Iraq Getting Back on Tourist Agenda : Kathika Travel Website

By Amanda Kendle

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There have been plenty of headlines about Iraq in the past decade or two, but not too many of them have turned up on the travel pages. But there seems to be some hope that this is about to change, and no doubt the Iraqi people are pretty pleased about that.

First Tour Group Visits Iraq

For the first time in six years, the country is considered stable enough for a tour group to make a trip there, and earlier this month a British tour group of eight tourists arrived in Iraq.

They are traveling to various sights around Iraq, including Babylon and the Tower of Babel to the south of Baghdad, north to Samarra which is home to a famous mosque and also to the Kurdish city of Arbil. Religious sites around Iraq are the most common places that tourists are expected to want to visit in future years as tourism – hopefully – becomes a normal part of Iraqi life.

This particular tour group is, of course, under protection – but with armed guards who are dressed as civilians, so it’s not as daunting as it could be.

The Future for Iraqi Tourism

The Iraqi government recognizes that tourism could be a good income earner for the country – particularly as a safeguard against further falls in oil prices, since right now 98% of the state’s income comes from oil – a clear case of putting all your eggs in one basket. Because Iraq has a lot of famous religious sites, reports say that tourism officials want to focus on “religious tourism” to start bringing in more tour groups.

With the names of so many Iraqi cities and regions having been splashed across our TV screens and newspapers for so long, if life continues to normalize more there in the future, general tourism might also become a good earner. Tourists like to visit places that they’ve heard of, and that means rather than heading to other Middle Eastern nations with city names people are not so familiar with, tours that visit places like Baghdad or Samarra could well take off.

But before we start vacationing in Iraq, we will probably be waiting for still less violence to hit our TV screens. While the statistics for the number of people killed in the country since the beginning of the year are the lowest since 2003, they still show that around 450 people were killed in January and February alone, and that doesn’t quite give us the confidence to book our tour yet. But we’re definitely getting interested.
photo credit: rosemanios