Iraq and Gulf Analysis

An occasional supplement to the Iraq website www.historiae.org

Maliki vs Shahristani?

Posted by Reidar Visser on Monday, 7 February 2011 15:08

This is becoming somewhat farcical, but today the Iraqi deputy premier for oil and energy affairs, Hussein al-Shahristani, tells Reuters that the Iraqi premier, Nuri al-Maliki, was misquoted when he said the Kurdish contracts with foreign oil companies had been approved. Shahristani reiterates the argument that he has always made about the need for the central government to review the contracts before they are approved, even going as far as explicitly saying they need to be converted to technical service contracts (more similar to what is being used by the central government for oil contracts in the south).

It is rather remarkable for the deputy premier to contradict the premier on such a key issue, and the suggestion about a “misquote” does not quite make sense: Maliki was presenting an elaborate argument about the geological differences between Basra and Kurdistan and the interview included several comments which all went in the same direction. Surely no simple “misunderstanding” can assert itself in this way across a whole section of an interview even though it seems likely that the interview with Shahristani was conducted in English and the one with Maliki in Arabic? Nonetheless, the refutation seems to reflect the prevailing mood in the Iraqi oil ministry, where Reuters reported astonishment and even disbelief during the weekend when the news of Maliki’s comments broke. No one, it was said, had heard anything.

So who is right and who is wrong? On the one hand, Shahristani himself has a record of recent misquotes, as when he allegedly said Iraq would reach an oil production of 4 million barrels per day at yearend – a figure which was promptly adjusted downwards by one million bpd by the oil ministry. But Maliki has also been acting strangely since the start of his second term. First, there was the seemingly suicidal attempt to alienate almost every force in Iraqi politics by attaching IHEC and other independent commissions to the executive, which just weeks ago brought about an alliance of critics reminiscent of the opposition Maliki was facing in early 2010 at the time of the budget. And then there was this latest episode involving the Kurdish oil deals, in which Maliki seemed to abruptly give up his pretensions to keep Baghdad as the ultimate power broker as far as the energy sector is concerned.

Perhaps what we are seeing is Maliki’s old tendency of turning to the Kurds in times of trouble, which was evident already in autumn 2009. If that is the case, the key question is how many members of his own Shiite alliance are willing to follow him in that direction, and how far are they willing to go when it comes to making concessions to the Kurds on issues like oil/energy, Kirkuk and generally enshrining the kind of quota-based, ethnicity-oriented political system that the Kurds are seeking. The latest move by Maliki was surprising in that it seemed to indicate that Shiite attempts to assert a centralist policy in energy questions were dead; Shahristani’s response today suggest that the centralist/nationalist element in the National Alliance, which also includes Sadrist and Turkmen components, is still there and at least is putting up some kind of resistance when it comes to independent energy deals by provincial authorities. Alongside Maliki and Shahristani, a third force to watch for is erstwhile Daawa member Ibrahim al-Jaafari, now parliamentary head of the National Alliance bloc, who is cutting a dominant figure both in parliament and at NA meetings, sometimes at the expense of Maliki himself. Jaafari was famously deselected as premier for a second term in 2006 thanks in part to Kurdish pressure.

A meeting of the National Alliance on 31 January 2011. Maliki is sitting to the right of Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Meanwhile, parliament was supposed to have done the second reading of the budget today, but the budget had not arrived in parliament from government! The second reading was postponed until tomorrow, to be followed by a vote later in February.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues, Oil in Iraq | 12 Comments »

The Law on the Federal Supreme Court: The Balance of Islamic and Career Judges

Posted by Reidar Visser on Sunday, 6 February 2011 17:52

The other big news out of Iraq over the weekend, in addition to the story involving the Kurdistan oilfields, was the first reading of the law on the federal supreme court in parliament yesterday.

