Hikers enjoy breathtaking Kurdistan landscapes while avoiding landmines, border attacks
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – It isn’t wild animals nor natural disasters that Kurdish hikers fear most, it is the unexpected bombardment by two of Kurdistan’s neighboring nations and thousands of mines underfoot that were buried during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Both challenges are formidable. Mines remain deadly for decades under the ground and both Iran and Turkey have never really stopped attacking areas along and well within the Kurdistan Region’s mountainous borders in their conflicts with various armed Kurdish opposition groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) or the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI).