“I am worried about the unrest,” the friend who picks me up from the airport after a trip abroad confides in me. “These protests, will they get us into another civil war?”
Welcome back to Kurdistan where the war against the Islamic terror group ISIS has changed the scene completely in a year, with an economic growth of 10 percent plunging into negatives. Where over 1,300 Kurdish Peshmerga have died fighting ISIS, and over 6,000 wounded. Brave Peshmerga who are honoured by all Kurds and who like most civil servants in the Kurdistan Region have not been paid for months.
As over 75 percent of all jobs are offered by the government, the result is disastrous for most, especially for those who do not have any income other than from driving a taxi or running a business. So it is a miracle really that protests did not start in earnest before, apart from minor ones in the second Kurdish city of Sulaimani.
The reason why civilians lost their patience is the same one that causes my friend to worry. It is the political strife, that has been coming and going for decades. It has peaked yet again with the crisis over the presidency and the opposition’s demand to change the system in Kurdistan to a parliamentary one.
Although the protests could be considered as a sign of a democracy functioning, in reality they show the failure of Kurdish parties to make the democracy really work.
Kurdistan’s parliament hardly has any power, with party leaders making decisions instead, and ministers who refuse to come to parliament to answer for budgets and financial situation. Parties remain an active part of the local economy and trade earnings.
After a year of getting their salaries too late, if at all, many Kurds are not only fed up, but out of savings and family to borrow money from. Since Baghdad has also withheld the salaries of Arab civil servants who fled from Mosul and Nineveh to the Kurdish region, the economy has stagnated.
But it is the political crisis of the past weeks where political parties meet and talk without reaching a consensus that has people frustrated. People go to the streets to show their disgust at the situation. Some on the instigation of their party, others on their own initiative, and some just to vandalize and fight the police.
At the same time it is the violence, and the burning of party offices and gunshots that is making most onlookers fearful. And when media outlets – seen as the politicians’ voice – are attacked and closed, it only adds to the feeling of something really terrible happening.
The civil war of the 90s is never far from the memory of the Kurds, when after reaching some autonomy from Saddam’s rule the different parties in Iraqi Kurdistan fought each other. Although the scars have healed, they still hurt.
Only a year ago, many Kurds thought independence was around the corner. But thanks to poor governance and the absence of consolidation of democracy, now the survival of their region may be at stake.
If politicians do not reach some agreement on major issues soon, the unrest could well spread. And the threat some parties uttered in the past months to split up the Kurdistan Region – making the Sulaimani province a separate unity - might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s the wrong time. With ISIS at the gates and Baghdad not on good terms, Kurdistan should be strong and united. Politicians have to make amends, and soon, to save not only the region, but also the status of the Kurds in the world. Now it’s finally back on the world map, they should make sure it stays there.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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