Tourism in Iraq

If you thought tourism to Iraq was dead, a collateral victim in a war long supposed to have been won, think again. On 1st May 2008, five years to the day since George W Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech, Bradt Travel Guides will publish Iraq Then and Now: a guide to the country and its people. Co-author Geoff Hann knows tourism in the north of Iraq is still very much alive, he regularly leads tours there - twice in the past year.

Journalist and co-author Karen Dabrowska knows Iraq, the surrounding region and its issues intimately, and is also Assistant Editor of Islamic Tourism Magazine.

‘Iraq Then’ explores the rich history and culture of one of the world’s oldest civilisations while ‘Iraq now’ looks in depth at the period from the rise of the Baathists to the present day. Guide sections feature The North, Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, and The South.

Interspersed are the views of local people:

-Sahib, an Iraqi PoW in Iran, captured during the Iran-Iraq war and held for 21 years

-Dr Sahib Al-Hakim, founder of the Organisation of Human Rights in Iraq

-Kassim Ali, who assisted the CIA in the early secret war to bribe senior Iraqi commanders to turn against Saddam

-Kamal Kadir, an Iraqi Kurd who says: ‘The happiest day of my life was when I watched the toppling of Saddam on 9 April 2003. It was an event that I thought I would never see, as I always believed that after Saddam the nightmare would continue with his sons, who were worse than him.’

Bradt’s original guide to Iraq, published in 2002, sold 3000 copies in the USA in April 2003 following a call from the Pentagon, and topped the bestseller list at Stanfords, London.

In addition to the detailed information on the country’s historical and cultural context, Iraq Then and Now offers a balanced view of the events of the past five years. Saddam’s secular rule was brutal and despotic, but during his rise to power there were also many improvements: legislation was passed giving women equal pay, substantial progress was made in controlling infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, and the number of students in technical fields increased more than 300%.

The authors take a reasoned and objective look at the 2003 war and the events of the past five years, with reports from major British newspapers and journalists, opinion polls from both the UK and US and extracts from Iraqi blogs.