CENTRAL NEWS
In Sulaymaniyah, protests against the failure to pay teachers and staff salaries and the economic crisis continue despite the police attacking the demonstrators with tear gas and electronic batons.
‘WE WILL MANIFEST A CIVIL REVOLUTION’
After the demonstrators arrived at the Sara Gate, they loudly said, “We do not expect reform and recovery from thieves and corrupt authorities, so today we will announce a civil revolution until the seizure of power at Sara Gate. Let the government collapse.”
After the protests started, Kurdistan Region PM Masrour Barzani claimed at the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Kurdistan Region that they would start paying salaries to employees tomorrow.
BURDENING THE REGION
Yesterday, the Spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Jotiar Aidl said that his government will borrow $205 million to finance its deficits to finally pay the belated October salary to the Kurdistan Region (southern Kurdistan) public sector employees. The news of further burdening the country comes after the Barzani family finally admitted to having sold southern Kurdistan to Turkey.
In a press conference on November 15, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani admitted for the first time that the Region had made an energy deal with Turkey for 50 years. The deal between Kurdish parties and the most hostile force to the Kurds was described by the KRG as “the best choice” the KRG’s eighth cabinet took at the time to resolve its economic crisis. Simultaneously, public sector workers in southern Kurdistan have not been paid for months, while the KRG earned income from its oil-deal with Turkey but expects the central government of Iraq to pay the salaries of public sector workers, working for the KRG.
On November 18, thirty-two Kurdistan Parliament’s lawmakers signed a petition calling on the parliament’s presidency to summon KRG officials for talks regarding the deal following Barzani’s remark about the Turkey-KRG deal being the best choice to have been taken. On the same day, public sector workers protested against delays and cuts in salaries, deteriorating economic conditions, and lack of public services in several cities including Sulaimani, Kalar, and Kirkuk. The protests by the KRG public sector workers comes after the federal government cut off all budget transfers to the KRG after the latter failed to send any of the 250,000 barrels of oil per day that it is required to under the 2019 federal budget law.
Though several officials of the KDP have since claimed that the oil-shortages in the deal with Iraq are independent of the new deal with the Anti-Kurd Erdogan regime, it has become evident with the KRG’s attempts to otherwise source funds that the Iraq-agreement was breached.
KRG paid the last salary on October 15 with eighteen percent tax cut, while salaries paid in July and August were taxed by twenty-one percent.
BEVERLEY HILLS LIFESTYLES
As civil servants starve under the corrupt KDP rule, the luxurious lifestyles of members of the Barzani family show to what extent the profits of the Region are being exploited.
Recently, Mansour and Masrour Barzani, the two most prominent sons of former Iraqi Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani, paid for two of the most expensive mansions in Beverley Hills in an all-cash transaction. There are also claims that Masrour Barzani was the anonymous buyer of a mansion in McLean, Virginia, that ranks as one of the largest homes in the entire state.
In 2012, local reporters detailed that Mansour Barzani once lost $3.2 million in a single night while gambling at a Dubai casino.
Foothil Manor was reportedly occupied by Sodabeh “Soodi” Khoshdaman last year. The U.K.-based woman is reportedly a mistress of one of Masoud Barzani’s sons, and the mother of a boy carrying the Barzani surname.
About 5.5% of the population in the “Kurdistan region” or southern Kurdistan, subsists on less than $80 per month, and while the region is economically prosperous compared to the rest of Iraq, even the reasonably successful Kurdish doctors only earn the monthly equivalent of a couple of thousands USD annually.
