Stuart Butler flew to Baghdad to check out reports of the start of a new tourism industry. He discovered historic sites deserted, a novel help group for intrepid travellers, great cafes, fascinating Shiite shrines and was even interviewed himself…
Words and photographs by Stuart Butler
It was hard to believe that this was where it all began. Today, there’s nothing much here. Some tumble-down walls, a few hardy shrubs growing low to the ground and a hot wind whipping up a fine dust. Yet, this silent and largely forgotten place was the very spot where civilisation began 8,000 years ago. This is the place where agriculture was invented; where the very first words were inscribed; where the wheel was first conjured up; where sandals, chariots and even beer were developed. This is the spot where the first organised religions were developed; where arithmetic began; where time itself was invented; and where the first towns were constructed. In short, this is where the modern world was born. This is Mesopotamia, the Land between the Two Rivers, the heart of the ancient Sumerian civilisation. This is Iraq. Had I been stood almost anywhere else in the world, I would have been battling hundreds of other visitors for that perfect photo opportunity of this most important of historical sites. But today, like most days, there were only a few songbirds sharing the sun-soaked ruins with me.
These days, the words Iraq and tourism are rarely mentioned in close association with one another. For most people, Iraq brings to mind memories of Saddam Hussein and decades of war and invasions, sectarian violence, ISIS and other terrorist groups, punishing international sanctions, and the search for weapons of mass destruction. For the past 20 years or so, Iraq has rarely been out of the news. But today, for the first time since the 1970s, there are glimmers of much-wished-for stability, and Iraqis are cautiously looking toward what they hope is a brighter future – a future in which tourism will play a key economic role.
Until the late 1970s, Iraq was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Middle East, and for good reason, the country is blessed with an abundance of historical, religious and pilgrimage sites, snow-covered 3,500-metre-high mountains and fascinating old towns and bazaars. But when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the tourism industry collapsed. Forty years later, however, a handful of adventurous tourists are starting to return.
Iraq was never a place high on my travel wishlist. But then, one day, I saw a photo of two elderly men playing cards and drinking tea in the Mam Khalil Café, a highly atmospheric old café in Erbil, the major city of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of Iraq. The photo challenged everything I thought I knew about Iraq. Within weeks of seeing it, I was on a plane bound for Erbil. That was more than a decade ago, and during that first visit, I spent ten days travelling around Iraqi Kurdistan (at the time, this was the only part of Iraq that was safe to visit). Not only did I get to drink tea and play cards in the café captured in the inspirational photo, but I also took a road trip along buckled mountain roads and visited ancient cliffside Christian monasteries and grandiose mosques. Following that initial visit, I thought often of returning to see more of the country. This time I wanted to see Baghdad and federal Iraq, but the dire security situation meant that I was in for quite a wait. The years ticked by. The Americans withdrew, the sectarian violence ebbed, and the terror of ISIS came and went. Peace started to spread across Iraq, and the country began to open its doors to international travellers. Then, in January of this year, I finally felt that the time was right, and I boarded a flight to Baghdad. The city was once known as a cultural capital of the Middle East, and if what I saw this time is anything to go by, it might once again reclaim its crown. Even though the guns only really fell silent a few short years ago, Baghdad is already dusting itself down. The cafés and bazaars in the historic old centre are once again abuzz, while in the outer suburbs, a new Baghdad is emerging. Here, the cafés are less historic and more Instagram cool, and they sit alongside confident art galleries, fusion-food restaurants and big boutiques full of worldwide fashion brands.
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Before we go any further, let’s take a quick look at the shape of modern Iraq. Officially, Iraq is one country that encompasses 438,000 square kilometres and has a population of 43 million. The huge majority of the population of Iraq is of Arab descent, but around 15–20 per cent of the population are Kurds. Concentrated in the far north of Iraq, hard up against the borders of Turkey, Iran and Syria (all of which have sizeable Kurdish populations of their own), in an area of rugged mountains that in winter are often covered in snow, this area is today often known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Operating largely autonomously from the rest of Iraq, it is, in many ways, a different country, albeit one that isn’t recognised by the UN or by virtually any government or major international body. But, it has its own government, military, flag, language and culture and has been generally safe to visit for at least 15 years.
