(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
You can usually get to know a city by being outside and absorbing the impressions, but here there are high walls and few people to see. The compass has crept over the mid-40s, and a warm wind is blowing. It feels like standing inside a giant hair dryer. Where are all the people? The few who are out look at me as if I have fallen from the moon. One of them mumbles something incomprehensible: "… crazy…" is all I can hear. Is it because you can not just walk out in this heat, or is it because white women have nothing alone on the street to do in this part of the world? I do not know. It's been a long time since I last felt so bright white and ignorant.
It's weekend. Sitting at a German bar in Erbil expatone. A blissful mix of diplomats, aid workers, war professors, journalists and mercenaries. A man with an almost translucent and leather jacket with "Hells Angels Kabul" and "EOD" (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) on his back, standing at the bar drinking beer. He is a bomb technician and one of those characters who flows into conflict zones to live a lifestyle he couldn't do at home. An ex-soldier who joined the invasion of Iraq in 2003 tells me that the mercenaries are more discreet now than before. They no longer walk around the streets with heavy weapons, but they are still here. He himself works as a security manager in an international organization. He seems nice enough, until he starts talking about the locals. "The world can't afford to wait for these people to grow up," he says. "They" are not like "us", that is his explanation of the conflicts in the Middle East. He seems unable to see a connection between the American war and the rise of ISIS. I feel uncomfortable. If there is anything the Middle East and Iraq really do not need, then there are more white people with weapons and poor self-understanding.
Refugee. I'm in Duhok, the northernmost province of Iraq. This is the place that has received the most internally displaced people since ISIS 'advance two years ago. In total, more than half a million have fled to the province, which already had a population of just over a million. Many of the internally displaced have not fled far, but it is still an insurmountable abyss back to their hometown. The fear of ISIS is deep in those who have seen the atrocities up close.
If there is one thing the Middle East and Iraq really do not need, it is more white people with weapons and poor self-awareness.
I meet a Yezidi family from Shengal. The hometown has been liberated after the events two years ago, yet they dare not return. They're scared. It makes an impression to meet these people. They are people like you and me who one day had to leave everything they had and just get away. Now they have nothing more than their lives and each other. A naked existence. I think of my own grandmother, who told about the day when my great-grandfather came home and with a serious face explained that the Nazis had come to Narvik. She was five years old then.
A local aid worker talks about the situation in Duhok when ISIS advanced two years ago. "There were people everywhere," she says. "Before the refugee camps came into place, the locals helped. They opened their homes to the displaced, provided them with food, blankets, and clothing, and ensured their survival. My mother cooked for over 60 people in our street. Our neighbors took their day, the cooking went on tour. " I think of "Refugees Welcome" at home in Norway, and how our own reception apparatus struggled to receive a few thousand. It feels shameful to call it a refugee crisis at all. During the autumn, the offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS will be launched. Then a new wave of internally displaced people is expected to Duhok. There is talk that this could be the largest influx of refugees since Rwanda.
Unfinished soft cake house. I have not given up trying to understand more of the city and daily life. In the evening I take the trip up to the dam in Duhok, the only local tourist attraction. The road up there is dark. At the end of it I find a gaudy amusement park. It feels surreal. Here are empty restaurants with painted scenery in fiberglass that will represent stones and rocks. Here are radio cars and trampolines, and it flashes in yellow, red, green and blue. In between the semi-dark paths there are people. Families with children and groups of young women sitting on the grass and talking. Up by the dam itself sit two peshmerga. They look like they're terribly bored. Two men have sneaked down to the water through a hole in the fence. I can hear children playing over the water from further away in the dark. A father and two teenage sons jog past and swing their arms. The boys look embarrassed.
Public employees have not received the salary they should have had in the last two years. One month here and one month there are paid, just enough to keep them alive and at work.
Compared to the image most Norwegians have of Iraq, the Kurdish areas appear noticeably normal. While the rest of Iraq has been at war, this area has been largely sheltered. Here, oil money is the most visible consequence of the American invasion. No one knows exactly where this money will go, it is said. At the same time, you see them everywhere. Many people drive expensive cars, and many of the houses are lavish on it a bit tacky the way one likes to associate with the new rich. All are different, with different varieties of towers, colors, marble, balconies, columns, pediments and ornaments. Here, the Planning and Building Agency has gone on holiday. It has its charm. Many of the soft cake houses are now unfinished, providing shelter for IDPs who prefer to be in the cities rather than in the camps. An economic crisis, which may actually be a political crisis, is the reason for the construction halt. A dispute between the government in Baghdad and the autonomous authorities in the Kurdish areas has led to public employees not receiving the salary they should have had for the past two years. One month here and one month there is paid, just enough to keep people alive and at work.
Split. On the way back to Erbil, I catch a glimpse of the lights from Ferris wheels in the distance. I have seldom seen such a high density of amusement parks. Safe and normal, but at the same time something feels strained. Iraqi Kurdistan may be a quiet cliff, but it is also surrounded by big politics and conflict. In the north, Turkish soldiers enter Iraqi territory in search of the PKK guerrillas. The border with Syria is not far away either. In the middle between Erbil and Duhok is Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, now occupied by ISIS. They do not just consist of the alien warriors we hear so much about. ISIS also carries a revolt from the Sunni Muslim section of the population, which went from being the power elite under Saddam Hussein to being pushed aside in the wake of the US invasion. Many local Sunni Arabs who previously lived side by side with Christians, Yezidis, Kurds and other minorities, are now part of ISIS. They have participated in massacres and taken women as sex slaves.
Relations between the various ethnic and religious groups may have been strained before – but how can a society recover from something like this? It seems almost impossible.
