Intel: Unpaid salaries fuel protests in Iraqi Kurdistan
Ongoing budget disputes with Baghdad have fueled salary delays and a lack of business bailouts in the Kurdistan Region as KRG debt swells to $27 billion.
Outraged after months of not receiving salaries, regular electricity outages and a failure to provide local business bailouts, protests erupted last week in northern Iraq against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The demonstrations follow months of budget disputes between Erbil and the Iraqi federal government, and a readiness by Iran to start negotiations with the Kurdistan Region for two free trade zones, the Iranian consul-general in Sulaimaniyah told Rudaw on Saturday.
