[1]Many reformers, including some members of Parliament, believe a crucial reason the legislative branch of government remains so weak is that the [fill in the blank] grew accustomed to interfering not only in elections, but also in parliamentary votes.
The [fill in the blank] spokesman denied any such interference, but members of Parliament said the [fill in the blank] could sway any electoral campaign by getting hundreds of voters to the polls, as well as providing access to government jobs for constituents, money and other facilities.
[2]”This life is like honey mixed with snake poison. It looks like freedom, but we rent this,” Kawkas gestures to the rolling fallow cropland where his sheep graze and to the abruptly rising bare mountains beyond where they grazed a month ago. “[fill in the blank], the landlord, controls it all. And the parties, the mayor, they all serve [fill in the blank]. [fill in the blank] gives them gifts and they do what he wants.”
Kawkas is angry, but the older man who owns the tent where we sit is scared. “Don’t say this! Don’t talk about these things in front of strangers.” We have hit a nerve: class power in the countryside. Kawkas ignores his elder and tradition and continues enumerating his grievances. The old man gets up and starts pacing outside the tent.
buermann’s new boss, old boss…
[1]Heavy Hand of the Secret Police Impeding Reform in Arab World By NEIL MacFARQUHAR [ November 14, 2005 New York Times ]
[2]The Question of Kurdistan by CHRISTIAN PARENTI [ November 14, 2005 The Nation ]
The Question of Kurdistan
Altun Kopri, located between Kirkuk and an oilfield to the northwest–beyond the formal borders of Kurdistan–has long been a majority Turkmen town with a Turkmen name, but in the past two years it has become majority Kurdish. The town sits mostly on a sloping island in the Little Zab River surrounded by fertile flood plains and sandbars. The population here has almost doubled over these two years as Kurds move down from the north and Turkmen move up from Kirkuk and east from Mosul to escape the escalating violence.
This area around Kirkuk and the oilfields is a demographic battleground. Whether or not the north becomes independent, Kurdish leaders want this terrain under their formal control as part of Iraq’s Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. And in preparation for the planned 2007 referendum on Kirkuk’s fate, Kurdish militants seem to be creating facts on the ground. Turkmen say that activists from the PUK and KDP are usurping all the civil service jobs and political power. Some charge that the Kurds are busing in people from the north and registering them to vote in Altun Kopri. Regular Kurds on the street and the local KDP deny this.
[…]
“We will use the Saddam plan,” says Hameed Afandi, the KDP’s Erbil-based minister of peshmerga affairs, when offering his solution to Iraq’s security dilemmas. A guerrilla fighter since 1961, the lean short-haired chain-smoking Afandi speaks in forceful, heavily accented English as he insists that Kirkuk is Kurdish. His comments offer a glimpse of the possible worst-case scenario: “The Americans are too soft. We will kill terrorists in the middle of the street. We will destroy their houses and kill their families. We would be very hard with them!”