As I predicted in THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online on July 22, Change, the new opposition in Kurdistan, did very well against the "Kurdistani list," the electoral combination of the two ruling parties, Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kudistan (PUK) that has ruled in the southern province of Sulaimani and Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) that has ruled in the northern provinces of Dohuk and Erbil.
In a stinging rebuke to the PUK, the unofficial count indicates that Change won Suliaimani's July 25 election. Things were not so easy for Change in the north, where in the 2005 election the brutal Barzani punished the rival Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) by whipping up mobs that burned KIU headquarters and murdered its head in Dohuk.
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