Kurdish parties looking for new alliances

Not a sur­pris­ing call from Maliki ask­ing the Kur­dish gov­ern­ment to “end to Kurd oil deal row, while at the same time Maliki knows very well that Barham Salih’s gov­ern­ment can do noth­ing about these oil contracts.

After assum­ing the pres­i­dency of the Kur­dis­tan gov­ern­ment, Dr. Barham Salih the Kur­dish PM, inher­ited sev­eral cri­sis from its pre­de­ces­sor Nejer­van Barazani, one of these cri­sis is the oil con­tracts signed by the pre­vi­ous provin­cial government.

Nobody knows exactly the con­tent of these con­tracts except the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Necher­van Barazani and Min­is­ter of Nat­ural Resources (oil) “Ashti Hawrami” in the Kur­dis­tan Regional Government.

Maliki’s main con­di­tion to end the “oil deal” issue between both sides (cen­tral Bagh­dad gov­ern­ment and the Kur­dish regional gov­ern­ment), is the trans­parency of the con­tent of these oil contracts.

Barzani’s Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party (KDP) sees the decline of the Barham Salih’s PUK polit­i­cal power in Kur­dis­tan, even in its strong­hold in Sulay­maniyah, and both for­mer Kur­dis­tan PM and the Min­is­ter of Nat­ural Resources are mem­bers of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

The cri­sis between Maliki’s gov­ern­ment and the Kur­dis­tan regional gov­ern­ment will not end before Maliki set­tles his long dis­pute with Barzani.

Kur­dish par­ties look­ing for new alliances

The sen­si­tiv­ity of the com­ing phase is wors­en­ing the rela­tions between the Barzani’s Demo­c­ra­tic Party and Talabani’s Patri­otic Union, both Kur­dish par­ties are inten­si­fy­ing their efforts to find an alter­na­tive polit­i­cal part­ner or a new alliance.

There are many rea­sons behind this polit­i­cal power shift such as the com­ing elec­tion and the posi­tions from the Baghdad’s cen­tral gov­ern­ment, but the main cause is the emerg­ing of the “Goran-Change Party”.

Barzani’s Demo­c­ra­tic Party (KDP) believes that the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan (PUK) is los­ing its power, will not be able to con­tinue to main­tain its recent posi­tion, and will not be an ally and the equiv­a­lent part­ner as in the past.

On the other hand, the rela­tion between the PUK and Dawa Party started to annoy the KDP see­ing it as a pres­sure card used by the PUK against them, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the tense rela­tions between Maliki and Barzani.

KDP offi­cials asked their lead­er­ship to improve the Party’s rela­tion with the “Goran-Change Party” and form an alliance with the new emerg­ing Kur­dish power, argu­ing that agree­ment between the KDP and PUK is a tac­ti­cal and not have any real importance.

But, till now there are no indi­ca­tors showed by Nushir­wan Mustafa, leader of the “Goran-Change Party” of his will­ing­ness to coop­er­ate with the two major par­ties in Kur­dis­tan, either before or after the elections.

Kur­dish “Change Party” com­plaints to the UN that PUK is tar­get­ing its mem­bers, means that mat­ters between the two had already reached a dead end. As for the KDP, despite the calls from the mem­bers to talk to Nushir­wan Mustafa, the party is based and obtains is strength from tribal loy­alty, so it is unlikely that the KDP’s lead­er­ship wants to attract an out­sider inside their “tribal” party structure.