By Ismael Aziz:

A couple of years ago Kurdish politics in the south of Kurdistan was awash with nice predictions. However, since then, with an end to the terrorist attacks of ISIS, but also the referendum disaster, political shocks and economic crisis and uncertainty, Kurdish politics today is at its lowest ebb among the people since before 2009 when the Gorran movement was founded and spiced things up a bit by challenging the status quo. For decades Kurdish politics has been dominated by the two clans and two families, and in consequence we should have expected nothing but disaster after disaster. A year dominated by the aftermath of the referendum has ended with the Iraqi state now in effective control of Kirkuk and reducing the rest of south Kurdistan’s cities toward the level of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, with no progress or advance for the last six months. The aim of the Iraqi state was achieved and Kurdish hopes and aspirations for an independent state, people and nation have been punished by followers of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator. The negotiations between Baghdad and Erbil have been tortuous.

But one critical thing has not changed: Masud Barzani is still in charge, even though the KRG has lost 51% of its land as the result of the referendum fallout. Barzani is on record as telling the people, “I will be responsible for all the consequences”, but in reality he took zero responsibility. He and his party have been calamitous for this nation since 1975 but still they are at large and controlling most of the Kurdish finances and politics. The whole world came out against the referendum, including Israel. The Israel state pretended to support the referendum but its inaction was louder than its talk. The Barzani party and family are specialists in failure. They have failed to serve the interests of the people and instead plunged the population into political and social disaster. Masud Barzani gambled with the nation’s future and lost badly.