After months of negotiations, Nechirvan
Barzani announced the formation of a unified Kurdistan regional
government (KRG) in Erbil on May 7, two weeks ahead of the
announcement by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that a
government for Iraq had been formed. While the world's media
remained focused on Baghdad, it largely overlooked the significance
of the events in the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The KRG is already the pre-eminent governmental authority in Iraqi
Kurdistan, with Baghdad's influence being non-existent. Unifying the
Kurdistan region is also a powerful symbolic act that may serve to
enhance the legitimacy of Kurdish politicians in Iraq as they
negotiate their people's future with their Arab counterparts in
Baghdad.
But there are of course problems facing Barzani and his new Cabinet.
The first is the rivalry between the KRG's two most important
participants: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by
Nechirvan's uncle, Massoud Barzani; and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), led by current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
The second problem is the dissatisfaction of many Kurds with the
performance of the KRG to date. Accusations of corruption are rife,
but so too is the popular belief that the leaders of the KDP and PUK
are betraying their support base by making too many compromises in
Baghdad rather than advancing Kurdish demands more forcefully. Both
dynamics are opening a political space into which Islamist movements
on the one hand, and ultra-nationalist groupings on the other, have
emerged.
The third problem relates to the Iraqi Constitution passed in
October 2005, which envisages a federal structure for the state that
devolves significant powers to the regions. There remain several
points of contention related to the relationship between Kurdistan
and the central government. These include the ownership of natural
resources and control of revenues accruing from them; the security
responsibilities of the Kurdistan Army (the peshmerga); and, perhaps
most saliently, the precise location of the boundary of the
Kurdistan region and the status of sensitive disputed territories,
including Sinjar, Makhmur, and Kirkuk.
Many of the current challenges can be traced to the division of the
KRG into two entities from 1994 onward. Political competition
between KDP and PUK leaders, an unworkable power-sharing system, and
the destabilizing actions of neighboring states combined to push the
KDP and PUK into a conflict that ended in a draw in 1997. From this
point on, Kurdistan's political geography stabilized into two
distinct regions: one dominated by the KDP and covering Erbil and
Dohuk; the other presided over by the PUK and including Sulaimaniyah
and the territories of Kirkuk outside the control of the Iraqi
government. New KRGs were established in each region, with the
result that Kurdistan had two cabinets, two prime ministers, two
sets of legislative procedures - in effect, two administrative
systems.
The United States applied pressure to unify these two
administrations, leading to the Washington Agreement of 1998, but
the matter became urgent only following Saddam Hussein's downfall in
2003. Since then the two Kurdish groups have agreed on the duration
of Nechirvan Barzani's tenure as prime minister (which ends in
December 2007) and the need to promote a transparent approach to
government. In terms of ministerial distribution, the KDP heads 13
ministries and the PUK 14. Three ministerial portfolios are held by
the Islamic Union and the Islamic Group, with Assyrian and Turkmen
parties each having one ministry in a bid to include minority
communities. Still, it is apparent that there is some way to go in
the building of trust between the KDP and PUK. Sensitive ministerial
portfolios, such as defense and finance, remain double-staffed in
Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.
The vestiges of two de facto Kurdish statelets are numerous, leading
to several structural problems that Barzani needs to manage by a
process of extensive reform. These include a grossly overstaffed
civil service, conflicting legislation in key areas such as personal
status laws and foreign investment codes, and different cultural
practices between civil servants from Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.
In dealing with these challenges, Barzani must show that the unified
KRG is not simply an extension of the KDP and PUK, but rather is
acting in the interests of the people of Kurdistan in their
entirety. By achieving this, the KDP and PUK will remain the leading
popular political forces in Kurdistan-Iraq. If they fail, they will
be increasingly challenged by Islamist movements and
ultra-nationalist secessionists, and the Kurdistan region will again
fall prey to the meddling of its neighbors.
Gareth Stansfield is reader in Middle East politics at the
University of Exeter and an associate fellow of Chatham House. He
has been a regular visitor to Kurdistan since 2003, undertaking
research funded by a United States Institute of Peace grant. This
commentary is reprinted with permission from the Arab Reform
Bulletin, Vol. 4, issue 5 (June 2006) www.CarnegieEndowment.org/ArabReform
(c) 2006, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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