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Iraqi parliament debates autonomy for
Kurdish areas
7.10.2006
BY SAM MANUEL, The Militant Vol. 70/No. 39 October 16,
2006 |
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WASHINGTON, --
Amid continuing conflicts between various bourgeois
factions represented in Iraq’s parliament, the
legislators reached a compromise agreement to allow
debate on a law to establish procedures to form new
autonomous regions in the country. Sunni politicians
agreed on the condition that, if passed, such a law
would not be implemented for 18 months.
The compromise requires parliament to form a
committee to consider amendments to the
constitution, including proposals by Sunni
politicians to restrict new autonomous regions.
As part of this jockeying for influence, the prime
minister of Iraq’s autonomous northern region, known
as Iraqi Kurdistan, threatened secession if Iraq’s
central government continues to challenge the
region’s authority to sign oil contracts. The main
Kurdish parties, however, have repeatedly stated
their objective is autonomy within Iraq, not
secession. Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, is a
Kurd and the central leader of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan.
The dispute over oil is the latest in a series of
clashes with Baghdad as the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) presses to extend and strengthen
its autonomy.
The compromise to allow debate on establishing new
autonomous regions was reached after weeks of angry
exchanges, walkouts, and boycotts of sessions in
parliament.
In one instance Sunni politicians objected angrily
to the presentation of a map that showed the
disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk as part of Iraqi
Kurdistan. In another, all the Kurdish members of
parliament walked out after an Arab politician
asserted that Kurds are only 4 percent of Mosul,
another oil-rich city in dispute.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),
the dominant party in the faction of wealthy Shiites
in the government, is pressing to form an autonomous
region in the predominantly Shiite and oil-rich
south. Wealthy Sunnis fear that with the KRG in the
north and a Shiite-led government in the south they
would be cut off from much of their access to the
country’s oil revenues.
There is also opposition among some forces within
the Shiite bloc to moving too rapidly to set up
other autonomous regions. Among them are cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr and Iyad Allawi, the former interim
prime minister handpicked by Washington.
Al-Sadr’s militia fought fierce battles against U.S.
troops in southern Iraq in 2004, but his movement
now heads several ministries in the current
U.S.-backed government.
Another object of dispute is Mosul province, which
is predominantly Sunni but also has a large Kurdish
population. Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of the
province, is a Kurd. Half of the 30,000 soldiers in
the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Division stationed in the
province are Kurds and have Kurdish commanders. They
were instrumental in suppressing a Baathist-led
uprising in the province aimed at aiding Baathists
in Fallujah during the U.S. ground assault there in
2004.
Goran said a referendum scheduled for the end of
2007 to decide what areas will be incorporated into
the KRG could result in the inclusion of most of
Mosul province together with the former Baathist
stronghold of Tal Afar.
Iraqi oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani told al-Sabaah
newspaper that he was not “committed to oil
investment contracts signed in the past…by officials
of the government of the Kurdistan region.”
In a sharply worded response Nechirvan Barzani,
prime minister of the Kurdish region, accused
Shahristani of flouting Iraq’s constitution. He said
the Iraqi charter gives regional and federal
governments joint control of oil fields currently in
production but gives the federal government no role
at all with regard to the new oil fields.
Kurds were brutally oppressed under the Baath party
regime of Saddam Hussein. They have administered an
autonomous region in Kurdistan (northern Iraq) since
the first U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 1991. A bloc
of Kurdish parties now holds the second largest
group of seats in the Iraqi parliament.
Tensions sharpen with Turkey
In an interview on National Public Radio, Talabani
downplayed the possibility of a Turkish invasion of
Kurdistan Region (northern Iraq), saying the
presence of U.S. troops prevents that.
But he warned that if Iraq’s neighbors, in
particular Turkey, Iran, and Syria, continued to
intervene in its internal affairs, the Iraqi
government might in turn support opposition forces
in those countries. Two days after his remark,
Iranian authorities blamed the Turkish-based
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for blowing up a
section of a natural gas line between Iran and
Turkey
Ankara has accused the KRG of providing support and
bases in northern Iraq to the PKK, a Maoist-led
Kurdish organization that has carried on a
decades-long guerrilla war against the Turkish
government. Last August Turkish warplanes bombed PKK
bases inside Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Reuters.
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