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| Iraq | |
| Kurds keep the faith despite problems | |
| 2006-10-29 | |
| In Chamchamal, a dilapidated Kurdish town in northern Iraq, a group of men chat away the hours until the breaking of the Ramadan fast at sundown and recount the many reasons why they have lost faith in their government. The Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the two guerrilla movements who fought for 40 years against Baghdad, have proved less inspiring in peacetime. “They were towers of strength . . . but now they are failures,” laments one. They complain, like others across the KurdsÂ’ autonomous northern zone of Iraq, of shortages of fuel, poor drinking water and other symptoms of the corruption and administrative lethargy they claim characterise the new administration. In August, they took to the streets to demand changes, one of many protests to have Âbroken out across the Kurdistan self-rule area in the past month. Yet this gathering in Chamchamal dismisses a suggestion that they may ever support an alternative to their current leadership. As bad as the present might be, they also recall a day 18 years ago when the Iraqi army rolled into town as part of its Anfal campaign, an attempt to isolate Kurdish guerrillas by depopulating the regions from which they drew their support. The Kurds estimate 180,000 people lost their lives. One policeman recalls how men, women and children were loaded into trucks and driven away, never to be seen again. “The [problems] today are all paradise compared to how it was then,” he says.
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| Posted by:Steve White |