Kurdish Institute of Paris

February 5, 2008 | By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD —" Turkish warplanes bombed villages in Iraqi Kurdistan on Monday as the Kurds came under pressure on several fronts. Representatives in Parliament discussed the Kurdish share of the budget, and the Turkmen, a minority group primarily in northern Iraq, declared that they would no longer support efforts to hold a referendum on whether the city of Kirkuk should join the Kurdistan region.

February 5, 2008 | Commentary | By DAVID L. PHILLIPS

Continued democratization and economic development is the best way for Turkey to drain the swamp of domestic support for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 | Theo Caldwell,  National Post 

An interview with Iraq's ambassador to Canada

Howar Ziad, the Iraqi ambassador to Canada, has seen the best and the worst of humanity in his homeland. The courage of the Iraqi people, and in particular the emergence of the Kurdistan region from decades of genocide and devastation, represents the highest aspirations of the human spirit.

Friday February 1 2008 | Reuters | Editing by Anthony Barker

VIENNA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Iraq has halted oil supplies to Austria's OMV AG in protest over a deal between the company and the Kurdish regional government, Iraq's oil minister said on Friday.

February 4, 2008 | Harry Schute - Erbil, Kurdistan; Iraq

I have no problem with the U.S. military rewarding tribal sheikhs with contracts in thanks for their turning against the insurgency ("Military: 75% of Baghdad areas now secure," News, Jan. 18).

FORLORN mounds of sun-bleached clothes stretch across the barren field. Traces of the people who died wearing them - a washed-out vertebra near a small canvas shoe, a jawbone by a faded lavender dress - reveal that they mark the shallow graves of 1,200 of Saddam Hussein’s unidentified victims.

The gaunt 52-year-old Iraqi army private stands on top of a rudimentary guard post fashioned from huge, sand-filled hessian sacks, brandishing a rifle.

February 1, 2008 | By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD — As a minority group in Iraq, the Kurds have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the country’s politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now their leverage appears to be declining as tensions rise with Iraqi Arabs, raising the specter of another fissure alongside the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

January 31st 2008 | Ankara and Diyarbakir | From The Economist print edition

The AK government uses Islam to win over Kurdish support

A SIGN adorned with Ataturk's favourite adage, “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk”, hangs in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, as a reminder of Turkey's decades-old policy of forcibly assimilating the region's Kurds. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) party might prefer “Happy is he who calls himself a Muslim”.

Tuesday January 29, 2008 | Liz Ford and agencies

A political science professor convicted of insulting the founder of modern Turkey is saying academics are finding it increasingly difficult to criticise the government.