Kurdistan Goes Sour

Political leaders recognize that dissatisfaction is at a high. "The needs of the people are so obvious but the question is whether there is any will to solve the problems," says Dr. Fouad Baban, a member of the Kurdish regional parliament from the PUK party that dominates eastern Kurdistan. "We have to really change." Dana Ahmed Majeed, the PUK governor of the Sulaimaniya province that includes Halabja, says Kurdistan is passing through a tough stage between liberation and democracy. But Kurds doubt their leaders will ever loosen their grip on power.

Everyone agrees the discontent is most acute among younger Kurds, who don't remember Saddam's oppression and are unimpressed with tales of their forebears fighting in the mountains. "This has nothing to do with the past. In every age people have their own demands," says Kamal Abdul Rahman, 26. Some of those demands are self-indulgent: for the last two months a group of students has staged a tent vigil in a Sulaimaniya park, asking for rent subsidies, money for couples to get married, jobs for everyone. But it's true that opportunities for young Kurds have not caught up with their ambitions. Party connections are required to land a good job or, in some cases, to get into graduate school. Many middle-class Kurds are leaving the country for work.

In Halabja, there is a plan to rebuild the memorial with a library and Internet center for young people. Workers are laying down new sidewalks, as well as the foundations on hundreds of low-income homes. "People are unsatisfied still but not like before," says Mudrik Hama Amin, a local student, as he showed an Iranian Kurdish cousin the cemetery for the gas victims. Still, he thinks the museum should be moved from Halabja's outskirts to downtown. That way, VIPs wouldn't be able to ignore today's Kurds while they pay homage to yesterday's.

© 2007