Will KDP-PUK tensions threaten Iraqi Kurdistan's unity?

Bafel Talabani paced the stage during a recent pre-election rally and railed against his rivals as the sun set over Dukan Lake. The crowd in front of him waved flags and cheered his promises to end authoritarian rule and corrupt governance in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.

To finalise and punctuate his remarks, he hurled the microphone to the stage and stormed off.

The rally near Ranya on 12 October came amid a fierce election campaign typified by piquant and often personal attacks between party leaders. There was no violence during the election period, but it was hardly placid. More than anything else, it highlighted the abiding tensions between the Kurdistan Region’s ruling parties.

Talabani, who leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), declared that Masrour Barzani, his counterpart from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), would never get another position in government without his party’s approval.

Media outlets close to Barzani published a fake audio recording of Talabani allegedly planning to commit electoral fraud in concert with Iran. They made derogatory comments about each other’s appearances and insinuations about their rumoured lifestyles, all amplified by partisan social media.

Together the two parties have ruled the Kurdistan Region since it achieved a measure of autonomy from Baghdad in 1991. This arrangement has rarely been easy, but relations between the two parties have noticeably deteriorated over the past three years as Talabani and Barzani have taken the reigns of their respective parties.

“The main issue is the demise of the power-sharing between the two parties. As a result, they do not seem to agree on much,” Shivan Fazil, a doctoral candidate at Boston University, told The New Arab. “The campaign rhetoric reflects something deeper.”

Voters had their say on 20 October. The KDP won about twice the number of votes as the PUK and ended up with 39 seats. The PUK received 23 seats, a modest increase of two. Now, the big question is whether they can come together to form a new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet. Neither is well-positioned to do so without the other.

Ten days after the election, Talabani appeared on a very different stage at the MERI Forum. Instead of partisan loyalists and ordinary voters in a dusty field, he spoke to a room of analysts, journalists, government officials, and foreign diplomats in a hotel ballroom in Erbil. Despite some optimistic expectations, there was little softening of tone.

“We will never back down from our rights and words,” Talabani told attendees, defending what he said during the campaign.

Challenging legislative maths

In order to form a government - and ensure a legitimate, devolved administration in the Kurdistan Region - the parties must find a majority in the new 100-member Kurdistan Parliament.

Even with the help of the three seats reserved for Christians and Turkmens that are held by its allies, the KDP is well short of that bar and will need to partner with at least one other party to make the legislative maths work.

The New Generation Movement, a populist opposition party, won fifteen seats, which would be enough to form a majority in coalition with the KDP. However, New Generation ran on a platform of removing the KDP and the PUK from power.

Its leadership knows that its supporters would abandon it in droves if it joined the government, having watched the Gorran Movement suffer that very fate.

The smattering of other parties, including the two Islamist parties and several smaller secular opposition groups, that make up the rest of parliament seem indisposed to join the next government and do not have enough seats to make it worth the KDP’s time to negotiate. As a result, it must deal with the PUK.

“Even if the math could add up for KDP to form a government with the other smaller parties, realistically such a scenario or outcome is very unlikely due to the existing territorial divisions” in the Kurdistan Region, Fazil said.

The KDP controls Duhok and Erbil governorates, while the PUK is in charge of Sulaymaniyah and Halabja. The security forces in each zone are affiliated with the party in power, as are the major commercial players. This territorial, security, and economic reality has ensured a relative balance between the two since 1991. But this system is increasingly breaking down.

“The PUK accuses the KDP of majority rule, overreach, and reneging from equal power-sharing. While the KDP charges the PUK for obstructing the government’s authority, rule and undermining Kurdish self-rule through filing lawsuits that invites federal government’s interference in the region’s domestic affairs,” Fazil said.

He further noted that the collapse in relations between the parties has manifested itself in various ways over the last six years. They could not agree to a nominee for Iraq’s president, contributing to a year-long delay in government formation in Baghdad.

The PUK boycotted cabinet meetings for six months following accusations over a car bombing in Erbil. The federal government has opportunistically used this disunity to increase its involvement in the Kurdistan Region’s political and economic affairs.

Most seriously, the inability of the KDP and the PUK to agree to a renewal of the regional electoral commission’s mandate and reform of parliamentary seats reserved for ethnic and religious minorities caused a two-year delay in holding elections. This cast doubt on the political legitimacy of the last cabinet.

But given the legislative maths and divided territorial control, if there is to be a unified KRG the two parties will have to find a way to work together.

“A government without either party runs the risk of further reducing the government’s authority in either of the two parties’ respective strongholds,” Fazil said. “It is a Catch-22.”

What sort of unity?

For those inclined to look for silver linings, they can find them in the statements from the party leaders. But to do so would ignore not only the substantive portions of their rhetoric but the fundamental dynamics of the Kurdistan Region’s politics.

At the MERI Forum, for example, Talabani called for unity and said the PUK was “ready to come to an agreement with all fronts,” but only provided that the others set aside their “party interests”.

Similarly, the KDP’s top leader Masoud Barzani called for the new government to be based on “one Region, one Government, one Parliament and one Peshmerga force,” but added that discussions would be guided on the relative performance of the parties in the election. This would obviously privilege the KDP’s views on government formation.

These hedged statements beg the question of whether the unity that the party leaders speak about is predicated on common interests or the partisan vision of whoever is making them. The words are there, but the spirit of unity and cooperation seems missing.

Following the election, the Kurdistan Region’s foreign partners called for the KDP and the PUK to “form a government without delay”. But this seems like an unlikely prospect given both recent history and the strategic interests of the two parties.

By reaffirming the power of the ruling duopoly, the election results paradoxically mean that the Kurdistan Region is headed towards greater uncertainty. The KDP and the PUK are moving away from cooperative arrangements and towards increased competition.

Under pressure from Baghdad, Washington, and others, the two parties may end up finding their way to a government formation deal, but the stability of such an arrangement would constantly be in question unless the two parties can reach a comprehensive bargain to resolve their outstanding disagreements.

In the current context, that may be a bridge too far.

Winthrop Rodgers is a journalist and analyst based in Sulaymaniyah in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. He focuses on politics, human rights, and political economy.

Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @wrodgers2