12 Parties Sign Letter of Understanding:
Seek to Block Kurds from Taking Kirkuk
Several Sunni, Shiite and secular political parties have come together in a new pact aimed at challenging the dominant coalition of the Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). They appear to aim at blocking the formation of a Shiite regional confederacy in the South. They also want to stop oil-rich Kirkuk Province from going to the Kurdistan Regional Authority. In March, the 18 month delay in the implementation of the Shiite region (comprising 8 provinces) will end.
The pan-Arab London daily al-Hayat is more breathless about the new pact than the Western wire services. It estimates that 12 parliamentary blocs have signed on to the memorandum of agreement, including a Turkmen party. They said that the central government should continue to enjoy its prerogatives with regard to administering national resources and expressed "severe anxiety" about attempts to conclude contracts by provinces without coordinating with the federal government. (This point is a slam at the Kurdistan Regional Authority, which is doing oil contracts without reference to the Oil Ministry in Baghdad).
The agreement also calls for the issue of Kirkuk Province to be settled by negotiation rather than by referendum. The Kurdistan Regional Authority wants to annex Kirkuk, but most of the Turkmen and Arabs there don't want that to happen. The Kurds have flooded Kurds into the province, so that they would win a referendum if it were held, but the other Iraqis are dragging their feet, so that the issue has been postponed until this summer and may be postponed further. The problem is that the referendum has the potential for sparking both a civil war and a regional war with Turkey.
The parties signing the agreement also want the al-Maliki government to set a timetable for withdrawal of US troops.
The signatories include:
The Sadr Movement (30 seats)
The Iraqi List of Iyad Allawi (25 seats)
Dawa Party - Iraqi Organization (15 seats)
National Dialogue Front of Salih Mutlak (11 seats)
National Dialogue Council (1/3 of the Tawafuq party)
The Turkmen Front
The Yezidi Progressive Movement
It is not expected that the signatories will form a new political bloc to challenge PM Nuri al-Maliki. (And a good thing, too, since you can't imagine them agreeing on anything beyond the narrow points they have assented to for very long).
The Iraqi List of Allawi says that it is in negotiations with PM Nuri al-Maliki to rejoin his cabinet, from which they withdrew last fall. How it is that they are rejoining his government, which has not, to say the least, worked very hard on these three points, is not clear.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Iraqi parliament, Humam Hamudi, said that next week a meeting for national reconciliation would be held in Beirut, to be attended by 22 Iraqi politicians.
It is not clear if the rumored Cairo reconciliation meeting will take place this week or not.
LAT says that the US military is pressuring al-Maliki to employ members of the Awakening Councils, but that it hasn't yet employed that many of them because the Shiite government is deeply suspicious of Sunni former insurgents.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/14/2008 12:30:00 AM
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8 Comments:
The western press is stunned by the potential implications of the new Nationalists alliance. This is basically a Maliki qoup against the US and its Iraqi allies: Hakim and the two Kurds.
You can kiss goodbye to the planned long-term Iraq-US deal, and to the Oil production-sharing deals. Without these, the Imperial Americans will not want to spend blood and treasure in Iraq, but Maliki can rely on the Sunnis and the Sadrists to survive. As simple as that.
It is not expected that the signatories will form a new political bloc to challenge PM Nuri al-Maliki. (And a good thing, too, since you can't imagine them agreeing on anything beyond the narrow points they have assented to for very long).
What is striking in this list of signtories is that the two main allies of the US, aka the Kurds and the Al'Hakim current are missing. This looks like the formation of a new nationalist bloc, one who wants to keep Iraq centralized and one who wants to keep control over the oil ressources. I read elsewhere that they were opposed to the revenue sharing oil contracts as well. Add to that the fact that they want a time table for the US troops to get out and I can easily understand why Al Hayat is enthousiast about the new pact. I do also think that this is a very good news for Iraq. Now if only the US would stop meddling in Iraqi affairs and teach moderation to the Kurds... but of course this is not on the agenda of the US : they want the lyon share of the oil contracts and for that plan, it's better if the oil ressources are managed by the different provinces rather than the central government...
It is not expected that the signatories will form a new political bloc to challenge PM Nuri al-Maliki. (And a good thing, too, since you can't imagine them agreeing on anything beyond the narrow points they have assented to for very long).
Since the Dawa is a signatory of the new pact, I don't see why they would challenge PM Al'Maliki who is one of their members; on the contrary, Al'Maliki could benefit from this new pact, as long as he doesn't play the game of the Kurds and the Al'Hakim current.
What I find almost surprising is that Iyad Allawi signed this pact too; I thought that he was a close ally of the Americans and the new pact goes clearly against the US interests.
You are dismissing the "new bloc" on the ground that they won't be able to agree on many things; but I think that the three main points of agreement are all very important for the future of Iraq and a good starting point :
1) A strong central government, against a Kurdish region and a big South Shiite's region.
2) Management of the oil ressources by the central government and a strong stance against revenue sharing oil contracts with foreign companies.
3) A time table for the withdrawal of US troops.
I think that the Iraqi arabs won't mind if the Kurds keep an autonomous region in the North, but they won't let go Kirkuk. So if the US doesn't artificially support the demand of the Kurds for Kirkuk, this new agreement could developpe into a good start.
I don't see how the splintered Sunni and Shia portions of Iraq challenge the only politically stable part of Iraq.
Regarding this statement:
... The Kurds have flooded Kurds into the province, so that they would win a referendum if it were held, but the other Iraqis are dragging their feet, so that the issue has been postponed until this summer and may be postponed further.
