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Iraqi Kurdistan, Caught Between Worlds

The Kurdish region of northern Iraq stands between different worlds: present and past, modernity and tradition, freedom and danger. The area has been autonomous since 1991, following the end of the Gulf War, when American jets set up what they called a “no-fly zone” over Kurdish territory, effectively preventing Saddam Hussein’s armies and air force […]

Dexter Filkins writes for The New Yorker:

The Kurdish region of northern Iraq stands between different worlds: present and past, modernity and tradition, freedom and danger.

The area has been autonomous since 1991, following the end of the Gulf War, when American jets set up what they called a “no-fly zone” over Kurdish territory, effectively preventing Saddam Hussein’s armies and air force from moving into the area. With a different language, history, and culture, the Kurds have stood apart from the rest of Iraq ever since the country was carved from the desert, in 1920. In the quarter century since the Kurds have been on their own, they have built something close to an independent state, with a flourishing economy and a thriving local culture. With the rest of Iraq in turmoil—the Kurds face isis along a six-hundred-and-fifty-mile-long front—the region is a refuge of calm.

The pictures by the American photographer Sebastian Meyer, who documented Iraqi Kurdistan between 2008 and 2016, capture the region’s contrasts, which often exist side by side. Drive around Iraqi Kurdistan today and you might find, on this side of the road, workers manning a high-tech oil pipeline, which pumps crude north into Turkey and on to the Mediterranean; on the other side, a group of farmers taking a break, setting down their scythes in a scene that looks as old as a century. During the day, you drive past a gleaming new high-rise tower in Erbil or Suleimaniyah, the region’s two biggest cities; at night, you attend a Kurdish wedding, where the families of the bride and groom celebrate in a way that hasn’t changed for generations. But the rollicking present is deceptive; everywhere, the relics of history present themselves, usually in the form of the leftover detritus of some past war. Mass graves—dug by Saddam’s armies, filled with Kurdish bodies—still mark the landscape here, are still being discovered, excavated and emptied.