When people talk of federal Iraq, they are really talking about all of the rest of Iraq, including the capital, Baghdad, outside of Iraqi Kurdistan. Until very recently, the security situation in federal Iraq has been far too volatile and dangerous for any form of tourism to take place. That has now changed (although most Western governments continue to advise against all travel to most of Iraq, and this makes most standard travel insurance policies invalid). Thanks to the recent introduction of visas on arrival, the easing of travel permits and restrictions, a vastly improved security situation, a hotel construction boom in Baghdad and an increase in the number of tour operators offering Iraq tours, many adventure travel experts are quietly optimistic about Iraq’s tourism potential.
One such person is Gianluca Pardelli, owner of the specialist adventure tour company Soviet Tours, one of the first tour companies back operating in Iraq. He told me about some of the obstacles faced when they first started running tours to Iraq in 2017 and how things are changing fast today. ‘Back then, there were only two Iraqi guides in the whole of federal Iraq!’ he says. ‘Both were already fairly elderly and had been working as guides years before, when tourists used to visit in the 1970s. Today, it’s very different and now there are hundreds of Iraqi tour guides. There are also a lot more international and Iraqi tour companies. In 2017, there were probably only three, maybe four, companies offering tours to federal Iraq. Today, it’s still a niche market, but some of the big international adventure-travel companies are starting to look at Iraq. Probably ten per cent of all enquiries we receive are from people interested in visiting Iraq, which is a big increase from just a year or so ago. If the political situation continues to improve, then tourism will increase because this country has so much to offer visitors.’
While the last official figures for tourism arrivals date back to 2013, most people involved in Iraqi tourism say they are seeing an increase in international visitors. However, even this can be a clouded picture as visitors to Iraq fall into several distinct groups. First, there are normal international leisure visitors. It’s very hard to know the numbers involved, but we do know that they can be divided into two groups: adventurous – and often fairly young – backpackers from Europe, the USA and elsewhere, and those on small-group, organised tours focusing on the country’s extraordinary historic sites. The next and much larger group of visitors are Iraqis living abroad who return to Iraq to see family or, in the case of younger generations who may have been born outside of Iraq, to visit the country for the first time. Then there are visitors coming specifically for a special event. For example, in January 2023, tourism received a major boost when the Iraqi city of Basra hosted theArabian Gulf Cup, a major regional football tournament. Not only did this event see thousands of football fans from across the Arabian Peninsula pour into Iraq, but the tournament also did a lot to announce the return of Iraq to the international arena. Added together, however, all of these visitor numbers don’t come to much.
There is another type of tourist visiting Iraq, though, and they are coming in huge, and ever-growing, numbers. An hour or so south of Baghdad are the cities of Karbala and Najaf. Major pilgrimage centres for Shiite Muslims, Karbala is the burial place of ImamHusayn, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, and Najaf is the burial place of Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad. The number of pilgrims visiting each year are mindboggling, with official statistics showing around 60 million visitors a year, while during the annual al-Arbaeen pilgrimage (Ashuraa) a staggering 22 million pilgrims will visit the shrines of these cities, which makes this one of the largest annual pilgrimages on Earth. These pilgrims come from across the world, although the majority of non-Iraqi pilgrims are from Iran.
Non-Muslim visitors to these holy cities are still very rare, but if my experience was anything to go by, those who do come are made very welcome. I found myself constantly greeted by Iraqi, Iranian and other pilgrims, and people were so interested to hear my opinion on these stunning shrines that in the end, someone from the local radio station came to interview me.
