The holiday season has yet to begin, but hotels in the mountain resort towns of Iraq’s Kurdistan region are already fully booked. The patrons are not tourists but refugees who have fled conflict in the country’s arid Sunni Arab heartland for the relative safety of its autonomous north, where Kurds run their own affairs. Shaqlawa may seem an unlikely refuge, but the resort town’s population has swollen by almost a half since the start of the year. On the main street of the town, crowded with construction sites, motels and guest houses, the newly opened “Falluja Kebab Restaurant” is testimony to its new residents. It is no small irony in a country with a historic enmity between Sunni Arabs and Kurds that residents of Anbar, a place synonmous with Arab nationalism, should now seek sanctuary with their onetime foe. In this mix, there is mistrust […]