The reason this piece of legislation has suddenly been fast-tracked in the Iraqi parliament is as follows. The constitution adopted in 2005 calls for special legislation to establish a federal supreme court, to be passed by a two-thirds-absolute majority in the Iraqi parliament. In 2006, this seemed to be a distant and unrealistic goal, and perhaps not a terribly pressing one since there was some kind of broad satisfaction with the pre-constitutional federal supreme court that had been put together in 2004. That court, which still exists, was staffed mainly with career judges, many of whom worked for the old regime, although care was taken to compose it on the basis of ethno-sectarian quota arrangements that came in vogue with Paul Bremer and his exile politicians back then. This background notwithstanding, after it showed some judicial independence in the years between 2006 and 2008, the Iraqi judiciary has increasingly been seen as a tool in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s pocket, especially after he seemed able to more or less dictate some of its decisions relating to the latest elections, including the recount in Baghdad. Most recently, a convoluted ruling by the court attached the “independent commissions” (such as the electoral commission) to the executive despite the existence of an explicit constitutional injunction that they be subject to the control of the Iraqi parliament. This in turn prompted strong reactions across the political spectrum, with Iraqiyya, Kurds and even Sadrists in Maliki’s own, all-Shiite National Alliance complaining that he had gone too far and that change was needed. The speaker of parliament, Usama al-Nujayfi of Iraqiyya, has apparently played a role in propelling the new draft law to its first reading.

In evaluating the draft law, one should consider its somewhat complex origins. A draft was prepared several years ago by the existing court, which probably moulded it in a way that would guarantee continuity as far as its own members were concerned. That draft was actually read in parliament in 2008 but the government presented a number of objections which are believed to have been incorporated in the current version. The above-the-fold excitement concerning the latest draft relates to the proposed composition of the court and the mechanisms for its recruitment, all of which were left unspecified by the drafters of the constitution in 2005 because they were unable to agree on an exact formula of Islamic and secular judges. Here is the new proposal: The court will consist of 13 members altogether, including an advisory board of 4, half of which will be ordinary legal specialists and half of which will be specialists in Islamic law. In other words, the only quota for Islamic judges relates to the 4-person advisory board, which does not take part in deciding cases as such. The recruitment procedures are also remarkable: The higher judicial council, a body largely made up of career judges (and for which another piece of legislation will be read next week), will propose three candidates for each of the 9 positions in the court proper, with the field limited to judges with a service of no less than 20 years; the president of the republic will then select one of the candidates for each position (in other words, the law creates a prerogative of the president which is not described in the constitution!) As for the four members of the advisory board, four professional judges will be nominated by the ministry of higher education and four Islamic ones by the two Islamic endowment (waqf) authorities (hence, one Sunni and one Shiite), with two from each group being selected by the government and approved by parliament. The judges will serve six years; the requirement that they should not be subject to the de-Baathification law of 2008 may well be a later addition to the draft by the government since some present members of the court are believed to fall in this category themselves.

In other aspects, such as the prerogatives of the court itself, the draft law seems to largely reiterate the constitutional provisions. The rather modest role suggested for Islamic judges to some extent reflects the origins of the first draft, and it would be surprising if it wins approval by the required 216 members of parliament, many of whom will be Shiite Islamists with rather bigger ambitions for the role of Islamic law in Iraqi society. Perhaps the most immediate effect of the first reading of this bill will be to put the existing court on notice and remind it about how many of its latest decisions have been perceived as highly politicised.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues | Leave a Comment »

Maliki Capitulates on the Kurdish Oil Deals

Posted by Reidar Visser on Saturday, 5 February 2011 16:04

Comments to AFP by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki today on the oil deals signed by the Kurds are nothing short of sensational. That exports from the Kurdistan fields will go ahead has been rumoured for some time, but the more crucial point is the clear assertion by Maliki that the contracts signed by the Kurds with foreign companies will be honoured.

To appreciate the extent of the change of Maliki’s position, one needs only remember the vehement criticism of these bilateral deals by his point men on energy issues like Hussain al-Shahristani and Abd al-Hadi al-Hassani. It was this kind of opposition that led to the breakdown of the first export attempt back in summer 2009. In fact, just weeks ago, oil ministry officials were adamant that even if the exports were to be resumed, costs only (and not profit) were to be paid to the operating foreign companies by the central government.

