Analysis
Mohammed A. Salih
Inter Press Service
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq: Iraq’s much-awaited recent power-sharing deal signifies a shift of influence on Iraqi politics away from the US and its regional allies to domestic Iraqi political actors, most notably the Kurds, and eastward to Iran.
In a matter of days, Kurdish-initiated talks did what Washington and Tehran and their regional allies could not do during eight months of intense diplomacy. They convinced the leaders of almost all Iraqi parliamentary blocs to sit around a table for the first time since March elections.
The resulting agreement appears to have ended the country’s political impasse though tentatively. But the country’s largest Sunni-dominated bloc, Al-Iraqiya, seems to be still unhappy with the powers it will be given in the new arrangement.
Al-Iraqiya led by the former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, came first in the March parliamentary elections with 91 seats but fell far short of the 163-seat majority needed to form a government. The current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition trailed Al-Iraqiya with 89 seats. And Kurds ended up fourth with 57 seats after a coalition of mostly Shiite religious parties that gained 70 seats.
While there was some doubt after the elections whether the Kurds can regain their king-maker position, they not only decided who would rule the country, but in a significant shift of role took a step beyond that to become the very glue holding Iraq’s fragmented political landscape together. This runs contrary to the conventional thinking among Iraqi Arab parties and regional countries that often suspect Kurds of harboring separatist agendas, and the view that they do not care about the chaos in the non-Kurdish parts of the country.
“The Kurdish vision for the talks was not tied to the agenda of any regional or foreign power and was not aimed at asserting the hegemony of a particular foreign country on Iraqis,” said Hemin Mirani, head of the Kurdistan Institute for Political Issues (KIPI), based in Irbil.
“Instead of roaming around the capitals of the regional countries, the Kurdish plan was to sit together inside Iraq and resolve the disputes right here … they had a realistic and balanced approach that did not favor one side against another.”
Amid all this, a stark reminder of Washington’s dwindling leverage in Iraq came from none other than Kurds themselves; they have been often touted as the closest allies of the US in Iraq.
Despite what Kurdish leaders called “tremendous” pressure from the US, its regional Arab allies and Turkey, they did not heed White House calls for Allawi to get the post of president. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden had made personal phone calls to Kurdish leaders to concede the office of presidency to Allawi. But in the end Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was elected to serve as president for another four-year term.
“With regard to the office of presidency, there were, in fact, two kinds of pressures on us; one coming from the American friends and the other from other parties,” said Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region at a meeting with the heads of Kurdish parties November 14. “The gist of Americans pressure was that if the post [of the president] were given to another party, then the problem might be resolved. But our position was that this would not only end up being detrimental to the Kurds, but also to Iraq.”
For the post of prime minister, after what is widely seen as Iranian behind- the-scene engineering, Shiite groups led by Maliki put together a larger parliamentary bloc than Al-Iraqiya, and secured the prized office of premiership.
“Iran’s role was stronger and more visible than US role. The Iranians would be happier with the government that will be formed,” Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician and member of parliament told IPS. People are no longer “following America’s line,” he said.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the US spared no efforts to leave its mark on the shape of the country’s political landscape as it hand-picked the new ruling class. Voters later forced out some of the US choices.
“We are witnessing the decline of US hegemony over Iraq day after day,” said Mirani. “The US now understands its weight in Iraq and is acting accordingly.”