Facing an increasingly dire economic and political crisis following an independence referendum, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq is teetering on a cliff edge that only political pragmatism can solve, experts said.
After Iraqi Kurds voted to be independent from Iraq in September, Baghdad launched a military offensive and reclaimed up to 14,000 square miles of land — including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk — which had been under Kurdish control since 2014, when Daesh swept through the region.
In the face of “a mountain of debt” compounded by the loss of some $350 million in monthly oil revenues since Baghdad retook Kirkuk, the Kurdish government will run out of funds entirely by early 2018, warned Shwan Zulal, a fellow at the European Center for Energy and Resource Security at King’s College.
“When you look at the figures, you know that Kurdistan is going to have a very long winter,” warned Zulal during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Kurdish Progress last week.
“Probably by February, there will be absolutely no money to pay anything, even the day-to-day running of government unless something changes: Unless Irbil and Baghdad start serious discussions and some cash comes from Baghdad,” he said.
Iraqi Kurds, hundreds of thousands of whom work in the public sector, have seen salaries slashed, delayed and unpaid as government coffers dry up. Putting food on the table, Zulal added, may become an exigent concern for Kurdish families in the months to come unless progress is made to break the political deadlock between Irbil and Baghdad.
While Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi will not allow the wholesale collapse of Kurdistan, he will “make sure that the region has zero bargaining chips moving forward,” said Renad Mansour, a research fellow at Chatham House, who also spoke on the panel.
But following the referendum — which Mansour called a political “miscalculation,” — the Kurds have found themselves effectively friendless in their face-off against Abadi.
Having rebuffed threats from Baghdad and pressure from friendly Western governments who cautioned against holding the referendum, the Kurds are now “alienated from the international community,” said Mansour.
“The Kurds are in a very difficult position. They don’t have much leveraging power,” Mansour told Arab News. “They’re going to have to make some compromises,” he said.
Amid concerns that the Iraqi Security Forces and the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) may launch a fresh offensive against Kurdish positions, Mansour said that careful diplomacy was key.
Western governments will continue to back Abadi, he said, as they believe he is “the key to rebuilding Iraq” after Daesh and “limiting Iranian influence” in Iraq.
Houzan Mahmoud, a women’s rights activist, urged caution before negotiating with Baghdad, however, citing a history of agreements that had fallen through. “Even if you go on (with) the negotiations, you’ll come up with a couple of (promises) and tomorrow they don’t happen,” she said.
Mahmoud stressed that while Baghdad bore some of the blame for the current situation, decades of corruption within Kurdistan itself created conditions ripe for crisis.
“There is a decadence, a political decadence in Kurdistan,” she said. All three experts roundly decried the patronage system, controlled by a handful of Kurdish family networks that had reaped benefits from oil wealth over recent years.
Unless the ruling elite changes tack the Kurdish people will suffer the deep freeze that has set over Northern Iraq since the referendum.
Instead of fighting for sovereignty, Kurdistan should first focus on strengthening its own institutions within the federalist system, stressed Mansour. “The Kurdistan region needs to build its state from the bottom up,” he said