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description= 8 posts published by Reidar Visser during January 2012;
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negotiation strategy over coming months the most sensational aspects of maliki s comments are as follows firstly they seem supportive of a plan by president jalal talabani a kurd to introduce a bill to parliament that would adjust by law the boundaries of governorates that comprise so called disputed territories and have boundaries that were modified during the baath this would be done prior to a final settlement of the disputed territories issues by referendum secondly in practical terms maliki revealed that with respect to salahaddin governorate which was created by the baath in 1976 the plan would involve transferring parts of that governorate with turkmens and kurds to kirkuk and parts with shiites to baghdad thirdly maliki used these arguments against any early referendum for a salahaddin federal region indicating that the talabani plan would have to be implemented prior to any decision on federal status the talabani plan or law proposal has not been published in its entirety nonetheless there is sufficient information in these comments by maliki to identify both theoretical and practical problems related to its potential application on the theoretical level we know the desire of talabani and the kurds more broadly to reverse any administrative changes to governorate boundaries that they interpret as having flowed from racist and anti kurdish motives in particular kirkuk s loss of a solid chunk of territory to salahaddin in 1976 is seen as something that needs to be rectified the kurds appear to believe that the number of kurds and possibly pro kurdish turkmens in the area will work in their favour as far as aggregate numbers for a reconfigurated kirkuk governorate are concerned and also maintain that it would be more difficult to make these changes if salahaddin was to receive federal status prior to a final territorial settlement to some extent chronology works in advance of the kurdish claims in this regard because the creation of salahaddin in 1976 was one of the last major changes to the administrative geography of baathist iraq potentially making it a convenient cut off point other major changes such as the creation of the muthanna governorate and the separation of dahuk from nineveh both antedated 1971 clearly the kurds do not want to go back to 1971 since they probably see the creation of dahuk as a virtuous move whose reversal is undesirable it was in fact part of the peace negotiations between the kurds and the baath at the time but exactly at the same time as the creation of salahaddin in january 1976 another new iraqi governorate came into existence najaf this in turn has similarly created cases of disputed territories with respect to neighbouring and more well established governorates like karbala presumably talabani does not aim to abolish the najaf governorate presumably too his law proposal contains impenetrable arguments for abolishing salahaddin but not najaf at the practical level there are problems too why should the shiite parts of salahaddin plus samarra revert to baghdad but not sunni tikrit all of these lands belonged to baghdad in the early 1970s reflecting administrative realities that date back at least to monarchical times if the talabani proposal involves attaching shiite but not sunni parts of salahaddin to baghdad it will no doubt be seen as sectarian perhaps in resonance with the idea of a smaller iraq from basra to samarra that has been in vogue among some exiled iraqis iraq administrative map 1971 it is interesting that maliki is flirting publicly with ideas that will be seen by many iraqis as typically post 2003 partition oriented discourse precisely the sort of thing maliki has tried to steer away from since 2008 on the other hand we should perhaps not exaggerate the importance attached by maliki to these ideas as end goals in themselves maliki knows perfectly well that whereas giving him the premiership was completed in a single parliamentary session fulfilling all his promises to the kurds and others depends on further legislation in parliament each legislative initiative comes with at least three crucial junctures first and second reading before a vote each of which offers opportunities for unexpected drama that can easily consign a legislative project to the growing catalogue of on hold items awaiting political consensus this may well be maliki s real intention in flirting with the talabani initiative on disputed territories the kurds will see it as a concession of sorts sectarian shiites will like the idea of a bigger baghdad extending to samarra none of it is likely to come into existence anytime soon meanwhile maliki governs posted in kirkuk and disputed territories 38 comments barzani throws down the gauntlet posted by reidar visser on tuesday 10 january 2012 19 22 in the clearest statement yet kurdish leader masud barzani has said he will not attend any national conference to deal with the current political crisis if it is held in the iraqi capital baghdad barzani s stance is supported by ayad allawi the leader of the secular and increasingly sunni supported iraqiyya party and is strongly resisted by the iraqi premier the shiite islamist nuri al maliki the question is whether the move will prove a bridge too far for barzani or rather the real question is whether maliki truly needs the national conference tentatively scheduled for the end of january maliki has after all spent the weeks subsequent to the us withdrawal in mid december to signal a complete disregard for the issues that his detractors and partners in government want to discuss at the national conference above all maliki has gone far in saying that the arbil agreement of november 2010 is mostly unconstitutional which is true and that having received his share of the bargain the premiership he intends to ignore anything in the agreement that cannot be found in the constitution this includes calls for the creation of a high council for strategic policies ethno sectarian balances in government ministries and ethno sectarian formulas for the allocation of security ministries to some extent developments over the last weeks have indicated that maliki may in fact succeed with an audacious policy of ignoring both iraqiyya and the kurds at the same time in the first place despite the iraqiyya boycott parliament has continued to meet and has made some progress on the 2012 budget which needs to be passed over the next month or so iraqiyya has seen a flurry of defections quite a few of which have occurred in sunni majority areas and cannot easily be attributed to intimidation by maliki supporters as has been claimed with respect to the south some iraqiyya ministers in particular independents and those from smaller factions like al hall have continued to take part in cabinet despite an official boycott when maliki presides over elaborate military displays and emphasises his role as commander in chief he is probably thinking of an alliance of his own shiite coalition and new breakaway elements from iraqiyya and the white party that alone can reach the critical absolute majority mark of 163 deputies in parliament recent reports suggest maliki is even about to try to reshuffle the kurdish chief of the iraqi army it is not the first time such rumours appear in december they were heard in relation to kurdish demands for more power in government this time it is being suggested the refusal to hand over vice