.png)
.jpg)
While the political infighting and violence that have afflicted Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 are by no means over, the Shia-dominated government has been able to channel them for its own purposes. Baghdad has accomplished this largely by pitting Iraq's two smaller ethno-sectarian groups -- the Sunnis and the Kurds -- against each other.
This tactic was seen most recently when last week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party, with the help of some Sunni lawmakers, pushed a new budget through parliament that allocated far less money to the Kurds -- who in previous years had been the Shia government's main ally -- than they had requested. The government's flexibility in making alliances of convenience demonstrates that it feels relatively secure in its position and is prepared to deal with rising Sunni unrest in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, especially neighboring Syria.
After nearly two months of wrangling, the Iraqi parliament approved a $118.6 billion budget in a March 7 session boycotted by Kurdish lawmakers. The Kurdish members of parliament refused to attend the session as a means of protesting the budget's allocation of only $650 million of the $3.5 billion requested for the Kurdistan Regional Government's debts to foreign oil companies operating within its borders.
The unprecedented manner in which Shia lawmakers and a handful of their Sunni counterparts unilaterally approved the budget is an indication that the government believes there is little risk in approving the budget without the Kurds' support, for several reasons. First, the government believes the Kurds are not likely to resort to armed insurrection or secession over a budget dispute. Second, the Kurds' only potential partner against the Shia-dominated central government is the Sunnis, who if anything have an even more strained relationship with the Kurds than the Shia do. Consequently, the Sunnis are unlikely to join with the Kurds to form a unified opposition any time soon.
The help from some of the Sunni lawmakers in approving the budget also highlights another important part of al-Maliki's strategy: keeping the Sunnis divided among themselves. Al-Maliki won the support of several Sunni lawmakers by offering pay increases to Awakening Council militias in the areas the lawmakers represent and by pledging to distribute 25 percent of the country's budget surpluses among the people, which is particularly helpful for the Sunnis, who mainly reside in areas that lack oil reserves.
Iraq's Shia, who make up about 60 percent of the country's population, are not in agreement on numerous policies, especially on how to deal with the Sunnis and Kurds. However, the various factions that make up al-Maliki's coalition have supported the prime minister as long as he has been able to show that he is preventing an alliance from developing between the Kurds and Sunnis, as well as keeping the Sunnis divided amongst themselves. The budget deal did both.
The Evolving Shiite Strategy
As the post-Saddam government was forming in Iraq in 2003 and for several years thereafter, the Shia aligned with the Kurds to ensure that the Sunnis, who had previously dominated the country, were effectively cut out of the political process. However, the Sunnis and Shia both had an interest in preventing the Kurds from expanding beyond the borders of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in the north. Despite this mutual concern, the immediate priority for the Shia was forcing the Sunnis to accept their new status as a political minority.
After the Sunnis were brought into the system from 2007 to 2008, the dispute between Baghdad and Arbil over the central government's insistence that energy development in Iraqi Kurdistan be done under Baghdad's supervision and control became more prominent. To push back against Kurdish demands, the al-Maliki administration aligned with the Sunnis, who were even less enthusiastic about Kurdish autonomy and who had a territorial dispute with the Kurds in northern Iraq, especially surrounding the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Since 2009, however, this balancing act has become more complicated. Both the Kurds and the Sunnis have become more assertive in challenging the Shia-dominated government. Indeed, after the 2010 elections in which the Sunni-backed secular al-Iraqiya List bloc won the most seats, the Sunnis sought and failed to form a coalition with the Kurds and even the al-Sadrite Shia faction against al-Maliki and his Shiite allies. The withdrawal of the remaining U.S. forces from Iraq in late 2011 exacerbated these divisions, and over the past year al-Maliki has taken a more aggressive approach against the Sunnis, as evidenced by the terrorism cases brought against Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and more recently against the bodyguards and associates of former Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi, one of the country's most senior Sunni officials. Tensions with the Kurds have also increased, particularly regarding security responsibility in the disputed areas around Kirkuk.
The simultaneous escalation by the Kurds and the Sunnis in 2012 made al-Maliki's Shiite allies and their Iranian patrons nervous, especially with large-scale demonstrations occurring in Sunni areas to protest al-Maliki's decision to implicate al-Issawi for terrorism-related activities. With the pressure rising, al-Maliki tried to defuse tension with the Kurds through talks that led to both sides pulling back their forces and agreeing on local police patrols in the disputed part of Kirkuk. At the same time, he offered concessions to the Sunnis -- mainly in the form of releasing some Sunni prisoners and offering certain groups financial incentives -- which likely is the reason that significant portions of the Sunni community are not participating in the protests against al-Maliki.
Meager Options for the Kurds
Sensing that the prime minister was on the defensive, the Sunnis and the Kurds tried to press their advantage. The Sunnis have mainly attempted to keep the pressure on through demonstrations, while the Kurds have sought to use the 2013 budget to get Baghdad to pay the $3.5 billion Arbil owes international oil companies that have been operating in the Kurdistan region over the past three years.
From al-Maliki's point of view, there is no way that the central government would underwrite the Kurdistan Regional Government's efforts to develop energy resources independent from Baghdad. Al-Maliki used Arbil's demands to make the case that the Kurds are trying to take revenues away from the national budget for their region while also playing to Sunni concerns about Kurdish autonomy. At the same time, al-Maliki was able to convince his Shiite allies that if they pushed the budget through parliament despite the Kurdish boycott, the Kurds would not be able to retaliate in any serious way. On that point, al-Maliki's confidence stems from the fact that the Kurds are landlocked and surrounded by Turkey, Iran, the Shia-led central government and Sunnis elsewhere in Iraq, and thus face serious constraints on exporting energy independent of Baghdad.
Turkey is the one country that could act as an energy transit state for Kurdistan if it chose to do so. However, doing so would require building costly new infrastructure to connect northern Iraq to Turkey, not to mention protecting that infrastructure from the militants who are active in the border region. Additionally, helping Iraqi Kurds gain greater autonomy -- even if Ankara's aims were limited to an energy partnership -- would risk empowering Turkey's own Kurdish rebels while also provoking Iraq and Iran. Given that a Kurdish enclave of some type will likely emerge in Syria when the ruling Alawite regime falls, Turkey is even more apprehensive about assisting the Iraqi Kurds.
The Sunni uprising occurring in Syria poses a threat to the Shia-led government in Baghdad because a spillover of Syrian militants into Iraq could rekindle large-scale sectarian violence. But the Shia are not alone in facing this threat; the Kurds too would stand to lose out, perhaps even more than the central government considering the Kurds' lack of allies and the already-fraught Sunni-Kurdish relations in Iraq. Consequently, the Kurds may have no choice but to accept the current limits of their autonomy. For Iraq's Sunnis, as long as certain factions can be persuaded to join with the Shia against the Kurds to form alliances of convenience, they will also be incapable of acting against the Shia-dominated government. The result may not be efficient or satisfying for all the participants, but it may be what the future of governance in Iraq looks like, and for the Shiite majority, it may be an acceptable outcome.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)