ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds of angry vigilantes from pro-Iran parties and militia groups set the main building of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the Iraqi capital on fire in the early hours of Monday after a former KDP parliamentary candidate made remarks criticizing the top Shiite authority in the country.
Naif Jardo Ahmed al-Gargari, who tweets under the name Nayif Kurdistani, and ran for the Iraqi parliament as a KDP candidate during the controversial 2018 elections, took to Twitter on Sunday criticizing the highest Shiite authority in Iraq, known as marja in Arabic.
“I am with an Arabic marja from the prophet’s lineage…. and not with an Indian, Persian, or Afghan marja who are not of the lineage but wear black turbans,” Kurdistani wrote, referring to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose birthplace is Mashhad in Iran.
Sistani wields moral authority and is widely revered in the country.
Shortly after the tweet was published, pro-Iranian Telegram channels provoked people to take the law into their own hands, as hundreds of their supporters responded by storming Baghdad’s Karrada district where the KDP’s office is located.
With the flags of Iran-backed militias raised high in the Iraqi capital, the KDP’s office was vandalized and set ablaze at around 1:00 am.
The attack on the main Kurdish party’s office comes at a tense time as Iraq is seeing political turmoil with parties failing to form a government at least six months after millions of Iraqis voted in an early election to end the deeply rooted endemic corruption and to put an end to the failure of successive governments in providing basic services to the Iraqi people.
KDP leader Masoud Barzani on Monday condemned Kurdistani’s remark and the attack on the party’s office.
Barzani said the attack was launched by a bunch of “saboteur and defeated” people and that it is a proof of “anarchy, the lack of stability and security” in Iraq.
The KDP immediately condemned Kurdistani’s tweet, stating that the former candidate “has no relationship or affiliation” with the party while expressing its respect to all religious authorities.
The former KDP candidate was later arrested upon the order of Kurdistan Region’s Interior Minister Reber Ahmed, who is also the party’s main candidate for the Iraqi presidency.
Before his arrest, Kurdistani apologized to the Shiite marja as he claimed that his Twitter account was hacked and that he was not responsible for the published tweets.
However, Kurdistani’s remarks had already damaged KDP’s office and Ahmed’s shot at the Iraqi presidency post.
The muqawama thuggish groups are smashing and burning the KDP office in Baghdad right now. pic.twitter.com/9xDummwhoX
— Hamdi Malik, Ph.D. (@HamdiAMalik) March 27, 2022
Pro-Iran parties in Iraq have had a rocky relationship with the KDP for years.
In 2020, criticism from senior politburo member Hoshyar Zebari against the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) led hundreds of the force’s supporters to attack KDP's office.
Two years later, the KDP is standing against the Iran-backed parties as it has allied with the Sadrist bloc and the Sunni Sovereignty alliance to form a new government. The tripartite alliance, however, still needs 18 MPs to meet the quorum to elect a president.
The alliance is preaching for a national majority government, under the direction of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose party won the most seats in the elections. The alliance’s agenda has been slammed by pro-Iran Shiite parties, who for years have enjoyed being part of a consensus government, and the tripartite alliance, backed by just under two-thirds of the parliament, seems to form an obstacle in front of their inclusion in the next Iraqi cabinet.
The situation escalated even further after the parliament failed to elect a new president for the second time on Saturday as the Iran-backed Coordination Framework and several other parties close to Tehran boycotted the session, preventing the legal quorum from being met.
Following the failure to elect a president, Sadr reiterated his stance against a consensus government by saying that Iraq will not return to "al-Attar's mixture", a phrase referring to the failure of the government based on political consensus, adding that their MPs “are not terrified by threats or tempted by temptation.”
Iraq is scheduled to yet again attempt electing a president on Wednesday, but a quorum is unlikely to be met unless the tripartite alliance and the Coordination Framework reach a joint agreement.
Updated at 12:27 pm
