Jamie Watt
On Friday night I walked through Erbil Avenue with friends. It was more crowded than I had seen it in months. People filled the restaurants and spent money freely, and new startups had set up booths to sell their products. One booth was selling qezwan, the roasted wild pistachio that Kurds have ground into coffee for generations. It has no caffeine.
The seller was full of excitement. Now, the seller told us, was the time to offer people natural Kurdish products.
That was not what I expected to hear this month. For three weeks I had been worried.
On September 30, the Global Coalition ended its military mission in Iraq, and the American air defense systems around Erbil left with it. Germany’s army had already said in July that it would pull its personnel from a base near Erbil International Airport, citing the loss of that protection. Those systems had been busy. Since the war with Iran began on February 28, Iran has launched more than 1,000 drones and missiles at northern Iraq, according to the Long War Journal. My family lived through those months in Erbil. When the interceptors fired at night, I took comfort in knowing someone was watching the sky.
Eight days after the withdrawal, two drones carrying explosives struck a camp for Iranian Kurdish refugees at Kawergosk, about 35 kilometers west of the city. No one was killed. Four days later, Iran hit the Azadi camp near Koya, where families of the Iranian Kurdish party PDKI live. Iraq’s replacement air defenses may take six months to arrive, The New Arab reported, and a Peshmerga captain told the paper the attack showed how urgently the Region needs defenses that can stop drones. There was a little fear in the air, and I will admit some of it was mine.
Officials here have stayed calm. Kurdistan Region Interior Minister Rebar Ahmed told a forum at the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil this month that the withdrawal was “more political than security-driven,” and that the Islamic State still poses a serious threat. The KRG’s Department of Foreign Relations said security cooperation with its partners would continue through other channels.
I first came to Erbil in 2009, and my wife and I have raised our children here since 2014. Somewhere in that time I started treating the city’s safety as something Washington provided, and I was wrong. The people I know here saw ISIS come close to Erbil in 2014. They sat through the missile attacks of 2022 and 2024, and they have lived under drones all this year. I am grateful to the soldiers who ran those air defenses. People here kept their shops and restaurants open long before those soldiers came, and they are keeping them open now that the soldiers are gone.
The qezwan seller is one of them. Starting a business in the same month foreign troops leave, with the sky less protected than it was in September, is a bet that the city will still be here next year, with customers who want what you sell. I am not sure I would have made that bet three weeks ago.
The British had a wartime poster for this: keep calm and carry on. Erbil has lived that way for a long time, and Friday night showed me where I should have been looking. I had been watching the sky and reading news from Washington to judge whether the city was safe. The better measure was on Erbil Avenue: who was opening a business, who was out to dinner, who was still making plans. The people I live among have read those signs through harder years than this one, and on Friday night the signs were good.
Iraq’s new air defenses may be six months away. The qezwan booth is open now.