Kurdish authorities vow to upgrade services after protests

The regional Kurdish parliament in northern Iraq has formed a committee to investigate recent protests in the city of Halabja, in the Sulaimaniyah governorate, after hundreds of residents took to the streets last week calling for improved services. More than half of Halabja’s 60,000-strong population depends on wells for their water needs and private generators for electricity, say residents. In addition, local doctors point out that area hospitals lack modern medical equipment and essential medicines. Roughly 90 percent of the city’s roads, meanwhile, remain unpaved. On 16 March, security forces tried to break up a demonstration by residents, who demanded a quicker pace for urban reconstruction. A 17-year-old boy was killed in the melee and nearly 10 others were injured. During the course of the fray, some 2,000 angry residents damaged a monument commemorating those killed in a 1988 gas attack on the city, launched by deposed president Saddam Hussein. Demonstrators claimed that the regional government has done little to help survivors, and that politicians have made money at the expense of residents’ suffering. Since the disturbances, scores of protest participants have fled the city, said locals, with security forces arresting hundreds of residents in the past three days. "Those behind the damage of the monument must be arrested and interrogated," said Emad Ahmed, deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan government. "And those among the security forces will be interrogated as well," he added, declining to elaborate. Ahmed went on to say that an official committee would meet with Halabja dignitaries and residents to discuss their complaints. According to independent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othoman, both the international community and the Iraqi central government have failed to honour their promises to Halabja. This, he explained, has led to "the failure of the regional government". Othoman added, however, that the regional parliament would try to address residents' demands. Halabja suffered badly under the former regime. An estimated 5,000 residents were killed in 1988, when Hussein allegedly ordered a gas attack on the city as part of a campaign to crack down on Kurds who he claimed were supporting Iran in its 1980-88 war with Iraq.