A
power struggle is going on inside Iraq's Kurds and
could change the country's balance of power, writes
Paul McGeough. Gorran challenge threatens politics
of Kurdistan.
March 8, 2010
Iraq's backroom strategists in Baghdad will be on
the edge of their seats this week waiting for poll
figures from a vital and newly divided corner of the
country - the ever-so-difficult Kurdish north.
How the Kurds voted on Sunday has the potential to
alter not just relations between their non-Arab
corner of the country with its capital, but also to
significantly tweak the contours of power in
whichever coalition government is cobbled together
when the counting is done.
The tension was sparked by an energetic break-away
from one of the two clan-based political parties
that have dominated Kurdish affairs for decades.
A tight unit among the political rabble of Baghdad,
Kurdish MPs always have spoken with a single,
kingmakerly voice.
Their control of 53 seats among 275 in the old
parliament guaranteed membership of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government, in which
they jockeyed relentlessly for economic and
political concessions for the north - but remain
furious at the lack of progress on their claim to
oil-rich Kirkuk, which lies adjacent to the three
provinces they control.
After a bloody past, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
buried their differences in a 1998 power-sharing
pact. This they managed for more than a decade,
monopolising power and patronage through a local
regime that was more about patriotism than
democracy.
Today's Kurdish crisis is the result of a split in
PUK ranks, with the rebels forming a third Kurdish
political force. They named it Gorran - Kurdish for
''change''.
The rivalry has been fierce. Gun fights and security
crackdowns have marred campaign rallies and as many
as 1700 government workers who switched allegiance
from the PUK to Gorran were sacked in what was read
as a warning to all Kurds of the fate that awaits
any who dare to cross the PUK.
Gorran - along with independent analysts - predicts
it can win 15 seats or more in the new 325-seat
parliament. Combined with perhaps half-a-dozen seats
likely to be captured by smaller Kurdish parties,
Gorran could threaten to vote with other blocs in
the parliament to bend the PUK and the KDP to its
will.
Whoever becomes prime minister, there is a consensus
expectation that the Kurds will be a part of the
next governing coalition - because the inevitably
Shiite-dominated government will want to have the
Kurds onboard,www.ekurd.netto
block them from making alliances with Sunni parties,
and because the Kurds are desperate to be close to
the seat of power, to better protect their
interests. But the friction between Gorran and the
other two Kurdish parties is likely to have a
bearing on how the Kurds behave in the coalition.
The first test of Gorran's post-election resolve
will be its stated intention to block the
reappointment as president of Iraq of their
erstwhile enemy, the PUK strongman Jalal Talabani.
In the eyes of some Kurdish commentators, Talabani
is the only Kurd of sufficient stature to hold the
presidency and to press their claims - at a time
when the other major parties have had enough of the
pushy northerners and are plotting to cut them down
to size in the new parliament.
Gorran has taken its campaign beyond the provinces
that make up Iraqi Kurdistan. Standing 170
candidates in eight provinces, its pitch for votes
extended to provinces where Gorran could further
split the Sunni vote as well as the Kurdish vote.
Gorran has not deviated from the Kurdish
fundamentals - chief among which are the north's
share of national oil revenue and their claim to
Kirkuk.
Under the leadership of a former deputy chief of the
PUK, Nawshirwan Mustafa, the new movement broke from
the PUK at the peak of an internal power struggle.
But because their differences were more about
personalities than policy, the only platform Gorran
could adopt to set itself apart from the PUK and the
KDP was the corruption, cronyism and mismanagement
of the two bigger parties.
Standing candidates for the first time in last
year's elections for the Kurdistan Regional
Government, Gorran succeeded mainly at the expense
of the PUK. Much to the surprise of observers, it
won 25 of 111 seats.
Jalal Talabani did not mention Gorran by name, but
the break-away party seemed to be foremost in the
mind of the Iraqi President when he told a campaign
rally last week: ''The enemies of Kurds and the
union who dream of destroying the union will be
entombed along with their dreams.'' Likewise, when
the KDP chief Massoud Barzani accused Gorran of
crossing the ''reddest of lines'', he warned that
the new party would be exiled from the region if
they persisted.
In all this, there is a wrinkle that risks ending
Kurdistan's poster-boy role for Washington as a
''yes, we can'' beacon of stability and achievement
in the chaos and uncertainty of the new Iraq. Unless
the PUK can hold off the Gorran challenge, the KDP
might well decide that the 50-50 power-sharing basis
of the pact by which the two parties rule the north
should be renegotiated.
That kind of talk could start a new clan war in the
north.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
The Sunday Morning
Herald | smh com.au
Top |
®
