Promoting a Vision of Tourist Bliss in Baghdad’s Dusty Rubble

9-21-08
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/world/middleeast/21tourism.html?hp

Humoud Yakobi gazes at the rubble-strewn parking lot, the maze of blast walls and the clusters of dusty palm trees on the island around him and sees hotels, restaurants and shopping malls, with throngs of people enjoying refreshments by the swimming pool or playing a round of golf.

“I always imagine it as some kind of heaven,” he said.

Mr. Yakobi, the chairman of Iraq’s Board of Tourism, is charged with attracting foreign visitors to his beleaguered country. Jazirat A’aras, an island in the Tigris that is just across from the fortified Green Zone and the new American Embassy, is central to his plans. He is seeking investors who might want to spend $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion to build on the island, which was a honeymoon resort before it was bombed and looted in 2003 and then taken over by the Americans for use as a construction yard for the new embassy.

As Mr. Yakobi and his colleagues envision it, the development would include “a six-star hotel,” spas, a yacht club, an amusement park, a shopping center and luxury villas, built in the architectural style of the Ottoman Empire-era buildings in Old Baghdad. The complex would also have an 18-hole golf course, the “Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club,” as it is called in preliminary sketches prepared by the Tourism Board.