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A man has filmed himself stuck between KDP and PUK checkpoints with 20 Wi-Fi routers, as neither side will let him through with the goods. He apparently passed through the KDP checkpoint coming from Erbil, but when he tried to cross the PUK checkpoint in the Smaquli area, east...

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Why does this mirror what was happening in Afghanistan.

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KDP appears to be overplaying its hand on Iraqi oil exports through the KRG pipeline, and the gambit seems to be already backfiring. Here is why: 1. Iraq exports around 3.4 million barrels per day through Basra's ports and the Strait of Hormuz, accounting for 85 to 95% of total shipments. Baghdad has requested only 200,000-250,000 barrels per day thru the KRG pipeline, roughly 7 to 8% of what was flowing through the south. Even if Baghdad wanted to push more volume through the line, it could not. Most of Iraq's oil sits in Basra, there is no pipeline infrastructure to move it north, and the same Iranian and militia threats that closed Hormuz could target the northern route just as easily. The KRG pipeline cannot rescue Iraq's oil sector. It was never going to. 2. Permitting the exports would have been a low-cost card and a show of goodwill. But by blocking even this, the KDP has handed Baghdad and Iraqi parties a scapegoat at the worst possible moment. During a crisis that is hitting government finances and ordinary Iraqis' salaries, the KDP chose to put conditions over a resource that would not have changed the picture in any big ways, and if salaries are delayed, Iraqi parties will point at Erbil. Basically, this has turned a pipeline dispute into a political framing device, and the KDP has placed itself inside the frame. For many Iraqi parties, this is not just ammunition. It is vindication. It confirms what they have long argued: that the KRG, and specifically the KDP, is ready to exploit Iraq's moments of weakness rather than stand with it. That perception, once reinforced in a crisis of this scale, will be difficult to undo. 3. The damage is compounded by isolation. Iraqi parties across the board, in their statements on this issue, are now referring to the "Erbil government," not the KRG. The language is deliberate: this is understood as a KDP decision, not an institutional one. Nearly all other Kurdistan Region parties either oppose the move or are critical of it, and when budget negotiations resume, they will direct blame squarely at the KDP. 4. Baghdad is also close to completing the rehabilitation of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline (the below video is today), which operates under an Iraq-Turkey agreement that predates the KRG and over which Erbil holds no legal or operational control. A small section of the line passes through KDP-controlled Duhok, but the KDP cannot realistically block it or do much about it. Once that line is operational, it will push the KRG pipeline further into irrelevance. More importantly, it will give Baghdad reason to sideline the KRG pipeline for good, not just during the current crisis but after things normalise too. Ironically, the card the KDP is holding is actively depreciating by overplaying its hand. The logic of holding a card is not inherently flawed. But deploying it in the middle of a regional crisis, on an issue of national significance, in an attempt to extract leverage, - in the current context - does not serve the KDP well. The timing is especially poor given the volatility of the broader environment. The trajectory of U.S. policy under Trump remains deeply unclear. The KDP is betting on a hand without knowing how the game ends.

Kurdistan Watch

24,594 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

This video of a Christian activist in Erbil has been widely circulated online, largely because few dare to publicly criticize the KDP this openly. The man, who is also an official with the Communist Party’s Ankara branch, accuses the KDP of turning Erbil’s Ankara district into a de facto red-light district in an attempt to distort its identity and erase the traditions of its Christian population. He claims that projects such as Pavillion - owned by Masrour Barzani’s 23-year-old son, Areen - have been built on land belonging to Christian farmers who have not even been compensated. He further alleges that new hotels and construction projects backed by KDP-affiliated businesspeople are part of a deliberate effort to demographically alter the district’s Christian character. He also criticizes the appointment of token Christian officials by the KDP, noting that these individuals are not even from the area. He goes on to accuse the KDP of reshaping Erbil’s broader identity by flooding the city with prostitution and elements he describes as alien to its cultural fabric. He notes that simply searching for the phrase “Mara’az Erbil” - a colloquial Iraqi Arabic term for “exhibition,” often used as a coded reference to prostitution and escorts - reveals how Erbil has become a well-known destination for such activities among Iraqi Arabs, despite the fact that almost none of the sex workers are not from the city. He concludes by asking why such activities are not taken to Barzan, instead of, in his words, “ruining the identity of Ankara and Erbil.”

