A reminder to the people of Kurdistan
I’d like to start by pointing out the fact that Mr. Nawshirwan Mustafa has put forward decent demands which are to fight corruption and decentralize the economy of Kurdistan; however Mr. Mustafa has also made the demand that the Kurdish parliament should dissolve which I believe is completely out of line, because the KRG elections had worldwide recognition as a fair elections without any significant fraud and so I don’t understand on what basis the Goran party can demand that the government to be dissolved; in this case Goran is the undemocratic party. The recent unrest in mostly in the Suleymanya province which again adds to the fact that the current government which enjoys overwhelming support in Duhok and Erbil has been voted in democratically and so I have to ask Goran, would it be democratic to ignore the will of the people of Erbil, Duhok and significant amount of Suleymanya?
I have some questions for the leadership of Goran and indeed their supporters; first off all I’d like to state that the majority of Goran members are ex-PUK members. Mr. Mustafa you were a senior member of the PUK until 2006, as I recall the PUK is the same party it was in 91 and if you complain about ‘corruption’ what took you so long to leave and demand ‘change’? You were a senior leader of the PUK throughout the dark days of civil war, why did you not demand change then? Kurdistan is much better off now than it was before you left the PUK and demanded change again what took you so long? To me it seems that you had no problems being a senior leader of the PUK when the PUK and KDP were bitter rivals however your issues began when the PUK and KDP achieved peace with each other and they achieved unity (This unity was indeed necessary for Kurds to have the power they did in Baghdad). To me it seems that Goran prefers division among Kurds unless of course they rule Kurdistan, this brings me to the conclusion that Goran is not at all concerned about the average person of Kurdistan but rather they are concerned with the lack of power that Goran has.
I’d like to discuss the pros and cons of the current Kurdish government and what they have achieved. People in Kurdistan constantly complain about the lack of electricity however Kurdistan has more electricity than the rest of Iraq, also people seem to forget that Kurdistan was a war zone a ‘no mans zone’ and so there was lack infrastructure in Kurdistan. From 1991-2003 Kurdistan was under international sanctions and Iraqi sanctions which mean that it was very difficult to improve the situation of Kurdistan. From 2003-present the KRG has successfully drastically improved the economy of Kurdistan in all sectors (Infrastructure, energy and tourism etc); although there still is a lack of electricity, the people of Kurdistan need to understand that something as expensive and time consuming as building up the electrical infrastructure of Kurdistan is not something that would happen overnight as (explained above) the KRG had to start from scratch. As the Energy sector of Kurdistan improves the Electricity of Kurdistan will improve and people need to have patience.
We all know that there are some very important issues that Kurds face; the case of the disputed area is not one that only affects the people of the Kurdistan region as the Kurds in the disputed areas are very eager to join Kurdistan and prosper like the provinces of Kurdistan. I believe it was very wrong and selfish of the opposition parties to run in separate lists in the disputed areas as we lost influence in Kirkuk (The total opposition votes would have gained Kurds more seats in Kirkuk), it’s not fair on the Kurdish population in the disputed areas, so again I ask what is the real intention of Goran? There is a saying ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ and this is the case everywhere in fact the Brits used the divide and conquer very successfully and built an empire based on this principle. Kurdish people had more seats in the central government in the previous government because they were united, however in the new government the Kurdish lists were divided and so we lost seats and the influence that we had. This is a very crucial time for the people of Kurdistan as now that a new Iraq is being created we must plant our roots deep to protect the freedom that we are enjoying, we must stay united to achieve this.
Throughout history Kurdish people have always fought each other and a quick look at the situation of Kurdish people today and indeed throughout our history will show that Kurdish people were the only ones losing out from the inter fighting. We must stay united and strong.
In conclusion while I agree that we need to tackle corruption in Kurdistan I must remind the Kurdish people that we are not an independent state and the more divided we are the weaker we are. There are certain groups (whether internal or external) that would like to see the destruction of Kurdistan and so this is not the time to destabilize Kurdistan, there is a time and place for everything and I don’t believe that this is the time for the current unrest in Kurdistan.
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