Posts Tagged ‘ Barzani ’

The influx of refugees into Iraqi Kurdistan is not because they are afraid or to seek a better life. It is because they feel abandoned and insecure in their land. Their leaders are not with them, the international community does not want to know anything about them, Turkey is not helping and Kurdistan Region...
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Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani’s visit to Baghdad, shortly after the political saga over the two-year extension of his presidency, carries a different symbolism from the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Erbil. The message of Maliki’s visit was to show that Erbil matters to Baghdad. But the only message one can...
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The hysterical reaction against NRT television reminded me of the Muslim outrage to cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. For those who don’t know what happened: During a live call-in show on NRT, a caller tried to insult the late Mustafa Barzani, regarded by many Kurds as the father of the Kurdish nation in modern...
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For the younger generation of readers, whose history books may not have been very tempting, 67 years ago the first Kurdish republic was established in Mahabad in eastern Kurdistan under the leadership of Qazi Muhammad. On December 15th of the same year, Iranian forces entered Mahabad. They closed down the printing press, banned the...
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As a frontline reporter of the 2003 war in Iraq, as a reporting instructor in the years that followed, and as someone who lived in Baghdad during the insurgency and sectarian war I was disturbed by the way the Kurdistan Region reacted to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s dispatching of Dijla forces into the...
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Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s visit to Erbil and Kirkuk sent many messages to the Kurds and Baghdad; the main one being Turkey is an important, strong and stable player in the region. But the visit also sent messages home to Turkey. The headline of the daily Hurriyet on August 2 was: “Barzani vows...
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