Faith is the inspiration for most tourists to Iraq

By Lin Noueihed

DUBAI (Reuters) - Its ancient sites may have been damaged and looted, its hotels bombed and its people attacked or forced to flee, but Iraq is still worth a visit, the head of its Tourism Commission says.

Violence in much of the country has frightened off visitors, but tourism chief Mahmoud al-Yakouki said more than 570,000 people visited Shi'ite Muslim shrines in relatively stable southern Iraq last year, a number he hoped would grow.

"Our most important work at the moment is religious tourism, especially to Kerbala and Najaf where the holy shrines are, as these areas are safe," he told Reuters.

"Every day 1,500 pilgrims visit these sites, mostly Iranians but also Muslims from Bahrain and other countries ... We are going to increase this to 2,500 a day, hopefully, after Ramadan. Before the war, Iraq received 8,000 pilgrims a day."

The state body established in 1956 meets the tour groups at the border and takes them to their hotels, offering catered week-long breaks near the holy shrines. Individuals also organise private visits to the shrines.

Shi'ite religious festivals in Iraq have repeatedly come under attack since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Authorities had to evacuate pilgrims from Kerbala on Tuesday after 52 people were killed in clashes.

The Commission is still hoping to attract investors at an Iraqi business conference in Dubai, to help it build or restore hotels in the southern cities of Najaf and Basra and on the Shatt al-Arab waterway that forms a border with neighbouring Iran, a Shi'ite country and a source of pilgrims.

Yakouki's remit covers largely Sunni Muslim central Iraq, which has been torn apart by violence since the invasion, as well as the largely Shi'ite Muslim south, but not the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north.