Kurdistan – in a circle of crisis

By Newshirwan Mustafa:

Yes, Kurdistan is in a crisis. This crisis is not a product of today’s events. It is not the echo of what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. It is not the product of the recent demonstrations. It is not the creation of the opposition.

The crisis  in Kurdistan is not the product of any of what I mention above.  The reason behind this crisis is much older than any of these issues, this crisis has many political, economic, social and cultural dimensions.

The crisis in Kurdistan is the product of the governing system in the region of Kurdistan, it is the product of the two governing parties economic, cultural and social policies. Up until the recent weeks, nobody from the leadership of the two parties and nobody from the government were ready to admit the existence of any crisis, but they were getting angry about the mention of a crisis. It was not until the situation exploded and it was on the verge of overthrowing the authorities, then they admitted, yes, there is a crisis.  Yes, Kurdistan needs reform.

Yet despite their admission, they have not yet approached the issue in a way to identify the reasons behind the crisis and put a framework and mechanisms to address it.

The crisis in Kurdistan has four dimensions.

The first dimension is the evaporation of the people’s trust in the two parties; they do not trust their promises, they do not trust the credibility of the parties leaders.

The second dimension is the evaporation of the parties grass root members’ trust in their leadership, especially after a long and fruitless wait for their parties conferences to be held.

The third dimension is the disappearance of the trust in each other among members of the leadership committees of the parties, which is reflected in the hidden and visible power struggle between their respective factions.

The fourth dimension is the disappearance of trust between the two partner parties.  Neither of them trusts the other with power or sensitive posts.

This four-dimensional crisis has thrown Kurdistan into a deeper and  bigger crisis, which could be called  a crisis of lost trust.

The consequence of this crisis has had a direct impact on weakening the region’s formal institutions, which were supposed to be the places where crises are resolved.  The Legislator, Executive and Judicial authorities, which were supposed to be the unifying institutions for all , came under the direct impact of this crisis of trust and the challenges created by the two parties.  As a result the crisis of trust in the parties and their policies culminated into people losing trust in the region’s institutions including the Legislator, Executive and Judicial authorities.

Social peace

Social peace is a pillar of national security, it is a kind of peace between different ethnicities, religions, social classes and different political beliefs, which is fundamental for the existence of national security.  The first requirement of such peace is to acknowledge the existence of such difference and accept each other despite the differences.  The second requirement is to guarantee equality in citizenship rights, by including it in the written laws and constitutions and implementing it in practice.

The third condition is to give citizens  a feeling  that – regardless  of  their racial, regional, tribal, religious and above all political background – they are benefiting from the national wealth and  participating in the decision-making process.

The social peace in Kurdistan currently is under a real threat.  What is threatening this social peace is the policy of the government, because they dividing the region into two zones of party government. In each region,  people are divided into first class and second class citizens.  The governing parties have used people’s political affiliation as the only criteria to divide them into different classes.

The first class citizens are the members and supporters of the governing parties who are privileged and benefiting socially, economically and politically from the authority.

Second class citizens are the ones who are not part of the governing parties and they are put under immense pressure constantly to conform by depriving them of their rights and entitlements.

Since the uprising in 1991, the social peace has never been in such danger as it is now.  The social, political, cultural and economical divisions are getting deeper and deeper.

On one side, the gap between a rich minority and a poor majority is widening as a result of the political elite joining force with the market.  On the other side, the conflict between the supporters of enhancing public liberties and its enemies is intensifying.  The authorities are trying to legalize a totalitarian one-party-based system, which is opposed by progressives who want to build a national state based on law. This affair has become a real threat to social peace, which is the main pillar of national security.

The events after 17 February 2011 have proved some facts.

1. The governing system has broken up the social cohesion, the society is divided into the persecuted and persecutors and the persecuted have risen to demand their rights despite their different ideological, social and educational backgrounds.
2. The governing parties would use everything at their disposal to stay in  power and wouldn’t refrain from using all kinds of violence to achieve that. It has been  shown that they are not concerned about preserving social peace as much as they are concerned about preserving their power.

