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By Safa Fadhil (Awat): Taxation and tax rate issues do not hit the headlines of the Iraqi news channels and newspapers even though they are perceptible in all world’s major media channels and business magazines. In its place corruption is under the spotlight in this part of the world. Oddly, both taxes and corruption are…
An Interview with Dr Wayne Lavender by Aras Ahmed Mhamad: Dr Wayne Lavender is a university professor who taught for 18 months in Slemani. AA: Through history people have become victims of war, corruption and violence. What do you think is the source of war? WL: I think there are multiple causes/sources for war. The…
Translation by Freeyad Ibrahim: Dedicated to the soul of the acclaimed Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas who died this week. Every time, wanting to meet God I stand up…stand in the line… stand … I am instilled in the ground… planted… Shaking and fall down like leaves.
Peace in Kurdistan Campaign Statement: The Kurdish experiment in democratic autonomy in Syria is now under grave danger from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front and other Islamist factions who are waging an increasingly ruthless campaign of violence and mass killing. This onslaught is threatening to demoralise civilians in the Kurdish-controlled region that has remained…
By Solin Hacador: Dictators may belong to the 20th century, but Assad’s fight to retain power evokes earlier times: the parading soldiers flourish children’s body by ballistic missiles and on their bayonets; the mass public executions, including of Kurds, carried out in residential areas. No matter their ethnicity, as they are all human. War itself…
By Dr Amir Sharifi: In the Western mainstream press and media, we have rarely come across reports of the unfolding religious violence against Kurds in Northern Syria (in Kurdish Rojava, Western Kurdistan in Kurdish) over the past weeks. It is now a known fact that al-Qaeda affiliated armed bands have opened a new front to…
By Mahmood Shawkat Jaff: An email informed me that AUIS will welcome distinguished Sulaimani poet, Sherko Bekas, to his first-ever poetry reading at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. That was fine news and perhaps it was the most interesting email that I had received since the beginning of that semester. On Saturday evening, November…
By Saman Salih Faraj: Translated by Aras Ahmed Mhamad This generation of Kurdish people is witnessing probably the greatest national event in the old and new history of their struggle, which is holding the first Kurdish National Conference in South Kurdistan. Kurds and their representatives from all parts of Kurdistan and in some other places…
By Mufid Abdulla: One of the biggest stories of recent days is the closure of American embassies across the Middle East due to the threat of major attack from Al Qaeda. The CIA has for a long time underestimated the ferocity of the Jihadis in Iraq and their links to terrorist networks all over the…
By Mufid Abdulla: In any country the parliament is the house of privilege, but in Kurdistan we have 110 MPs who cannot decide when the election days will be. And we have the case of the council elections that have not being held for the last twelve years. This amounts to a fraudulent attempt…
Interview and translation by Aras Ahmed Mhamad: Sherko Bekas, the acclaimed modern Kurdish poet, died yesterday (4 August) of cancer. Son of the poet Fayak Bekas, Sherko was born in Sulaymani in 1940. He joined the liberation movement in 1965, working for the Voice of Kurdistan radio station until he was forced into exile in…
Introduced by Yasin Aziz: These two short poems were written in Arabic by Buri Taj al Din Ayyubi (1161 – 1183 AD) who was the youngest brother of Saladin Ayubi and a well-known poet. They were published in the next century by Ibn Khallikan in his ‘The Obituaries of Eminent Men’ – also known as…
By Jalal Hasan: Translated by Aras Ahmed Mhamad The question that is always asked before elections is: which political party will win the majority of the votes and which will lose some of their votes and popularity? This question has also been asked in Kurdistan’s elections. Kurdish political parties and their leaders try to persuade…
By Beyan Farshi: It’s happened a lot, and in between many reminder notes have been overseen or lost through the centuries. Browsing through the lost reminder notes might reveal the unspoken truth, but the thing that most of us are aware of is the conspiracy of those silent suspicious souls who intended, and still do,…
By Issa Chomani: The Turkish government has been holding negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan under the settlement process since late 2012, claiming it intends to find a peaceful and political solution to the decades-long Kurdish dispute and the armed conflict between the Turkish military and PKK. The clashes between the…
