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14 OCTOBER 2006
While the presence of 800 international companies, including
some giant ones such as Chryslers, Ford and Exxon Mobil, in
the international Trade Show this week in Erbil, the capital
of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq
reflects growing confidence on the part of the international
business community in the Kurdish nationalist government,
increasingly broad section of the region’s population of 5.5
million are prepared to defy its authority.
Recent media reports from the region indicate a significant
increase of the anti-government protests. This is the result
of the persistence of so many problems such as lacking basic
services, rising inflation, corruption and the violation of
democratic rights. Because the two main Kurdish nationalist
parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), have failed to deliver
on their promise that a major increase in seats in the Iraqi
parliament would pave the way for the region’s independence
and bring prosperity to all, popular disaffection is
growing. In the past several months, at least 5 strikes, 7
demonstrations and one general strike had been reported.
The popular independent local newspaper Hawlati
recently reported a strike by school teachers in both towns
Kalar and Chamchamal as well as staff at the University of
Sulaimaniyah. The strikers demanded higher wages and
improved working conditions.
In late July, the British Guardian reported that 3
workers were killed and another 13 wounded when guards fired
on a strike by workers of the Tasloja cement factory.
According to other reports, at least 700 workers at the
factory, the biggest in the region, went on strike demanding
higher wages and reinstate 300 workers laid off by the new
management.
The shooting prompted widespread outrage that led the mayor
of Sulaimaniyah to hold a press conference announcing the
arrest of 40 guards at the factory. The factory had been
sold earlier in the year by the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) to an Egyptian company.
The biggest challenge to the KRG was when thousands of
people participated in week- old demonstrations from 5th
to 13th August in most towns and cities across
the region’s three provinces. Footage of these
demonstrations was shown on local TV stations and satellite
channels, and pictures were posted on Kurdish internet
sites. The demonstrations came amid the worst crisis to hit
the region and Iraq, while temperatures soared 45 degrees
Celsius.
FOXNEWS reported in August that the country was
facing fuel shortage and the prices of a gallon of gasoline
had reached $4.92, eight times higher than the official
price. The demonstrations erupted first in Kalar and
Derbandikhan, where people protested of the lack of basic
services such as electricity, water as well as soaring price
of fuel. Soon residents of other cities joined the protest
and demands were extended to include a curb on corruption
and expansion of democratic rights such as free speech and
the right to strike.
On August 8th, a committee was established to
organize these protests at the national level and a general
strike was called for the entire region. On August 13th,
despite the governments pledge threat to punish those
defying its warning not to strike, hundred of thousands of
people stayed home and shops and offices were closed.
Thousands demonstrated in the city center of Sulaimania, the
second biggest city in the region.
Although leaders from both the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), who have in
effect ruling the region since 1992, have conceded the right
of the people to demonstrate, security police (Asayesh),
together with a riot police unit, which was established this
spring due to increase anti-government protests, have used
excessive force to suppress these protests and have even
fired upon demonstrators in many towns.
According to a final estimate by Hawlati, in
Sulaimaniyah alone one person was killed and more than 280
arrested. .Among the detainees were many journalists
such as Doctor Hakim, sabir Aziz and Ali Hama-Salih, a
correspondent of Hawlati. The London based The
Kurdish Media had reported on August 15th,
that security forces were still doing house-to-house
searches for the leaders of these demonstrations.
Among those arrested was Baxtyar Hama-Saaed, a lawyer and a
member of the Sulaimaniyah strike committee. On August 20th,
about 110 lawyers went on strike and demanded his immediate
release. Hushyar Abdullah, vice-president of the
Sulaimaniyah Branch of the lawyer’s Association, told
Hawlati “we will continue this strike until our
colleague is unconditionally released”.
Fearing that the lawyer’s strike would further ignite the
anti-government sentiment already at levels unprecedented
for the past 15 years of the Kurdish nationalist regime, the
Asayesh released Baxtyar and all other detainees that
night. Asayesh later issued a public statement condemning
lawyer’s strike in the Kurdistani Nwe, the PUK‘s main
newspaper.
Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site about the
charges laid against him and about the arrests, Baxtyar said
he had been arrested in the late afternoon of August 13th
by Asayesh on charges of organizing the demonstration”. He
added that “along with other 65 demonstrators, later reduced
to 32, I was put in prison for about 7 days”.
When asked why the masses are protesting the Kurdish
government, he replied that “people in Kurdistan have
witnessed an incredible rift between poor and rich in the
past two years……and small numbers of the rich, who are
either members or affiliated with the two Kurdish
parties-PUK and PDK- with support from the US administration
in Iraq have gained substantial control over the wealth
generated in the region”. He added that “people have no
expectation anymore for improving their living condition and
have no choice but to demonstrate”.
Despite the recent discovery by a Norwegian company of oil
in the region and the increase of the regional government’s
share from the central government’s annual budget -from $1
billion a year before the invasion to $5.6 billion in 2006,
according to figures by the Iraqi Central Bank (ICB), along
with imposition of 15 percent tax on personal and company
incomes, the KRG has done nothing to improve basic services
and less social inequities.
Spero News reported in mid-July that “drivers have
to wait days to get their petrol shares”. As for electricity
supply, the newspaper reported that the “local authorities
announced that they would cut power from 16 to 9 hours per
day”.
Soran Mohammad, a 27 year-old from Chwarqurnna told the
newspaper “in the heat of summer they cut power, but they
[officials] have it for 24 hours”. In July, the United
Nation news agency reported a lack of power for schools and
hospitals in Erbil.
