ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has accused the Iraqi government of cherry picking articles of the constitution – a practice they claimed is at the core of problems that have fueled wars and domestic rivalries.
The leadership of the KDP, Kurdistan’s biggest ruling party, met in Erbil on Tuesday. Masoud Barzani, head of the party and former Kurdistan Region president, presided over the meeting.
This was the first meeting of the party leadership since the disastrous loss of Kirkuk on October 16 and subsequently other disputed areas after Iraqi forces took control in the wake of Kurdistan’s independence referendum.
The meeting comes after a series of strong stances out of Baghdad against the Region.
A day earlier, the Iraqi government called on Erbil to respect a verdict from the Iraqi Federal Court that ruled there is no clause in the constitution that allows for the secession of any Iraqi component.
This week also saw preliminary approval given to Baghdad’s draft 2018 budget that called the Kurdistan Region “provinces of the north.” The KRG has slammed the term as “unconstitutional” and a sign that Iraq no longer recognizes the Region as a united, single political and administrative entity.
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, whose government is tasked with holding talks with Baghdad to iron out their differences, was also at the KDP’s meeting.
The readout of the meeting stated that remarks and actions of many Iraqi officials are “far from adherence to the Iraqi constitution which they claim to implement.”
The KDP accused the central government of violating a number of articles of the constitution both before and after the referendum.
They warned that “selective” use of the constitution, interpreting the constitution “according to individual interests,” and the use of force in the face of a difference of opinion, would cause Iraq to enter a new cycle of “war, domestic and foreign disagreement,” just as it had in the past.
“The meeting reiterates the implementation of the constitution, governance on the basis of consensus and balance, and sees it as the solution to the problems.”
Masoud Barzani, who resigned from the presidency of the Kurdistan Region on November 1, had said before the vote that Iraq has departed the principle of the consensus that was the basis of the new Iraq established after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Several Iraqi parties, including the ruling Shiite Dawa party headed by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, advocate for a political majority. Current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is also a member of the Dawa party.
Kurdish parties have said that they will have little to no influence if the Iraqi parliament conducts business through a political majority as they can secure only about 60 seats out of 328 seats in the legislature.
The KDP statement called on all parties of the Kurdistan Region to put aside their differences during this “sensitive” stage and to express their full support for the KRG as a “legitimate party” to enter talks with the federal government.
The statement, though it did not name the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said the some party members committed “treason” that exposed the people of Kirkuk and other disputed areas to the threat of Iraqi forces and the mainly Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi.
It did not provide any evidence, but said that the PUK had accepted its role in the fall of Kirkuk.
A PUK statement on October 24 conceded that a “regional plot” on October 16 exploited internal divisions of the party that partly caused the loss of Kirkuk. The party has since opened an internal investigation into what went wrong.
The PUK’s officials in question are mainly from the family of the party’s late founder Jalal Talabani, including his eldest son Bafel who denies the accusations.
The KDP claimed that cooperation between those PUK officials and Iraqi forces, supported by various foreign parties, meant that years of achievements of the Kurdistan Region were put at risk “within hours” and allowed the Iraqi army and the Hashd to “pressure” the Kurdistan Region.
The party asserted, however, that the identity of the disputed or Kurdistani areas claimed by both Erbil and Iraq will not be changed by a military takeover. The recent Iraqi operation will fail to achieve its objective, just as the process of the Arabization under the former Iraqi government failed, the party’s statement added.
The KDP claimed that the takeover of the disputed areas was prepared long before the referendum.
The military operation “does not seem to be a fallout of the referendum of the people of Kurdistan, but it seems to come from a preplanned plot that began with the end of the Hawija liberation,” the statement read.
