Iraq’s Half Federalism and Half Central Power

By: Mirza Nammo

Mar 10, 2005

Since the structure of governments in Iraq is been reveled and elections already being held to create those governments the issue of dual duty for Kurdish MPs have being ignored by Kurdish media, politicians, and political analysts.  This is not an issue that we can overlook without knowing what the intentions of the US and other stakeholders are.

I was hoping some of our Kurdish officials who were part of the deal making with the US and other Iraqi political groups on the issue of government structure and elections would comment on this issue, so we would have some concrete knowledge about the actual deals, and we wouldn’t have to resort to hypothetical analysis because this method of analysis sometimes leads to shooting in the dark even with the best of intentions, so I am hoping that if there is a clarification on this subject the Kurdish politicians will be generous enough to let us know.

As it is structured by the last election people of Iraq in the south voted for national assembly, and provincial councils, and people of Kurdistan aside from that also voted for the Kurdish regional government (KRG). It is from this unorthodox setup for Iraq that my suspicions and concerns begin and here is why:

Who will govern all the provinces that are outside of KRG in the matters that are outside of the provincial council’s jurisdiction?

Since Kurdistan or at least a part of it has KRG to be the governing body for all that falls beyond provincial council’s power, wouldn’t other provinces need an ARG if I may use that term?

Are the provincial councils of non Kurdish provinces will have more power, so they would not need any input from the federal government in all the areas that KRG is mandated to handle in Kurdistan?

Will any decisions for lack of a regional government for Arab Iraq be made from the national assembly while the same decision in Kurdistan is made by KRG?

If that happens wouldn’t that give the decision making power to the Kurdish MPs on matters of Arab regional affairs?

And wouldn’t that take Kurdish MPs away from their usual duties and preoccupy them with matters of other jurisdictions?

When I look at such a strange setup for Iraq’s half federalism and half central power the question of why constantly imposes itself on me, and the only hypothetical response that I can come up with since I don’t have the details of the actual deals, I can say that US is planning to keep Iraq as a central power to take the worries of the neighboring countries away, but since US’s hands are full now dealing with the Arab insurgency, they don’t want to fight the Kurds too at the same time, so this half federalism is just temporary, and it is to pacify the Kurds until a strong government especially in terms of military and security forces are established in Iraq then the powers of the KRG will be taken away and as before all decisions will be made from Baghdad and implemented by local authorities who are approved by Baghdad just as it was during previous regimes.