Iraqi Kurdistan is booming. It adopted a motto “the new Iraq” to differentiate itself from the rest of country, which many people—not without reason—associate with instability and violence. This past week I spent in Karbala and, if it’s any indication, Karbala is now giving Kurdistan a run for its money.
I visit Iraq three or four times per year, going to different areas each time. Earlier this year, for example, I have visited Kirkuk, Erbil, and Sulaymani in Iraqi Kurdistan; Tikrit, Beiji, and Mosul in Iraq’s Sunni Arab belt; and, of course, Baghdad. This was my first time flying into Najaf, and the longest I’ve spent in nearby Karbala and Hindiya in a decade.
Karbala is booming. Certainly, there are signs of the ongoing fighting in Iraq: Billboards dot roads and traffic circles urging Iraqis to fight ISIS together. Displaced persons from areas of fighting also abound. Here, however, the Western news media has failed by omission: there are numerous press reports about Iraqi Kurdistan’s admirable work to house and feed those displaced by ISIS, efforts for which the Kurdistan Regional Government seeks money. But Karbala is now home to more than 11,000 displaced families—between 40,000 and 50,000 people. For all Americans picture Iraq as polarized among ethnic and sectarian factions, it is telling that so many Sunnis from Fallujah and Ramadi find safety in Karbala and Najaf. The many Hosseiniyehs [Shi’ite congregation halls] and mosques along the road between Najaf and Karbala now house refugees, with the religious authorities of both cities each taking responsibility for the food and shelter for half. The story of southern Iraq’s outreach toward those displaced by ISIS is seldom heard in the West simply because Western journalists seldom visit; that is unfortunate, and undercuts broader understandings with the sin of omission.
At any rate, I stayed across from Karbala University in Imam Hussein City, a multipurpose complex with apartments, a communal dining hall, mosque, medical clinic, and event hall, which is now both a transit point for hundreds of Sunni refugees and a dormitory and training complex for Shi‘ite volunteers undertaking a month-long regimen before heading off to fight ISIS. Every morning, I would see school kids—both boys and girls—from Ramadi, Fallujah, and even Tel Afar head off to school.
Meanwhile, Karbala is largely safe, about as secure as Iraqi Kurdistan. Back in 2007, it was the site of the kidnapping and murder of five U.S. servicemen with the connivance of Iran and the militias it supports. But the situation had changed a good deal in eight years. Certainly there remains an air of uncertainty regarding future stability, but the same is true in Iraqi Kurdistan, which recently suffered a tragic car bombing. I made my first trip to Iraqi Kurdistan about 15 years ago, when few Americans visited there. As Americans laud the promise of Kurdistan today, they forget that back in 2000, it was unsafe to venture outside Duhok, Erbil, or Sulaymani at night because of fear of terrorist attacks in the villages or along the roads connecting the cities. Thankfully, no one in Washington wrote off Kurdistan the way so many seem prepared to write off southern Iraq.
Some may believe that Karbala is unsafe because of Iranian influence. Certainly Iran is the predominant influence. The Najaf airport is predominantly served by flights from Iran (though also from Qatar, Turkey, Dubai, Bahrain, and Syria) but this makes sense since Karbala is, alongside nearby Najaf, the major center for religious pilgrimage. There is nothing wrong with capitalizing on this industry; indeed, it is contributes well to Karbala’s development since it supports a burgeoning service industry and keeps Karbala not solely dependent on the central government or oil. So too does competition. I came away from Karbala believing that being governor of Karbala would be the toughest job in Iraq. The reason is because the Atabat–the governance of the holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala–is independent of government, organized, productive, and efficient in its sponsorship of economic development and civil projects.
Most provincial governments blame Baghdad for their own failings or simply take a slow path to development knowing that the are the only show in town. In Karbala, however, the government must constantly try to keep up; the Atabat can achieve things the the government cannot. Simply put, the government does not fare well in such comparisons. For what it’s worth, when I first started visiting Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish intellectuals and even some politicians acknowledged that the silver lining to the internecine struggle between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is that both struggled to outdo the other and so provided more for their people. Competition is good, but too often lacks inside Iraq.
Regardless, justifying American neglect in supposed Iranian influence not only cedes ground to Iran, but it misunderstands both Iraqi Shi‘ites and Iraqi Kurds. As my colleague Ahmad Majidyar and I outlined in our recent monograph about Shi‘ite communities outside Iran, the Iraqi Shi‘ite community remains quite distinct from Iran, and seeks to be engaged on its own merits rather than as a subject of Iran. And, as for Iraqi Kurdistan, the atmosphere may be less religious than in Iraq’s Shi‘ite south, but the Iranian presence and political influence remains just as strong in Sulaymani and Erbil as in Baghdad and Karbala.
Iraq has serious problems, economic, political, and military. But as tragic as recent events have been, there are also significant pockets of success—not only in Iraqi Kurdistan, where much of the American press and NGOs operating in Iraq now sit—but also in southern Iraq: Basra, Najaf, and Karbala. After so much sacrifice, let us hope that the United States will not snatch defeat from the jaws of opportunity.