In terms of the perennial debate about the constitutional right of provincial entities to sign contracts without reference to Baghdad, Maliki appears to sidestep the question somewhat by offering an ad hoc justification to the effect that oil drilling in the Kurdish areas is technically more difficult than in the south and for this reason it is permissible to accord greater profits to the companies that invest in the north than those operating in the south (where technical service contracts and more modest per-barrel remuneration have been the norm for foreign companies dealing with Baghdad). In this way, it looks as if the affair has been dressed up as the oil ministry “recognising” the deals because of the special geological challenges presented by the Kurdistan region, but it still begs the question of whether any deal signed by the Kurds in the future, regardless of profits etc., will automatically be recognised. The question is important, because according to the constitution, existing governorates can do exactly the same as federal regions as far as oil is concerned, and the issue of bilateral energy deals between governorates and foreign companies therefore forces its way onto the agenda as a potential domino effect that could gradually make Baghdad less influential in the energy sector (and, arguably, in governing the country as a whole). What if an existing governorate can reiterate the Kurdish argument about having a particularly challenging environment for drilling oil or gas?

The political dynamic that has enabled these development has its roots in late 2009, when it became increasingly clear that Nuri al-Maliki was failing in an attempt to turn his State of Law coalition into a truly national political entity with appeal beyond the Shiite-majority areas of Iraq. Further weakened by the de-Baathification issue and results in the 7 March 2010 elections that were worse than he had hoped for, he needed both Iranian and Kurdish support to clinch a second nomination and to form the government. The Iraqiyya component in the government that was declared in late December was surprisingly strong and the Kurdish one comparatively weak, but Maliki has since come under fire for issues such as attaching the independent commissions to the executive, prompting protests from both the Kurds and Iraqiyya and even a surprise initiative to establish a new federal supreme court. In this kind of situation he is giving concessions to the Kurds even though they alone don’t have the votes to keep him in office. These developments are also a major defeat for his oil minister, Shahristani, who was unable to ramp up short-term production in the south and thereby became dependent upon comparatively modestly sized exports from the north while he is waiting for his own string of deals with foreign companies to come to fruition.

The big question is how Iraqiyya will react, since its constituencies are critical of the Kurdish oil deals and concessions to the Kurdistan Regional Government in disputed questions generally. In that kind of perspective, the logical thing for it would be to withdraw from government and focus instead on an opposition role headed by the speaker of parliament, Usama al-Nujayfi (Adnan al-Janabi of Iraqiyya also won the presidency of the parliamentary oil and gas committee today). However it does seem its members are more concerned with more Byzantine ways of seeking power in government, including vice presidencies (Hashemi) and strategic policy councils (Allawi). In fact, Iraqiyya is rumoured to be asking the Kurds for help in both of these issues, signifying the extent to which Arbil has managed to come out on top in the latest developments despite a somewhat adverse point of departure. At the same time, these latest developments mark a triumph for a primitive, identity-oriented and Balkans-inspired political agenda of potentially destructive ethno-nationalism that many Iraqis had been hoping was on its way out.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues, Oil in Iraq | 13 Comments »

False Alarm on Oil Exports or Not?

Posted by Reidar Visser on Wednesday, 2 February 2011 13:57

The surprising aspect of the failure to start oil export from Kurdistan yesterday was not the fact that the target date of 1 February was missed. This happens in Iraqi politics all the time: Each day, for almost every issue of significance, one can find someone saying it will be solved “in two days”, others claiming it will take “two weeks” and some maintaining “the rest of the month” is needed. Rather, the remarkable thing was that the messenger in this case was someone who has a businesslike reputation and is seen as reasonably realistic by friends and opponents alike – the prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Barham Salih.

It is still unclear whether the delay means the oil-export issue will simply become one among several items in the growing quagmire of pending questions in Iraqi politics or whether a solution is actually around the corner. The new government that was announced in late December 2010 remains incomplete without security ministers. The controversial, US-supported strategic policy council remains bogged down in detailed disputes about the status of its chairman/president (that technical distinction is part of the dispute!) and the country has no legally elected vice presidents (not that they are needed, but this issue keeps deflecting energy from potentially useful discussions). Before parliament can give the budget the full attention it requires, it needs to elect more committee heads and update its own bylaws, and with the recent outrage over Maliki’s moves to bring the “independent” commissions under closer control by the executive, there is more talk than ever about actually trying to craft the special legislation for the federal supreme court called for under the constitution (which requires a two-thirds majority in parliament).

