# Posted 8:18 AM by Taylor Owen  

ZAKARIA: Last summer I went on a fascinating trip to the Kurdish Region of northern Iraq. I have been fairly derelict in writing about it. Not due to lack of things to say though, as the "other Iraq" (as Kurds so want it to be called), is a fascinating part of the world that will undoubtedly remain at the center of great political turmoil in the coming decade. I will try to write more about the trip over the holidays, but below is a short piece in the Walrus that my close friend Emily Paddon and I wrote about our truly wild last night in Erbil:

Rattle and Hum

ERBIL — It is the eighth day of our sponsored junket of “The Other Iraq” (a.k.a. Kurdistan), during which we have ridden the roller coasters at a new mountaintop theme park, been paraded through tony shopping malls, and met with the region’s political, media, and academic leaders. Dusk finds us in the Kurdish capital, exploring an 8,000-year-old citadel where Alexander the Great is said to have once clashed with the Persians, when our cellphone rings. “Would you like to come over for a European drinking party?” a familiar voice asks. It is Zakaria, the Kurdish rock star–cum–nation builder to whom we were introduced days ago. Our flight to Jordan departs at 3 a.m. from the modernized Erbil International Airport, but we can’t resist. “Bring your bags,” the voice commands.

No stranger to late-night escapes, Zakaria snuck out of his family home in a less prosperous Erbil at 4 a.m. fifteen or so years ago. Fleeing persecution under Saddam Hussein, the teenage piano prodigy made his way to Sweden, where he scraped by as a backup singer in local bands. Eventually, he started writing his own music, a blend of traditional Kurdish marching rhythms and pop genres that became anthemic to Kurds around the world.

He returned to the Kurdistan Region after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 with big plans to help rebuild his homeland. Many Iraqi Kurds, along with brothers in Turkey, Syria, and Iran, grew up dreaming of a sovereign state, but their nationalist ambitions have been somewhat tempered by Kurds’ rising fortune in post-Saddam Iraq. They now control much of Iraq’s oil (if you include the contested Kirkuk region) and are friendly toward the United States. Iraq’s president and foreign minister, both Kurds, ensure that Kurdish concerns are on the national agenda.

Zakaria, who arrived on the scene with plenty of investment capital, has been party to this progress. He swiftly rose to the upper echelons of the establishment, befriending the Barzanis, Kurdistan’s ruling family, and brought international visibility to the cause. It’s rumoured that when George W. Bush visited Iraq, he met with Zakaria, who has become the primary symbol of Kurdish nationalism. As one native explained, “Imagine if you were Irish, and Bono was the Pope.”

We are soon whisked off in a convoy of four white SUVs without licence plates to meet Zakaria at Naz City, a luxury complex he built with help from the Barzanis, on the edge of Erbil, to lure members of the wealthy and educated Kurdish diaspora back home. The development consists of seven high-rise apartment buildings, an underground garage with 1,100 parking spots, an outdoor gym, two tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a twenty-four-hour security system Zakaria claims to have designed himself.

A couple of guards usher our cars from the darkness of the countryside into the electrified compound through pastel peach–coloured gates. While Naz is said to be 80 percent full — housing seven ministers, 112 members of parliament, and fifty-six university professors — we don’t see a soul until we are greeted by Zakaria’s manager at the entrance to one of the high-rises.

He informs us that the evening’s festivities will take place in the building’s model penthouse. We are given a perfunctory buyer’s tour: master bedroom with mountain view, “children’s office,” and a cavernous living room with black pleather couches lining the walls. “Did you expect to see anything like this in Iraq?” he asks hopefully. It is a question we’ve been asked continually during our time in Kurdistan, and, once again, we affirm that we did not.

Zakaria is late. We sit silently on one of the couches and stare at the steaming Kurdish barbecue prepared by his mother. When the star finally arrives, he offers us drinks from a bar stocked with Black Label, Champagne, and Chablis, and calls for his humidor. Cocky but cool, he tells us he is going to build a “medical city” adjacent to Naz, and similar compounds in the Kurdish cities of Sulemania and Dohuk. He says he’s also financing large-scale construction projects in Baghdad. If the Kurds and Arabs are ever to get along, he explains, someone needs to start building bridges.

We lose track of him when he heads off to mingle to the tune of his last album with other guests who’ve been trickling in. There’s the head of security for Erbil, the president of the Kurdistan Student Union (a breeding ground for political fervour), and a high-ranking member of the Kurdish Democratic Party — not to mention the heavily armed, Peshmerga-trained bodyguards who have protected Zakaria night and day ever since Kurdish forces discovered a death list during a raid on an Islamic terrorist group; Zakaria was listed fourth.

