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In an effort to maximize
their voice in Baghdad, Iraq’s largest Kurdish
parties are running as a coalition in the 15
December parliamentary elections. But the alliance’s
two key factions -- factions who for years warred
with each other -- have so far failed even to create
a unified government for the Kurdish autonomous
region. What chance, then, of pressing Kurdish
demands in the new national legislature?
Erbil, 14 Dec. (RFE/RL) -- There is little
doubt how Kurds will vote in parliamentary polls on
15 December. If the last national vote, this
January, is any indication (and few doubt it will
be), Kurds in northern Iraq will vote overwhelmingly
for the Kurdistan Alliance List.
The Alliance comprises the two parties that have
dominated Kurdish political life for decades -- the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) -- along with a few small
parties.
“It is very hard to [propose] a law, to discuss a
law, in parliament before we have a single
government.”
Though relations between the two factions have
generally been good since a U.S.-brokered deal in
the late 1990s and since the election of a unified
Kurdish parliament in January, the impact of their
past competition for power continues to affect the
shape of Kurdish politics and the region’s prospects
of democracy.
At times in the past, the two groups have waged war
on each other. Today, the KDP and PUK still control
separate parts of the Kurdish autonomous region. The
northern part of the Kurdish entity is governed from
KDP-run Irbil, while the southern part of the region
is ruled from PUK-controlled Al-Sulaymaniyah.
Both parts of the region are administered by
entirely separate sets of ministers.
The Missing Government
Despite the parties’ electoral alliance, one key
step toward reuniting the Iraqi Kurdish region has
yet to be taken -- the creation of a single
government.
This is hamstringing the Kurdish parliament. Without
a unified government, the region’s parliament -- the
Kurdish National Assembly -- is largely powerless,
argues Adnan Mufti, the Assembly’s president.
"A unified government is very important for us, as a
parliament, firstly because we promised our people
during the elections [in January] that our key
interest is to unify the government. And,” he
continues, “it is very hard to [propose] a law, to
discuss a law, in parliament before we have a single
government.”
In practice, parliament is paralyzed. “Because there
are now two administrations we have decided in
parliament, particularly in the legislative
committee, that it was not in the people's interests
to discuss any law before we see a unified
government," Mufti says.
Mufti, a top PUK official, gained his position in a
power-sharing deal between the two factions ahead of
the elections in January, at which Kurds also
elected representatives to Iraq's National Assembly.
The two Kurdish factions agreed on several points.
One was to demand that a Kurd should fill a top post
in the national government in Baghdad and that the
PUK’s leader, Jalal Talabani, should be that man.
Talabani is now Iraq's president.
Another was that the president of the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) would be the KDP leader
Mas'ud Barzani. He now holds that position.
However, confusion about a third point is
contributing to the inability to unify the region’s
two administrations.
"I don't seen any logical [problem] or obstacle to
reunification. We will do that,” says Sadi Pire, who
heads the PUK's Irbil branch. “But … we agreed with
[the KDP] that the position of prime minister should
be rotated – [held] half the time by the KDP, half
the time by the PUK, or according to any other
formula that we agree upon."
But KDP officials see things differently.
Newzad Hadi, governor of Irbil, says the two sides
agreed to a four-year term for prime minister and
that the first to hold the position would be
Nechirvan Barzani, currently the top KDP official in
the Irbil region. "All this had been approved by
every party,” Hadi says.
Weakening Their Own Case?
For some Kurdish observers, the disagreement is a
measure of how far the two Kurdish factions still
have to go to achieve their promised transition to
greater democracy in the Kurdish autonomous region.
Behrooz Shojai, a lecturer on civil society at the
University of Dohuk, sees the two main factions as
two establishments that face little pressure to
change. Pressure will only come, he says, when
powerful opposition parties emerge -- and there are
no strong opposition groups today.
One of the region’s few, small opposition parties --
the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) -- came under
attack on 6 December, when its offices in Dohuk and
five other towns in the region were torched. Four
members of the party were killed.
The leader of the KIU, Salahuddin Muhammad Bahauddin,
accused KDP officials that administer the area of
organizing the attacks. The KDP denies the charges.
The failure to unify the government’s duplicate
administrations into a single government also
weakens the Kurds' bargaining position in Baghdad,
argues Mufti, the leader of the Kurdish National
Assembly.
He says the Kurds need a strong parliament and a
strong government if they are to press successfully
for one of their key demands: the expansion of the
Kurdish autonomous region to include Kirkuk and
other towns and villages in northern Iraq.
"If we stay as we are now, we cannot do our best and
we will have many problems dealing with Article 136”
of the Iraqi constitution, he says. Article 136
obliges the Iraqi government to conduct a census
and, by December 2007, to hold a referendum in
Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine
the final status of these areas.
The Kurds consider full implementation of the
article essential to their hopes of recovering what
they say are Kurdish territories. Former president
Saddam Hussein attached those areas to neighboring
governorates with majority Arab or heavily Arab
populations.
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