It’s mainly mud on what is to become the road to the new border post between the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and Turkey, only the second one for general use through the mountain ranges dividing the two. Cows amble by without a shepherd; a truck leaves a fresh trail.
“Before, you could not walk here without being shot at,” says Kak Salah, a commander serving with the Iraqi Kurdish security forces in the border region. He comes to a halt and will go no further, pointing to the peak of the highest mountain in front of us. “The Turks watch us from up there. If you [went further] looking for your cow, they would shoot. Today might be your lucky day, or it might not.”
This muddy path is set to open the Kurdish mountain area of Mergasor for business and tourism from Turkey. But it's in the middle of an area where the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Kurdish resistance group from Turkey, is active. The workers building the road are being protected by Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga fighters. The PKK does not want a road that can be used by the Turkish army to hunt down its fighters.
Turkey and the PKK have been locked in a civil war for years, with thousands of victims. Under the protection of one of the Iraqi Kurdish parties, the group can still operate from across the border from its bases in the Qandil mountains. The sound of a plane is heard from high in the sky above, on its way to offload its bombs there.
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