Dildar Loqman – Activists
The KDP and PUK do not want the people of Kurdistan to live in prosperity. To serve this goal, they have launched a calculated and aggressive political strategy centered around the systematic impoverishment of the population. The overwhelming wealth of the Kurdistan Region is not distributed among its citizens but instead hoarded and divided among the ruling elites. While the public suffers in poverty, they live like pharaohs—opulent, detached, and unaccountable.
All of the oppression inflicted on the people is conveniently blamed on so-called opposition parties, as if every injustice were their fault. The non-payment of salaries to public servants is not merely an economic issue—it has evolved into a deep humanitarian and societal crisis. Citizens live under tremendous pressure, facing financial hardship and complete political negligence. This has destroyed public trust in the government.
Let me break it down:
These are the main causes behind the salary crisis in the Kurdistan Region:
- The KRG itself is the primary cause of the salary crisis.
- Ongoing disputes with Baghdad over budget and oil revenues.
- The lack of a regional budget law, which could provide transparency in income distribution.
- A deep-rooted financial and economic crisis fueled by mismanagement.
- The existence of thousands of fake names on government payrolls.
The Salary Cuts: A Policy of Deliberate Destitution
Since 2020, the KRG adopted a brutal policy of salary cuts and privatizing public services. State-owned assets were quietly transferred into the hands of party-linked individuals. No government in the Middle East has ever dared to hand its people over to poverty so openly and brazenly. The global reaction was shock—but not within the KRG, where the people were thrown into the fire and expected to endure it.
Salary payments were halted, later resumed partially—half-salaries, quarter-salaries, or nothing at all. This was not just mismanagement—it was a calculated move to exhaust and discourage public servants, to push them out of their jobs through hopelessness.
Meanwhile, the fuel crises, medicine shortages, skyrocketing food prices, and daily market chaos have become the norm. These are not isolated events but the consequences of a policy. A policy where oil, food, and pharmaceuticals are monopolized by party cronies under the guise of ministries and official institutions.
Economic sectors have been entirely privatized, and assigned to the ruling parties. This means salvation from poverty is now impossible—because the region’s revenues are no longer spent on salaries and services for the people.
As Shakespeare would say:
“In Kurdistan, the devils of the region have gathered and turned hell into a desert.”
And What About the Recent Statements?
Let’s talk about these latest statements regarding salaries…
You know what? That day, three ambassadors visited me, visibly confused and embarrassed, asking:
“Is this really the nation of your people?”
They were shocked that the only thing people still talk about is salaries.
I replied:
“No—we don’t want salaries. We’re honorable. We don’t stand at Baghdad’s door begging for money.”
Our Prime Minister practically kneels before Baghdad just to say thank you for giving what is rightfully ours.
And what do we have left?
- We have endless suffering.
- We have disgraced national dignity.
- We have unemployed journalists, countless prisoners, old collaborators, informants, and spies.
- We export dissidents and receive foreign aid, while those funds are used to pay party members instead of schoolteachers and civil servants.
This time, three poor souls fainted from hunger.
Three ambassadors, fainted—literally—and asked:
“Do your people not have magnetic resonance machines? Has the nation’s mother burned herself to keep her children warm?”
I said:
“No, no… But we do have Sheikh Raouf—the ‘scholar’ who anoints himself with kerosene and pretends to be a saint while not knowing the difference between a wire and a goat’s horn.”
Then they calmed down and even asked for my address—planning to visit that night, uninvited.
They didn’t know I was a “scholar” too.
Final Reflection
Awat Sheikh Janab had the nerve to say the government would “respond to Baghdad” over financial matters.
Respond? They have 160 billion dinars in hand, and yet they act as if they’re penniless! The federal government should cut off this lifeline for once and for all, so they stop humiliating us by calling it “support.”
Meanwhile, Peshawa Hawrami criticized MPs for daring to speak of people’s suffering.
I say: don’t just criticize their words—grab them by the throat, because their mouths have reached the edge of this nation’s soul.