An article published in mid-September in the Peyamner
daily News, a news agency affiliated with the KDP, said
of the protests “[A]lthough the spark may have come from the
fuel crisis, in principle frustrations have been brewing
slowly in the region. House prices increased significantly
without a real increase in wages in key sectors and with
many accusing the government of corruption”.
In March a report from the World Bank estimated that a
total of $37.4 million is needed to ease the current power
supply deficit in the two main power stations of the region
–Dokan and Derbandikhan- which both have a total of 649 MW.
According to the KRG officials, the region needs 1000MW to
meet the local demands.
The PUK and KDP have been controlling the region since 1992
when the Iraqi government withdrew its forces so as to avoid
confrontation with the US and allied powers, which had
declared the region a no-fly zone. Yet the nationalist
parties have failed to allocate enough revenue to meet the
local demand for electricity.
Both parties were also responsible for the looting in 1991,
following the first Gulf War, of a $2 billion project of
Bexma dam project near the town of Rania, close to the
Iranian border. UN reports had estimated that the project
was in its final stage and would have been capable to
produce enough electricity for the entire region.
The frustration of the public from the lack of power is not
surprising, especially given the fact that Iraq in the early
1980s had enough electricity for all its regions and was
even able to export $20 million electricity annually to
neighbouring Turkey
During the recent protests, the masses demanded a quick
reaction from the government to fight rising inflation and
corruption .According to Iraqi Central Bank, inflation has
risen to 70 per cent in the end of July, compared to 52.5
per cent in June. This increase amounts to almost 125 per
cent relative to inflation rate in 2005, according to the
estimate of the World Bank. This significant increase
prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to declare,
in its latest report about the state of the Iraqi economy to
declare that “the overall economy is sinking in what is
called stagflation”.
The unprecedented increase in the cost of living and the
level of corruption in the region have even forced TV and
Radio programs to devote some attention to these issues in
the past two months. The popular comedy program “Barnamay
Barnama” (The Program) of the KURDSAT, the PUK’s TV
satellite channel ridiculed the KRG explanation of soaring
inflation and demanded the government to take full
responsibility.
Massoud Barzani, the president of the KRG, recently
acknowledged the pervasive corruption within his government,
but the KRG has refused to take responsibility for the
deteriorations of the basic services and growth in social
inequality. Barzani told the Kurdish radio of the Voice
of America in early August during the time of these
protests that “if the corruption persisted, I don’t want to
be the president of a corrupt government”.
Feeling the enormous pressure from the public, and having
failed to improve basic services even after two weeks of
protests, the KRG has tried to deflect public attention by
launching a political war with the federal government. On
September 1st, a decree had issued by the
president of the KRG that ordered all Iraqi flags to be
removed from government offices in the region, stating that
the flag represent the era of the Saddam Hussein regime,
under which the Kurds suffered much.
This “flag war” prompted a strong reaction from both Shiite
and Sunni politicians, who accused the KRG of seeking an
independent. The federal prime minister’s office issued a
statement rejecting the Kurd’s proposal and demanding that
“Iraqi flags should be the only flag raised over any square
inch of Iraq”.
In another development, Associate Press reported that
Saleh Mutlaq, a leading Sunni lawmaker, responded harshly to
the KRG position and warned the Kurds that “what will be
taken by force today, will be returned by force another
day”. Media reports, also, indicate an increasing call from
clerics during prayers in Baghdad and other cities to oppose
harshly to any move by the Kurds to separate. Hawlati
also reported in a recent edition that thousands of Kurds
who study in universities outside the region have been
seeking alternative universities after they received death
threats.
The KRG does not intend to separate. In a political campaign
to salvage the image of the KRG among Arab politicians ,
the leaders of PDK and PUK ,Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani , have repeatedly expressed surprise at the
campaign against them and reassured them that they are
strong defenders of federalism. The main aim of the KRG was
to use such an emotional topic such as an independent of
Kurdistan, sponsored by 95 per cent of Kurds according to a
2004 poll, in order to deflect public attention from the
current social and economic crisis.
The KRG has repeatedly blamed the central government for the
shortage of fuel and electricity supplies. Local media
reported the Kurdish officials complaining that current
crisis was due to Baghdad’s decision on June 25 to cut
supplies to the region by half.
Jamal Abdullah, deputy prime minister of the KRG, recently
told the Kurdistan TV, the PDK main TV channel, that
“95% of problems that led to public frustration are from
outside and we have no control on it”.
Abdulla’s solution to the lack of basic services was to
press for the full-scale privatization of the region’s
economy. He claimed that if privatization is expanded, the
1.1 million employees currently on government’s pay roll
will leave government posts and reduces the pressure on the
budget. This is in line with the policy of the Bush
administration, which had pushed relentlessly to impose its
profit-driven policies and destroy the public sector.
In the past three years, the KRG has been actively
privatizing much of what remains of public institutions such
as water, electricity and fuel distribution an agency. In
late July, the Kurdish parliament passed a law that allows
foreign investors to own 100 per cent of local companies
with a tax break for up to 10 years. It’s no small wonder
foreign companies were enthusiastic about participating in
this year’s Erbil trade show, especially with the news that
about 100 million barrel of reserve of oil has been
discovered in a town close to Turkish border.
While elites among Shiite politicians are pushing for
legislation from the Iraqi parliament to introduce a
regional government in the south of the country similar to
the one in the north, the experience of the last three years
has shown that such a regional government, even if survived
sectarian violence and insurgency, is bring nothing but
hardship for the overwhelming majority of the population.
But for the rich, such a regional authority would be “an
oasis of peace and prosperity” –the words used by the US
congressman Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota during his visit to
the Kurdish region last July.
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