Kurdistan Elections fateful for Iraq
Aljazeera English reports on the Kurdistan elections:
For the first time in recent memory, the two major Kurdish parties (which are in a sense clans and clan allies) are facing significant opposition, as from the Goran or Change Party.
Critics of the joint government of Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and (Iraqi President) Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which are in coalition with one another as the Kurdistan Alliance, charge that the Alliance is corrupt, authoritarian and inefficient. They say that Barzani has jailed journalists for 'libel' and encourages a cult of personality (his picture is everywhere). Those who are on the outside of the ruling clans are often disadvantaged and sometimes they have rioted, as even at Halabja, a shrine to the genocide against the Kurds launched by Saddam Hussein in 1988.
The likely winner, incumbent Massoud Barzani, seems on a collision course with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki over Barzani's determination to incorporate into the Kurdistan confederacy the disputed oil province of Kirkuk, a plan to which Arabs and Turkmen, as well as Iraqi nationalists, object.
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2 Comments:
Mas'od Barzani is infinitely less intelligent than Talabani, and far more dependent on US patronage. He, like all autocrats, obviously thinks that he is a God's send who is loved by his people, except a handful of traitors maybe, who are the source of his power.
So his biggest problem is not Maliki, but being ditched by Americans. His latest attempt at doning a Zalmay (dumping a "Constitution" for voting without giving the people a chance to absorb it) were thwarted by the US who have now switched to straight talking to get some sense in his tiny mind.
It has to be remembered that the constitution really does allow a referendum that everyone at the time knew the Kurds would win to give Kirkurk to Kurdistan, and this constitution was written under very heavy leverage from the US.
At one point the Bush administration was very sympathetic to dividing the country of Iraq - which would have left Kurdistan surrounded by fairly hostile countries, dependent on the US and disposed to allow a permanent military base on their territory.
Because of furious Turkish objections, as well as objections from the Saudis and after US talks with Iran on Iraqi security began, the US reversed course on dividing Iraq - but this was after the constitution had already been approved.
The US is now pressuring the Kurds, with good reason now, to abandon elements of the constitution that were written in the US embassy. The Kurds justifiably feel betrayed and defiant over this issue.
The referendum issue is a remnant of the worst days of US-Iraq policy. It is difficult to imagine how any occupation policy could be worse in any way than the early US occupation policy over Iraq.
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