IRBIL – The Qandil Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan have maintained a reputation for relative tranquility and stability in a diagonal belt across northern Iraq while much of the rest of the country has burned with sectarian nihilism and anti-occupation insurgency.
Three years ago, the California public relations firm Russo Marsh & Rogers launched an advertising campaign entitled “The Other Iraq” [1] which showed Kurds at peace and thankful for the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. The campaign was intended to lure American and British private investment to Iraqi Kurdistan and to let the world know that at least part of the war was an outright success at a time when the Iraqi insurgency was at its worst.
