoroughfare in this Kurdish city, the sedan is an easy mark for the Kalashnikov-toting police at the checkpoint. It has Baghdad license plates and, more alarmingly, Arabs in the front seat. "What are you doing here?" the police demand, motioning the car to the side. It was a routine exchange, but one that reveals how far Irbil and the entire Kurdish region have drifted from the rest of Iraq and toward an informal but unmistakable autonomy that Kurdish leaders are determined to preserve.
Residents in northern Iraq already call the area Kurdistan. The territory, stretching from Kirkuk on the region's southern edge to the Tigris River in the west and to Turkey and Iran in the north and east, is patently a world apart from the rest of Iraq. There is a building boom, with new apartments, hospitals and shopping centers. The gleaming 10-story Hotel Irbil, opened in October, is often sold out, its 167 rooms renting for $68 to $193 per night. Markets bustle, and even the devalued dollar goes a long way, with decent-quality Turkish-made pullovers for $12 and a Pepsi and shwarma sandwich the Iraqi hot dog for a little more than 50 cents.
While extensive areas of Iraq remain plagued by violence, the Kurdish sector is calm, with tight security maintained by swarms of Kurdish police officers and militiamen. Reconstruction projects, lagging in many parts of the country, are moving briskly ahead. The Kurds have veto power over most laws passed by the central government in Baghdad and have their own 80,000-member military, the peshmerga, whose troops are far better disciplined and skilled than most of their new Iraqi counterparts. |