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Long the example of how
a prosperous Iraq might look, the northern region's
ugly side comes to the fore in a series of violent
outbursts
Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region
of Kurdistan (northern Iraq), is less than an hour’s
flight from Baghdad but almost a world away. While
the insurgent-plagued airport road in Baghdad is
known as the “Highway of Death,” the road from the
newly opened Erbil International Airport, plagued by
nothing more dangerous than cyclists in spandex,
wends through construction for a real estate
development called “Dream City,” a planned community
of several hundred California-style detached
single-family homes, a supermarket and an American
school. 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. While the Kurdistan Regional
Government has a parliament and a president, the
administration of Kurdistan is carved up between two
rival political parties the Kurdish Democratic Party
(KDP) in Erbil and the adjoining Dohuk governorates,
and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in
Sulaimaniyah Governorate. 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. Frustration at this dual monopoly appear
to have been behind a violent outburst yesterday at
Halabja, the town on which Saddam Hussein inflicted
a barbaric chemical attack in 1988, killing 5,000.
It was the anniversary of the atrocity, and the mob
destroyed the government-sanctioned shrine to the
victims of the attack. While the KIU played a role
in inflaming political debate ahead of the election
by accusing their rivals of being American and
Israeli stooges, the incident reflected the fact
that the KDP and PUK rule Kurdistan in part by force
and fear.
Police State
Kurdistan is a veritable police state, where the
Asayeesh — the military security — has a house in
each neighborhood 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,
according to these groups. “Our members are
regularly thrown in jail for seven or eight months
at a time without cause,” said Hadi Ali, the
Minister of Justice, the token KIU minister in the
KDP-dominated Erbil administration. “When they get
out I tell them that they are lucky to be alive and
to keep quiet.”
The KDP and PUK each have their own militias, which
are essentially the armies of the local governments.
According to the Minister of Justice, the courts in
the region are almost completely politicized, with
judges often rubber-stamping party decisions. 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 building 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 the 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 of membership in one of the two parties.
Scholarships are only for party members.” Big
business contracts depend on connections and
political affiliations as well, leading to a
pandemic of corruption, according to Kurdish
businessmen and anti-corruption groups.
A Hundred Small Saddams
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.
The Baathists maintained the Awqaf as a useful tool
of coercion, but 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 by the Erbil
Awqaf 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. “Kurdistan
isn’t suitable ground for a free media,” he said.
“If America wasn’t here and if America wasn’t
funding us, the parties would move to shut us down.”
The lack of protection for free speech and the
politicization of the security services and
judiciary in Kurdistan were made apparent by the
case of Dr. Kamal Said Qadir, a jailed law professor
and journalist. Dr. Kamal, who is also an Austrian
citizen, criticized Masoud Barzani, who is both the
President of Iraqi Kurdistan and the head of the KDP,
and other members of the Barzani family, calling
them “traitors to the Kurdish issue” in articles
published on an opposition website run by Kurdish
expatriates. When Dr. Kamal returned to Erbil last
October, he was arrested and tried in secret. He was
sentenced to 30 years in prison for threatening the
security of Kurdistan.
Dr. Kamal’s sentence is likely to be drastically
reduced after appeal. In an interview, Barzani to
TIME that the laws under which he was charged need
to be changed. Says Barzani: “Although he has been
very aggressive and libelous against me personally I
have forgiven him personally for what he has written
about me and ask other people whom he has been
writing against to forgive him as well.” Still, the
treatment given to Dr. Kamal sent a clear signal to
journalists and government critics. “There are red
lines that you cannot cross,” said Saman Fawzi Omer,
a professor of law at Sulaimaniyah University. “You
cannot criticize the leading members of the PUK and
KDP or this is what happens to you.”
www.time.com
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