The oil-export issue itself has some additional problematic aspects that have received a certain degree of attention already and are likely to cause more widespread discussion once the issue reaches the full parliament through the budget, regardless of whether oil is actually about to start flowing (and some media reports suggest this is indeed the case). Ever since the first oil-export attempt was aborted in 2009 and local sales of oil were initiated in Kurdistan by the local authorities in order to compensate the foreign companies working there, voices critical of these local sales have been heard in Baghdad. When Ashti Hawrami, the KRG natural resources minister, told The New York Times on 8 July 2010, at a time when the local sales of oil were peaking, that proceeds from oil smuggled to Iran were being used to compensate foreign companies operating in the region, it certainly added to the controversy (even through Hawrami later claimed journalists had failed to understand his distinction between oil and oil by-products). At any rate, going forward, it seems clear that a part of the proposed new deal on oil “exports” from Kurdistan actually involves not exports as such but rather boosting production for local markets, and if this relates to some kind of special quota for Kurdistan that will be exempted from the general, population-based national revenue-distribution formula and hence less transparent – and if local sales are done according to a different formula than export oil (i.e. if more money gets pocketed by the foreign companies) – then it could certainly prompt criticism from Iraqi parliamentarians who are likely to ask tough questions about any deviance from the constitutionally mandated, universal pattern of distribution across Iraq. Again, it is critical to note that as far as oil is concerned, there is not one iota of difference between a federal region and a governorate when it comes to the relevant constitutional provisions.

Meanwhile, the Kurds have made one important gain in that Khalid Shwani has reportedly been made head of the important legal committee in parliament, a job which the secular Iraqiyya had been seeking. The position is potentially useful, though particularly as a tool of obstruction. The challenge for the Kurds is that their long list of demands to Maliki (the 19 points) involve complicated pieces of legislation on issues like the presidency council and energy that are likely to stay in parliament for a very long time before they ever reach the legal committee, no matter what Shwani does (or what Maliki has promised). Ultimately, though,  it is likely that these elected forums, rather than backroom deals, will decide the overall structure of Iraq’s oil-export regime in the long run, regardless of whether some kind of short-term fudge will enable oil to flow from Kurdistan in the near future.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues, Oil in Iraq | 21 Comments »

Maliki and the Kurds: An Apparent Fudge on Oil Exports

Posted by Reidar Visser on Thursday, 27 January 2011 15:10

Among the first moves of the new Maliki government has been an agreement with the Kurdistan regional authorities (KRG) to resume oil exports from fields in Kurdistan operated by foreign companies that have cut separate deals with the KRG previously. Exports are supposed to start as early as 1 February.

So far, relatively few details about the agreed arrangements have been revealed. Baghdad has reportedly agreed to lower the minimum export requirement for Kurdistan in the annual budget to 100,000 barrels per day (it was originally 150,000 bpd, which the Kurds found somewhat steep), and unlike the previous attempt at starting export in the summer of 2009, Baghdad will this time pay a “contribution” (musahama) towards covering the expenses of the foreign companies that operate in Kurdistan. So far, the exact size of the payment has not been specified, but according to Asim Jihad of the Iraqi oil ministry it will be paid to the Kurdish regional authorities rather than directly to the foreign companies, and there are certain “barter” elements to the deal as well, including improvements to the refining capacity and electricity supply of Kurdistan plus provision of oil for the local market there.