It's probably a good idea to postpone this referrendum, but I detect a slight bias in the way the issue is being framed. The overwhelming majority of Kurds who returned to Kirkuk are families who were originally forced out in the 70's and 80's. The Kurdish administration has indeed pressured Kirkuki families to return, usually by preventing Kirkukis from attending high school or college within the KRG, refusing to resettle Kirkuki refugees within the KRG, and generally pushing people back, even though many of them prefer to remain in Sulaimaniyah or Erbil, away from the war. But that's very different from "flooding" Kirkuk with Kurds in order to win the referrendum. Nobody not originally from Kirkuk is being "flooded" into the city.
But the spin is that somehow the Kurds are cheating the system by bringing in supporters from outside the region. The Kurds were a majority in Kirkuk before the Arabization campaigns, and the population currently more closely resembles the proportions of the early 80's than the 90's, when most Kirkukis were living in horrible conditions in collective towns around Erbil and Chamchemal. In fact, thousands of Kirkuki families have not returned, and remain in the KRG despite pressure from the authorities. If all Kirkuki Kurds actually did return, their majority would be even larger.
Now I also agree that the referrendum probably needs to be postponed and certainly agree that there should be a political solution to avert a wider civil war, or a war with Turkey. But consider carefully the groups that are part of this coalition opposed to the referrendum. There is no Kurdish membership in this group, other than a small fringe group of Yezidis who are not representative of the Yezidi community at large, and who are not Kirkukis. What you have here is not an olive branch, but the coalescence of a group of parties interested in controlling Kirkuk, who share a history of opposing Kurdish autonomy. This represents a hardening of positions, which actually increases the risk of conflict.
The idea that Salih al-Mutlaq or the Sadr Tendency will treat the Kurds of Kirkuk (or anywhere else) with anything other than harsh repression is an illusion. Commentary on this site often underemphasizes the fact that both sides have been through this before, that this conflict over Kirkuk is as much about mass displacement in the 70's and 80's, as it is about the Kurds suddenly deciding to grab that which is not theirs. Also of course there is the oil. Arab and Turkish nationalist governments cannot permit Kurdish control over oil resources, and the Kurds understand quite clearly that they will remain a repressed and marginalized minority without exercising this control. These competing narratives are why this is such a hard problem to solve - particularly since those who would deny the Kurds Kirkuk's oil, also would deny them their autonomy or self-determination.
This new coalition represents a false hope for preventing a civil war. The real alternative to a civil war will likely be a territorial division, granting both sides some of the oil fields (and probably require the Kurds, despite their majority status, to relinquish Kirkuk city and resettle to the north and east.)
The truth is, the Kurds should have immediately negotiated with the other ethnic groups in Kirkuk in an effort to defuse suspicion and fear, and they should have given immediate power-sharing guarantees. They did not; instead they tried to maximize their claims, and now they will be forced to give up on Kirkuk as US power in the region wanes.
Without Kirkuk - or because of conflict over Kirkuk - the KRG will be choked off economically and crushed militarily by whatever Arab nationalist central government gains power and is able to purchase helicopters and military equipment. This is unfortunate, given that such a move will perpetuate the same sort of destablized, repressive Iraqi state that has existed for most of the last 40 years, and indeed, since Shaykh Mahmud's revolt in 1921. This future of unending warfare is quite a contrast to the very different prospect offered the people of Slovenia (population 2 million) and Kosovo (1 million), who combined, have only a little more than half the population of the KRG. But unlike the widespread acceptance of self-determination in the Balkans, the right of Arab (and Turkish) nationalist governments to dictate to the Kurds their economy, nationality and identity will not seriously be questioned.
Christiane: Allawi didn't have much choice. His list's members wanted to join, and his control is only nominal nowadays.
Anyway, an interesting response from the right-wing pro-war Daily Telegraph in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/14/wiraq114.xml
The headline is: Iraqi opposition alliance threatens government.
The alliance in fact made it clear that they fully support Maliki on his Nationalists program. I think the neo-cons should try harder.
Barazani, Kurdistan's president, has responded angrily saying that he will get Kirkuk, like he got the Constitution before it.
Othman, an outspoken MP from the Kurdish Alliance came up with a novel idea: the Kurds will ditch the Shiite and form a pact with the Sunnis ... because there are 52 Sunni Islamic states worldwide and only one Shiite, Iran.
Hashimi, the Sunni Vice President, who foolishly signed a memorandum of understanding with the two Kurdish warlords, suddenly declared that his ministers are ready to rejoin Maliki's cabinet (having walked out months ago.)
Ahem. There is an "Islamic Da‘wa Party" (to which poor M. al-Málikí belongs) and also a separate "Da‘wa Party (the Iraq Organization)." The latter is the faction that signed the memorandum of understanding.
His Excellency is a bit of a political klutz, but even so, he is not in fact conducting a coup against his own "government," or trying to wiggle out from under the yoke of the militant GOP, or anything of that sort. (Would that he were!)
A series of focus groups in Iraq found that Iraqis wholeheartedly expect sectarian divisions in their country, which were minimally important before the US divide-and-rule occupation, will heal quickly as soon as US troops leave.
A summary report of the findings was obtained by the [Washington] Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed by the newspaper:
Until the March 2003 US occupation Sunnis and Shiites coexisted peacefully.
Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them.
After the United States leaves Iraq, national reconciliation will happen "naturally."
A sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups ... and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis."
Dividing Iraq into three states would hinder national reconciliation. (Only the Kurds did not reject this option.)
Most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq as beginning with the US occupation.
Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report described as an important finding, implying that "the current strife in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years."
The Washington Post added this note: "Outside of the military, some of the most widespread polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in September for several news media organizations, showed the same widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a U.S. departure will make things better. A State Department poll in September 2006 reported a similar finding."
JHM's sarcasm and being dismissive of the Iraqis abilities is the attitude that turned a "cakewalk" into the biggest disaster in US history.
Sorry old chap, no Oil and you are leaving. GOP or no GOP.
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