The Kurdish secret

By Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

September 3, 2007

Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region, -- Iraq today is a land of contrasts - mostly black and blacker. Travelling around the central Baghdad area the past few days, I saw little that really gave me hope that the different Iraqi sects can forge a social contract to live together. The only sliver of optimism I find here is in the one region where Iraqis don't live together: Kurdistan.

Imagine for a moment if one outcome of the US invasion of Iraq had been the creation of an American University of Iraq.
Imagine if we had triggered a flood of new investment into Iraq that had gone into new hotels, a big new convention center, office buildings, Internet cafes, two new international airports and Iraqi malls. Imagine if we had paved the way for an explosion of newspapers, even a local Human Rights Watch chapter, and new schools. Imagine if we had created an island of decency in Iraq, with public parks, where women could walk unveiled and not a single American soldier was ever killed - where Americans in fact were popular - and where Islam was practiced in its most tolerant and open manner. Imagine ...

Well, stop imagining. It's all happening in Kurdistan, the northern Iraqi region, home to four million Kurds. I saw all of the above in Kurdistan's two biggest towns, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah. The Bush team just never told anybody. full text