Dead Quiet in Kurdistan

Much as I respect the need for intellectual property laws, I'm not sure I could handle reporting in Kurdistan were it not for $2 pirated DVD's imported from Malaysia. There isn't much else to do here in Erbil at night, especially when all my Kurdish friends are married. It's hot, and dusty and I've been waiting for the past few days for the green-light from the PKK -- the Kurdish militants at war with Turkey -- to go visit them at their camps up in the mountains here in Iraqi Kurdistan. So my options are either drinking alone or Spider Man 3 shot in shaky-cam.

But the enervating boredom can be misleading. There's a lot on slow boil here in Kurdistan, as elsewhere in the region. Just going out to a Turkish restaurant for lunch yesterday afforded little glimpses of the larger disorder. At the table next to mine, three Kurdish businessmen openly discussed committing fraud with an Arab official from Kirkuk, who, over the course of the meal, successfully negotiated a fee hike from $10,000 to $15,000 for his services in robbing their country. "Now you're working for us," said one Kurd, with the inevitable backslap.

Meanwhile, my waiter -- a twenty-something with a chiseled frame he didn't get from serving donner kebab -- whispered to me that he's a Turkish Kurd fighter with the PKK. "We not afraid to die, like you Americans," he said as he waved at the flies gathering on my salad. "As soon as they need me, I'll be back in the mountains."

And when my driver and I stopped off at a car wash on the way back at the hotel, several of the towel-boys were Arab refugees from Baghdad, with the usual horror stories about executed family members.

Moreover, the summer doldrums that have settled over Erbil are themselves disquieting. When I was here in March, the whole city had a gold rush feel that had boosters talking about Iraqi Kurdistan becoming the next Dubai and which made finding a hotel room and a parking place difficult. But it's clear that business is down everywhere -- scarred off by the recent bombings and the border conflict with Turkey. Kurdish officials are doing their best to downplay the tensions, "What can Turkey do?" But Kurdistan is surrounded by so much conflict, that it can't afford any more. The "Other Iraq" is still Iraq, and the barbarians are still waiting at the gates.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Erbil