Imagine Your Favorite Sioux Falls Coffeehouse Destroyed: Recent Iraqi Bomb Blast Could Have Had My Name on It
A recent car bombing in Iraq could have had my name on it.
At 5:40 PM Friday Iraqi time, a car bomb exploded outside of the United States Consulate inAnkawa, the Christian enclave in Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq. Two people were killed and seven were wounded.
The bomb exploded across the street from my favorite Erbil bakery and my favorite Erbil café. The Nelly’s Bakery and anotherbusinesswere destroyed and O’ccaffee, a nice coffee shop with the best pizza in Erbil, was damaged.
Imagine Kalahdi’s, Josiah’s Coffeehouse and Café or Caribou Coffee in Sioux Falls and you have an idea of what O’ccaffee is like.
Kurdish authorities believed ISIS set the remote controlled bomb. The Kurdish/Iraqi front with ISIS thugs only about 60 miles away to the west. That’s where ISIS was massacring Assyrian Christians.
A British friend of mine had just eaten lunch at O’ccaffee earlier that day.
He, a Swiss friend of mine and I used to comment that we were at ground zero eating at O’ccaffee because of its location next to the U.S. Consulate.
To make matters worse, the U.S.Consulate bombing site is only about a kilometer from where I lived in Erbil for 18 months.
When I lived in Erbil from January 2012 through June 2013, it was perfectly safe. There wasn’t any part of the city of over a million that I wouldn’t go to at any time of night or day. The Peshmerga and security forces were good at keeping the bad guys out.
Now, according to my British friend, when before there were all sorts of American, British, Germans, Austrians, Dutch, French, Turks and other expats there trying to drum up business and make deals, about the only foreigners there now are governmental officials and aid workers dealing with the Syrian refugees.
That’s a shame. Erbil was taking off as a major trade and business center as well as being a safe haven for all peoples of all religions from the chaos in Iraq and the Middle East.
And now this.
I enjoyed my time in Erbil. The Kurds are awarmpeopleandappreciate what we as Americans and our allies did to liberate them from Saddam Hussein’s brutal tyranny. And unlike most of their Arab brothers and sister in the region, the Kurds look to America and Europe for hope and inspiration, not to old grudges and radical Islam for solutions.
I hope this bombing is an isolated incident and not a further broadening of ISIS’ misguided caliphate war on civilization and civilized people in the region.