Voters in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq cast ballots in the region’s parliamentary election on 20 October, more than two years after they were originally scheduled. In the interim, the Kurdistan parliament was inactive, and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet has operated under dubious legal authority. This vacuum and the persistent lack of unity between the two main Kurdish parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – allowed Iraq’s federal government to tilt the balance of power in its favour. The semi-autonomous region’s already fragile legitimacy has been increasingly in question.
In these elections, the KDP won 39 seats, making it the largest party, and the PUK increased its seat total to 23 in the 100-member parliament. The New Generation Movement, a populist opposition party, came in third and won 15 seats. Several other smaller opposition groups, Islamist parties, and ethnic and religious minorities received the remaining seats. Turnout was better than expected at 72 per cent of registered voters, although if all eligible voters are considered, this falls to a somewhat less impressive 55 per cent turnout.
With a new parliament elected, the Kurdistan Region’s political leaders must now embark on the difficult process of government formation and must appoint a new KRG cabinet. This will be an exceedingly difficult task. The imbalanced election result and the tensions between the two ruling parties will drag major policy initiatives into the partisan mud, politicizing even straightforward technocratic programmes. Political division and dysfunction have held back the Kurdistan Region and its development. Reforms should be judged not merely on their ingenuity, but on whether they are successfully implemented across the whole region.
Following the last election in September 2018, it took the parties 10 months to divide up the top posts, ministries and other positions. Since then, tensions have soared between the two ruling parties – the KDP and the PUK – and their working relationship has all but collapsed. The coming months (and likely longer) will be excruciating and will only serve to further damage the Kurdistan Region if government formation drags on. In such a scenario, what remains of the previous cabinet would stay in place but with much less ability to pursue reforms given its dubious authority to introduce legislation into the new parliament. Opportunistic forces in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region would also seize on any opening to undermine reform initiatives through the courts.
A good example of the current state of dysfunction and of how political infighting stifles reform is the absence of a modern dual carriageway between the region’s capital Erbil and Sulaymaniyah – these are the two largest cities in the Kurdistan Region but they lie in separate political zones. Instead of building a region-wide transport network, the KDP and the PUK have focused on serving the areas that they control. Road connections between them are poor. This harms both political unity and economic development. Without a new, unified and empowered government, all kinds of reform and development initiatives will play out against this kind of self-interested model.
Rivalry and stalemate between the main parties
The KDP clearly wants to govern without the PUK, abandoning decades of fractious but cooperative governance. The PUK’s main strategic goal in the election was to prove that a balance with the KDP still exists. These strategic goals are fundamentally incompatible – and that alone makes reaching a deal a difficult prospect. To achieve a breakthrough, the parties will have to set aside the basic political paradigm – where the KDP tries to formalize its dominance and the PUK tries to reassert balance – that has been developing over the last few years.
The Kurdistan Region’s diplomatic partners will urge the parties to be reasonable, to think beyond their narrow self-interest, and to compromise as they did during the last government formation process. But here lies another major difference to 2018. Since then, a new generation of leaders has emerged in each party, with Masrour Barzani taking over the day-to-day operations of the KDP and Bafel Talabani seeing off several challengers to wrestle the PUK into more cohesive shape. Their positions depend on each being able to get the most for their party without giving up much to the other. This will stymie reform efforts amid partisan posturing over questions of who and where any given policy most benefits.
During the campaign, the major question was whether Barzani would be able to serve another term as prime minister. The PUK declared that this could never happen, but the KDP’s solid win in the election certainly bolsters Barzani’s case. If a deal is to be made, the PUK will have to recant these statements while the KDP forces its rival to take the least powerful posts. Such a humiliation would be unacceptable to Talabani.
Indeed, there is a personal element to their rivalry. To be blunt: it seemed like Barzani and Talabani viscerally disliked one another even before the election campaign. Now, after weeks of political attacks and derogatory personal taunts, that feeling runs much deeper. Perhaps Talabani views this as part of the political game, but Barzani is infamously thin-skinned and will not have taken the barbs lightly.
Meanwhile, Shaswar Abdulwahid, New Generation’s bombastic leader, will be reinvigorated by his party’s good result. That will make the Kurdistan Region’s politics of personality all the more volatile and will lead to policy reforms being weaponized. This is already evident in the campaign disagreements over the KRG’s MyAccount banking program, which Talabani has referred to as ‘Masrour’s Account’.
Difficult options lie ahead
In order to form a KRG cabinet that includes both the KDP and the PUK, negotiators must navigate this potent mix of incompatible partisan ambitions, a system that rewards strategic self-interest, and personal acrimony between key players.
If the KDP and the PUK are unable to form a government quickly, the situation will inevitably draw numerous comparisons with the period of divided administration that existed in the Kurdistan Region between 1998 and 2006. The KDP is already dominant in the Erbil and Duhok governorates and the PUK in control of Sulaymaniyah. If they cannot form a unified KRG, they will turn progressively inwards and focus only on their respective zones. This is something that is already happening, but will accelerate.
While the comparison to that previous arrangement seems apt at face value, there is a significant difference with today. The Kurdistan Region is now part of a constitutional and federal Iraq. Whatever happens, Baghdad will play a significant role in its future. In the two years that elapsed during the electoral delay, the federal government inserted itself forcefully into the internal affairs of the Kurdistan Region using the courts and the budget.
One possibility is that the politicians in Baghdad negotiate, finagle or impose a solution on the querulous KDP and PUK through a combination of inducement and arm-twisting, with assistance from Tehran, Ankara and Washington. The result would amount to a jury-rigged outcome that more or less ignores the internal political dynamics of the Kurdistan Region, but serves larger geopolitical goals.
Alternatively, the PUK may do what it has indirectly been threatening to do for the last two years and forge a separate relationship with Baghdad. This would allow the PUK to bypass a regional government dominated by the KDP and receive benefits directly from Baghdad. This would be an extreme reaction and would only come after all other options are exhausted. Doing so would irreparably damage the Kurdistan Region as an entity and completely destroy the relationship between the parties. It could only be accomplished in concert with Baghdad, which may resist, but the legal framework is already in place to begin the process.
The KDP, the PUK and the population of the Kurdistan Region will now consider the next steps. It is unlikely that anything will happen immediately: playing for time is a time-honoured tactic of Kurdish politics. This will only serve to deepen partisan tensions and hinder reform efforts. Proposals will be immediately politicized, even if they would benefit the people of the Kurdistan Region. Difficult times lie ahead unless the KDP and the PUK can be pushed towards a deal without delay.
This article is part of a series from Chatham House that provides in-depth insights into the inner-workings of Iraq’s government and evaluate what recent developments – both public and behind the scenes – reveal about prospects for a more a stable, accountable and prosperous Iraqi state.
This series is part of the workstream on the political economy of reform, under the Middle East and North Africa Programme’s Iraq Initiative, led by project director Dr Renad Mansour.
