Word: kurds
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...Assyrian ramparts of Kirkuk's 3,000-year-old citadel, the giant open-air market snaking around its base seems the very picture of communal harmony: Kurdish, Turkoman and Arab shoppers navigate through narrow lanes, past stalls selling everything from fresh fruit to plastic flowers. My police escort, a Kurd, beams down with pride. "This is the perfect Iraq," he says. "Nobody angry, everybody happy...
...target for the country's increasingly voluble politicians. In his apparent overwhelming confidence in his power, Maliki has recently picked fights with his Kurdish allies, his Shi'ite opponents and his Sunni partners over a variety of issues. Now Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, wants to haul the Prime Minister into federal court, an unprecedented and blistering public slap. The cause: moves to set up councils of tribesmen loyal to Maliki in majority Shi'ite and Kurdish areas where the Prime Minister does not naturally hold sway. Talabani and the Kurds - with sympathetic sectarian nods from...
...acrimonious exchanges between Maliki and the Kurds are rooted in the economic and territorial ambitions of both parties, and they threaten to widen the broadening Arab-Kurd schism. Maliki's recent call to amend the constitution to beef up the central government's powers at the expense of Iraq's 18 provinces did not spare the semiautonomous three-province Kurdish region in the north. It has not only stoked tensions with the independence-minded Kurds but has also drawn fire from his Shi'ite coalition allies in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, who want to set up a similar semiautonomous...
Eighteen months after the U.S. troop surge aimed at creating the security necessary for Iraqis to resolve their political conflicts, those political conflicts are threatening to become even more complicated. Besides the Arab-Kurd and Sunni-Shi'ite divides, there has long been a struggle among rival political parties for supremacy among the Shi'ites. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently called for amendments to Iraq's constitution to strengthen the central government's power at the expense of the country's 18 provinces. This week, Maliki's rivals in the southern Shi'ite bastion of Basra submitted...
...trickiness of the political climate was apparent earlier in the week, when Iraq's President, who is a Kurd, its Sunni Arab vice president and the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) met in northern Iraq and denounced the Turkish raids. "We condemn operations and they should be ended as soon as possible," said Massoud Barzani, the KRG head. But the condemnation was not as full-throated as it could have been. President Jalal Talibani stressed that Iraqis valued Turkey's friendship, and said that he hoped problems could be addressed through diplomacy...