(Baghdad) “Political revenge” or takeover? In Iraq, the federal power in Baghdad is taking advantage of the relative stability of the country to review its relationships and its control over autonomous Kurdistan, with experts and political leaders taking a turn of the screw.
The standoff is also playing out in the courts, with several verdicts promulgated in Baghdad and decried by Erbil, capital of an autonomous Kurdistan since 1991 in northern Iraq, and traditionally supported by the West.
Control of oil, payment of civil servants’ salaries, intervention in regional legislative elections: for decades, the same issues have more or less poisoned relations between the federal power and Kurdistan.
This time, Baghdad has the upper hand. The pressure is directly aimed at the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), at the helm in Erbil, engaged in an internal struggle with the other historic Kurdish formation, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
“I must warn you of plots aimed at dismantling Kurdistan through various tactics,” accused the region’s Prime Minister, Masrour Barzani, of the PDK, at the end of March.
For two decades, while Baghdad struggled with repeated conflicts, Kurdistan presented itself as an economically prosperous oasis of stability.
But in a country with immense oil wealth, in Baghdad or Erbil, observers denounce endemic corruption, failing public policies and repeated crises, within political elites that have remained almost unchanged for 20 years.
“Mistakes” in Kurdistan
Upon his arrival, the current Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Chia al-Soudani, supported by pro-Iran parties, had re-established peaceful relations with Kurdish politicians. But Baghdad and Erbil have always had checkered relations.
“Successive governments (in Baghdad) have long been consumed by crises and difficult contexts,” an influential political leader told AFP, referring to the years of war and fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group. and anti-power demonstrations.
“This means that they have never looked into the errors made by Kurdistan,” he explains, speaking anonymously.
“Whether it is for oil agreements, oil exports, the financial system of the region, many illegal decisions have been taken. It’s time to fix it,” he believes.
At the end of February, the Federal Supreme Court, the highest judicial body, ordered Baghdad to pay their salaries directly to Kurdistan civil servants, without going through the local authorities.
Likewise, the Iraqi justice system removed 11 seats reserved for minorities in the regional Parliament. According to observers, these positions allowed the PDK to secure its parliamentary majority against its adversaries.
Two cases initiated by… lawyers from Souleimaniyeh, a Kurdish bastion city of the PUK.
Rejecting these verdicts, the PDK announced its boycott of the local legislative elections planned in Kurdistan in June, raising fears of a further postponement of the vote.
Finally, since an international arbitration won by Baghdad a year ago, oil exports formerly carried out unilaterally by Erbil – without Baghdad’s consent – have been stopped.
Erbil ended up agreeing to deliver its oil to Baghdad in exchange for a percentage of the federal budget. But disputes continue to hamper the recovery of exports.
On Saturday, the President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, was received in Baghdad by Prime Minister Soudani. The two men discussed “their common vision on national issues and affairs”, soberly indicates a press release from Mr. Soudani.
Authoritarianism?
“There is a desire among certain Shiite political actors to constitutionally undermine Kurdistan,” believes political scientist Ihsan al-Chammari, specifying that the multiplication of complaints “weakens the political weight of the region and the PDK”.
If in the past “many matters were passed over in silence in return for agreements” negotiated between parties to “form a government” for example, now these files “take place as part of political revenge”, he adds.
Despite the “political character” of the judicial decisions, the analyst considers that they are “constitutional”.
Sabah Sobhi, PDK parliamentarian, accuses certain political forces of wanting to transform “federalism and administrative decentralization” in Iraq into a “centralized and authoritarian” system.
He also castigates the “disagreements within the Kurdish house” – in allusion to the PUK.
In March, Bafel Talabani, president of the PUK, denounced “the defamatory attacks against the Federal Supreme Court and the accusations targeting this independent and professional court”.