The
Economical and Political Structure of KRG and the Influences of Oil on The
Structure
Compared to the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan enjoy more
economic and political stability. However, it still applies that Kurdistan is
run widely by political parties who practice a form of sultanistic system to
this day. Throughout the course of history, we come across examples of nations
rising or falling due to their brutal history. History, as well as the
experiences of others, help us understand things from a clearer perspective.
This will therefore help us establish what is to be done today. In Kurdistan,
the political structure and government formation is based on its history as
well as the politics of its resource. We will see what Kurdistan went through
for a period of time and how this changed not only its political structure but
also the economic aspect as well. In the wake of the Kurdish insurgencies, a
new model of governance came into being since the nation’s history has ever seen. Many events that
marked the end of a revolution with triumph on the nation’s side has given way to the Kurdish trial
of rule. To fully comprehend this dynamic of the Kurdish experience regarding
autonomous rule, we need to go back to the events the preludes to what is now
today. The ties of these events to the fledging of the oil industry and their
effects will postulate deeper insight and let us delve into the Kurdish case
with oil and its impact on its self-rule.
After
throwing out the Iraqi army from Kuwait in March 1991 and the emergence of a
revolution in Iraq, affiliates of the Iraqi-government Kurdish local militia,
known as the Jash, joined the PUK and KDP. However, the revolution gradually
stopped and US-led armies refused to interfere in support of the rebels. Around
1.5 million Kurds escaped before the Iraqi attack, yet Turkey closed the border
pushing hundreds of thousands to seek out shelter in the mountains. Meanwhile,
coalition forces declared the formation of a “safe haven” in April 1991 on the
Iraqi part of the border. International aid agencies undertook a huge aid
operation to aid the refugees. Moreover, on the individual level of operations,
figures like Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani opened dialogues with Saddam Hussein
on the autonomy for Kurdistan. On May 1992, in the Kurdish controlled area,
elections were held in which KDP candidates gained 50.8% of the votes, whereas
the PUK had only 49.2%. In theory, this meant that in the formation of a
Kurdish government, the two parties would have almost equal balance.The theory did not turn into
reality. In fact, it led to a series of civil wars that marked a period of
Kurdish modern history. The KDP-PUK civil war may be nothing new, for these two
parties have a long history for the intermittent clash that only stopped when
they, alongside with some other minor parties, formed the Iraqi- Kurdistan
front line in the mid 1988s. In 1996, again violence broke out between the two
leading parties which led to the formation of two separate governments in Iraqi
Kurdistan: the PUKs headquartered in Sulaymaniyah, and the KDP in Erbil. Even
with this, neither Talabani nor Barzani actually chose to work for the
governments they designed. To alleviate the civil conflicts, the U.S.-mediated
Washington Agreement in September 1998 was signed by Barzani and Talabani which
resulted in launching a formal peace treaty. The two parties (KDP and PUK)
agreed to share revenues and power, deny the usage of Iraqi-Kurdistan by the
PKK, and not permit Iraqi troops to enter the Kurdish regions. should Saddam
Hussein attack Kurds. To this, the United States guaranteed to use military
force to protect the Kurds.Meanwhile,
the standards of life were increased by the implementation of the U.N.
Oil-for-Food Program which carried revenues to Iraqi-Kurdistan. Iraqi
Kurdistan became a somewhat peaceful region, until conflict was renewed by
Ansar al-Islam by entering the region in late-2001.Also, During the invasion of
Iraq by American in 2003, PUK and KDP played a considerable role in overrunning
much of the northern part of Iraq such as Kirkuk and Mosul with American air
support. Barzani was later elected as a president of Iraqi Kurdistan whereas
Talabani was elected as a President of Iraq.
Oil
cannot be seen as a single economic entity producing revenue; many of the
consequences of oil exporting and importing are political. Throughout this
history that is shortly mentioned above oil has had a major impact on the
morphing of the political structures existent today. The major superpowers have
always had interests in keeping these middle eastern regions under their
fingertips and casting them into strong footholds that were dependent on them.
In the 1999 Washington agreement, the US intervened to glue back together the
political forces that shape that newly came out of a civil war with gigantic
casualties; this was not because of America’s philanthropism, rather it was because
the Kurds were the only faction in the MENA region that was not extrapolated on
the polarity existent between the Shiite and the Sunni states. Kurdistan had a
hope of growing democracy. Due to the hard gains in conventional reserves in
the world, it would only be logical for the major developed countries to sought
KRG’s
oil.
Oil has some very odd properties. Considering the revenue, it provides
to a country’s economy, one expects to see only positive outcomes as a result.
Because it is a natural resource, it supposedly makes any region rich. We see
that this has not been the case, at least not in all countries with this
resource. An obvious change can be detected in the effects it had on the
democratic structure of some regions. Not only that, but it has created a
dependency that has made certain places suffer because of it. By nature, it creates
this dependency that leaves no space for much else to grow and prosper. This
dependency may have seemed like a prosperous source of income, but we need to
keep in mind that in the long-run, oil may run out. We have already seen a
deficiency in some places and have already started looking for alternatives.
This contradicting view seems to be the nature of oil. It is supposed to make
countries succeed, but has it really done that? Do we see petro states growing
because of it or due to the lack of it?
Although there are always exceptions to any kind of extractive
conclusion, we can safely say that oil has been a curse, at least in the case
of KRG. It has brought a dependent source of income and a change to democracy
that was good for the people and the government in the short-term, but turnt to
a curse as we moved along. We saw the destructive power it had not only on the
society and its people, but largely on the political structure as well. One can
never tell what would have happened in the absence of oil in the KRG, but we
see that oil provided Kurdistan with a political structure based on patronage
networks and dependency that has recently led to a broken economy and injured
government.
Banu Barzan
Kurdish