The authorities’ disregard for public opinion

In July 2009, the third election of the Kurdistan parliament took place, and people participated in the process with great enthusiasm.  The parties in power, nominally KPD and PUK followed every path to conclude the process in their favor. They involved the security forces, police, peshmerga and armed forces to win the majority.  They used ministries, general directories, the heads of the administrative units and school’s head masters for the same reason. They took vast amounts of money from the public purse, utilized their mass media capability and mobilized the KRG and their parties foreign relationship networks.  They illegally distributed thousands of pieces of land, pistols, computers and cars to their supporters.

Above all, they started threatening the supporters of the other parties, firing bullets at the homes of the activists of Goran (Change Movement) and the movement’s headquarters.  They began a political punishment, which included sacking activists and supporters of the other parties, cutting their wages, removing them from their posts, daily use of degrading treatment, arresting, detaining and terrorizing them.  However, the ugliest of all was a systematic defrauding and falsification of the election process and its outcomes.

Despite all of those irregularities in the election process, the supporters of the opposition parties accepted the outcome, hoping:

1. to move peoples protest from the streets to the parliament
2. for the governing parties to review their actions and to draw lessons from seeing their public support shrinking

However,  it soon became clear that they not learn from the past and they were not ready to allow the opposition – which became the voice of the street – to have any role in drafting the laws related to the political system.  By preventing any attempt to change the laws they acted against pluralism and  the basis of  human rights, and they blocked any legislation in favour of enhancing democracy and transparency. In addition to that, they denied the parliament its right to be a credible observer on the performance of the government. They continued worse than ever by:

1. attempting to expand their party’s hegemony over the society
2. intensifying the pressure on the opposition in the parliament and suppressing protests outside the parliament
3. defrauding the public finances to strengthen their parties.

The irresponsible behavior of the governing parties reached its peak during the general election for the Iraqi parliament.

The hopes of the public in the ability of the opposition group to achieve social justice, improve public services, eradicate corruption and reform the political system through parliament gradually disappeared – and that is why public protests started again.

The first movement on the streets came as a reaction to the assassination of the journalist Sardasht Osman.

The second movement came about in the aftermath of approval of the demonstration law.

However, the authorities not only ignored the voice of the street, but they also tried to pass some undemocratic legislations to consolidate the one-party system and perpetuate their control over the parliament for ever.

When the public became disillusioned about the government and the parliament, they began their third movement.

The third movement started on 17 February 2011 from the Bar Draki Sara square in Sulaimanyha and resulted in the killing of a young demonstrator and the wounding of 55 others at Salim main Road, concurrently with the victory of the people of Tunisia and Egypt.

Instead of drawing lessons from the overthrowing of Bin Ali and Mubarak and their respective regimes  and relenting to the demands of the public which had been raised by the protestors, independent media and recently by the  opposition parties – and have been recently formulated by  Goran(Change movement) in its 7 point project – the authorities opted for  suppression, intimidation, confrontation, assassination and arrests.

Suppression was not enough to stop the events. Gatherings and demonstrations continued, the authorities feared that the protests would become nationwide and expand to Erbil, the capital city of the region of Kurdistan, and  intensify the pressure on them.  To contain the street protests, the opposition and the protest of the Kurds living abroad, the governing parties launched a multi-dimensional campaign, which included:

1. quelling public protest by using state terror, or trying to dissuade them with empty promises
2. launching a war against the opposition parties, including media attacks, economic and livelihood war, psychological war, political war and armed invasion to the cities by units wearing civilian clothes.  They intensified the pressure on the opposition to draw them into a prolonged and futile negotiation process and force them to accept the authority’s conditions.

Demonstrations and civil war

Currently in Kurdistan, whenever the topic of demonstrations is mentioned, the governing parties, their media apparatus, even some people with good intentions warn the demonstrators about the possibility of civil war.  Of course, people are not wrong to be afraid of civil war, because the internal war in Kurdistan was a national catastrophe.   It caused considerable political damage to the Kurdish national cause, in addition to the human and economic damage.  That is why it is necessary to look at the link between demonstrations and civil war.

