ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) politburo claimed on Thursday that Shiite parties in Baghdad are not looking to mend relations with Erbil, but instead work towards the dissolution of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
“There is a systematic policy toward the centralization of Iraqi power, and this is done by the religious Shiite political parties,” senior KDP politburo member Roj Nuri Shaways told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Thursday.
“If this approach succeeds, even if they have good intentions, which we doubt they do, this will lead to a dictatorship even worse than Saddam.”
Having previously served as Iraq’s deputy to then-PM Nouri al-Maliki, Shaways led a KDP delegation to Baghdad earlier in January to mend ties with Erbil, which have become even more fraught amid ongoing budget and oil disputes.
The KRG has also formed a separate a delegation to speak with Baghdad, which visited the capital earlier this week. Some members of the KDP are also part of the Baghdad delegation.
However, Shaways claims Shiite parties are not looking for warmer relations with the KRG.
“Baghdad understood that we are ready for agreement. However, they are not coming on board, because the Shiite parties want all of Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region.”
“We asked Baghdad if they want to still want to cooperate with us or not, and said that if they do, we want to see action. We will not accept things being imposed on us,” he said.
Shaways claimed that “antagonism” toward the Kurdistan Region is part of those parties’ policy.
He said that this approach started after the rule of the American Coalition Provisional Authority post 2003 invasion, during which according to Shaways, the Kurds had more power and more say in matters.
“Back then, we had more experience for we knew what we wanted as Kurds, while they [Iraqis] were divided among different ideas.”
“After the Shiites got a taste of power, their ambitions increased and they started thinking why would they settle for federalism when they could rule all of Iraq,” he added. “This reached the peak when American troops were withdrawn from Iraq upon an American deal with Maliki, and this changed the balance of power.”
The Kurdish position then weakened, especially that of the KDP, which, according to the party official, is when they decided to hold the independence referendum in 2017.
“The referendum will always be a card we can use in the right circumstance, and it is one of the biggest achievements Kurds have had,” he said.
In regards to oil, Shaways claimed that it is the Kurdistan Region’s constitutional right to get their share of oil revenues as part of the budget, saying their problem is not with “how the oil is pumped out,” but rather with “how the oil revenue is distributed.”
Control of oil revenues has long been a thorny issue between Erbil and Baghdad. The KRG has operated an independent oil and gas sector since 2006 and later began exporting its oil to the international market via a pipeline through Turkey in 2013.
Years of tensions over the independent oil sales came to a head in 2014 when then-PM Maliki suspended the Kurdistan Region’s share of the federal budget – leaving hundreds of thousands of public sector employees with unpaid salaries.
That same year, the Peshmerga took control of security in the disputed territory of Kirkuk, allowing the KRG to also seize control of the province’s bountiful oilfields.
When Iraqi forces retook the area in October 2017, the KRG lost around half of its oil revenues, compelling the government to suspend exports via Turkey for several months.
The federal budget share dispute worsened in December 2019, when Baghdad agreed to send Erbil a 12.67 percent share of the federal budget in exchange for 250,000 barrels of oil per day, but neither side fully abided by the agreement.
Baghdad failed to pass a budget in 2020 because of political turmoil, record low oil prices, and the coronavirus pandemic. In November, Iraqi lawmakers passed the Fiscal Deficit Coverage Bill approving loans to cover civil servant salaries for the last two months of the year.
The bill passed with a majority vote, despite a walkout staged by Kurdish MPs angered that Erbil is obliged to hand over an unspecified amount of oil in exchange for funds – a clause they said was not in the original bill.
Iraq’s Council of Ministers on December 21 approved the 2021 budget bill. Parliament has met twice to discuss the bill.
On December 22, Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani announced Erbil and Baghdad had reached a deal on Iraq’s Federal Budget Bill for 2021 after months of disagreements. As a result of budget disputes and low oil prices, the Region’s civil servants went unpaid for most of 2020 – prompting deadly protests across the Kurdistan Region.
The deal “keeps the common interest of all Iraqi people, including the people of Kurdistan Region,” Talabani said at the time.
Deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament Basheer Haddad told Rudaw’s Mustafa Goran on Wednesday that the delegation will return to Baghdad next week “to finalize their talks with the parliament and reach a deal that benefits both sides.”
In regards to Iraq’s elections, postponed to October, Shaways claims that parties in power have postponed the elections because they want to hold on to power.
“Those in power want to stay that’s why, they don’t want elections.”
“For us, it’s not the election that matters, it’s the elections law that does. Until the law goes back to being fair, the result for us will always be the same.”
Early elections were one of the key demands of protests that began in October 2019 across central and southern Iraq. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who took office in May last year, asked the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in November to take “all necessary measures” to ensure the elections will be held as scheduled, and “continuously work to guarantee a successful election.”
The IHEC said in August it would be ready to hold early elections in June provided the government and parliament meet certain demands, including passing a new electoral law and allocating a budget for the vote.
Iraqi President Barham Salih in November officially signed the electoral reforms into law, dividing provinces into smaller voting constituencies for the 2021 election.
Elections are scheduled for October 10, moved from June 6 by the Council of Ministers on January 19.
The decision was made as a result of low registration numbers, the IHEC said.
