Masters of Kurdistan

This fact was not known to me before reading Luizard's The Iraqi Question: that Kurdistan is divided into two areas of control. The northern mountainous region, with its capital at Erbil, is under the complete control of the PDK, led by Massoud Barzani. The southern region, with its capital at Sulaymaniyya, is controlled by Jalal Talabani's PUK. Nominally, the PUK portrays itself as a leftist alternative to Barzani's right-wing nationalism.

Both organizations run a couple of thriving activities: collecting tolls and tariffs at the Turkish frontier (Baghdad does not see a dime!) and smuggling out contraband oil. Luizard notes that flood of income is so high that local farming and industry have been abandoned.

Anyway, today Juan Cole is outraged on a decision by Barzani, a virtual warlord, to send a Kurdish-Australian journalist to prison for having criticized him. This Barzani character is a power-hungry, duplicitious SOB, so no surprise there. Barzani's claim to infamy is a march into Erbil in 1996 allied with Saddam Hussein's troops and supported by Turkey to combat the "Iranian-dominated" PUK, followed by a push into the PUK heartland at Sulaymaniyya, forcing Talabani into exile. The USA negotiated with Iran and Turkey to force Barzani back, but he has succeeded in claiming Erbil as his own. BTW, it is the PDK which intimidates Iraqi Christians living in the north by confiscating their land.

Of course this is not the whole tapestry of Kurdistan: There's also Kurdish Hezbollah, Kurdish Communist Party (links to the PKK), Islamic Union of Kurdistan, Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (linked to Iran), Socialist Democratic Party of Kurdistan, Iraqi Turkmen Front, Islamic Union of Turkmen (supported by Tehran), and the Assyrian Democratic Movement. But they are all minor characters in a PDK-PUK script.