For Iraqi Kurds, the occasion is bittersweet, because it was springtime 35 years ago, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq war, when the Iraqi army swept through the Kurdish countryside, razing villages and massacring the inhabitants. Over time, they started exploiting oil fields in Kurdistan and established their own revenue stream from exports. All these events have somewhat dampened the Nowruz spirit in Iraqi Kurdistan today, twenty years after the U.S. invasion. Kurdish leaders frequently say they want Kurdistan to become the new Dubai, the go-go economic hub of the United Arab Emirates. Salih, now the university president and the event’s ringmaster, gathered the usual array of luminaries: the Iraqi prime minister and foreign minister, the president of the Kurdistan region and its deputy prime minister, the UN chief in Iraq, and others.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 06, 2023 18:02 UTC