In this post we visit the Red Prison in Sulay then drive to our overnight town of Soran via: the Gali Ali Beg Waterfall, The Hamilton Road, The Kawlokan Gorge, The Rawanduz Gorge and the Bekhal Waterfall.
After my third run in Iraq we picked up a coffee and headed to The Red Prison.
“The Red Prison” or Amna Suraka built in 1979-1985 in Sulaymaniyah was very interesting and very moving. Its name comes from the fact that the original colour it was painted in was red but has since faded over time. The Red Prison was used by Saddam Hussein’s regime to torture and imprison and execute politic dissidents. It now a museum explaining who was kept here and why and also commemorates “The Kurdish Mass Exodus” of 1991 into Turkey during the Gulf War and “The Anfal Campaign” or genocide of the Kurdish People in 1988. All three events commemorated here involved Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.
From 1979 to 1991, hundreds of people (no one knows exactly how many) including teenagers were imprisoned in The Red Prison, especially students, Kurdish nationalists, and other dissidents. Many were tortured and raped. Eventually those held and still alive were released by the US forces when Saddam Hussein was captured.
In 2003 the Red Prison was turned into a Museum to chronicle and commemorate the victims of two events: “The Anfal Campaign” of 1988 and The Mass Kurdish Exodus of 1991.
“The Anfal Campaign” or the “Kurdish Genocide” was a counterinsurgency operation, which was carried out by Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups but quickly turned into a campaign to eliminate the Kurdish in Iraq all together. Sadly, 182,000 Kurds were killed, mainly by chemical attacks and gas. This campaign also destroyed 4,500 villages and towns. The museum has an entrance into the campaign that features 182,000 shards of mirrored glass to commemorate each human killed and 4,500 ceiling lights for each of the villages and towns destroyed.
The Mass Kurdish Exodus of 1991 was the result of a retaliation of Saddam Hussein’s forces against an uprising by The Peshmerga Kurdish Forces resulting in 1,500,000 Kurds fleeing their homes during cold snowy March-April. More than 1,500 Kurds died of exposure trying to pass into Turkey who resisted their entry for several days until finally they took in many thousands but it was too late for many Kurds. This is not the only time that Kurds have been displaced. The Kurdish-Turkish Conflict of 1978 and the Iraq-Iran War of 1980 also caused many millions to be displaced bringing the total displacements to over 3 million – The Kurdish People know what it is like to be displaced and have suffered greatly as a result.
The Gali Ali Beg Waterfall is 135km from Erbil but not very tall or wide but expelled a lot of water. Swimming is not allowed but you can see it up close in a paddleboat but the area around the waterfall is very small. A bit of a disappointment.
The highlight for me was walking 1.4km along an old section of the famous Hamilton Road, named after an Australian Engineer who built it back in 1928 to connect Erbil with the border where an existing road leads to Tehran, the Capital of Iran. This section of the original road at 571m above sea level was abandoned since it was too narrow and a new section built in the 1980’s as well as widening in many other areas.
The Kawlokan Gorge was simply spectacular at 641m above sea level near Soran. You can see the town of Rawanduz perched high on top of the edge of the gorge.
The Rawanduz Gorge below the town of Rawanduz is the best at 731m above sea level. It is huge and all the locals play backgammon from a viewing balcony with the gorge laid out below them.
Our final stop was the Bekhal Waterfall at 656m above sea level and was very disappointing as it is swamped with tacky tourists shops, cafes and restaurants. There are shops and balconies on the waterfall itself !!!
Soran (Pop 125,000, Elev 620m, First Settled in 714BC) is a nice town surrounded by the craggy peaks leading to Iran. It is also “car city” with a huge section of the town selling used cars and many workshops that service them. Soran is also famous for hard drugs smuggled in from the nearby Iranian border. I ended the night with a delicious dinner for only 9AUD (see photo) with a baked chicken dish of that area.
Enjoy this day of sadness and awesome geography…
ABOUT ISIL (DAESH), ISIS, IS:
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Daesh, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and The Islamic State (IS) are all the same
militant extreme Islamist group founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999.
Islamic State pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, and participated in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multi-national coalition led by the United States. In 2014, the group proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate and began referring to itself as the Islamic State. As a caliphate, it claimed religious, political, and military authority over Muslims worldwide. Its adoption of the name "Islamic State" and its idea of a caliphate have been criticised, with the United Nations, various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups rejecting its statehood and legitimacy. In Syria, the group conducted ground attacks against both Syrian government forces and Syrian opposition factions and by the end of 2015, it held an area that contained an estimated 8-12 million people and stretched from western Iraq to eastern Syria, where it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law. ISIL was estimated at the time to have an annual budget of more than US$1 billion and more than 30,000 fighters.
In mid-2014, an international military coalition led by the United States intervened against ISIL in Syria as well as in Iraq with an airstrike campaign, in addition to supplying advisors, weapons, training, and supplies to ISIL's enemies in the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces. This campaign reinvigorated the latter two forces and damaged ISIL, killing tens of thousands of its fighters and reducing its financial and military infrastructure.
The American-led intervention was followed by a smaller-scale Russian military intervention exclusively in Syria, in which ISIL lost thousands of more fighters to airstrikes, cruise missile attacks, and other Russian military activities, and had its financial base further degraded.
In July 2017, the group lost control of its largest city, Mosul, to the Iraqi military, followed by the loss of its de facto political capital of Raqqa to the Syrian Democratic Forces. By December 2017, IS controlled just 2% of its maximum territory (achieved in May 2015) and Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of the group underground, three years after it had captured about a third of Iraq's territory. By March 2019, IS lost one of their last significant territories in the Middle East.
The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations. It is well known for its videos of beheadings and other types of executions of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, as well as its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The international community holds IS responsible for committing massive human rights abuses, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The group committed genocide against Yazidis and against Christians on a historic scale in northern Iraq and Syria, and systematically persecuted Shia Muslims during its rule.
In October 2019, ISIL media announced that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi had become the new leader of the group after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group's previous leader since 2013, died during an American military operation after detonating his suicide vest in Barisha, Syria. ISIL has also had a presence outside of the Middle East through its various "provinces" and affiliates and has had a notable militant presence outside of the Arab world, predominantly in countries with significant or majority Muslim populations such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as in countries with relatively low Muslim minority populations such as the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nowadays ISIS is limited to certain cities/towns inside Syria and Iraq such as IDLIB or IDLEB in Syria. A deal has been done that as long as they stay in these places they will not be prosecuted and jailed. Lets hope this lasts…
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