Thus in legal terms, it seems as if the stalemate regarding the contract status of the foreign companies is continuing as before. The Kurds are reluctant to formally submit the contracts to Baghdad for approval since that would mean not only potential challenges to the contract terms but also cession of what the Kurds believe is their sovereign right to conclude such deals with third parties. Baghdad, for its part, is reluctant to pay the companies that operate in Kurdistan directly according to the contract terms, since that would mean recognising the right of federal authorities to sign deals with foreign companies without coordinating with Baghdad – which in turn would mean that not only federal regions but in fact every governorate across Iraq could do the same thing. Since federal regions and governorates have exactly the same residual rights under article 115 of the constitution, it would be potentially suicidal for the central government to admit a residual power to sign contracts for so-called “future fields” without coordination with Baghdad. Under this kind of permissive scenario, Basra, Maysan and Anbar would suddenly negotiate with foreign companies without reference to Baghdad. It seems far more likely that Baghdad is aiming for a restrictive interpretation of article 112, second, that would require coordination with the oil ministry for all future deals as part of the national “strategic policy” on oil – and instead will opt for for temporary, horse-trading solutions of the kind now agreed with the Kurds in the short term while it is working on boosting its own export capacity, which will still take some years.

Thus unlike what happened in 2009, money will this time be paid from Baghdad to Kurdistan, and presumably the Kurds will then pay the operating companies. The problem for the Kurds is that as long as the contracts are not submitted for review (as opposed to just making them public), Baghdad will continue to pay Arbil with reference to its own assessment of reasonable costs rather than in accordance with the lucrative terms of the contracts. Whether this in the long run is actually good enough for the Kurds – and not least their foreign partners – remains to be seen. Clearly, the foreign companies that operate in Kurdistan are not there in order to do non-profit work forever, and the Kurds will be under pressure to pay them more generously instead of simply compensating them for expenses. Other potential hitches regarding the new arrangements relate to parliamentary oversight: Presumably the compensation payments are to be specified in the annexes to the 2011 budget to be debated in February, and presumably the payments due to be transferred to the Kurdish ministry for natural resources as part of the deal will be subject to parliamentary debate in the Kurdish regional assembly as well, where the PUK and Gorran have a history of asking critical questions about the KDP-led oil policy.

Nonetheless, this deal represents an interesting move for the new Maliki government, where a key question since December 2010 has been whether Maliki will lean more towards the Kurds or Iraqiyya in hammering out his policies. Based on the latest move by Maliki to attach the independent commissions to the government, one can start wondering whether he actually has a viable grand strategy at all. He can afford to alienate either the Kurds or Iraqiyya, but not both at the same time. This holds true for the oil sector as well.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues, Oil in Iraq | 6 Comments »

On Lions and Other Mesopotamian Creatures

Posted by Reidar Visser on Monday, 24 January 2011 15:19

It was a pity the Iraqi soccer team, aka “The Lions of Mesopotamia”, lost by an extra-time goal to Australia in this weekend’s quarter-final in the Asian Cup. After a nervous beginning, the Iraqis played a lot better as the match progressed and once more demonstrated that the country has got word-class potential also beyond the oil and energy sector.

The reason the Iraqi football team does so well is utterly simple: It maximises its potential by putting together the nation’s best talents regardless of their ethnic and sectarian backgrounds. Careful investigations based on a Paul Bremer paradigm for understanding Iraq would show that the number of Shiites in the team is disproportionately high compared with the national demographics and there are too few Kurds and Sunni Arabs. But the bigger point is this: No one cares. Most players are known only by their first name and their father’s name, with no family names indicating place or tribe of origin; TV commentators frequently use first names only during matches. During substitutions, Kurds are exchanged for Shiites and vice-versa, but no one is protesting even as the ethno-sectarian balance gets even more distorted during the course of a match: Only talent counts.

The obvious contrast to the Iraqi national soccer team is the Iraqi political scene. Here some still believe that ethnic and sectarian affiliations are more important than talent: The distribution of key leadership positions almost invariably replicates a scheme in which ethno-sectarian affiliation, rather than ability, is centre stage. Once a Kurdish president had nominated a Shiite premier, the speaker of parliament “had to be” a Sunni. Once a Sunni had become speaker, his two deputies “had to be” a Shiite and a Kurd. In this setting, there is no dynamism and no meritocracy; hence it is unsurprising that the performance of the Iraqi political institutions is invariably substandard.

