A Committee to Protect Journalists news alert.

One would think Iraqi President Jalal Talabani would have better things to do than harass journalists and file frivolous lawsuits against one of the region’s only independent newspapers. Both he and Masud Barzani are angry at a recent AEI Middle East Outlook which the independent newspaper Hawlati excerpted which documented growing corruption and its detrimental effect on the U.S.-Kurdish relationship.

Neither Jalal Talabani nor Masud Barzani are willing to:

a) enunciate the difference between personal, party, and government property; nor

b) explain how they have accumulated great wealth despite entering Iraqi Kurdistan 17 years ago with little more than a couple cars and the clothes on their back.

After at first demanding to in a letter, the Kurdistan Regional Government has refused to send representatives to debate publicly any of their concerns and the issues raised in the report. It is much easier to simply silence critics.

It says a great deal about the real state of Iraqi Kurdistan that, in recent days, Masud Barzani’s intelligence service has systematically been going through their files of people whom they believe I know or had been seen with and threatened them. Most of the recipients of their threats I had not seen or spoken to in over five years.

Kurds and Iraqis deserve better than this.