October 11, 2010
Getting Away From It All: The Iraq You Don’t Often See
HABBANIYA, IRAQ — Over the weekend, Iraqis escaped from the bombs, checkpoints and assassinations around them by coming to Habbaniya Tourist Village, a holiday site 50 miles west of Baghdad, near Falluja. Habbaniya was built in the era of Saddam Hussein, whose 1982 official tourist guidebook boasted that it was at the time “the largest tourist village of the kind in the Middle East.”
Today, the swimming pools, hotel and holiday apartments are empty, but Iraqis still enjoy swimming, jet skiing and boating in the lake.
see more pictures @ http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/getting-away-from-it-all-the-iraq-you-dont-often-see/
