Road Trip Northern Iraq

My friend Thomas Erdbrink -- a correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC -- and I have gotten tired of hanging out in Erbil waiting for for the Turkish invasion of northern Iraq and have decided to take matters into our own hands with a road trip. We've just driven three hours up to Zahko, the city next to the main border crossing with Turkey. Starting tomorrow we're going to drive as far as we can east along the rugged country on the Iraqi side of the border.

Our hope is that we'll be able to get some sense of the Turkish army's operations in these areas. They've reportedly been shelling targets associated with the PKK, a Kurdish rebel group that's been killing Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. But while the Turkish army accuses the PKK of staging cross-border raids, the PKK's main bases are far from the Turkish border; they are farther east in the Qandil valley which is closer to the border with Iran. Thomas and I would like to see how difficult it is to travel from the Turkish border to Qandil, and to keep our eyes out for PKK along the way.

Already we've encountered some difficulties. Such is the sorry state of cartography in Northern Iraq that the only navigational aid we could get on short notice was a decorative scroll wall map of Kurdistan, with the place names in Kurdish. We do however have binoculars, and a satellite modem if we get lost.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Zahko