president tareq al hashemi is part of the equation it is high time iraqi politicians begin to understand maliki and his modus operandi in 2010 he promised the kurds to deliver on their 19 points in exchange for their support for his second term and went on to discover that most of those points were unconstitutional so it would be difficult to implement them there is a similar situation with the sunni majority governorate of anbar which handed maliki a list of 20 points maliki approved of course provided that everything was in accordance with the constitution needless to say from 2008 and onwards the federal supreme court has mostly produced rulings in favour of maliki certainly on questions of centre governorate relations where some decisions have placed the provincial powers law of 2008 above the constitution itself the judiciary also seems sufficiently amenable to maliki s desires that it synchronises its business to fit his agenda probably creating a sense of terror among political opponents not unlike that seen during the run up and the immediate aftermath of the march 2010 parliamentary elections but maliki can also be pragmatic he probably does not care much if the iraqi parliament is left to its own devices for most of the year but he does need its approval for the annual budget exactly one year ago we had a similar situation subsequent to the euphoria of the government formation maliki then turned to the kurds and made compromises on oil exports the basis for a budgetary deal he went on to ignore most of the arbil agreement and has continued to consolidate power today he is probably weighing whether he actually needs the kurds all of the kurds to pass the 2012 budget scenes like these have been played out before it deserves mention that much of the arbil conference that led to the formation of the second maliki government actually took place in baghdad the iraqi football association just like iraqiyya dominated by secular and anti maliki personalities long tried to have its summit in kurdistan but eventually ended up having it in baghdad anyway maliki must be asking himself why he as the iraqi prime minister should take the trouble of travelling to the kurdish region to attend a conference he does not really need maybe the most interesting question today is whether the rest of the kurds and in particular those who are the kurdish competitors of barzani will back up his demand to have the conference outside baghdad posted in iraq regionalism general iraqi constitutional issues 17 comments small victories for maliki in parliament posted by reidar visser on thursday 5 january 2012 14 22 the iraqi national assembly was it usual self today with the predictable assortment of idiosyncrasies that are typical of iraqi politics however for prime minister nuri al maliki there was some good news this includes the simple fact that the parliamentary sessions continue to take place despite the boycott by the secular iraqiyya party today once more signs of tensions between maliki s own shiite islamist state of law bloc and the kurds at one point threatened the quorum of the session but an amicable resolution was found and the session could resume technically as an extraordinary session since it had been officially terminated during the preceding tension with relative peace vis à vis the kurds maliki is probably satisfied with the fact that some iraqiyya members opted to take part in the session which altogether counted 192 members thus comfortably above the quorum threshold at 163 and not that much different from the normal attendance level in 2011 reportedly those iraqiyya members present numbered between six and eight over and above that they included at least three deputies who say they are forming a new bloc within iraqiyya opposed to calls for sunni area federalism and sympathetic to shiites that have defected from iraqiyya in the south these three deputies all nominally belonged to the iraqiyyun bloc of parliament speaker usama al nujayfi in the past and one of them was formerly a prominent advocate of a majority government between iraqiyya and state of law conceptually then this new tendency seems similar to the white iraqiyya breakaway faction of iraqiyya which is reckoned as openly pro maliki equally important is the fact that they remain separate and have not joined white iraqiyya additional iraqiyya attendants in parliament today reportedly included members of the hall karbuli faction it is noteworthy that the assembly today managed to agree on additional judges to the de baathification appellate court which had proved troublesome in the past in the past white iraqiyya has sometimes been dismissed as shiite iraqiyya which is not entirely plausible since it also includes vocal sunni members from nineveh today s developments stress that there are more sunnis in the north that are prepared to speak the language of anti federalism and could be potential allies to maliki in the north they come at a time when there are conflicting reports about the exact status of iraqiyya ministers boycotting cabinet meetings with some reports suggesting that certain individual ministers are prepared to return again the hall faction is mentioned as a possible dissenter to the general iraqiyya line to maliki this is the ideal scenario parliament continues to function not terribly effective but enough to get some things done and preventing a formal disintegration of democratic politics maliki may well be hoping that similar things could happen at the level of the cabinet since a situation with too many acting ministers unapproved by parliament in the long run would threaten one of the most basic principles in a parliamentary democracy that of ministerial answerability to the national assembly it is noteworthy that all these developments point in a different direction than the doom and gloom associated with the iraqiyya boycott and renewed violence today importantly and often overlooked by western policy makers this is a potential avenue of rapprochement that has nothing to do at all with the arbil agreement posted in iraq regionalism general iraqi nationalism sectarian master narrative 45 comments kurds challenge maliki ally in parliament posted by reidar visser on tuesday 3 january 2012 14 09 as iraqi parliamentarians reconvened for their first session of 2012 today the full spectrum of ongoing political crises were on display symptomatically the basic facts of who attended and who did not at times took precedence over the substantial content of the session in the first place the secular and increasingly sunni backed iraqiyya party remained absent a comfortable quorum was nonetheless reached with around 180 deputies present from the shiite islamists the secular white iraqiyya breakaway faction from iraqiyya and the kurds that did not last long however protesting against statements by hussein al asadi an ally of prime minister nuri al maliki the kurds withdrew from the session demanding an apology from asadi asadi had accused the iraqi president jalal talabani a kurd of illegally providing shelter for the newly indicted tareq al hashemi the sunni vice president thereby supposedly violating the anti terrorism law other members of the shiite islamist parties including maliki s own state of law alliance intervened and provided assurances that asadi would not attend parliament until he had recanted the kurds promptly returned to the session these developments show two things firstly the kurds remain committed to the parliamentary process des...
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