About 50 miles separate this city, Erbil, from the modern and well-armed incarnation of fascism, the so-called Islamic State, which is battering Kobane into submission in Syria.
But the main peril at this moment for the Kurdistan region in Iraq, which the foreign secretary just visited, is that it is coping with the influx of well over a million refugees from Syria and internally displaced people from the south and the west of Iraq. And all this without Baghdad, the nominal capital of a nominal federation, lifting a finger to help and worse still denying them their budget for nearly a year.
Civil servants, and there are many in the currently state-dominated economy, have not been paid all year. They and the Kurdistan Region are surviving on loans from families and neighbours. The economy is being strangled by Baghdad, which wants to force the Kurds to comply. Yet the Kurds are generous and hospitable to these new guests, having been refugees or displaced many times themselves.
The scale of the humanitarian crisis remains unknown to many outsiders. But travel around here and you will see scrappy tents in makeshift camps almost everywhere. I visited one such camp for Christians who left everything behind in Mosul.
One 17-year-old told me, in impeccable English, that he was just two exams away from his degree but is doubtful he can ever return to finish it. He and others explained that their camp, in a public park in the Christian enclave of Ankawa, seemed fine now but would soon become unbearable when the cold winter arrives within a few weeks.
We then visited a nearby school, which has been given over to internally displaced people, as have 700 schools in the Duhok province, which is nearer both to Syria and Mosul and where refugees and the internally displaced outnumber Iraqi Kurds in many places.
Another camp, half an hour from Erbil, is now home to a variety of ethnic groups from Mosul, including some Palestinians who Saddam Hussain accepted in the 1980s. Some tents are inside a large storage facility for concrete. The impressively hard-headed manager outlined plans to encourage its residents to represent their different needs as elderly people, women and children.
The children seemed resilient and cheerful, demanding politely that they be photographed. For their sake, I hope that their return home will come sooner rather than later but that seems improbable.
Various minorities who fled will find it very difficult to return to live side-by-side with some Arab neighbours who ratted on them to the jihadists and looted their property once they had escaped.
The Kurdistan regional government and voluntary organisations of all types are gripped by the urgency of the crisis.
The Archbishop of Erbil explained in passionate but logistically coherent terms how three Christian churches had united to register people, who had often been forced to flee without any identification. They are mobilising assistance from as far afield as Detroit. One plan is to raise money for small caravans that could house a family of five at a cost of $4,000 and be fabricated locally.
The European Technology and Training Centre, which runs civic training and reintegration programmes and on whose board I sit, is doing what many institutions and companies are doing. The ETTC puts together food packages for people and we delivered some directly.
All such initiatives are vital but are dwarfed by the scale of the impending disaster once the cold curtain of winter suddenly descends. One experienced observer told me that it is probable that nearly 150,000 people will lack adequate shelter when winter comes. Stand by for news stories in December about old people dying of the cold or from winter related respiratory diseases.
Some 26 camps are needed but only three have so far been finished. The Kurdistan regional government will also seek to turn unfinished construction sites into temporary shelters.
I heard considerable criticism about the flat-footed, abominable and clunky contribution of various United Nations agencies and their well-paid officials, whose administration costs are seen as excessively large. I am told of meetings attended by up to 40 people all of whom need to have their say, however irrelevant they are, and insist on consensus, despite smaller meetings being able to make quick decisions and being more suitable to dealing with this crisis.
The Kurds believe they were treated badly by the UN in the 1990s and do not seem that impressed this time. A proper reckoning of the role of the UN must, however, take second place to averting disaster when winter falls. The humanitarian crisis should be a much bigger priority for urgent and practical action by the international community.
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Gary Kent is director of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq and writes in a personal capacity
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Photo: Gary Kent