Revisiting Kurdistan: 'If there is a success story in Iraq, it's here'

Luke Harding, war correspondent for The Guardian, filed a report 16 July 2014, posted at www.theguardian.com , detailing the differences he found in a recent visit to Iraq Kurdistan from his last visit in 2003, eleven years ago, just before the US invasion of Iraq.

According to the report, he "finds a self-confident region transformed by oil money."  As Harding writes, "(Kurdistan's) capital, Irbil, is a haven of religious tolerance and relative safety... If there is a success story in Iraq, it's here... What has transformed Kurdistan's fortunes is oil."

The face of modern Irbil: luxury modern housing developments are transforming the city. Photograph: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

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