Our international sales teams acknowledge no frontiers: Charles Jenkins, International Sales Manager at Palgrave Macmillan has just sent me these dispatches after his recent trip to the Kurdistan region in Northern Iraq..
"After overcoming considerable logistical and security challenges, the first International Book Fair to take place in Iraq for nearly 30 years went ahead last week in Erbil, the administrative capital of the Iraq Kurdistan region which is located in the North of Iraq, not far from Mosul. Held in a specially constructed exhibition hall in a beautifully landscaped park, amid tight security, it was formally opened by the newly-appointed Minister of Higher Education from the Kurdish Regional Government(KRG).
It had been hoped the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabany, the first non-Arab President of an Arab country would attend, but his visit was called off at the last minute for security reasons. Many officials from various Iraqi and KRG Ministries were in attendance along with representatives from every University and library in the country, starved for so long of good quality English and local language books and materials for the educational sector.
The Book Fair provided an excellent opportunity for foreign and Arabic academic publishers and suppliers to display and sell their latest textbooks, library books and materials. The Iraqi government had budgeted about £700,000 for the purchase of books relating to Higher Education in the English Language; cash sales were brisk, and in the purchasing frenzy one could witness the unusual sight of boxes of books being hauled away in supermarket trolleys by librarians, academics, students and private individuals, under the watchful eye of the ubiquitous, gun-toting Peshmerga soldiers..theft was not a problem at this Fair! Most popular subject areas included medicine, engineering, sciences(particularly geology), English language/linguistics/literature and business.
Kurdish National flags fluttered proudly at the entrance to the Fair, something which would not have been possible before Saddam’s overthrow. The event was widely heralded as a great success and one that is hoped will become established as an important annual event in the educational and cultural development of the country in the future.
No other foreign publisher’s representatives attended. Many were not permitted by their companies to visit or, if they were, were unwilling to do so because of the perceived security risks, despite Erbil being much safer in reality than most of the rest of the country provided sensible precautions are taken. The US monitor all commercial and military flights in and out of Iraqi airspace and two American F16 Jets were in close radio contact with my plane from Amman ‘guiding’ us in to Erbil airport. It’s still very much uncharted territory from a business travel perspective and it was in fact the first time these particular Royal Jordanian pilots had ever flown into Erbil!
Erbil, believed by many to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world is definitely ‘back on the map’ and eager to reintegrate itself into the international business community."