Northern Iraq looks to ‘dark tourism’ for cash

In an October 2013, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, then the Kurdistan Regional Government's representative to the United Kingdom, outlined sectors of the economy then being developed in Iraqi Kurdistan.

She discussed relevant prospects in the autonomous region's oil and gas sector, as well as its tourism industry.

One particular area she outlined was referred to as "sites of conscience," or "dark tourism."

"I'm sure you know people visit Auschwitz as a way of discovering the history of the Nazis and what happened the Jewish community," Rahman said. "This is apparently a sector of tourism worldwide that does very well.

"We want the world to know our story and what happened in Kurdistan, both positive and negative," she added. "We want the world to know about the genocide, the chemical weapon bombardments, the torture, the executions."

Rahman was referring to the Anfal, the genocidal campaign waged by the Saddam Hussein regime against Kurdistan in the late 1980s which killed 182,000 Kurds. One notably infamous incident of that period was the gassing and killing of 5,000 Kurdish civilians in a single day in the town of Halabja on the Iranian border.

The sites of these atrocities still exist. Amna Suraka, for example, was a headquarters of Iraqi intelligence during Saddam's rule, where his regime applied the most brutal forms of torture against his Kurdish victims and "disappeared" many. It is now a museum.

Rather than destroy the site, which was known as Saddam's " House of Horrors," the Kurdish authorities decided that preserving it as museum would commemorate those who were killed there, and as a stark reminder of the regime's brutality against the Kurds.

A hall of mirrors in the complex consists of a staggering 182,000 shards of glass, one for each victim of the Anfal. Also in Halabja there is a memorial and museum to the gas attack.