التحليل الجغرافي السياسي للسياحة في العراق وأثرها في قوة الدولة

Rp-Geographical analysis of tourism in Iraq and its impact on the power of the state.pdf

Abstract
Political Geography is one of the Human Geography branches, and its study field is the state (Political Province). Political Geography is related to Tourism Geography in terms of the distribution of geographical phenomena, their variation, their Geopolitics evaluation and their political frameworks, and the role of the state in defining these frameworks through the strategies that classify them to promote tourism, its development and grow, and the role of both Domestic Tourism and International Tourism in the required Geopolitics impact.
Tourism in the world is affected by a range of risks identified by the World Economic Forum through the Global Risks Report 2019. This report contains five main risks, the first risk in the report was the economic risk due to its important role in which the growth of countries depends primarily on the economy. Then geopolitical risks came in second place, which is due to the behaviour of political countries with influence and hegemony in influencing the course of the international arena, and the situation includes non-governmental actors that have contributed to influencing tourism, also include non-governmental actors that have contributed to influencing tourism. Then the other risks came like the social risks, environmental risks and technological risks. This is considered evidence of the role of both soft powers and globalization in facilitating the process of communication and travel, which leads to an increase in global demand for tourism.

Iraq possesses great geographical and tourist elements, whether they are natural or human elements, which if were invested properly and provided for their developmental elements, they would have played a major role in supporting the Iraqi economy. However, it is still below the required level at the level of environmental tourism, cultural tourism, archaeological tourism, sports tourism, desert tourism, even religious tourism and other types of tourism spread throughout Iraq, which qualifies Iraq in the future to become a tourist country par excellence only if it has a good and correct environment for development, investment and tourism services such as infrastructure And superstructures and other requirements, especially since the tourism reality is weak compared to Iraq’s tourism capacity in terms of owning multiple and diverse tourist facilities and sites.
In Iraq, religious tourism is considered the total movement of the tourism sector, and it has a geopolitical weight in terms of the increasing millions demand every year for it. This is due to the location of the Holy Shrines of Imams in it. Still, it lacks the presence of an independent sector in tourism, as well as the absence of a particular religious tourism authority to regulate revenues and costs and the nature of economic activities included in the tourism classification. However, the structure of the Iraqi economy included tourism through the amount of demand for hotels and restaurants and classified it among the wholesale and retail traders, thus it counted only two activities and neglected the rest of the activities that make up the tourism sector. This does not give the true value of tourism in general and religious tourism in particular, especially since tourism demand increases annually until it reached nearly 21 million tourists in the year 2023 AD. This increasing demand requires advanced tourism services that accommodate the increasing numbers and meet their desires.
Religious tourism has geopolitical dimensions and effects represented by the political dimension and the economic dimension as well as geostrategic, environmental and health dimensions. Each of these dimensions has positive and negative effects on community peace and international relations, and the possibility of using them as a soft power in the development of international relations in various directions.
Religious tourism is developed by preparing studies of the necessary strategies by the state and working to develop tourism facilities in order to be able to accommodate the increasing numbers of tourists annually from various countries of the Islamic world, who are not prevented by weather, economic conditions, time, and others from travelling. Because these tourists consider traveling to the Holy Shrines as a religious, spiritual and ideological duty, especially during the peak period, which is Ziyarat Arba’een of Imam Hussein (a.s).
The results of the study were conducted on those seeking domestic tourism demand in order to supplement the demand according to their own tourism indicators according to a questionnaire form in the normal period with (300) forms and in the peak period with (400) forms, the results were different. The results of these questionnaires were as follows: The factors of tourist attractions, the educational attainment of tourists, the weather condition, and the leisure time of tourists do not affect them or hinder them from travelling to Holy Shrines. While studies and researches confirm that there are specific factors that determine and restrict the local tourist from travelling to perform the religious Ziyarat.