Butt Check in Kurdistan

Here's something I'd never seen before today: a cigarette checkpoint at the gatehouse to the Ministry of Pershmerga in Erbil. By now we've all gotten used to turning in our mobile phones when entering secure locations, since electronics can be used either to hide explosives or to detonate them. But perhaps the Kurds take the health of their peshmerga fighters just as seriously as terrorism. In which case, this would be another sign of how Iraqi Kurdistan is outpacing the rest of Iraq, since I'm guessing they're not worrying about second-hand smoke in Baghdad.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Erbil