Scaring people by the possibility of a civil war in the event of public demonstrations is an indication of how reactionary is the Kurdish leadership’s political mind.  Because the governing parties are thinking of prolonging their authority forever, they see every protest from any sector of the society, no matter how peaceful and civilized, as an act of animosity – and the internal enemies, who are the weakest of enemies, have to be dealt with by weapons.

At the time of the struggle the traditional Kurdish parties did not have the opportunity to practice parliamentary, civil and legal activities.  They are the product of the secret armed struggle and their political structures are built based on those principles. They still believe in the methods of that epic period,  including:

1. they find weapons necessary to defend themselves and preserve their power
2. they measure the balance of power between themselves and others by the number of weapons and the number of armed personnel they possess
3. in contrast with armed political struggle, they consider civil political actions to be abnormal, in the hands of external enemies, a coup, trouble-making and vandalism
4. whenever any disagreements reach a dead-end road with others, they resort to solving it by force because they don’t believe in civil methods such as protest, demonstrations, petitions and strikes.

Demonstrations, petitions, strike and protests are the means of putting a public message across or expressing anger about any economic, political, social, cultural and even  environmental issues in democratic countries which have gone beyond the time of armed struggle.  Here these civil methods are still considered acts of animosity, vandalism and trouble making.  If they want to leave the mentality of the secret armed guerrilla struggle behind, they need to get used to the modern civil way of life.

So where is the threat of civil war  coming from?

A civil political organization without an armed wing is not going to wage a civil war even if they were mistreated and lost the election by fraud, the election outcome is going to be forced upon them.

In contrast, a political organisation with armed forces or competing political organizations for power possessing weapons, when they  can not secure their desired outcome from the election through legal and illegal means, then they won’t accept the results and resort to the use of force and wage civil war.

Whatever are the secret goals of the strategic agreement between the PUK and KPD, the main pretext for the ratifying of that agreement was to prevent civil war waged again between the two parties, because they both possess armed forces and neither of them accept defeat in any election.

The threat of civil war comes from such political organizations who do not accept civil political struggle and peaceful exchange of power. They have armed forces and they use them to preserve their power, to intimidate people and win elections.

The threat of civil war comes from the parties with armed forces not the ones without.  Therefore, to eradicate the roots of civil war, those parties need to be disarmed and their armies transformed into ceremonial forces that are not involved in internal political conflicts and elections.

We know what we want

It doesn’t affect the extent and seriousness of the political crisis in the region of Kurdistan whether its existence is denied or accepted by the authorities or anybody else.  The leadership of the two governing parties (or, as they always call, it the ‘Political leadership’), which is unaccountable to the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, can approach the current crisis in either of two ways.

1. treating the demonstrations and the protests as dangerous to  the security of the region ( security solution)
2. treating it as people’s protest against an incompetent and corrupt system which can not meet the minimum of the public’s expectations, and try to find a multi dimensional solution.

If they choose the first option, as they have done recently, then they will continue mobilizing Peshmerga, security forces, police and their party’s intelligence agencies to suppress the public through more violence and killing.   However, in the current political environment in Kurdistan, Iraq and the middle east, this option might only calm the situation down temporarily, but in the end it is going to result in the complete overthrow of this system.

If they opt for the second approach, then to prove their good intentions and seriousness about solving the situation, they must:

1. normalize the tense situation in Kurdistan, remove all signs of pressure on the opposition parties and their supporters and remove all signs of suppression from the street
2. start a serious discourse to agree on the kind of reform needed by the governing system in the region of Kurdistan, the mechanism to achieve it and a time scale for the process

Often some journalists, university lecturers and political experts belonging to the authorities accuse us  of not knowing what we want.

No Gentlemen, we do know what we want, you know what we want and we also know what you want.  To put an end to all this, we are going to tell you, we want radical reform.

Radical reform means replacing the one-party government of the PUK in Sulaimanyha and one-party government of the  KPD in Duhok and Erbil with a Kurdistan National Government.

This is the illness and this is the treatment.

Newshirwan Mustafa is Chairman of Gorran.