Barzan: August
Scenes from a glorious swim in the Kurdistan Region's Barzan area today. Beneath the beauty, however, issues are clearly mounting for the Kurdistan Region and its people: worsening chaos in Baghdad causing instability among factional political parties, lack of trust in ruling class and crackdown on recent protests, corruption across pretty much all walks of life, ongoing drain of brilliant young brains, water shortages, drought, heating climate, gas flaring emissions, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees who face a significant cut in UN funding by the end of the year, and of course Turkish attacks on the Kurdistan Workers' Party, resulting in civilian deaths as we saw most tragically last month. This week, it became clear that Kurdistan Region elections will v not be taking place in October.
N.B. I can also confirm that the glamorous Rubar Resort's swimming pool has been concreted over... but whether or not it was due to bikini opposition remains tbc. All in all, there's a lot going on right now and huge challenges (and opportunities, should they be taken) ahead.
All credit: Alannah Travers
