In Chamchamal, a dilapidated Kurdish town in northern Iraq, a group of men chat away the hours until the breaking of the Ramadan fast at sundown and recount the many reasons why they have lost faith in their government.

The Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the two guerrilla movements who fought for 40 years against Baghdad, have proved less inspiring in peacetime. “They were towers of strength . . . but now they are failures,” laments one.