Erbil: departure of the expats
Summary: our contributor returns to Erbil to discover an altered city, one caught in political stasis and sharp inequalities of wealth.
We thank Winthrop Rodgers for today’s newsletter. A journalist and analyst who spent several years in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, he focuses on politics, human rights and economics and is an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. @wrodgers2
For about a decade, Erbil was a hive of activity for the international community. Starting in the late 2000s, Iraq’s Kurdistan Region underwent rapid economic development, involving oil contracts, new construction, and urban expansion. It all came crashing down a few years later amid a financial crisis, but the war against Islamic State (ISIS) broke out at the same time. This brought a different kind of attention and turbocharged the influx of largely Western expats.
Erbil became a base for a motley crew of oil executives and contractors, soldiers and diplomats, humanitarians and development staff, English teachers and university professors and a pack of journalists dropping in to cover the whole thing. During the day, they flocked to offices on compounds, like those hosting the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), and in new high-rises in the trendy Empire office and residential complex. On pleasant summer nights expats from a kaleidoscope of countries and jobs would meet for drinks at Teachers’ Club, the Classy Hotel, or whatever place was new and fun.
But times have changed. These days, Western expats constitute a far less visible presence around Erbil. The world, its wars and its economic gold rushes moved on — and those that make up the foot soldiers of the international community have largely moved on too. Erbil should provide an interesting case study for scholars of military interventions and international development for what happens after attention dwindles and local dynamics reassert themselves.
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Expatriates relaxing in an Erbil venue during the peak of international military and humanitarian intervention, a vibrant presence that has now largely vanished, leaving behind a legacy of stark economic inequality.This shift did not happen all at once. The liberation of Mosul and later the end of ISIS’ territorial caliphate resulted in the first ebbing away of expats. Lives abroad were further disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many deciding to return to their home communities rather than be stuck in the Kurdistan Region for an uncertain amount of time. With ISIS more or less relegated to the past, the humanitarians and journalists packed up and went to attend to the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the unfolding genocide in Gaza. More recently, the Kurdistan Region has become a casualty of the US/Israel-Iran War. The oil and gas sector has been particularly hard hit with expat oil workers exiting the city and the region. Other expats just naturally found an endpoint for their time in the Kurdistan Region and decided to leave.
Today, the physical hallmarks of the time before the exodus stand as quiet and unremarked reminders. Take the UN compound, for example. Inside those walls, a massive humanitarian mission was orchestrated. At the height of the war with ISIS, the Kurdistan Region hosted more than 1 million refugees and IDPs. An army of UN agency officials provided food and shelter in dozens of camps and dealt out funding and technical assistance to the local authorities. The compound gate also served as a venue for protests and pleas for assistance. After the murder of Jina Masha Amini in 2022, hundreds of Iranian Kurds gathered there to mourn her with songs and street theatre and to call for justice from the international community. Now, the compound lies deserted after UNAMI’s mandate ended at the end of 2025 at the request of Iraq’s federal government.
The T-Walls and fortified access that once guarded the US Consulate in Ankawa are gone as is the consulate which has relocated to a massive new structure. The warren of residential buildings that served as the centre of US diplomatic activity for 15 years are now just sleepy streets open to walk around. Only the incongruous outdoor basketball court and the outline of letters spelling out “Erbil Yacht Club” suggest the literal and figurative bubble that once surrounded the buildings and their occupants. The diplomats have technically relocated to the new consulate compound further outside of town but, in reality, the war between the US and Iran has left it largely empty after staff were withdrawn earlier this year.
This is not to say that Erbil is a ghost town; in fact, it is very much getting on with things. New cafes and restaurants are springing up. Luxury apartment buildings are rising above the city’s upscale “Golden Zone” district. But instead of being frequented by expats — as they once would have been — it is wealthy locals that dominate the scene. Indeed, many of the hangouts that were popular a decade ago are no longer what they were and have been replaced by different hotspots. The newly constructed Erbil Avenue development includes a clump of restaurants with offerings from celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay and CZN Burak catering to Erbil’s politically connected elite. Part of the complex is the new headquarters of the Youth Hub, an initiative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) prime minister’s eldest son Areen Barzani, and a Real Madrid-branded football training facility.
The rest of the city, which was always left relatively untouched by the presence of expats, is more exposed to the political and economic dysfunction that characterises the Kurdistan Region. Water service can still be spotty, despite the construction of a new pipeline from the Great Zab River last year. Earlier this summer, petrol prices more than doubled amid a supply disruption. The KRG still has not formed a new cabinet nearly two years after elections, slowing the pace of governance and reform. But these are due to local dynamics, rather than the absence of expats and their money.
Nevertheless, the deep inequality within Erbil is part of the expats’ lasting legacy. This is a well-documented phenomenon in places with a significant humanitarian and development presence and in economies that are heavily dependent on expats. Of course, wealthy locals who benefit from the Kurdistan Region’s oil rentier economy, returning diaspora, and rich individuals from the rest of Iraq also contribute to inequality. What is notable — if unsurprising — is that they have served to reinforce a starkly uneven landscape, even after the Western expats moved on.
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