Word: kurdistan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Baker-Hamilton commission--have called for the contentious issue to be shelved. But Kurdish leaders say further delay only increases the chance that the political process for settling the Kirkuk issue will turn into an ethnic struggle. Kirkuk is a major staging ground for Arab insurgents trying to infiltrate Kurdistan, and Kurds say they could do a better job than the Iraqi government of maintaining security there. "If we had control of Kirkuk, we could clean it out in two months," said Abdullah Ali Muhammad, head of Kurdish security forces in Arbil. Other Kurdish officials warn that if the referendum...
Since then the differences between Kurdistan and Iraq proper have become even more dramatic. The plains around Arbil--once a glaring semidesert wasteland--are exploding with luxury housing developments. They have names like British Village, which resembles a gated California suburb, and Dream City, which supposedly will have its own conference center, supermarket and American-style school. The Turkish developers of Naz City, a high-rise condominium complex, are trying to sell house-proud Kurds on modern apartment living. An American company wants to build Iraq's first ski resort in the mountains near the Turkish and Iranian borders. While...
...Kurds' most important achievement has been to keep their region free of Iraq's insurgency and sectarian warfare, thanks to their army of 70,000 peshmerga soldiers. Not a single American soldier has been killed in Kurdistan since the start of the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in Arbil since June...
Take a walk, however, in any of this city's safe and prosperous neighborhoods, and you will quickly see that the other Iraq isn't so far away. Some 150,000 displaced Iraqi Arabs have taken refuge in Kurdistan from the conflict in the central and southern parts of the country. Kurdish officials require Iraqi Arabs trying to enter Kurdistan to have a Kurdish resident vouch for their character. As a result, the Arab refugee population is largely middle class, with a preponderance of doctors, lawyers and other professionals...
...Kurdish officials. Such neglect may soon reach a crisis point in Kirkuk. The Iraqi constitution calls for the city to hold a referendum by year's end on whether it should remain under the control of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad or become part of Iraqi Kurdistan...