By Layla Al-Khafaji ~
Baghdad — Amber gold sunsets cloak the Tigris River, its radiance on the Baghdad skyline. Blood and war in memory now, disappearing before sweeter harmonies — of rebirth, culture, and reunion. Iraqi spirit stirs from dust and decades. And it’s reclaiming its heart for the world.
From Sumer ziggurats to Mosul minarets of yore, new Iraq’s tourism legacy is not monuments — but hope, survival, and memory to return and resell the nation not in battered history but in unsoiled beauty.
Heritage Reclaimed
Iraq is the “cradle of civilization,” and theirs it still is. Of Mesopotamia’s middle land, land of the written word, land of law, land of cities, there lie over 10,000 archaeological sites scattered, going back some 5,000 years. Babylon, newly listed on the UN World Heritage but whose wall had already begun to crumble, thrives again everywhere good trade with foreign benefactors and natives.
Supported by a UNESCo paper, Iraq’s Culture Ministry accelerated restoration rehab for Iraq’s heritage such as Ur, Abraham’s home. They’re world heritage, not restored identity conceptualized by tourists.
A New Chapter for Hospitality
Najaf, Baghdad, and Karbala hotels have re-opened, cafes were filled to capacity, and the foreign names were again heard. Internal tourism is already on the rise, particularly by the tourist Iraqis and pilgrims previously, in the boycott areas, due to fear of security issues.
Tourism business is more foreign travel-oriented now. A number of the recently enhanced visa-on-arrival regime of Iraq, introduced in 2021, compel international travelers from more than 30 countries to go there in increasingly greater numbers — and Britain and the USA are no exception. It compelled record volumes of European and Asian package vacations promotions to go there and see what many have traveled to discover there for decades.
Iraqis themselves are the vanguard. Young entrepreneurs are building eco-lodges on Kurdish mountaintops, staging cultural exchange programs, and promoting Iraq on TikTok and Instagram social media outlets. Iraqis, whose lives had previously revolved around war for more than three decades, are being guided in tours these days as therapy, rather than as commerce. Art and culture are therapy in rehabilitating war cities.
Mosul Culture Museum, which was plundered and set ablaze by ISIS, is half-exposed today with gigantic-scale restoration efforts like ALIPH. The restored pieces of art and displays on the city’s rejuvenation are now open to everyone to see and learn.
Likewise, the World Heritage property of Hatra, south of Mosul, received its first visitors in nearly two decades in 2022. They now have locals as their guides, not tales of devastation, but of restoration, optimism.
A Landscape for Any Traveller
And then apart from history and restoration, Iraq diversifies itself well also. Kurdistan has mountains towering over valleys, above waterfalls and looted monasteries. Ahwar in southern Iraq, a delicate network of marshlands and UNESCO World Heritage, is nature lover’s and ecologist’s heaven on earth.
Adventure. Adventure tourism also is increasing in popularity. Waist deep in water from island to island of reed, visitors are canoeing through the Marshes to live among the Marsh Arabs and be saturated in the culture that is two millennia old. Iraqi tour operators have been providing cross-cultural experience, ecologically friendly travel, and sustainability-tourist holidays, IraqiTourism.org goes on.
Even food tourism is hip in Iraq today — Baghdad food tours are enticing visitors to masgouf (grilled fish), samoon bread, and saffron biryani. All about relishing locally grown, locally consumed diversity in Iraq.
Challenges Still Present, Momentum Builds
No fault = no resurrection. Iraqi security thought and organization, bureaucracy closed off to us. Tourism recently announced to be a national priority with five-year master plan for additional transport, site protection, and state encouragement of private investment in Iraq.
Foreigners war-displaced, wonder of tourist once, now command streetspace between — no longer as war reporter and humanitarians but as strollers, snap-shot-takers, historians, and fantasists.
The world tiptoes once more, as Iraq unfolds — in awe, in deference, and in a rush to see past the headlines.
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