15 September 2006
The debate over Iraqi devolution, which many regard as synonymous with carving the country up into autonomous mini states, has started. The principle was enshrined in the Iraqi constitution adopted last year. But as the stuttering launch of the parliamentary debate underlines, it’s not just the local drivers of the proposal — mainly Shiite groupings and, to a lesser extent, Kurds — whose interests are involved, regional powers have much at stake too.
The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which accounts for almost half the legislature, fired the first shot last week when it put forward a draft bill on the mechanisms to establish federal regions and pushed through a vote to list it on the parliamentary agenda. But the debate never took place, after the speaker of parliament said he knew nothing about the bill. A second attempt was made on Sep. 10, but was this time thwarted by an unusual alliance of Sunni parties and lawmakers from firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s group. A third session is now scheduled for Sep. 19.
As it stands, the constitution stipulates that one or more governorates has the right to form a region based on a request from a certain number of parliamentarians, subject to approval by referendum. Sunnis fear becoming marginalized if Shiites succeed in establishing an autonomous region in the oil-rich south with their own government, parliament and security forces, just as Kurds have done in the north. And under a US-brokered deal last year, Sunnis were given the right to propose amendments to the constitution, provided this was done within four months of the assembly’s swearing-in. That deadline has passed, but Sunnis are still trying to form a committee to draw up proposals. Advocates of the regional law are meanwhile racing to meet another deadline: the constitution stipulates that the assembly should enact legislation defining procedures to form autonomous regions within six months of its first postelection session, or Oct. 22. All that’s required for enactment is a simple majority.
It’s not just Iraq’s Sunnis who are concerned: sources in Baghdad say pressure is mounting from outside to delay, if not derail, the devolution process. New political alliances are being formed on the basis of preventing the establishment of a strong pro-Iranian state in southern Iraq and a Kurdish state in the north.
Proposals for a full federal system are being championed by Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the powerful Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. “Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq. We support it strongly because it will keep dictatorship from happening again,” al-Hakim told worshippers at last week’s Friday prayers meeting. He has called for the creation of a Shiite “super-region” of nine provinces in the oil-rich area stretching from south of Baghdad to the Mideast Gulf. Protected by its eastern neighbor, such a Shiite state would be viewed as a menace by everyone south — notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain — with a restless Shiite minority or majority population of its own. Concerns ratcheted up another notch recently, when al-Hakim insisted on calling the waterway the Persian Gulf — the old name used only by Iran that is loathed by Arab Gulf states.
If adopted, the federalism law would not only legitimize the autonomous regional government of Kurdistan but pave the way for the first independent, and certainly oil-rich, Kurdish state in modern history.
It’s an outcome feared by countries with Kurdish minorities, especially Turkey. Kurdish President Massoud Barzani’s decision earlier this month to fly the Kurdish, not Iraqi, flag on public buildings across Kurdish-controlled territory not only provoked a war of words between Erbil and Baghdad, it created a crisis in Ankara. Turkey fears the autonomy allowed Iraqi Kurds will stoke similar aspirations among its own Kurds, led by the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). After a lull over the past few years, PKK attacks have increased recently while Ankara is pursuing a rapprochement with its Arab neighbors especially after the recent carnage in Lebanon.
Barzani responded by brandishing the threat of secession, warning that “if at any moment we, the Kurdish people and parliament, consider that it is in our interests to declare independence, we will do so and we will fear no one.”
Despite US declarations, relayed by Iraqi Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, that it does not support unilateral steps by regions or parties, the Kurds are in reality way ahead of other Iraqi groups in setting up their own mini state. The Kurdish parliament is set to approve this month a hydrocarbon law that regulates — and legitimizes — foreign investment in the region’s oil and gas resources according to its own production sharing formula. It also adopts its own definitions of revenue sharing and oil revenue collection. It may be no coincidence that the head of the government committee drawing up Iraq’s federal hydrocarbon law is none other than Barham Saleh, Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister and the former premier of Erbil.
By Ruba Husari, Dubai
(Published in Energy Compass Sept.15, 2006)