Iraq and Colombia

Available for over a year

Pascale Harter introduces personal accounts from journalists, writers and reporters around the world. In this edition, two dispatches from once-notorious areas, which find them on the mend and trying to attract tourism. Theopi Skarlatos is in Iraqi Kurdistan, a land once targeted by Saddam Hussein's regime, then battered by the US-led invasion 10 years ago and still wracked by disputes over oil, frontiers and religion. Yet it's also a booming area full of new ski resorts and condominiums - and hoping for ever-greater numbers of foreign visitors. Charlotte Pritchard is in La Guajira, the desert covering some of the frontier between Colombia and Venezuela, and meets one smuggler-turned-tourist guide with an impressive family record.