The approach to Gwer, on the Peshmerga-IS frontline, was proving just how green a correspondent I was. Each no-name village between Erbil and the front had me asking: “Is this it?” None was. Each looked and felt as I assumed a Middle Eastern frontline must, their pockmarked concrete buildings caked with dust and characterised by an eerie emptiness that suggested abandonment. But this, my fixer told me, was simply what Iraqi Kurdistan looked and felt like.
The outskirts of Gwer, forty kilometres south-west of Erbil, threw my ignorance into stark relief. To the dust and air of abandonment were added burnt-out cars, which bore witness to recent US airstrikes, IS graffiti that had been painted over upon the villagers’ return to their recaptured home last month, and countless Peshmerga checkpoints. These latter were of particular concern. I was not, strictly speaking, supposed to be there, lacking official clearance as a journalist. My passport wasn’t nearly enough to convince the guard at the final checkpoint of my credentials and for a moment it looked like we’d have to turn back. Luckily, my fixer, who looked at me with a certain embarrassing incredulity, knew the Lieutenant Colonel on the hill and told the guard that the former was expecting us. “Shall I call him?” my fixer asked in Kurdish. The guard demurred and let us through.
Matthew Clayfield
Matthew Clayfield is a journalist, critic and screenwriter.
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