Will the KRG squander a chance at real reform?
With 1.4 million people on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s payroll, the KRG had a problem long before arguments with Baghdad broke out or the Islamic State appeared on the scene. Three out of every four working adults in Iraqi Kurdistan get their salary from the state. At least they used to – the current economic crisis in the region has left most salaries unpaid for several months. The light at the end of the economic tunnel has yet to appear. The KRG continues to rack up debts that threaten to compromise its long-term future.
Normally such a crisis should present an opportunity to seriously restructure a defunct system. While the statements coming from Kurdistan’s leadership promise economic reforms to deal with the problem, cutting some salaries and reducing the perks of high officials seems akin to brandishing an umbrella in the face of a hurricane. Removing subsidies on petrol and actually charging people for electricity are steps in the right direction as well, of course, but these hardly constitute the bold action necessary to deal with the scale of the problem.
In the end, the patron-client system itself has to be attacked and dismantled. The political parties’ stranglehold on the economy needs to be loosened once and for all. Strict auditing systems and merit-based hiring and firing need to be put in place. Ghost employees and real employees that do little more than drink tea and chat need to be purged from the civil service. The civil service needs to be trimmed to at least half its current size, so that the remaining bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, police and the Peshmerga get the salaries they deserve on time. The people of the region also need to stop viewing the state as the only likely source of livelihoods.
Most of all, the lack of economic transparency and legal accountability that still bedevils the KRG needs to be addressed. Average people in the region understandably suspect corruption when they lack the means to see how the government spends the budget, or even what its budget really is. Business owners continue to fear that without government connections or “cuts” for political elites, their hard-earned assets face seizure at a moment’s notice.
Most people I speak with regularly tell me all these things, and the observations I make here hardly constitute some kind of epiphany. Yet still the system seems virtually impossible to change, even in the face of crisis. The Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Gorran and others all say something must be done, yet they all still seem unwilling to really do what must be done. Their political support depends a lot on the very patron-client systems that must be dismantled, and they fear the unknown ramifications of breaking a now unsustainable social contract.
We know that the weakest political regimes, such as occupation governments, depend mostly on force to maintain their population’s obedience. States that buy their population’s loyalty do much better than this, so long as they have the money to continue the arrangement -- such as in the Arab Gulf. The real basis of enduring political stability and strength comes from governing legitimacy, however, wherein the people see their elites and institutions as reasonably fair, competent and representative of their aspirations. Such legitimacy does not coexist well with corruption, wasta and the economic inefficiencies these two necessarily create, however.
While KRG leaders made some admirable advances towards building real legitimacy over the last ten years – by building roads, providing electricity, defending the region from myriad threats and allowing people a measure of freedom – they also undermined it by squandering the oil wealth of the boom years, giving sweet real estate deals to their friends and family, and failing to build a society that the average person could view as reasonably fair and just. If they fail to use the present crisis to seriously try again at building a fair and just society, the threat of instability and a failed state looms.
If Kurdistan fails, the event will come with more than a little irony. It will have happened not at the hands of Saddam, the Islamic State, Turkey or some other foreign oppressor, but rather due to the narrow self-serving perspectives of the Kurds’ own political elites and their loyal followers.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Normally such a crisis should present an opportunity to seriously restructure a defunct system. While the statements coming from Kurdistan’s leadership promise economic reforms to deal with the problem, cutting some salaries and reducing the perks of high officials seems akin to brandishing an umbrella in the face of a hurricane. Removing subsidies on petrol and actually charging people for electricity are steps in the right direction as well, of course, but these hardly constitute the bold action necessary to deal with the scale of the problem.
In the end, the patron-client system itself has to be attacked and dismantled. The political parties’ stranglehold on the economy needs to be loosened once and for all. Strict auditing systems and merit-based hiring and firing need to be put in place. Ghost employees and real employees that do little more than drink tea and chat need to be purged from the civil service. The civil service needs to be trimmed to at least half its current size, so that the remaining bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, police and the Peshmerga get the salaries they deserve on time. The people of the region also need to stop viewing the state as the only likely source of livelihoods.
Most of all, the lack of economic transparency and legal accountability that still bedevils the KRG needs to be addressed. Average people in the region understandably suspect corruption when they lack the means to see how the government spends the budget, or even what its budget really is. Business owners continue to fear that without government connections or “cuts” for political elites, their hard-earned assets face seizure at a moment’s notice.
Most people I speak with regularly tell me all these things, and the observations I make here hardly constitute some kind of epiphany. Yet still the system seems virtually impossible to change, even in the face of crisis. The Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Gorran and others all say something must be done, yet they all still seem unwilling to really do what must be done. Their political support depends a lot on the very patron-client systems that must be dismantled, and they fear the unknown ramifications of breaking a now unsustainable social contract.
We know that the weakest political regimes, such as occupation governments, depend mostly on force to maintain their population’s obedience. States that buy their population’s loyalty do much better than this, so long as they have the money to continue the arrangement -- such as in the Arab Gulf. The real basis of enduring political stability and strength comes from governing legitimacy, however, wherein the people see their elites and institutions as reasonably fair, competent and representative of their aspirations. Such legitimacy does not coexist well with corruption, wasta and the economic inefficiencies these two necessarily create, however.
While KRG leaders made some admirable advances towards building real legitimacy over the last ten years – by building roads, providing electricity, defending the region from myriad threats and allowing people a measure of freedom – they also undermined it by squandering the oil wealth of the boom years, giving sweet real estate deals to their friends and family, and failing to build a society that the average person could view as reasonably fair and just. If they fail to use the present crisis to seriously try again at building a fair and just society, the threat of instability and a failed state looms.
If Kurdistan fails, the event will come with more than a little irony. It will have happened not at the hands of Saddam, the Islamic State, Turkey or some other foreign oppressor, but rather due to the narrow self-serving perspectives of the Kurds’ own political elites and their loyal followers.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.