Severian
21st November 2005, 02:00
Originally posted by
[email protected] 20 2005, 01:01 AM
Jalal Talabani is the president of Iraq and he is a member of the PUK/KDP a leftist political movement which has progressively moved towards the centre and has now become a social democratic party and an observer member of the Socialist International.
That's not much more accurate. The PUK and KDP are two different parties. They are, for all practical purposes, nationalist parties.
The PUK may be affiliated to the Socialist International, but so what? So was the French Socialist Party when it was supporting the massacre of Algerians and Vietnamese. So is Blair's Labour Party. So is the Israeli Labour Party which has presided over ethnic cleansing, torture, and the denial of the most basic human rights to Palestinians. So is the PRI, which ruled Mexico as a one-party state for decades. I could go on.
Both the PUK and KDP are profoundly venal, corrupt, patronage-based parties which do not stand for any principle at all, even Kurdish independence anymore. They even fought a civil war with each other, over nothing at all but power and patronage. One of them appealed to the Saddam Hussein regime for help against the other.
They've also cooperated with the Turkish armed forces, the most vicious enemies of the Kurdish people, against the Kurdish Workers Party of Turkey.
Their support to the U.S. occupation of the rest of Iraq is in that tradition. It's also interesting to note that the one part of Iraq where there is strong support for the occupation....is the part where people don't have to live under occupation. Instead, they're under the same regime as before the invasion.