Losing the high ground.

Publication: Kurdish Life

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Kurdish Library

"The Iraqi group that has benefited the most from the occupation is



the Kurdish tribal leadership. The Kurds received a great deal of funding for 12 years prior to the war, and US intelligence agencies utilized the region as a base to penetrate the rest of the country. The Kurds dominate the puppet army and police; they have determined the ultra-federal character of the constitution and make no secret of the fact that they favor an ethnic cleansing of Arabs and other non-Kurds in Kirkuk, including those born in the city. Oppressed minorities in one epoch can rapidly become oppressors in another as Israel continues to demonstrate to the world. The Kurdish leaders, with Kirkuk in their bag, are happy to become a western protectorate." Tariq Ali, God, Blood, Oil and Iraq, Counterpunch 1.17.06

Kurdish leaders may be happy, but what of the Kurds they rule? In an article for the January issue of TIME magazine, Andrew Lee Butters made these observations on the status quo in Iraqi Kurdistan: "Fueled by oil wealth from rich fields in the region, Kurdistan has all the appearance of a budding market economy, with many of the appurtenances of Western capitalism. But the safety and progress in northern Iraq has come at a cost--and the Kurdish government may be paying for it now ... The two parties monopolize power in their respective territories and their despotic tendencies threaten civil liberties and the fledgling democratic process, creating an environment that is rife with corruption and repression ...

"Kurdistan is a veritable police state, where the Asayesh--the military security--has a house in each neighbourhood of the major cities and where the Parastin 'secret police' monitors phone conversations and keeps tabs on who attends Friday prayers. While these security measures are an important part of why Kurdistan has largely kept jihadi and resistance cells from forming within its borders, security measures are often used by the ruling parties as an excuse to crack down on opponents and independent civil organizations ... 'Our members are regularly thrown in jail for seven or eight months at a time without cause,' said Hadi Ai, the Minister of Justice, the token KIU [Kurdistan Islamic Union] minister in the KDP-dominated Erbil administration. 'When they get out I tell them they are lucky to be alive and to keep quiet'....

"The secret police even have their own judges, he said. During each of Iraq's three elections in the past year, police officers openly campaigned for the ruling parties. Schools, hospitals and other government buildings carry portraits of the respective party leaders, and access to education, jobs and career advancement is often determined by party affiliation. Demonstrations are banned unless they are party-sponsored.

"'Kurdistan isn't a civil society, it's a partisan society,' says Rebwar Ali, head of the Kurdistan Student's Development Organization. "The presidents of the universities, the university council, the deans and heads of the departments should all be members of one of the main parties, KDP or PUK. Admissions aren't based on merit; they are based on membership in one of the two parties. Scholarships are only for party members.' But business contracts depend on connections and political affiliations as well, leading to a pandemic of corruption, according to Kurdish businessmen and anti-corruption groups.

"The KDP and PUK do include some smaller parties in their governing coalitions and on their electoral lists, especially those composed of ethnic and religious minorities, such as Assyrians Christians and Turkomen. But established opposition parties say that these small parties have either been bought off or wholly invented by the ruling parties, in order to give the appearance of diversity and broad support ...

"Sunni-dominated Kurdistan is a tolerant refuge for religious minorities, who are free to worship as they please, these groups say. But the ruling parties keep tight rein over the Muslim religious establishment through the Ministry of Awqaf, an institution that was created by Iraq's British overlords in the 1920s to control mosques, mullahs and what gets said in Friday sermons ... It was disbanded by the American-appointed Governing Council in 2003 and forbidden by Iraq's new constitution. Yet Ministries of Awqaf still exist in Kurdistan, and are still used to enforce political orthodoxy.

"'Instead of one big Saddam, we have a hundred small Saddams in Kurdistan,' says Mullah Ahmed Wahab, a member of the Iraqi parliament for the KIU and the head cleric of mosque in Erbil, until he was fired on the pretext that he held two jobs ... The media in Kurdistan is extremely partisan and prone to propaganda. There are no independent television stations in the region, and the future is grim for independent radio news, according to Kurda Jamal, head of US funded Radio Nawa."

Corruption, Nepotism--and More

On the first day of winter, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting covered the status quo in the region ruled by Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan: "Mayors were fired and administrators in water, electricity and fuel ministries were moved to other posts ahead of elections for parliament, after rising criticism from residents of the region dominated by the PUK." Local Kurds charged authorities with "abusing and monopolizing power" and engaging in "systemic corruption." Said musician Halmat Shareef, "Many people have become rich while thousands of families are suffering from lack of water, electricity and housing." Civil servant Shara Mustafa blamed the PUK's method of choosing local administrators. "Age, experience and skills are not criteria," he said. "If you have party and nepotism, you will get anything. Ten percent of the posts are given to qualified people. In this government, we find posts for people, instead of finding people to fill posts."

Indeed the December 15th elections were a wake-up call of sorts for the ruling Kurdish parties. Few students even voted. Qadir Hamajan, the head of the Suleimaniyah municipality, insisted that local problems were receiving greater attention. As proof positive, he added, "Even Iraqi president Mam Jalal talks about them."

Nergiz Duhoki placed blame squarely on the ruling parties. "The disunity among the Kurds in southern Kurdistan and the advancement of the Islamic ideology is an indication of the political bankruptcy of the two dominant political parties, the KDP and PUK, in southern Kurdistan," he charged. "The two administrations are as disparate as they can be. While most of the Kurdistanis across the board are repeatedly asking the same question, the two are 'fooling' us by saying that the two administrations will be reconciled 'soon' ...

"The idea that the Kurdish rule can be a model for the rest of Iraq is grotesque, and one can note the recent attacks on the Islamic headquarters ... That the senior officials of the two administrations, including the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, are democratically elected as a result of the direct vote from the masses is just false. That both of the administrations conduct themselves in a democratic manner is again false ... That Kurdistanis are satisfied with the two parties' dominant rule is also wrong ... Let me conclude by saying that the current Kurdish rule is ultimately the result of the uprising initiated by the people of Kurdistan in 1991, but currently the Kurdish people are the victims of a corrupt rule, based on tribalism and nepotism." (KM 12.22.05)

In the Sinjar mountains Yezidi Kurds voiced their disenchantment to American military officials. "We believed that Jesus Christ was coming with a force from overseas to save us," said village leader Khalil Sadoon Jahi Jundu. "We do have freedom, but the...

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