Oil for soil: toward a grand bargain on Iraq and the Kurds

C.Responses to UNAMI’s Proposals

Kurdish leaders expressed disappointment only with specific recommendations, not the overall perspective. They criticised UNAMI’s criteria, which they claimed did not reflect prior agreement. For example, Moham­med Ihsan, the KRG official responsible for the disputed territories file, referred to “a methodological paper” that, according to him, all sides had accepted in late 2007 and posited that UNAMI’s views would be based primarily on the district-level results of the December 2005 parliamentary elections.⁶⁸ Likewise, Qader Aziz, Masoud Barzani’s special envoy on the Article 140 process, asserted: “Our agreement with de Mistura was that if the referendum didn’t work out, we would rely on the December 2005 elections instead. But he didn’t even do that in his recommendations”.⁶⁹

Like any aspect of the disputed territories question, use of the 2005 elections results is problematic. As Kurds see it, those elections provide persuasive guidance about an ethnic group’s preference to join the Kurdistan region or stay under Baghdad. Thus, they say, if in Mandali district the Kurdish list received 25 per cent of the votes, this means that 25 per cent of the population are Kurds; on this basis it would be difficult to question UNAMI’s recommendation to keep Mandali under the administration of Diyala governorate (ie, under the federal government). By the same token, if only 5 per cent of the population of Zummar district in Ninewa governorate voted for Arab parties and the rest for the Kurdish list, then logically Zummar should be attached to the Kurdistan region.⁷⁰ Kosrat Rasoul Ali, the KRG vice president, called on UNAMI to publish the district-level election results.⁷¹

However, non-Kurdish politicians question use of the 2005 results, contending that the elections were marred by fraud and preceded by demographic changes that stacked the electoral deck:

We agree that if an area is 70 per cent Kurdish, it should go to the KRG. But we say that all these [disputed] areas have been subject to demographic manipulation [since April 2003]. So we would need to first reverse those changes. Only then could we go back to determining these areas’ status. Moreover, if you use elections as a basis for this, the Kurds will have all the more reason to manipulate the next elections. There were many complaints about the 2005 elections.⁷²

For now, the Kurds appear to have decided that while they will quibble about specific elements of the phase one recommendations, they will not take a formal position. They publicly criticised inclusion of Aqri⁷³ and the suggestions made for Qaraj, Hamdaniya and Mandali, areas they consider historically part of Kurdistan regardless of current population make-up (which, they say, results from demographic manipulation). Instead, they first want to see the whole package, ie, all three stages, including Kirkuk. As Kosrat Rasoul Ali put it:

UNAMI was supposed to give us technical support, not to provide political solutions. This proposal only complicates things further. We are now waiting for phases two and three; perhaps they will be better. We cannot reject the project until we have seen everything. In fact, it would be better to reveal all three stages at once and not deal with Kirkuk separately.⁷⁴

Other Kurdish officials have echoed this approach. A senior KRG official said, “we don’t oppose the report, but we want to deal with UNAMI’s proposals as a single package. And then we will compromise”.⁷⁵ In other words, they appear to be suggesting a possible territorial deal.

Arab politicians appeared of different minds about UNAMI’s proposal, perhaps reflecting a lack of internal cohesion and debate. Rakan Saeed, the deputy governor of Kirkuk appointed following the December 2007 Arab-Kurdish agreement, called it a “partition plan”: “We reject it. UNAMI did not consult us. We spoke with them but not specifically about majorities and minorities in these districts”.⁷⁶ The better way forward, he suggested, was for UNAMI to seek consensus on Kirkuk provincial elections. Feeling re-empowered through U.S. support of the awakening councils, Kirkuk’s Arabs hope to perform a good deal better in provincial elections than they did in January 2005 when many, for one reason or another, stayed away from the polls. Through greater representation on the council, they intend to push back Kurdish power in Kirkuk and complicate the quest to incorporate it into Kurdistan via Article 140, UNAMI’s method or otherwise.

Another Arab leader was more positive, calling the proposal “balanced”, but he echoed Kurdish leaders in stating that what matters, in the end, is Kirkuk.⁷⁷ Likewise, the head of the Hawija awakening council indicated he liked aspects of the proposal, for example concerning Qaraj, but expressed disquiet at what he described as Kurdish efforts to “buy people in Qaraj, as well as in Hawija and in Baghdad”.⁷⁸

Perhaps the strongest opposition came from the Turko­mans. Hassan Turan, a Kirkuk provincial council member, criticised UNAMI for its reliance on the December 2005 election results (see above) and accused de Mistura of pro-Kurdish bias in calling to delay Article 140’s implementation (rather than considering it null and void) and unilaterally naming the disputed territories.⁷⁹ However, he supported UNAMI’s general approach, as long as it sought the council of representatives’ approval of a definition of disputed territories and dealt with all of them (i.e., including areas far from Kurdistan, such as Anbar/Karbala/Najaf and Baghdad vs. Salah al-Din over Dujeil). For UNAMI to fail to address all disputed internal boundaries, he said, would “raise suspicions about its motives”.⁸⁰

The federal government’s position remained unclear. An independent Kurdish member of the Kirkuk provincial council, who said he embraced UNAMI’s proposal, called on the government to show its hand:

We should press Maliki on whether he is prepared to implement UNAMI’s recommendations: Are you ready to deal with this? We should test his will and that of the presidency council. This is an international document; it’s serious. We cannot just reject it out of hand. This is a big game with big players.⁸¹

There is no indication that the Maliki government, to which UNAMI addressed its “first analysis”, has taken any steps to act on the proposals. Most likely it decided to wait for phases two (Tel Afar, Tel Qaif, Sheikhan and Sinjar districts in Ninewa governorate and Kha­na­qin district in Diyala governorate) and three (Kirkuk),⁸² which UNAMI now says have been combined into a single report it hopes to release by late November 2008. In any case, non-action would make sense: the government has a stake in the status quo insofar as the Kurds are at a natural disadvantage in having to prod the government to action.

In July, UNAMI’s awaited proposal on Kirkuk was overtaken by the imbroglio over the provincial elections law and, following this in August, the Iraqi army’s move into disputed districts in Diyala governorate. It seemed that the combination of greater assertiveness by the Maliki government and the relatively passive U.S. role had dealt a setback to Kurds’ prospects in Kirkuk and other disputed territories they claim without resolving anything. Once again, UNAMI was expected to produce fresh proposals to break the deadlock. Although after two months it helped defuse the crisis over the provincial elections law by proposing a separate mechanism for Kirkuk, the experience drove home the need to search for a “grand bargain” that would include settlement of the hydrocarbons question and the constitution review.