Near midnight, the bodyguards gather and lock arms, circling the room in a traditional Kurdish dance. Zakaria, perched on the bar, Cohiba in mouth, bellows his own name. “Zakaria!” his men holler back. He raises his hands in triumph and cries out again. Unlike Zakaria, the guards haven’t been drinking, but they are nevertheless whipped into a frenzy, kicking higher and shouting louder. The call-and-response escalates until the din surely echoes through the compound.

As our departure time approaches, we are forced into the fray to make inquiries; we need a ride to the airport. But Zakaria wants his European drinking party to continue. He pulls a cellphone from the pocket of his Italian suit and spouts a stream of Kurdish before turning back to us. “Don’t look so worried,” he says with a sly smile. “I’m holding your plane.” (3) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:17 AM by Taylor Owen  

MI: Last week, a friend at Prospect Magazine asked for a run down of what was happening in Canadian politics, and in particular, how Ignatieff, the magazine's intellectual zeitgeist, was suddenly leader of the Liberal Party. Below is what they posted:

One Step Closer to an Obama-Ignatieff Continent

Somewhere, Samantha Power is smiling. Yesterday, while she was working on Obama’s State Department transition, her predecessor as the head of Harvard University’s Carr Centre for Human Rights (now run by adventurer-cum-Prospect-writer Rory Stewart), and fellow journalist-turned-academic, clinched the nomination for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Michael Ignatieff’s victory comes at a time of great turmoil in Canadian politics. Despite huge enthusiasm for Obama—over 70 per cent of Canadians supported him—the country oddly re-elected a prime minister, Stephen Harper, who in temperament, ideology and style is Obama’s antithesis. But Harper might have reason to take pause; having dismissed the coming recession during the election, he is now faced with holding together a minority government facing a crashing economy and a volatile political mess. And so enters Michael Ignatieff. But it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Instead of a hoped-for delegated convention win next May, Ignatieff yesterday was acclaimed leader amidst a rather unlikely flurry of parliamentary drama. On November 27th, a mere six weeks after the election and to fierce criticism, finance minister Jim Flaherty released an unwise economic statement—one which played politics in lieu of addressing the country’s economic woes.

In particular, he announced plans to cancel public party financing. In so doing he created a unity of protest that the Canadian left itself rarely manages, driving the leftist NDP, the Separatist Bloc Quebecois and the centrist Liberals into each others’ arms. They formed a coalition, under the leadership of the lame duck Liberal party leader, Stephane Dion. Their plan was to bring down the government.

Having grossly underestimated the opposition reaction, Prime Minister Harper was forced to ask the Governor General (an unelected figure, appointed by Queen Elizabeth) for a short term reprieve in the form of an archaic “prorogation” of Parliament. With this granted, and faced with a budget vote and potential election in January, the Liberal party decided its leisurely six month leadership election might usefully be slightly sped up. Indeed, they broke into something of a sweat.

This was all good news for Iganiteff. The author and writer had the edge in every measure of support, from caucus to party brass to general membership. His two competitors—the much younger Dominique Leblanc and his old college roommate and ex premier on Ontario, Bob Rae—saw the writing on the wall, and gracefully stepped aside.

Which brings us back to Samantha Power. At around the same time she began working in Obama’s Senate office, Ignatieff was making his first moves into Canadian politics. Both seemed drawn to politics, after years of writing and talking about it. After a rousing and flirtatious speech to the 2005 liberal party convention, Ignatieff then returned formally to run in 2006, expecting to sit as an MP in Paul Martin’s government, and maybe get a chance at leadership. But the Liberals lost that election, and he was thrown into a leadership race far sooner than expected.

It was during this leadership race that I became personally involved, as part of a policy team of Canadians around the world. (I’m currently doing a PhD at Oxford). We mucked in policy discussions during the campaign, and were a part of something that was quite unique to Canadian politics—genuine excitement, at the prospect of a different kind of politics. That’ll teach us. Ignatieff lost on the last ballot.

After a troubled tenure as leader, and a disappointing loss to Harper this November, liberal leader Dion agreed to step down, and called a leadership race. Ignatieff was the immediate front-runner. Our team reformed, far bigger now. The race was meant to end at a delegated convention in May. But, then, events intervened.

Ignatieff can be the first transformational Canadian leader in a generation. He is an intellect, internationally respected and, perhaps most importantly, he has a sophisticated and articulate knowledge of, and belief in, liberalism. What’s more, he is emerging politically along-side a US administration with which he shares ties and ideological and policy sensibilities. Both his and Power’s long play from academia to politics seem to have proved successful.

When Ignatieff first ran for Canadian politics, his critics dismissed him as an arriviste outsider, prone to stumbles and missteps: Iggy the egghead. Better head back to your Harvard seminars and your London dinner parties, they said. At the time Michael was quoted as saying that he was “less naive than I appear.” So it would seem. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion