'I took a picture to show my dentist' - the first package tourists arrive in Iraq

Martin Chulov reports in the Guardian :

When tourism chiefs in Basra were assessing the prospects for western visitors four years ago, their verdict was not encouraging. "There is," they said, "a 70% to 80% chance you will be OK."

Things must have improved because yesterday the first group of western package tourists to visit Iraq's capital and second city finally arrived in Baghdad - tired, uninsured and a little exasperated, but happy - after a 17-day tour that would have been unthinkable 12 months ago.

On the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the irony was compelling: the last group of western foreigners to arrive outside the Sheraton hotel in Baghdad were invading US marines. Six years on, the assembled group of four Britons, a Russian who lives in London, two Americans and a Canadian wielded nothing more menacing than suitcases and dogeared tourism guides.

[ ... ]

The tour was organised by Geoff Hann, who has been bringing groups to Iraq since the 1970s. He was last in Baghdad in October 2003 before returning for a travel conference late last year, then deciding security had improved enough to risk another tour.

Most clients were retired people with an abiding interest in the culture, rather than would-be war tourists, he said.

"Dealing with the former government was probably more ordered," he said when asked to compare than and now. "As long as you did what Saddam's guards asked you to, you were fine."

None of the group could get travel insurance and all turned up despite stern warnings from the Foreign Office.

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