Opposition in Baghdad among Kurdish, Shiite parties to Iraq Study Group

The Kurdish groups were among the most ardent supporters of the US invasion, viewing it as the means of transforming Iraq’s predominantly Kurdish northern provinces into a de-facto independent state. Under the new Iraqi constitution imposed under US occupation, the north was placed under the jurisdiction of a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

The constitution granted the KRG complete authority over all new oil production in the region. As well, it stipulated that a referendum take place by December 2007 to determine whether the inhabitants of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk wished to join the KRG.

The incorporation of Kirkuk would give the KRG authority over as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves. In the lead-up to the referendum, there have been a series of accusations that Kurdish militiamen are using threats and violence to pressure ethnic Arabs and Turkomen to leave Kirkuk in order to create an overwhelmingly majority Kurdish population.

Like the Kurds, the Shiite establishment largely supported the US invasion as a means to supplant the traditional Sunni Arab establishment that had held power in Iraq since the country’s formation in 1920. Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party rested on the Sunni propertied and tribal elite. Shiite parties have dominated each of the puppet governments formed under US occupation. Most units in the new army, interior ministry and police are made up of Shiites, giving their participation in US operations against Sunni Arab insurgents the character of a sectarian conflict.

SCIRI, one of the most powerful Shiite factions, has aggressively supported the federalist constitution and declared its intention to form a Shiite regional government encompassing nine southern provinces of Iraq. Under the US-backed constitution, the bulk of oil revenues would flow into the pockets of such a regional identity, as 60 percent of the country’s reserves are located within its proposed borders.

The ISG report cuts directly across the ambitions of the Kurdish and Shiite parties. In the face of a society collapsing into a Shiite-Sunni civil war, an entrenched Sunni insurgency against American troops, rising tensions throughout the Middle East and tremendous domestic opposition in the US, the ISG advocated a new political strategy. It called for overtures to the former Sunni ruling elite and regional talks aimed at re-establishing a strong central Iraqi government to assist US forces to impose “stability”.

Baker specifically recommended the rewriting of the constitution to oppose regional control over oil revenues and recommended that the Kirkuk referendum be indefinitely delayed. Moreover, the ISG called for the future of Kirkuk to be discussed by an “International Iraq Support Group,” including Turkey, Syria and Iran—all states that repress their own substantial Kurdish minorities and bitterly oppose the emergence of a de-facto Kurdish state on their borders. The ISG also recommended a substantial reversal of the de-Baathification policy used by the US occupation and its Shiite and Kurdish backers to marginalise the Sunni elite.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/isgi-d13.shtml