ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Tensions are high among political parties in the Kurdistan Region after an MP was controversially stripped of parliamentary immunity last week. Iraq’s President Barham Salih met with Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Monday to try and smooth things over.
Salih, who is also a Kurd and a top figure in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), met with Barzani in Sulaimani, where the two men stressed the need for “political unity and harmony” among Kurdish parties.
Their meeting follows a vote in the Kurdistan parliament on Thursday to revoke the parliamentary immunity of Soran Omar, a Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) MP, allowing Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to sue him for libelous statements submitted to the parliament.
The move, supported by President Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and minority blocs in the parliament, was roundly condemned by other factions as an attack on the parliament’s democratic functions.
Salih’s PUK – which boycotted the session, alongside the Change Movement (Gorran), the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), Komal, and New Generation – was especially vocal in its opposition.
The row has created new and deeper schisms between the Kurdistan Region’s parties, and could undermine their collective clout in upcoming battles with the Iraqi federal government over oil sales, the budget, and territorial disputes unless the KDP and PUK thaw the ice.
“The president of the Kurdistan Region and the president of Iraq stressed the significance of unity and harmony in the Kurdistan Region,” Barzani’s office said in a statement following the meeting.
The two presidents urged all sides, notably the KDP and PUK, to “exert their efforts to meet the demands of the people and provide security and political stability” in the Kurdistan Region.
Stripping Omar of his immunity is not the only cause for the recent spike in KDP-PUK tensions. Peshmerga units affiliated with both parties are currently involved in an armed standoff over a patch of territory.
When the KRG imposed coronavirus lockdown measures in early March, the government deployed a Peshmerga unit under a KDP commander to secure an area of northern Erbil called Zini Warte used by people smugglers to evade movement restrictions.
Accusing the KDP of attempting a land grab, the PUK deployed its own Peshmerga unit to secure the territory. Complicating matters further, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) also deployed its fighters to the area, which lies near its Mount Qandil base.
For more than two months the forces have been locked in a standoff.
Both the KDP and PUK, along with their affiliated security forces, dominate their own respective spheres of geographical and economic influence inside the Kurdistan Region – a remnant of the brutal civil war of the 1990s. They have since worked together to govern the autonomous Region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is dead against any attempt to split the Kurdistan Region into two administrations – an eventuality made more and more likely as tensions flare between the Region’s two biggest parties.
The parties had been due to hold talks last Saturday to help ratchet down the tensions. However, following Thursday’s vote stripping Omar of his parliamentary immunity, the PUK pulled out of the dialogue, accusing the KDP of “unilateralism”.
The KDP insists the vote to strip Omar of his immunity was in line with the parliament’s own bylaws.
Many will hope Tuesday’s meeting between the two presidents will help thaw the ice between the two parties.
Saadi Pira, another senior PUK official, told Rudaw on Sunday the party has not “shut the door on meeting with the KDP”.
Erbil-Baghdad relations
Barzani and Salih also discussed the new government taking shape in Baghdad as well as mechanisms to resolve long-standing Erbil-Baghdad tensions.
“[The two presidents] voiced support and coordination with the Iraqi federal government to get rid of the crises and work to provide livelihoods and health care to the people,” Barzani’s office said.
Days before leaving power, Iraq’s former prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi ordered a halt to the Kurdistan Region’s share of the federal budget, accusing the KRG of failing to honor the 2019 budget agreement to provide 250,000 barrels of oil per day to the state oil marketing body SOMO in exchange for federal funds.
Salih and Barzani agreed that the Iraqi constitution should be used as a basis for resolving the long-standing accumulated issues between the Iraqi government and the KRG.
The two sides also stressed the need for continued efforts “in the fight against the remnants of terror and for security and stability across all parts of Iraq.”
