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Iraq holy cities are becoming tourist meccas

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
The Washington Post

	LOIS RAIMONDO / THE WASHINGTON POST An Iraqi boy offers to sell posters of Shiite religious leaders to tourists visiting Najaf. Tourism has provided a much-needed boost to the city's economy, but some residents say visitors are introducing materialism into what was once a pious culture.
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Then he went shopping.

Since war ended in May, visitors estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands have braved continuing violence to travel to a country that was virtually closed to outsiders during three decades of rule by Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.

The main attractions are the Shiite Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, historical gathering places of the world's preeminent theological, philosophical and scientific scholars and considered by many Muslims to be as sacred as Mecca and Medina.

On Shiite holidays in particular, the sister cities have been the scenes of immense celebration — and devastating violence. Last week, a coordinated series of bombings killed at least 110 people in Karbala, many of them Shiite pilgrims who had flocked there for Ashura, the day commemorating the 7th-century battle that killed Imam Hussein, the prophet's grandson.

Before the war, Najaf and Karbala were tranquil places where women in black robes glided around among scholars engaged in decades-long study of the Koran. Now the sister cities have the hustle and bustle of a crowded bazaar. Vendors cooking sticky sesame sweets on the streets beckon for visitors to try a taste. Long buses crammed with all manner of goods — clothes, toys, washing machines, ovens — line up neatly on the streets.

Tourism has provided a much-needed boost to Najaf's economy, and in many ways it has brought out the best in many of its residents. Some have taken to hosting visitors as they might their own families, handing out tea, dates, blankets and even shelter for free.

While a handful of the visitors come from as far away as Indonesia or South Africa, the great majority come from Iraq's next-door neighbor and recent arch enemy, Iran. Many people here say they welcome their Shiite brothers from across the border, but the lopsided exchange rate between the Iraqi dinar and the Iranian rial has created an awkward economic hierarchy.

Explained Sayeed Salih Mehdi, 43, a day laborer: "The rich in Iran are rich in Iraq, and the poor in Iran are also rich in Iraq."

Some residents say they worry that the visitors are introducing greed and materialism into what was once a modest and pious culture. Many Iranian tourists leave with sacks full of goods that would be unimaginable on an Iraqi salary. They have driven lodging prices from $3 to $5 a night to upward of $120.

"Tourism has made the economy better," said Muhsin Burhan, 20, an Iraqi laborer. "But the social situation, it is worse."

Saad Habeeb Ibrahim, a tribal leader, said he worries that the country's treasures are being ruined. "It makes me nervous to see Najaf and Karbala this way for their reputation," Ibrahim said. "Before, they were known as religious cities and they were clean. But they are now getting dirty."

Because tour groups are unregulated, concerns have been voiced about the possibility that Iranian buses are being used to smuggle weapons, explosives or foreign fighters into the country. The suspicions are fueled by regular pronouncements by the U.S. military and Iraqi security officials that unnamed Iranians are suspects in various attacks.

Ahmed Aljobory, who in January became the chairman of the Culture Ministry's new board of tourism, acknowledges that the influx of tourists has brought a degree of chaos to Najaf and Karbala. He said he has begun consulting with officials about setting up new border checkpoints, a registration system that would ensure that every visitor who enters the country eventually leaves it, and an entry fee to help offset the strain on public services.

"There are people coming in from everywhere. We cannot stop them," Aljobory lamented. "We haven't any control over them."

	LOIS RAIMONDO / THE WASHINGTON POST Fatima, 18, an Iranian who said she was visiting Najaf, Iraq, for the first time, stops to browse at a shop outside the Imam Ali mosque.

In Saddam's time, tourism was so strictly controlled that responsibility for overseeing it fell to his intelligence services. Passenger manifests had to be faxed to the government weeks in advance. Tourists couldn't enter directly from Iran, but had to first fly to Syria or Jordan and board a bus that would be escorted by Iraqi security officers.

Today, the Iran-Iraq border is porous. Dozens of buses line up at dawn each day to cross at three main checkpoints. Even those without proper identification can get in by paying bribes of $150 or less, according to several tourists and tour operators.

Most tours focus on the central part of the country and include, in addition to Najaf and Karbala, the shrines at Baghdad's Shiite district of Kadhimiya. But Alaa Azawi, 49, vice chairman of the Union of Travel and Tourism Companies, which represents more than 300 companies in Iraq, imagines a not-too-distant future when visitors can visit an almost unlimited number of attractions that combine history and religion with the intrigue of the most recent war.

There's Babylon, which is where the Bible says the world's languages were created and which is now under guard by Polish troops; Basra, a port city where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet.

Najaf, set around the Euphrates, is home to roughly 900,000 people. Among the world's 120 million Shiites, it has long been revered as the resting place of Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the man Shiites believe should have been his heir. Inside the city boundaries, the words of religious leaders are treated as law and women must be covered from head to toe with a black or navy abaya. Burial in one of Najaf's numerous cemeteries is considered a great honor.

Before the U.S. invasion, there might have been 150 people in front of the shrine at any given time, said Abbas Hasoun Abbas, 35, deputy manager of the compound. Now it's closer to 3,000 — smiling tourists recording each other with digital video cameras, vendors hawking cloths with pictures of the shrine and religious verses, families lunching on falafel and salad as they sit on the cold pavement.

With so much demand, tourists and residents say, even those with reservations at hotels or guesthouses can't count on lodging in Najaf. More than a few have arrived to find their rooms given to a higher bidder.

Sayeed Amer Mehdi said he became a guesthouse operator as a gesture of goodwill. The 31-year-old police sergeant said he saw some Iranians sleeping on the street one day and invited them to his house. After doing this a few times, he realized he could ask for money.

He found a house that could hold 40 people and began advertising it to Iranian tour groups. At $5 a night for blankets and a space on the floor, it was a bargain. Since he opened it in December, it has been full nearly every night, yielding net revenue of $5,000 a month, a small fortune for the public servant whose salary is $160 a month.

On the other side of the economic boom are people like Abdul Jabbar Abdullah, 52, who reads verses of the Koran for burial ceremonies in Najaf. He grew up on Rasoul Street, in a three-bedroom house a few blocks from the Ali shrine. But late last year, he said, his landlord evicted him, saying he could get more by renting to Iranian visitors. Abdullah, his wife, four daughters, son and two granddaughters are now crammed into a 400-square-foot studio that overlooks a garbage dump.

"I don't recognize Najaf anymore some days. People are being seduced by material things," he said.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company