Erbil tallying billions in debts, compensation Baghdad owes Kurdistan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is to prepare a dossier that may request the Iraqi government to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to Erbil as compensation when the two sides sit down to negotiate Kurdistan’s bid for independence.

 

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani has asked the KRG’s Council of Ministers to prepare a detailed dossier with regard to relations between Erbil and Baghdad for negotiation with the central government, a statement from the KRG read Wednesday.

 

The dossier “must explain how the Iraqi government has been dealing with the Kurdistan Region in an unfair and illegal manner, particularly related to the Peshmerga, the budget, and compensating for all the damages conflicted on the Kurdistan Region at the hands of the successive Iraqi regimes, especially compensating the Anfal victims and destruction of the infrastructure of the Kurdistan Region,” the statement read.

 

Kurdish officials say that 182,000 people lost their lives during the Kurdish genocide in the 1980s, called Anfal, and thousands of Kurdish villages were emptied of their populations and destroyed by the Iraqi government. 

 

The statement added that the ministers should also estimate the KRG’s share of international loans provided to the Iraqi government and other entitlements under the Iraqi constitution. It also noted Baghdad’s lack of interest in paying for hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqis who sought refuge in the Kurdistan Region.

 

PM Barzani also expressed the Region’s readiness to enter a “sound” negotiation with Baghdad “in a peaceful way” to resolve the problems.

 

According to a request signed by PM Barzani in July 2013, the federal government must compensate those who suffered under the policies of former Iraqi governments between 1963 and 2003. 

 

In another directive sent a month later that year, the KRG put the total compensation at nearly $387 billion.

 

The KRG’s Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami told Rudaw then that the figures might seem high, but should be into context of the losses suffered. He noted that more than 200,000 Kurds were martyred, thousands of homes destroyed, and the Kurdish regions devastated for three decades. 

 

Erbil will hold a referendum on independence on September 25, a vote strongly opposed by Baghdad.