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The new strength of Iraq’s central
government is alarming the Kurds
20.2.2009
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February 20, 2009
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', —
In Its campaign to attract
foreign investment, Iraq’s self-ruling Kurdistan
region often promotes itself as the “gateway to
Iraq”. If investors set up shop in the country’s
most stable area, they will, say the Kurds, be
guaranteed pole position when the rest of Iraq
becomes safe for business. Hitherto, visas issued at
the Kurds’ two international airports or at their
land crossings with Turkey and Iran were accepted by
Iraq’s central authorities when visitors travelled
on to Baghdad and beyond. Thousands of foreign
businessmen and journalists used to take advantage
of this easy entry into Iraq. But Iraq’s prime
minister,www.ekurd.netal-Maliki,
recently
declared that foreigners
entering via the Kurdish region
without a visa issued by the central authorities may
be arrested and deported. So the “gateway” has, for
the moment, been closed. Mr Maliki presumably
intends to show the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
who is ultimately in charge.
In the past year or so, Iraq’s Kurds, despite the
enviable security of their territory, have been on
the back foot in Iraqi politics. As violence in the
rest of the country has subsided, territorial
disputes between Kurds and Arabs—in the province of
Kirkuk and in parts of Nineveh and Diyala—have
become more dangerous again. And the Kurds are
increasingly angered by their continuing failure to
seal an agreement with the central government on an
oil law.
The Kurds still want a referendum to decide whether
Kirkuk and other Kurdish-populated areas, as well as
those “Arabised” under Saddam Hussein, should become
part of their self-governing region. According to
the constitution, this referendum should have been
held by the end of 2007, but it has been postponed
repeatedly and some Arabs now argue that the
constitutional requirement has lapsed. The Kurds
also demand the right to manage the extraction and
exploration of oil in their region, although they
say they would continue to share the revenue equally
with the rest of Iraq.
In local elections held at the end of last month in
14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces (but not in the three
Kurdish ones or Kirkuk), Kurdish parties lost ground
in the mixed provinces of Nineveh and Diyala to
Sunni Arab parties, which had previously boycotted
the polls. Tension between Arabs and Kurds,
especially in those areas, has risen. In Nineveh, a
stridently anti-Kurdish group called al-Hadba (an
Arabic name for Mosul, the capital), led by Sunni
Arabs, won the council with 49% of the votes. The
Kurds had previously run the show there, thanks
largely to the Arab boycott.
Many Kurds now worry that a strongman may once again
be emerging in Baghdad. The Kurdish parliament’s
deputy speaker was reported to have called Mr Maliki
“a second Saddam”. With American approval, the prime
minister has consolidated his power. His Islamist
Shia party did well in the local elections on a
relatively secular law-and-order platform. He called
for strong central government,www.ekurd.netanathema
to the Kurds after their suffering at the hands of
Saddam. Arab politicians, seemingly with tacit
American approval, have begun to deride the Kurds
more openly for their supposed “stubbornness”. Mr
Maliki and Massoud Barzani, president of the
Kurdistan region, get on badly and have not met for
months.
Maliki has questioned the Kurds’ right to control
some of the disputed areas, for instance around the
town of Khanaqin and in some parts of Kirkuk
province. He has even
deployed Iraqi troops
there to
test the Kurds’
response; the Kurds have so far refused to be
provoked into fighting. He has also promoted
constitutional changes to dilute the power of
regions.
The Kurds’ political standing has been further
weakened by strife within the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), one of the Kurds’ two main parties,
which is headed by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani.
Five senior PUK men resigned,
calling Mr Talabani too autocratic, but then came
back into the fold
when he said he would try to meet some of their
demands. Alarmed by this apparent dip in the Kurds’
political fortunes, Nechirvan Barzani, the Kurdish
region’s prime minister (and nephew of its
president), has raised the spectre of war with
Iraq’s Arabs and called on the Americans to settle
the main unresolved issues before their troops
withdraw from the country.
So far, however, the Kurds’ love affair with the
Americans has seemed one-sided. “We love them but
they don’t care,” the Kurdish region’s prime
minister said recently, not for the first time.
“When we say something about protecting our people’s
rights,www.ekurd.netthey
see it as a problem that disrupts their Iraq
policy.” Some Western diplomats, afraid that
Kurdish-Arab tension may boil over again, think the
Americans should do more to get the UN and perhaps
the European Union involved in broking a deal. The
Kurds want President Obama
to appoint a special envoy to tackle the issue, but
he shows no sign of doing so. The new
administration, says one American general, would
probably still want to “kick the issue down the
road”.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
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