The practice of allocating top jobs on the basis of ethno-sectarian criteria is a collaborative enterprise in which incompetent Iraqi politicians collude with ignorant Westerners and strong-minded Iranian strategists in order to hide the fact that they are not really qualified for their jobs. In actual fact, their task is simply to provide the best possible services for the Iraqi citizens; yet their inability to do this makes them resort to ethno-sectarian demagoguery instead of admitting that they are not really qualified to be part of the squad. The question Iraqi voters should ask themselves is why the notion of a “Kurdish” or “Shiite” or “Sunni” quota should be any more legitimate in government than on the soccer pitch.

Posted in Iraqi nationalism, Sectarian master narrative | 21 Comments »

The First Step of the New Maliki Government: Attaching the Independent Electoral Commission to the Executive

Posted by Reidar Visser on Friday, 21 January 2011 14:50

The batch of decisions by the federal supreme court released earlier this week contained another interesting item in addition to the refusal to rule in the parliament replacement debacle. In a lengthy ruling, and probably one of the more innovative pieces of jurisprudence ever produced by the court, it has decided that henceforth the “independent commissions” and in particular the Iraqi election commission (IHEC) are to be “attached” to the executive branch of the government.

This is an extraordinary move since the constitution is crystal clear in article 102 with respect to how IHEC is answerable to the legislative branch of government, i.e. the parliament and not to the the government:

تُعد المفوضة العليا لحقوق الانسان، والمفوضية العليا المستقلة للانتخابات، وهيئة النـزاهة، هيئاتٌ مستقلة، تخضع لرقابة مجلس النواب، وتنظم اعمالها بقانون

But through a lengthy argument and creative thinking, the court in its latest ruling manages to put this unambiguous provision to one side by arguing instead that the nature of the work of IHEC is of the “executive” kind and hence its subordination to the legislative branch of government contradicts the principle of separation of powers, which is also part of the constitution as a general principle!

In other words, the court has detected an “error” in the 2005 constitution, and rules in favour of the government against a clause of the constitution itself. This is interesting firstly because it indicates the amount of pressure that must have been brought to bear on the court from the government. Secondly, it begs the question of why the court is not doing anything to explicitly address a far more glaring “error” in the constitution, i.e. the obvious contradiction between article 115 (which gives residual powers to both federal regions and governorates) and article 122 as well as the whole provincial powers law of 2008 (which subordinate the governorates to Baghdad in a more comprehensive way). In this question the court has increasingly ruled in favour of the central government although clause 115 on the residual powers of the governorates is arguably stronger. Thirdly, the timing is also interesting, since the request from Maliki’s lawyers to make the change is dated 2 December 2010, i.e. at a time when he had not yet had his new cabinet confirmed but evidently had the audacity to enter into such controversial legal territory apparently without any fear of creating scandal. But then again, this latest decision just adds to the impression of a political system that is rotten to the bone. Unlike the Tunisians, however, the Iraqis and the Iraqi press just don’t seem to have the guts to do anything about the situation.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues | 24 Comments »

The Federal Supreme Court Refuses to Intervene in the Parliament Replacement Issue

Posted by Reidar Visser on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 18:01

In a shameful and so far much-overlooked development, the Iraqi federal supreme court today issued a ruling to the effect that it has no jurisdiction in the question of the laws that govern replacement of candidates, leaving it to the politicians themselves to sort out the mess.

This is nonsensical for two reasons. Firstly, in appealing to article 93 regarding its own remit and its supposed inability to touch on issues that relate to interpretation of laws in force (as opposed to constitutional interpretation), the court has shown great inconsistency over the past years. In fact, in one of its landmark rulings in July 2009, the court actually used its interpretation of the law on governorates not organised in a region to overrule the constitution itself regarding parliamentary oversight of the governorate assemblies.

Secondly, and more importantly, the issue at hand is about far more than interpreting the replacement law on candidates from 2006. It is indeed about constitutional issues, since the principle of 1 deputy per 100,000 Iraqis is coming under threat when party leaderships dispose of replacement seats as they see fit and thereby upset the balance between governorates. The court also serves as a court of appeal in cases arising from the application of federal laws.

