Opinion: What the PUK and KDP Fear

What frightens the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the parties that have been the two political, military and economic forces in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991, is whether their power is legitimate. During the (1991) uprising they came into Kurdistan's cities as two struggling forces, their legitimacy established as revolutionaries. Fifteen years later, they believe they are legitimate authorities based on their revolutionary history. They are not prepared to change the basis of holding power from a revolutionary to a legal basis of (democratically-elected) parliamentarians. They pay more attention to the mountain veterans (Peshmarga fighters who battled for Kurdish independence in the mountains) and keep them in positions of power at the expense of new generation. They give privileges and financially rewards solely to veterans who served before the uprising. This weakens the rule of law and undermines parliament and the constitution. Their fear of this change is baseless. They can have the legal (democratic) grounds to stay in power. But their fear of law and democratic power blinds them from seeing more modern types of rule.