ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani said in an Eid message on Wednesday that political parties should resolve the snarled issue of the presidency and urged young Kurds to stop migrating in large numbers.
"Many deep crises have faced Kurdistan, including the presidential question, economic problems, the decline in the price of oil, the flow of refugees which has strained our limited capabilities to host them and the Erbil-Baghdad problems,” Barzani said in a statement.
In a message for the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha on Thursday, he added that the crisis plaguing Kurdistan “above all” is the war with the Islamic State group (ISIS), or Daesh, which has continued since August last year.
“I hope this feast ends Daesh terrorists and leads refugees to return to their cities and homes,” said Barzani.
“I call on the political parties to decide on a mechanism to identify the election of the president within the context of the constitution,” Barzani said in his written message, adding that “I understand the supremacy of the law and I should respect it more than anybody else.”
The main political parties in Kurdistan have met several times over the past weeks but have failed to resolve an impasse over the presidency: Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has urged a second extension since 2013 to Barzani’s term, which ended last month.
He has been president since 2005 but his party and others who support that stance counsel that changing leadership in the midst of a war is unwise.
Barzani also praised the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, whose sacrifices include some 1,500 dead and 7,000 wounded in the war with the militants.
“The durability of the Peshmerga and our nation focused the world’s attention on us. On an international level the Peshmerga became the symbol of defense and ISIS became the symbol of tyranny and violence,” read the statement.
The war, and the economic and other strains associated with it, have hit hard at Iraq’s autonomous Kurds, who were planning their own independent nation before the start of the war.
Adding to the strains has been a disturbing trend of migration, with the Iraqi Federation of Refugees saying in July that some 300 Iraqi Kurds were leaving every day in search of better lives in the West.
“I understand the demands of the youth, Barzani said. “I call on the youth of the Kurdistan region to stay in their homeland. The crises are tough, but they can be resolved also,” he said.
“The elimination of Daesh and self-determination are my priorities for the people of Kurdistan,” Barzani said.