At any rate, by referring to a clause in the constitution that establishes a procedure for parliament to make decisions regarding the status of its own members by a two-thirds majority (which in turn can lead to an appeal to the federal supreme court), the court kicks the can a little further down the road and envisages possible involvement at a later stage. But it is totally unnecessary for the court to be so timid about the issue. Iraq needs a functioning parliament now, but instead of deciding on heads of parliamentary committees and its own bylaws, the assembly today declared another holiday which will last until 30 January, after the Shiite religious holiday of Arbain. Those waiting for a budget, security ministers, vice presidents or strategic councils will probably need to wait much longer than that.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues | Comments Off

Parliament Agrees on Committees, But Not on Their Leaders

Posted by Reidar Visser on Monday, 17 January 2011 16:11

The Iraqi parliament today decided the membership of 26 parliamentary committees. Except that due to disagreements among party leaders they could not decide on who should head the committees, meaning they will probably remain inoperative or at least unable to make major decisions for yet some time. So on top of the partial government without security ministries, vice presidents that aren’t really vice presidents, and a parliament without updated bylaws and with a handful of deputies that clearly violate the constitutional requirements, we today get two dozen headless committees. Bravo!

As for the composition of the committees, a few tendencies can be glanced from the lists of members. For example, there is a clear distinction between prestigious committees and the less sought-after ones. Almost all the frontbench politicians have chosen the committees for foreign affairs, security and defence, legal affairs, integrity, finance, and oil, though with some interesting variations between the parties in terms of how they have staked their bets.

The foreign affairs committee in particular includes several high-ranking individuals, with Sadiq al-Rikabi, Sami al-Askari and Yasin Majid from State of Law listed alongside Khudayr al-Khuzai, tipped as a possible vice president. Humam Hammudi of ISCI is also in this committee and has been rumoured as a possible committee head; however whether he will get this position probably depends on whether ISCI definitively chooses to define itself as part of the all-Shiite National Alliance after all. From Iraqiyya, Salman al-Jamili and Arkan Arshad are the most prominent members.

State of Law has also deputised key party members to the security and defence committee, including Hasan al-Sunayd, Abbas al-Bayati and Adnan al-Shahmani. Ammar Tuma from Fadila and Hakim al-Zamili, a Sadrist, complete the National Alliance contingent in this committee. Iraqiyya has got people like Hamid al-Mutlak, Falah Zaydan and Iskandar Witwit, himself a former army commander.

The legal committee is arguably the most important one since it does the final checking of key legislation, and there are reports that the battle for its leadership – between Iraqiyya and the Kurds – has been particularly intense and one of the reasons for the delay of settling the question of the committee heads. Amir al-Kinani, a Sadrist, and Jaafar al-Sadr, the son of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, represent the National Alliance, whereas Iraqiyya have included people with Kirkuk connections like Umar al-Jibburi and Arshad al-Salihi in this key committee. They will probably be closely watched by some of the most prominent Kurdish politicians that have also been given membership, like Khalid Shwani, Muhsin al-Saadun and Latif Mustafa.

The composition of the integrity commission does not bode particularly well for those looking for a quiet shelving of the de-Baathification question (though there appears to be no de-Baathification committee as such). No prizes for getting that the Sadrist Bahaa al-Aaraji is on it, alongside other vocal National Alliance politicians like Kamal al-Saadi of the Daawa, Jaafar al-Musawi (Fadila) and Hussein al-Assadi from Basra. Sabah al-Saadi, an increasingly outspoken politician who used to be with Fadila but is now independent, managed to secure re-election to this committee (he famously tried to scotch the formation of Nuri al-Maliki’s second government in December 2010 on procedural grounds).

The finance committee includes Haydar al-Abbadi, a prominent Daawa candidate who was once considered a potential PM, and Ibrahim al-Mutlak, the brother of the new deputy PM from Iraqiyya. Jawad al-Bulani is also there, but like Salim al-Jibburi from Tawafuq who is represented on several committees, he is likely to lose his seat when the federal supreme court rules on the replacement of parliamentary deputies who became ministers.

