Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RwISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN ÖZETi
Turk~hDairy News 11IESDA Y, HINE 6, 1995
School's out for Kurdish children
despite months of feuding
'Education is free of charge for children. But
we, don't have enough books"notebooks, or pens'
'-j
By Tolle Aram
Agence France Presse
SALAHUDDIN, Iraq- A two-month truce
betweenrival Kurdish factions innorthern Iraq has
enabled thousands of children to take exams and,
finish a school year punctuated byviolence.
"The pupils are our future.1t would have been a
real shame if we hadn't managed to p:iItasideour
political problems to organize proper exanis for
them," said Kamal Shakir, head of the regional government's
health ministry;
Shakir; 52, a member of the Iraqi Communist
Party, is regarded as neutral by the two main factions
so was asked to chair il committee setting
, exams for the 980 primary and 303 secondary
schools in the Kurdish area.
Organizing the schools has not been easyamid
the continuing feud between the two plain factions,
the K.urdistan Dembcratic Party (KDP), .led by
Massud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) headed by Jalal Talabani.
The two sides agreed on Thursday to extend their
two-month ceasefire begun in Apriluntil July 15.
They have fought over control of the paralyzed
regional government and its tax revenues for more
than a year in northern Iraq, which they have run in
defianc~ of Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War.
"Since December, when even Erbil district was
split into PUK and KDP pockets, we have received
..eur salaries only twice," said Abbas Ismail Accrai,
head of a school for six to 12-year-olds in
Salahuddin, the KDi>headquarters.
Although Accrai believed the KDP w.asgenuinely
, short of money, others were more sceptical.
"The KDP has money but they use it for
weapons," said teacher Sherzah Rassoul. Kurdia
Saicf Aziz, the head of a school for 12 to 18-yearold
girls in Erbil, the region'.s main town which is
controlled by the PUK, complained that the PUK
had also only paid teachers' salaries twice.
However, Aziz, 56, remained detennined to ~ive '
'
her pu~ils an education. "We'll teach the pupils
even Without a salary because the Kurdish cliildren
have a right to be taught," she said. ' ,
Other teachers are more fortunate: those in KDPcontrolled
Dahuk province and the PUK-controlled
,Sulaymaniyah province are paid regularly but do
not count themselves as well-off.
'
"We eam between 200 and 300 dinars (about 6.5
dollars) per month. With that, we can't even buy a
pair of shoes," said Nesrin Abdallah, a teacher in
. Sulaymanirah town; , ,
Sc~ools.m ~orthern Iraq are in an appalling state,
.parl1cularlym the countryside. Many village
schools were destroyed by Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's forces in the 1980s. .
At Abbas tsmail Accrai' s school in Salahuddin"
children sit on shaky' wooden benches, but in many
village schools pupils have only the bare ground to
sit on and no heating during the winter.
"Education is free of charge for children. But we
don't .haveenough books, notebooks, or pens,"
Accral told AFP. "UNICEF, (the United Nations
,children's fund),provides each child with five thin
notebooks and some pencils once a year but that's,
not enough," he added ..
Accrai heads an Arabic school, where Kurdish is
~>nl~taught as a subsidiary languag~, whereasAziz
IS director of one of the many Kurdish schools that
have opened since the GulfWar. .
"In the 1970s, all classes were run in Kurdish but
the Iraqi government slowly replaced them in the
1980s with Arabic," said AZlz. .
" The regional Kurdish government which began
.operating in mid-1992 supported the opening of.
Kurdish schools and orderecf thousands of books 'to
be.r.rinte.din Kurdish., '
, DespIte our problemsnow, the classes are better
than before 1991. Wecan give lessons on, Kurdish
history and we don' t have to fill our children' s
, minds with (Iraqi) Baath party propaganda," she
.added., .
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