Shafaq News

By Ali Hussein Feyli

-Father, how long must we wait until salaries are paid?” asked the son.

-Until the beginning of the month, my boy, replied the father.

-So, when the month begins, will the problem end? The son pressed.

-No, my boy, no… the salaries will not come. But we will learn how to live without them. The father answered, smiling bitterly.

This simple exchange between a father and his son in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq encapsulates a crisis that has dragged on for years, turning salaries into a deferred dream, a partial right—almost as if citizens are begging for favors rather than claiming their due.

Lengthy negotiations between Baghdad and Erbil ignite media debates time and again, yet they have neither warmed households nor revived daily life. The plain truth today is that the salary crisis has outgrown the ability of both governments to resolve. What is missing is not resources alone, but the political will to merge economic, political, and security solutions with genuine mutual respect.

In a country where endless meetings yield no results and where outside actors constantly intervene, waiting for justice becomes a kind of delusion. Justice is not frozen in legal texts; it is the spirit that breathes meaning into the law.

It is natural to demand that the Kurdistan Region meet its obligations, and for citizens to feel real improvements in their lives. But what is happening now resembles a policy of “collective punishment.” True, Baghdad’s current policies are less openly hostile than in past years, but their outcomes remain the same: deepening the erosion of Iraq’s fragile coexistence.

On the other side, international reports still rank Iraq among the world’s most corrupt states, with hundreds of billions wasted over the past decades. Yet federal employees in central and southern Iraq have never been denied their salaries, while more than one million public servants in Kurdistan are abandoned to an uncertain fate. The federal government dares not touch the wages of its ten million beneficiaries but leaves an entire region in limbo.

Baghdad’s decisions are no longer just financial measures; they reflect a deeper conviction that the Kurdistan Region is undeserving of continuity. Delaying salaries is no different from cutting them entirely—the effect is the same: exhausting society and undermining its stability.

The full extent of damage wrought by the crisis may not yet be visible, but what is clear is this: Kurdistan is the only place in Iraq suffering such punitive policies, and its ordinary citizens remain the greatest victims—forced to pay the price of political disputes and retaliatory decisions.

This article was originally written in Arabic.