What chance, then, of pressing Kurdish demands in the new national legislature?
Irbil, 14 December 2005 (RFE/RL) — There is little doubt how Kurds will vote in parliamentary polls on 15 December. If the last national vote, this January, is any indication (and few doubt it will be), Kurds in northern Iraq will vote overwhelmingly for the Kurdistan Alliance List. The Alliance comprises the two parties that have dominated Kurdish political life for decades — the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — along with a few small parties. “It is very hard to [propose] a law, to discuss a law, in parliament before we have a single government.” Though relations between the two factions have generally been good since a U.S.-brokered deal in the late 1990s and since the election of a unified Kurdish parliament in January, the impact of their past competition for power continues to affect the shape of Kurdish politics and the region’s prospects of democracy. At times in the past, the two groups have waged war on each other. Today, the KD
