ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The process of negotiation around the formation of Iraq’s next government has been crippled by foreign interference from regional and international players, according to former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who claimed on Wednesday that the country’s parties would have reached an agreement by now if it were not for external interference.
Since the country went to the polls on October 10, Iraq’s political parties and alliances have been at loggerheads over the election of the country’s presidency, which is reserved for Kurds, and the premiership, which constitutional convention dictates is reserved for Shiites. In January, during the first sitting of the new parliament, Mohammed al-Halbousi was re-elected for a second term as the parliament speaker; a position reserved for Sunnis.
Almost all political players in the Iraqi scene have been around since the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, and have haggled with one another on numerous occasions. Their failure to reach an understanding over how to share power has made them vulnerable to even greater interference from Iran, Turkey and the Gulf States, as well as the United States.
The prime minister from 2006 to 2014 and current leader of the State of Law Coalition, the largest party within the Coordination Framework consisting of pro-Iran groups, has admitted that this external interference has always existed but that it is at its peak. “There has been clear political interference in all the processes [since 2003],” Maliki told his party’s TV station on Wednesday evening. “We have not seen this level of interference in the history of the political process.”
The Shiite groups and Kurdish parties have found it difficult to find a middle ground and are divided between the two main alliances: the Save the Homeland Alliance which consists of the Sadrist bloc, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Sunni parties, versus the Coordination Framework of Maliki's State of Law Coalition and other pro-Iran groups, alongside the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Maliki said in the interview that unless there is an agreement between the KDP and the PUK over a presidential candidate, the deadlock would continue and, with it, the danger of further derailing the political process. The PUK insists that their choice - current President Barham Salih - be re-elected while the KDP opposes the candidacy of Salih and wants to push its candidate, the current interior minister Rebar Ahmed, to occupy the ceremonial post.
The KDP and its allies hope that on Saturday they will be able to push their Ahmed through and see him elected as the next president with the presence of at least 220 parliamentarians out of the 329 needed to reach the legal quorum.
Since 2003, Iran, Turkey and the Gulf countries as well as the United States have had their say in the formation of Iraq’s governments and the election of its leaders. Maliki said that during his second term as prime minister in 2010, the then US Vice President Joe Biden suggested to him that Jalal Talabani should not be re-elected president. “I refused and told him that Mam Jalal, may God bless his soul, will not accept,” Maliki claimed in the interview.
The comments from Maliki came two days after Turkey once again bombed the northern Duhok province reportedly targeting Kurdish militants, and less than two weeks after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Erbil, allegedly targeting an Israeli base. In fact, on Wednesday night the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued further threats that the forces under his command would target the Kurdistan Region once more in retaliation for the killing of members of its force. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami suggested that the March 13 missile attack on Erbil was in retaliation for the killing of two IRGC commanders in Syria by Israelis earlier in the month. This contradicts Iranian statements that the targeting of Erbil was to strike a Israeli base.
“Be careful, we don’t just hold [a] funeral for our martyrs but we avenge them immediately and this message is real and serious,” Salami warned. “If you repeat it again, you will experience the missile attack again.”
Maliki added in the interview that the missile attack on Erbil was not related to the lingering political process in Baghdad, and instead claimed that it was a fight between Iran and Israel.
Mashaan al-Juboori, however, a notable member of the Save the Homeland Alliance said that the Sunni’s alliance with the Sadrists and the KDP would not be intimidated by the language of missiles from Iran.
“We as the Save the Homeland Alliance are sticking to our project that we have carried out in a peaceful way and as per the constitution… the topic of the presidency for the KDP’s candidate is not a matter of discussion,” Juboori told Iraq state media on Monday.
“Iran is an important neighboring country, it has the largest borders with Iraq, and has deep relations with the KDP, the PUK, the Shiite Islamic powers, we respect that and take it into consideration, but we will not give in to the language of rockets, if we were to give in, Halbousi would not have become the parliamentary speaker,” Juboori said.
While Maliki and other parties within the Coordination Framework as well as the PUK are close to Iran, the Sunni parties are close with the Gulf countries and Turkey. The KDP has cordial relations with Turkey, Gulf countries and, to a lesser extent, with Iran.
Halbousi and the leader of Azm Alliance Khamis al-Khanjar - two of the most notable Sunni politicians - visited Istanbul to meet with the Turkish president and the head of Turkey national intelligence in late February.
“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a closed-door meeting with the two Iraqi officials at the Vahdettin Mansion, according to the Presidency of Turkey,” Anadolu Agency reported on February 26. “Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, also attended the meeting.”
Both Iran and Turkey have used drones, missiles and cross-border operations to target militants of several groups that are based in the Kurdistan Region and fight the two states. While the two countries have serious disagreements, they view the Kurdistan Region through the prism of security and have often trampled on Iraqi sovereignty by carrying out attack after attack.
Maliki said in the interview that the neighboring countries often say that Iraq is their security backyard and thus allow themselves to interfere in the country. “Turkey says that Iraq is a security backyard and a matter of our national security, Arabs and the Gulf [countries] say the same, Iran also says that Iraq is our security backyard and a matter of our national security,” Maliki said. “And under the pretext of national security, it is as if this is a permission to interfere in Iraqi affairs.”
Under the administration of Biden, the US military has carried out two airstrikes against facilities of Iran-backed militias, the latest of which was in June 2021. The airstrikes have targeted locations of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq and Syria, killing dozens of PMF militia. The US Department of Defense called the strikes an “unambiguous deterrent message,“ in response to a series of ongoing attacks against US personnel and facilities in Iraq.
Enraged by the airstrikes, the PMF groups vowed revenge against “the American occupier” through their Telegram channels, threatening to increase their attacks on US forces in the country.
It is unclear as to whether the legal quorum will be met on Saturday’s session to elect Iraq’s president, with the Coordination Framework's threats of boycotting the session continuing to cast a shadow of uncertainty over its success.
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