Kurdistan Watch

19,369 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

This is perhaps one of the most candid acknowledgments from a KDP official regarding the depth of their ties with Turkey: Hoshyar Zebari states that the KDP is not only close to Turkey but saying, “We don’t hide anything from each other.” He goes on to praise Turkey’s treatment of civilians, claiming that it has shown more mercy and kindness than the PKK. When challenged by the reporter—who references conversations with local civilians—Zebari responds, “I know these locals better. Turkey isn’t preventing them from going about their daily lives or mistreating them”. Zebari also acknowledges direct intelligence cooperation, noting that the KDP knows the terrain better than the Turks. He adds that individuals arrested in the area are typically those collaborating with the PKK. When the report displays a map showing Turkish military bases scattered across the region, Zebari explains that their presence dates back to 1992, citing the threat posed by the PKK. He says that the KDP is fully aware of the extent of Turkey’s deployment, adding that he knows the location of Turkish posts “like the palm of my hand.” When pressed further about the scale of Turkey’s military footprint, Zebari responds bluntly: “You know what? We are fine with that.” The report states that Turkey currently maintains 136 bases and outposts across the KDP-controlled areas of the Kurdistan Region of which 121 of these—around 89%—have been established since 2018. Interestingly, the documentary also features PUK leader Bafel Talabani, who argues that Turkey uses the war against the PKK as a pretext for its military presence. He claims that Turkish forces have a far great presence than U.S. troops in the region, and that the Turkish deployment primarily serves to protect the KDP. Talabani also claims that cooperation between Turkey and the KDP goes beyond military coordination, encompassing intelligence-sharing as well.

Kurdistan Watch

16,736 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

The Kurdistan Region's Emerging Strategic Geography The Kurdistan Region’s energy and industrial map shows an emerging strategic geography in which the KDP and PUK, the two ruling parties that already run separate administrative systems inside one nominal regional government, check each other through control of different but interdependent assets. The KDP remains the larger economic power, but the rapid build-out of the PUK's gas and industrial base is narrowing an older imbalance, and it is doing so just as the two sides cannot agree on how power should be divided. The two developments are more tightly connected than they look. Look past the shorthand that the KDP has oil and the PUK has gas, and ask what each party's assets actually let it do. The KDP's strengths are built around monetisation: oil, refining, trade and export corridors. The PUK's emerging system revolves around gas, which carries a different kind of weight. Gas does not simply earn income. It feeds electricity, sets the cost structure of heavy industry, and binds producers to consumers through infrastructure that is expensive to replace. Oil gives the KDP scale and routes to market. Gas increasingly gives the PUK influence over how the wider regional economy functions, and over the energy choices available to actors beyond the Kurdistan Region. Two economic models follow from this, each with its own logic. The KDP's is built to preserve optionality: oil, refining, Erbil manufacturing, Duhok and Zakho logistics and access toward Turkey, so weakness in any one sector or route is offset by the others. It suits a party betting on autonomy. The PUK's is built on embeddedness: gas feeds electricity, electricity and gas feed industry, that industry sells into Iraq, and the pipelines and ten-year offtake contracts binding those stages are costly to unwind. That gives particular assets leverage out of proportion to the PUK's smaller share of output, and it explains why the smaller economy has begun to constrain the larger one. It also explains why the government has been so hard to form. As of 16 August 2026, 665 days have passed since the election without a cabinet. Gas did not cause the dispute, which also runs through security institutions, revenues, senior offices and the longer contest between the KDP and PUK systems. But the economic geography is making compromise harder. The KDP is trying to turn an electoral win into a more hierarchical order at the moment that advantage has narrowed to a single seat. That narrowing is itself a measure of how far the PUK's fortunes have moved: a party still on the back foot economically could not have assembled a rival bloc of comparable size in the first place. The imbalance beneath the seat count is closing, and the seat count is starting to show it. This report maps the assets behind that shift, and shows how the complementary holdings in KDP and PUK territory have become a check on each other's power, an unusual one: in the social sciences these constraints are usually institutional, resting in parliaments, courts and electoral rules. Here the restraint is material, resting on each party's control of assets the other cannot easily do without:

The National Context

12,019 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

[WATCH] THE PRESIDENT WILL NOT RESIGN. When it comes to the President, there is always a distinctive role between him being the President of the party and the state. There are many factors that influence the state in terms of governance and stability. If the President is called upon by some to resign and he keeps quiet it can throw the state into a state of turmoil. I want to make it clear that the officials agreed with the President on his approach, he took us into confidence and explained the factors that led him to make that particular pronouncement. We believe that the President did the right thing in pronouncing in the best interest of South Africa that he will not be resigning. There was nothing in terms of the judgment that warranted the President to resign it was just mere calls made by individuals and political parties that wanted to throw our country into a state of turmoil, uncertainty and anxiety. So it was imperative that he focus on that. It was correct for him to tell the country that from where he is standing there is nothing in the judgement that states he has done any wrongdoing and what he is going to do with the options in front of him and he has made this public. The President will take the Section 89 Report on review based on the outcome of the judgment and the legal advice he has received. There are no daggers out for the President to resign just opportunistic elements. These elements do not know what they want, they want to impeach and want him to resign, they do know what they actually want. The veracity of the report has not been tested in any committee so they don’t have a basis for the President to resign.

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22,015 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten