ERBIL, Iraq, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The failure in the leadership of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani is putting both Iraqi Kurdistan and its people in danger, an analysis said Wednesday.
"Because of the misrule of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq ... may go down as the Yasser Arafat of the Kurdish people," says a report Wednesday by World Politics Review.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has a reputation in Baghdad as a leader with the ability to generate a unified stance from the Iraqi sects represented in the political climate in Iraq.
Barzani, the report says, has largely retreated from the reach of Baghdad in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, pursuing autonomous business contracts in the region with foreign developers while skirting attempts to rein in the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Meanwhile, corruption in the Kurdistan Regional Government is pandemic, leaving many contractors without revenue to finance their payrolls, while the region is lagging behind greater Iraq in political developments.
In some of the disputed regions, such as the north of Diyala province, the deployment of the Kurdish Peshmerga force also has threatened the relationship with the Iraqi army, and presumably Baghdad.
"Barzani's true goal is clear: expand the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan into oil-rich areas before the state of Iraq and a more capable central government solidify," the newspaper said.
