Two years after Iraq’s Kurdistan Region went to the polls to elect a new government, the KDP and the PUK – the region’s two largest parties – have still failed to reach an agreement to form the new government. A caretaker government, originally elected in September 2018, remains in charge.
This situation is taking the Kurdistan Region down a path of profound and possibly permanent division. Its longstanding partners in Europe and the US have grown frustrated with its latent dysfunction and are no longer willing to play referee. This leaves it more vulnerable to interference from regional powers who are better placed to adapt and can play a longer game.
The main impediment to moving forward is not petty disagreements between the two parties over ministerial positions, as is sometimes claimed. Instead, the impasse stems from the collapse of the 2006 Strategic Agreement between the KDP and the PUK. The parties no longer share the same basic vision for how the Kurdistan Region should operate. The formal and informal frameworks that bound the two parties together for the last two decades are no longer functioning.
Instead, the Kurdistan Region has effectively divided into two geographic areas that are controlled by one party or the other. The KDP is in charge in Erbil and Duhok governorates. The PUK is dominant in Sulaymaniyah and Halabja.
The two zones are not fully separate, as they were during the era of divided administrations between 1998 and 2005. But it is a cumbersome arrangement. State institutions and the security forces look to unelected party leaders for guidance, not Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ministries. Reports indicate that rents are extracted from truckers and traders at checkpoints on the border between KDP and PUK areas.
Until now, the parties have maintained that the Kurdistan Region remains a cohesive entity despite the partisan divide. On 6 October, KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called on the parties to reactivate Kurdistan’s Parliament, which has not had a substantive meeting in more than four years saying: ‘I don’t know what they are afraid of’.
Below the surface, however, bigger changes may be afoot.
Political leaders from the PUK have a more radical proposal: to devolve administrative and fiscal authority to governorates, mayors, and district directors. Some powers would be retained by the KRG and the Kurdistan Parliament. But most important decisions over everyday matters would be shifted to lower levels of governance. Proponents of the plan cite Switzerland’s cantons and the UAE’s emirates as inspiration. Better to get out of each other’s way, the argument goes, and disaggregate executive authority.
Given the outsized power wielded – exclusively and separately – by the two parties at the governorate and local levels, this change would formalize partisan control over governance within the Kurdistan Region’s two zones, representing the biggest constitutional change in a generation.
And it would repudiate the key peacebuilding assumption following the Kurdish civil war: that strong, unitary, and shared institutions are needed to reinforce Kurdish self-government and autonomy. That it is even being considered reflects the depths to which relations between the KDP and the PUK have deteriorated.
Many parts of the plan are vague. How would it change the relationship between local authorities, the federal government, and the KRG? How will revenues be shared, if at all? How will decisions be made about key sectors like oil, gas, electricity, and trade?
For the moment this remains a PUK proposal, its prospects uncertain. The KDP opposes the plan – part of the reason there has been little progress in negotiations to form a government. Many Kurdish voters will oppose reinforcing the power of the ruling parties without any meaningful checks. And, while they are certainly disillusioned by their present circumstances, they are keenly aware of the risks the PUK plan would pose to the Kurdistan Region’s fragile constitutional position in Iraq.
Over the past five years, Iraq’s federal government has gradually eroded the KRG’s ability to manage its own political and economic affairs, enabled by the KDP and the PUK disunity.
A bad time for division
The potential for a fracture inside the Kurdistan Region comes at an inopportune time geopolitically. The US–Iran War has created significant instability. Foreign partners are preoccupied with problems at home. And changing regional dynamics are seeing sovereign states reassert influence over non-state actors.
The US presence in the Kurdistan Region is less potent than in years past. It completed a military withdrawal at the end of September after twelve years as part of the international coalition fighting Islamic State. Diplomatic activity in Erbil – where the KRG is based – has been hampered for much of this year due to security concerns stemming from the US–Iran war.
American and European diplomats are discouraged by their inability to bring the KDP and the PUK together, despite restlessly encouraging them to form a government. This inability is a signal of the West’s flagging influence over top Kurdish leaders. That will only worsen if diplomats have to contend with empowered local officials that answer primarily to the KDP and the PUK leadership.
The Kurdistan Region’s immediate neighbours like Turkey and Iran are much better placed to adapt to a Kurdistan Region that is divided and disaggregated. They can play the long game, and act at the local level through economic, social, and religious ties, rather than the top-down military and political approach of the US and Europe. Unity between the KDP and the PUK matters far less in their calculations.
Turkey’s immediate aim in the Kurdistan Region is to ensure that its own Kurdish political process, which is seeing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) disarm, continues. The KDP and the PUK have strongly supported this process and provided important interventions to facilitate it. They have also supported the integration process of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the new Syrian state.
In the near-term, the KDP and the PUK are unlikely to diverge much from this path. But the risk is that greater division at home could fragment their positions on issues beyond the Kurdistan Region’s borders. If that happens, Ankara might side with one of the parties, which would result in further instability.
Iran’s first goal is to ensure that Kurdish groups do not enter its war with the US. So far, the KDP and the PUK are in lockstep about the importance of avoiding any impression that they might intervene against Iran. Tehran’s second goal is to curtail the activities of its own Kurdish armed groups, even to the point of demanding they be expelled from Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. Weak and divided state institutions in the KRG make this difficult to achieve. That, in turn, makes it more likely that Iran will take matters into its own hands.
In the absence of a US security presence, interference from regional neighbours could also lead Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to become more hands-on in dealing with matters in the Kurdistan Region. This would be a bad outcome for Kurdish self-governance and would likely inflame political tensions between the KDP and the PUK.
The sour mood that prevailed in the Kurdistan Region during the election two years ago has only deepened. Pushing governance decisions to the local level in an effort to avoid intractable partisan impasse at the top is one proposal. But it could have significant knock-on effects.
A continued impasse between the KDP and the PUK risks setting off an irreversible decline for the frameworks that have enabled Kurdish self-governance for the past two decades. To get beyond this blockage, leaders from the KDP and the PUK must entertain imaginative solutions, but not ones that further divide, weaken its shared institutions or undermine democratic principles. Otherwise, it risks becoming a place that other actors pick apart at the expense of Kurdish autonomy.