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Creating Problems for the Kurdistan Region: Provocation and Foolishness
The provocative practices of political actors in Baghdad toward the Kurds and the Kurdistan Region, particularly in obstructing and fabricating excuses on the path to resuming the export of Kurdish oil and paying salaries to employees and retirees in the region, have attracted attention and raised concerns among observers, rational thinkers, and defenders of Kurdish human rights keen on the security and stability of Iraq. They have repeatedly urged the Kurdish negotiators to exercise diplomacy, strategic patience, wisdom, and flexibility in dialogue to clarify issues until all negotiation and diplomatic efforts are exhausted, and to accept some partial and superficial treatments of specific issues and disputes while striving to reach acceptable solutions. They also called upon the other side in Baghdad and their representatives to adhere to previous promises, agreements, and statements, or at least to some of them, and to not ignore reality and its reasonable limits, potential changes, and to abandon manipulation and the policy of complicating matters to divert attention to subsidiary issues, while avoiding moral obligations and not underestimating the constitution they wrote and the laws they enacted, all in a distasteful game dominated by fanaticism, sectarianism, and chauvinism under the banners of majority and democracy.
Amid events that foreshadow significant changes, rounds of negotiations have taken place between Erbil and Baghdad, with numerous meetings and visits occurring over several barren years. However, it appears that those entrenched in a culture of arrogance, control, authoritarian mentality, and bad faith, who believe that manipulation is a viable means to address problems, continue to seek to shuffle the cards and waste time. They proceed along a path of ridicule-inducing indifference, committing new mistakes that may be even more egregious than past errors, with the aim of dragging the Kurds into new crises and blackmailing them regarding oil and financial entitlements outlined in the federal budget law, along with many other unresolved contentious issues.
These are the political players behind the barriers to the export of Kurdish oil and the complications delaying the payment of salaries to employees and retirees in the region with flimsy justifications. They impose political considerations far removed from legal, economic, and technical realities on the matters at hand, exhausting Kurdish negotiators in details that stray from the truth. Alongside them are all those striving to plunge the region (government and people) into severe economic crises, who do not respond to diplomacy or courteous dialogue, especially after the people of Kurdistan have grown weary of the masks of those whose true faces they recognize, of sweet words masking their real voices, and they are tired of political promises and bidding attempts that seek to usurp their will. They have confirmed that putting obstacles in the way of exporting their oil and withholding their monthly salaries is obstinacy, provocation, and foolishness. The logic of (argue with them in ways that are best) does not apply to them because they do not want to be given the opportunity to build a dictatorship-free Iraq that accommodates everyone, a democratic, federal, and united Iraq.
Therefore, to avoid dragging the region into crises and conflicts with dire consequences, there is a pressing need to solidify positions, mobilize resources, organize and arrange the internal Kurdish house, and build a clear collective Kurdish stance to face all possibilities, using it to close off doors and windows from which foul winds might blow. It is important not to put all the eggs in one basket, to engage with positive steps and expected changes, and to rely confidently and firmly on the legitimacy of the intended purpose and goal.
Lavant: Sobhi Salih
