I might have to eat my words some day, but . . .
This may be one of those very rare instances of where the Government of Bahrain and Gulf Air were able to get traffic rights and set up operations before the regional competition. The rebuilding of Iraq will be the next gold mine. Check out the fares on the Gulf Air website-- they are anything but a give-away.
The guinea pigs, Royal Jordanian and Turkish have already been doing Iraq operations for a while. I also remember with some misgivings the pictures of the DHL Airbus A300 with the wingtip blown off. However, this was over 4 years ago, and the situation has changed in Iraq over those years. For sure, I prefer Bangkok over Baghdad as my holiday destination, but there is demand for service. As for a war zone, I am increasingly starting to wonder about some of the "friendly" places we fly to, like Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad. I certainly don't want to go into town at any of these places either and the same would hold true for any of the new "exciting" destinations.
In any case, I suspect that within the year Bahrain Air, Emirates and possibly Qatar Airways and Etihad tails will also be present at the Baghdad International Airport and other airports in the country. On the upside of the equation, air transportation plays a positive roll in the development of a country. As commerce increases, Iraq will continue to stabilize. Hopefully Gulf Air will make some good revenue along the way.
The challenge at the moment, it would seem, is for Gulf Air to not ignore its crews which will operate into Iraq and to positively address their legitimate concerns.