[ShafaqNews] In May 1994, Iraq witnessed a traumatic and bloody fratricidal war. Back then, tensions and competition between the Kurdistan region’s two major parties was at its zenith. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were essentially in control over the semi-autonomous region. Yet despite the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, they failed to unite their 80,000 men and considerable arsenals, instead seeing each other as the principal threat. That tension could be felt in almost all major Kurdish cities and towns, whose residents' loyalty and affiliation were divided between the two parties, a Kurdish political leader told Middle East Eye.
In Qalat Deza, a town in northern Sulaminiyeh province on the Iraq-Iran
 ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
border, a chicken lost its way and crossed from the house of a PUK fighter to one owned by his KDP neighbour. A quarrel broke out between the two men. The PUK fighter, "without thinking", pulled out his weapon and shot his neighbour dead, the Kurdish leader recalled. The "chicken incident'', which the elders of the Kurdistan region recall bitterly, led to what they sarcastically call the "brother's war", a conflict that lasted for almost four years and led to the killing of hundreds and displacement of thousands. |