Kurdistan Regional Government - Tag Search

This is a guest post from Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an analyst for the Jamestown Foundation. His main expertise is the situation of Kurds in the Middle-East. Wilgenburg is also an editor of the Kurdish newspaper Rudaw, based in Erbil.

It seems increasingly certain that Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya alliance will be squeezed out of the next Iraqi government. Wilgenburg explains one of the main reasons Iraqiyya is sidelined: tensions between the Kurdish parties and some of Allawi's coalition partners.

The Kurds are often branded as potential kingmakers in Iraq, and have to decide which list they will support: the largely Sunni-supported Iraqi National Movement (Iraqiyya) of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, or the State of Law coalition headed by Shi'ite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Although the Kurds have good relations with Allawi, they have problems with some partners of the Iraqiyya list in Mosul, which contest Kurdish claims to disputed regions. Allawi's list seems to be the biggest challenge to Kurdish territorial claims in Mosul and Kirkuk. Therefore it is more likely that they will support a Shiite alliance.

The former Kurdish PM Nechirvan Barzani outlined the Kurdish position towards Iraqiyya pretty clear. "Unfortunately, the Iraqiyya list involves figures who have made their political mission against Kurdish people, and refuse to acknowledge gained Kurdish achievements."

The murder last week of Kurdish journalist and student Zardasht Osman continues to trouble the water in ostensibly stable and secure Kurdistan. On Tuesday, hundreds of university students marched through Erbil, the capital of that semi-autonomous northern region, and fought with security forces at the parliamentary building there, according to the New York Times.

The Iraqi government has blacklisted the Chinese state oil company, Sinopec, because it refuses to relinquish contracts it signed with the Kurdish regional government. The central government doesn't consider those contracts valid.

"Sinopec is blacklisted unless it changes its position and withdraws from these contracts," Abdul al Ameedi, the deputy head of the Iraqi oil ministry's petroleum contracts and licensing directorate, told Dow Jones. "We have cancelled Sinopec's pre-qualification."

The Iraqi government can't form a state oil company until it passes an oil law. And it can't pass an oil law until it reaches an agreement with the Kurds, who don't want to surrender too much control over their oil resources.

Parliament has been arguing over this law for years and hasn't made any progress. That doesn't seem likely to change in the near future.

Kurdish election results are finally in, and there's little surprise about the winner: Masoud Barzani won another term as president with 68.8 percent of the vote; the ruling coalition won a majority in parliamentary elections, with 56.6 percent of the vote.

It is notable, though, that the Change List -- a new opposition movement -- pulled in an impressive 27 percent of the parliamentary vote, despite their claims of "irregularities" at the polls.

Change List probably didn't win enough seats to impact Kurdish government in the near future; the ruling coalition is still firmly in charge. But the electoral results demonstrated growing dissatisfaction with a corrupt, entrenched ruling party -- and the Change List's 27 percent support could grow in years to come.

Results from Iraq's Kurdish elections were supposed to come out tonight. But Faraj al-Haidari, the head of the Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq, now says the results won't be released until tomorrow or Wednesday, insha'allah.

Anbar province continues to worry me. Two attacks today, one a targeted assassination that killed a police chief in Ramadi, the other a suicide bombing at a funeral in Khaldiya, a town between Fallujah and Ramadi. The attacks killed 4 people and wounded 10.

There were also several other attacks today, most of them in northern Iraq; details are here.

And there are sketchy reports of an attack on the offices of the Kurdistan Islamic Union. Final results from this weekend's Kurdish elections should be announced within hours.

A third party in Iraqi Kurdistan is giving the powers-that-be a run for their money in recent elections, according to early tallies.

An Islamist leader and his two sons were arrested today in Pakistan, part of a larger anti-Taliban push by the government.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- and a host of other Obama Administration heavy hitters -- will begin arriving in Israel on Monday.

Click through to read more.

Out of town for the next 36 hours, so weekend blogging will be slow on my end.

Iraqi Kurds voted today in regional elections that are expected to keep president Masoud Barzani in power. Polls are scheduled to close in a few hours; the ballots will then be flown to Baghdad and counted over the next several days. Barzani and other candidates stepped up their nationalistic rhetoric in the days before the election, bolstering the Kurdish claim on disputed territories like Kirkuk.

Taliban fighters attacked government buildings in the city of Khost, killing an unknown number of Afghans. A spokesman for the defense ministry said the attackers included at least three suicide bombers; Afghan troops have surrounded the buildings.

Meghan O'Sullivan, a former senior adviser on Iraq in the Bush administration, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post. O'Sullivan's basic argument is that Iraq is dealing with "issues-based" problems, not sectarian conflict.

But the reality is that Iraq's most difficult problems are primarily about substantive issues. Iraqis and their leaders are divided on fundamental questions about the nature of the state -- specifically, whether the locus of power should be in Baghdad or in the provinces. Should Iraq be a more traditional Arab state, where power is centralized in the capital? Or should the regions and the provinces -- i.e., the KRG -- have substantial authorities and autonomy?

This is pretty muddled thinking -- probably what I should expect from one of Bush's Iraq advisers, right?

The New York Times reports that the Kurds in Iraq have approved a constitution (two weeks ago) that lays claim to the disputed and oil-rich Al-Ta'mim province (home to Kirkuk). This basically stomps right through quiet negotiations that had apparently started recently between Kurdish and Iraqi lawmakers, organized by the United Nations and United States.