Sherwan mohammed hassan – Activist If we wanted to identify the greatest and bitterest irony in the thirty-year history of PUK and KDP rule, we would undoubtedly have to look at the shocking reality unfolding this winter: the struggle between the two ruling parties to monopolise the entirety of revenues, privileges, and political decision-making, while ordinary citizens are forced to search for a single barrel of heating oil to warm their homes on a land that itself is a sea of oil. For decades, these two parties have used the national, judicial, economic, and security institutions of the Kurdistan Region as extensions of their own political offices. Whenever the issue concerns the division of areas of power, the seizure of land, monopolisation of border crossings, or the transfer of capital to foreign banks, they make decisions with lightning speed and protect their shared interests above every law and above the interests of the nation. The reality is that public-sector employees wait month after month for salaries that are cut or delayed, simply to meet the basic needs of their families, while the ruling elites of both zones continue to speak from within their grand halls and palaces about “national resilience” and “protecting the integrity of the Region.” This represents the complete erosion of the very essence of patriotism, because it demonstrates how the “nation” has been turned into a shield for protecting partisan and family interests. The people of Kurdistan live on land rich in black gold, yet they are forced to beg for their basic financial rights and secure winter fuel from a system of power that remembers its citizens only during elections and crises. Until the interests of society are placed above the power of these two parties, Kurdistan will remain a place where those in power grow ever richer while its people are left to harden under the weight of poverty and the cold. Post navigation A Failure of Historic Proportions: When Zone-Based Rule Makes the Law and the Citizens Its Victims