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.
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