Education and higher education have also attracted some top politicians, especially from the National Alliance and ISCI (Khalid Atiyya, Maha al-Duri, a prominent female Sadrist, Walid al-Hilli of the Daawa and previously a candidate to head the de-Baathification committee, and Aziz Alwan, the former ISCI governor of Dhi Qar). One can perhaps understand that Iraqiyya does not pay so much attention to the education committee since it controls the ministry; however when it comes to the oil committee the absence of prominent Iraqiyya deputies is somewhat more remarkable. The National Alliance has appropriately sent three representatives from Basra to this committee, although they are all less than 35 years of age, with ties to Fadila, Daawa/Tanzim al-Iraq and the Sadrists respectively. Furat al-Sharaa of Badr/ISCI is also from Basra. On the other hand, Iraqiyya has only got Adnan al-Jannabi, a veteran politician from central Iraq, and less known politicians from Diyala and Mosul. How much more important this committee potentially is than the elusive strategic think tank!

The remainder of the committees are of less significance. Some of the people named there are clearly waiting for other, mostly vice-presidential jobs, including Adil Abd al-Mahdi for cultural affairs and Tariq al-Hashemi for migration affairs (their inclusion proves that they are not vice presidents, as argued here earlier), and Ayad Allawi himself (also on the migration affairs committee). The tribal committee has attracted Muhammad al-Sayhud of the National Alliance from Maysan and Hussein al-Shaalan, a veteran Iraqiyya politician from the mid-Euphrates region; Nuri al-Maliki’s recently-confirmed replacement deputy, the secular (ex-Iraqiyya) Izzat al-Shabandar is on the committee for parliamentary affairs; Adnan al-Asadi, thought by some to be the interior minister in waiting is on the national reconciliation committee; Ali al-Allaq and Muhammad Mahdi al-Nasiri of the Daawa are on the religious affairs committee, Mahmud Uthman, a prominent Kurdish politician, is on the committee for regional and governorate affairs; Abd al-Hussein Abtan, ex-governor of Najaf for ISCI is on the separate economic and investment committee; Haydar al-Mulla of Iraqiyya is on the human rights committee.

The parliamentary session appropriately ended with reference to another lacuna in the  new Iraqi political system: A discussion on the need to hold local elections at the sub-governorate level, where no comprehensive, standardised elections have taken place yet in the post-2003 era.

Posted in Iraqi constitutional issues, Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

More Kurdish Protests against the Budget

Posted by Reidar Visser on Sunday, 16 January 2011 15:14

It has been reported that 40 Kurdish deputies withdrew from today’s parliament meeting in protest against the revised version of the budget, now presented for its first official reading.

What the Kurds protest against are the limited changes to the previous version. That was tentatively “read” in the parliament earlier, and the Kurds rightly protested that it had not been duly considered in the financial committee. However, even though the procedural objection of the Kurds was sustained and a provisional financial committee formed, the document that was presented today apparently still contained all the clauses to which the Kurds have made exception. Over and above that, the one major change appears to relate to additional funding for the next Arab summit to be held in Baghdad!

Basically, the Kurds dislike the clause in the budget that obliges them to stick to an oil production target of 150,000 barrels per day. Or rather, they dislike the conditions attached to this item, i.e. firstly that any failure to produce that much will automatically reduce Kurdistan’s share of the national income from 17%, and secondly that the compensation for expenses that will be paid to foreign companies operating in Kurdistan has not been decided. In other words, there could in theory be a repeat of the stalemate seen in 2009 in which no agreement on the validity of the contracts signed by foreign companies operating in Kurdistan is reached – either because the Kurds refuse to submit the contracts to Baghdad for approval (which would signify an admission of a loss of sovereignty in the oil sector) or because the remuneration offered by Baghdad is seen as inadequate by the Kurds or their foreign partners.

The underlying political dynamic that has enabled this situation to emerge consists firstly of the enduring centralistic tendencies in at least some leading personalities in Maliki’s entourage, and secondly the emergence of Iraqiyya as a potential supporter of these tendencies, for example through people like Rafi al-Eisawi whose finance ministry is directly involved in hammering out the budget. More dialogue is expected before a second reading and then the vote itself, perhaps in February. The problem for the Kurds is that Maliki does not need their votes to pass the budget (which he can do with the support of Iraqiyya alone), and unlike in 2010, the Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani does not have the power to veto it.

Posted in Iraqi nationalism, Oil in Iraq | 2 Comments »