The "Other Iraq"

An advertisement campaign out of northern Iraq is aimed at promoting investment in and travel to the region by English speaking audiences. Erbil is the city that seeks to unseat regional power Dubai as the benefactor of Western travel and entertainment dollars. The campaign refers to the Kurdistan region as "the other Iraq" in order to distinguish itself from its far more violent and unstable sister regions to the south. Millions have been spent to help bring stability and international investors to the region. While the region gives hope that the rest of Iraq may someday turn to multinational investiment in order to provide the Iraqi public with better jobs, social programs, and sanitary conditions, Kurdistan enjoys the luxury of being able to avoid the sectarian strife in the south do to a homogeneous community and having benefited from the no-fly zone established in 1991.

Kurdistan looks to be on the way to a viable economy to compliment it's already existing military force. Many scholars and pundits argue that the Kurds deserve their own country - although none of them are probably Turkish - and if Erbil is any indication of what the Kurds have planned for the future then Kurdistan, not Afghanistan or Iraq, may become the poster child for democracy in the Middle East. The more companies and countries that invest in Kurdistan creates more interests in keeping the region stablized. Even if the Kurds don't establish their own sovereign nation, the work being done in the region should help create a blueprint for the rest of Iraq if the sectarian violence ever stops.