Among the many issues that continue to dog Iraqi politics, the question of federalism has perhaps been the most persistent. Even before Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in 2003, Iraq’s then opposition had laid out the broad contours of decentralized government. Largely at the behest of the two main Kurdish parties, federalism was included as a core tenet of the opposition vision for a new Iraq, beginning with the Salahudin conference in 1992. Indeed, as other Iraqi opposition groups understood it, proposing a federal structure for any post-war order was an essential condition for ensuring that the Kurds – who now enjoyed virtual autonomy as a result of post-Gulf War security and financial arrangements – remained committed to the territorial integrity of the country.
However, the precise terms of power-sharing and the balance of power between the central and regional governments – and more specifically, between Arab and Kurdish areas of Iraq – were never fully delineated or agreed prior to 2003. That Kurdish autonomy would be preserved was generally accepted. But there were clear differences of opinion within the Iraqi opposition at the time over the form that federalism would take. Proposals ranged from a simple two-way Kurdish–Arab division to the creation of several federal units reflecting either ethno-sectarian divisions or geographic areas. More importantly still, the precise powers that the proposed federal government would enjoy relative to regional ones, and what role Baghdad – the acknowledged federal capital – would play, were never clarified.
This ambiguity continued into the immediate period after Saddam Hussein was ousted in March 2003. Federalism and decentralization were articles of faith for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority that governed Iraq in the post-war period, and for the most powerful Iraqi parties that were elevated to governing roles. All of them foresaw long-term threats from restoring a strong central government. However, this common purpose masked a continued lack of broad agreement, let alone any consensus, between these groups over the purpose and design of federalism – a situation that set the contours for the dispute over the relative powers of the federal government and the KRG that continues to this day.
The Kurds sought a formula that linked the Kurdistan region with other parts of Iraq while giving up as little of their hard-won autonomy as possible.
The Kurds, despite the significant internal divisions between their two main factions (the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)), presented a powerful and unified front. For them, federalism was not about preserving the cohesion of the Iraqi state, which they considered anachronistic and, at worst, a failed relic of a bygone age of empires. They saw federalism as preserving the autonomy and gains of almost a decade and a half of self-rule since autonomy was seized after the 1991 Gulf War, and as creating the basis for eventually achieving the long-cherished goal of independence when political circumstances permitted. From a Kurdish perspective, they were making significant concessions to be part of a unified state that they would rather not belong to, but of which they had to remain part. That necessity was to some degree due to the absence of any immediate external support for Kurdistan’s independence (especially from the US), and to the lack of finances to support independence as meaningful autonomous revenue streams were not available. Federalism for the Kurds was a means to disentangle themselves from Baghdad’s control, and to ensure that an Arab majority could never again impose its direct rule on Kurdish areas. As one very senior Kurdish leader put it, ‘Iraq is an 80-year failed experiment that should not be repeated’. Consequently, the Kurds sought a formula that linked the Kurdistan region with other parts of Iraq while giving up as little of their hard-won autonomy as possible.
By contrast, the Arab factions and parties were much more divided on the form of (and, in some cases the need for) federalism once Saddam Hussein was removed and the opposition was installed in power. The Islamist Shia factions that were most influential in the opposition, and which enjoyed the most influence on the US in the early days of the new state saw federalism as a way to acknowledge Kurdish exceptionalism while preserving a unified state (in which Islamist Shia parties would be ascendant in non-Kurdish areas). The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI – later named the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, ISCI) was the only party that called for the establishment of an ethnic Shia region modelled on the Kurdistan region, which would allow the interests of the Shia umma (community), as one senior leader described it privately, to be protected. Other factions were more ambiguous in their views. The idea of a non-ethno-sectarian, multi-regional structure was briefly revived by a small number of groups. Yet for most, including the Shia clerical establishment in Najaf, federalism – at least the version proposed by the Kurds and SCIRI – was regarded as extreme and a potential threat to Iraq’s territorial integrity. While the need for special arrangements for the Kurdish region was accepted, most factions outside the Kurdish–SCIRI nexus supported the type of bi-regional federal system envisaged in the 2002 Declaration of the Shia of Iraq. While this plan supported administrative decentralization throughout the country, it promoted a unitary state in which the government in Baghdad retained authority to govern non-Kurdish provinces that were at least equal in scope to the Kurds’ authority over the territory that they controlled. This view aligned more closely with Sunni and nationalist parties, which advocated for a centralized state that granted the Kurds autonomy along the lines of the never-implemented 1970 agreement. It was also closer to the opinions of many indigenous Iraqis, who were not part of the former opposition, and therefore, for the most part, not part of the debate.
