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End the Thuggery in Iraqi Kurdistan
18.4.2011
By Michael Rubin
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April
18, 2011
Today was Day 60 of protests in Iraqi Kurdistan. The
protests erupted after Massoud Barzani’s forces
fired into a crowd after Kurds holding a
demonstration of solidarity with the people of
Tunisia and Egypt. The Iraqi Kurdistan president
apparently believes that, with international
attention focused on Libya and Syria, he has free
reign to crack the heads of anyone who dares to
question his family’s rule and its embezzlement of
Kurdish assets.
Today, his militia sought to disperse the protestors
by force. Meanwhile, Facebook reports suggest that
Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP militias have
attacked protestors in the Kurdish capital of Erbil
with knives and clubs, and that opposition
parliamentarian Muhammad Kiyani has been seriously
injured.
There’s a noxious mix in Iraqi Kurdistan of
America’s own making. On one hand, the White House
remains largely silent about Kurdish human rights
and their struggle for freedom and democracy. On the
other, former U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and
former Coalition Provisional Authority official Dick
Naab now do high-profile business with Barzani,
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Michael Rubin |
and CPA-era Colonel Harry Schute
now advises the security forces engaged in the
bloody crackdown.
Given the behavior of Khalilzad, Naab, and Schute
(and Peter Galbraith before them), Kurds would be
right to be paranoid that American officials will
turn a blind eye toward their oppression in the hope
of keeping their own golden parachutes open. So long
as the White House remains silent on Barzani’s
assaults on journalists and the murders of students,www.ekurd.netthe
Kurds will assume that Obama’s commitment to human
rights is cynical, and that senior National Security
Council officials—and perhaps Vice President Biden
himself—ingratiate themselves to Barzani only so
that they might finance their retirement with
Kurdish oil.
That’s not good for America’s image, but there is an
easy remedy: It’s time for the Obama administration
and Congress to demand an end to
government-sponsored thuggery in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Michael Rubin
is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. His major research area is the Middle
East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and
Kurdish society. He also writes frequently on
transformative diplomacy and governance issues. At
AEI, Mr. Rubin chaired the "Dissent and Reform in
the Arab World" conference series. He was the lead
drafter of the Bipartisan Policy Center's 2008
report on Iran. In addition to his work at AEI,
several times each month, Mr. Rubin travels to
military bases across the United States and Europe
to instruct senior U.S. Army and Marine officers
deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan on issues relating
to regional state history and politics, Shiism, the
theological basis of extremism, and strategy.
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