“Iraq is in no better shape than us. What would encourage us to go back to Baghdad to seek their assistance?” Renas Jano, a KDP member of the Iraqi parliament, said to Al-Monitor. Jano believes internal Kurdish divisions do not justify returning to Baghdad, citing historical examples of previous deals between Kurds and Baghdad that have collapsed.
Acknowledging the current deadlock in Iraqi Kurdistan's politics, Jano believes the KDP should use the Gorran-PUK alliance as an opportunity “to work out a new agreement” on how to handle various challenges. If the new alliance insists on approaching Baghdad outside KRG official policy, it would effectively split Kurdish decision-making and undermine the Kurds' position vis-a-vis the national government.
As a result of a Kurdish civil war, Iraqi Kurdistan was divided into two separate zones from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. Thus, the chances of a physical separation cannot be dismissed if the PUK-Gorran alliance and the KDP continue to pull away from each other.
With the Islamic State (IS) on a downward trajectory in Iraq, various actors are vying for influence in the post-IS order. While the Kurds' unity ensured their remarkable gains after the collapse of Saddam's regime, their current fragmentation might adversely affect their standing and gains in post-IS Iraq.
“Unless Kurdish leaders set aside their personal egos and rivalries for the sake of a greater Kurdish cause, the post-IS era could be disastrous for the Kurds on the national and international levels, [as] the international community will lose the current level of interest in the Kurdistan Region once IS is gone,” Yerevan Saeed, a Kurdish affairs analyst, told Al-Monitor.
“The Sunnis are crushed in Iraq, and you have powerful [predominantly Shiite] Popular Mobilization Units backed by Iran, and the Iraqi government backed by both Iran and the United States, and they will pose serious threats to the current status of the Kurdistan Region.”
(Conflict image via Shutterstock)
Comments are closed.