After Election Rout, Kurds Lament Loss of Power in Diyala

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish residents in Iraq’s Diyala province blame inner rivalry among Kurdish parties for the loss of more than half of their seats in the provincial council, leaving the Kurds in the volatile province nearly powerless.

“This kind of result is unbelievable,” said Ibrahim Muhammad, a Diyala resident, adding that he believes the Kurds there have never been as powerless since 2005.

The Kurds won only three seats in the April 20 provincial elections.

Jaffar Barzinji, head of the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) office in Khanaqin, admitted that party rivalry was the main cause of the unimpressive showing at the polls.

“The Kurdish bloc was hoping to reclaim the chairmanship of the provincial council, in order to remain decision makers,” Barzinji said.  “We lost the post because of disputes among the Kurdish parties.”

He added that now the Kurds have no choice but to come to terms with the reality.

“The Kurdish bloc is now willing to even accept minor posts such as the deputy governor or advisors,” he said. “Just a month earlier, we had refused to accept such posts.”

Talib Muhammad, a Kurd, who formerly chaired the Provincial Council, said that, “The deputy governor is as powerless as an ordinary employee.”

Muhammad lamented that a set of new laws in the province gave the head of the Provincial Council as much authority as the governor.

Diyala-based Kurdish journalist Salam Abdullah charged that “political disagreements” had weakened the Kurdish position in the province.

“The situation is terrible for the Kurds,” he noted. “They lost everything they had gained in the previous election.”

Barzinji said that his party would meet soon with its ruling partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), “to discuss which posts the Kurds should demand in the province.

“We expect to take the police department,” he added. 

But the former chairman of the Provincial Council, Muhammad, said it was wishful thinking to believe that the Kurds would be heading the police post.

According to Muhammad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will personally assign all security and police posts in the province. “And he will never afford the Kurds such positions,” he maintained.

Living in the volatile province and observing its complex politics, Muhammad believes it would have been in the best interests of the Kurds to have made an alliance with the Shiite or Sunni groups.

Kwestan Muhammad, another Kurd from Diyala, is concerned that due to their diminished presence in the Provincial Council, the Kurdish parties “will no longer be able to provide necessary services for the Kurdish areas.”

“They just lost the power that they needed for this,” she said.

But Anwar Hussein, the mayor of Khanaqin blames the election loss on the flight of thousands of Kurds from the province in the face of violent attacks.

“Thousands of Kurdish residents have fled to other parts of Kurdistan due to threats on their lives,” he explained.

Parts of Diyala province, including the major towns of Jalawla and Saadiya, are within the disputed territories that Baghdad and Erbil hope to solve through constitutional Article 140.