Whether it came from a tourist visiting the historic sites, a religious pilgrim or a member of the Iraqi diaspora returning to their roots for the first time, one thing I heard repeated again and again was that to enjoy Iraq to the full it was crucial to make local friends and contacts. Baghdad local Abdalla Almashkorconcurred. Abdalla is an engineer and a trainee dentist, but, as if juggling these two careers wasn’t enough, he also volunteers as a guide to his home city. When I asked him what it was that made Iraq such a unique place to visit, he first rolled off a list of historic and religious sites before stating: ‘But, to really enjoy Iraq, the most important thing is to meet the people. For so many years, the international media, especially the Western media, has portrayed Iraq as a very Islamic and conservative place, but that’s not really true. If you can get an insight into the community, then you’ll see that most people are not like this’.
Of course, in most parts of the world, meeting local people in any meaningful manner is often easier said than done. But not in Iraq. Thanks to an innovative community tourism project, making fast friends in Iraq – and gaining real local insights – is easy. With so little published material on tourism in Iraq, the website and Facebook group Iraqi Travellers Café has perhaps been the single most important tool in promoting and encouraging travel to Iraq for both independent travellers and those on organised tours. It was originally established by Diyar Alzuhairi and a couple of friends. He explained: ‘We wanted to reconnect the Iraqi people to the outside world after years of being excluded, and to erase stereotypes – both that Iraqis might have of the world beyond Iraq and that the rest of the world might have of Iraq, and encouraging friendships beyond borders.’
Diyar still sounds surprised when he describes howquickly the idea has grown, with the Facebook group now having almost 40,000 members, all of whom are carefully vetted before being allowed to join. ‘When we first set up the Iraqi Travellers Café, it was more a way of allowing Iraqis intending to travel abroad to ask each other questions,’ he told me. ‘But then, in 2021, when the Iraqi government started issuing visas on arrival, the focus of the group started to change as more and more foreigners started visiting Iraq. Very quickly, the site became the go-to for travel advice to Iraq. People started to use the Facebook group as a platform for asking questions about visiting, arranging to meet locals and making better engagements with Iraqis. It’s a two-way thing. When people come to Iraq, Iraqi members of the group try to help them by answering any questions and maybe even arranging to meet up, but if an Iraqi member of the café travels abroad, then maybe the people we helped here will help us when we are in their country. When I travelled to the USA recently, I spent every night staying in the house of someone who’d been to Iraq using the Travellers Café. It’s community and social tourism in which both parties’ benefit’.
This last part about mutually beneficial tourism seems to be a side of tourism that many Iraqis are keen to see grow. Gianluca from Soviet Tours gave me his thoughts on the potential for community tourism in Iraq. ‘In the marshes in the far south of Iraq, there are now homestays operating,’ he said. ‘And couch surfing is proving to be very popular, which is a great way of getting to live with an Iraqi host. For the moment, the sort of tourists coming to Iraq, whether they’re budget travellers or those on organised tours, are very interested in getting to meet and know Iraqis, and if that can be maintained, then that’s a good thing.’
For Diyar from the Iraqi Travellers Café, there are the economic benefits that small-scale community-based tourism could bring to the country. ‘The economy of Iraq is very dependent on oil money,’ he said. ‘But we feel that given time, tourism can also become a major contributor to the economy. One of the goals of the Iraqi Travellers Café is to encourage and empower locals to benefit from tourism, whether that’s through hosting tourists in their homes or volunteering to show visitors around their city. There aren’t many job opportunities in Iraq, so community tourism could be a good source of income for those with proper training. In the past, we have organised training sessions for Iraqis wishing to work in this kind of meaningful tourism.’
The thought of Iraq one day becoming better known for innovative community tourism projects than war and violence might seem laughable to some. But then again, as I stood among the 8,000-year-old ruins of the place where writing itself was invented, I couldn’t help but wonder if the unknown Sumerian who’d come up with the concept had also been laughed at. ‘Writing! That’ll never catch on here!’
