The political expert told Kurdpress in an interview that there are tensions between the two governments but the two sides are seeking to settle long-time tensions.

What follows is his answers to Kurdpress questions;

Do you think that President Nechirvan Barzani and PM Masrour Barzani can men ties between Erbil and Baghdad? In what Way the problem of the disputed areas, like Kirkuk, can be solved?

When it comes to issues complicated as Baghdad-Erbil ties, it has less to do with who is in charge as much as the realities on the ground. Certainly, when both men came to power they sent signs of a willingness to negotiate with Baghdad and ‘reset’ the way Kurds would do things.

However, let’s not forget that in terms of Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), politics in the last decade has been dominated gradually by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). While without an official post, Masoud Barzani is still the one who makes the major decision in the party, and therefore no big changes are in the horizon when it comes to doing things despite off what the Barzani cousins have announced.

Masrour Barzani for instance wrote an op-Ed for the Washington Post highlighting his priorities as the new PM of the KRI. It is notable that he mostly talked about the KRI as part of the international community, and the different roles it played in fighting against ISIS and the humanitarian crisis, and even ‘softly’ blamed the international community for not supporting the Kurds in their referendum in 2017, preferring an international angle to the Kurdish issue and hopping for more international backing. Surely, he talked about his efforts to reach a new ‘fair’ agreement with Baghdad over the Budget that would be the ‘bedrock’ for all future agreements. However, the piece reflected the old KDP tendency to see any solution coming from outside rather than inside and through a better partnership with Baghdad. This signals more or less the old way of doing things as opposed to what he is promising in his op-Ed.

I believe what will dictate KDP’s approach to the negotiations is the issue of KRG’s debts which many think are as high as $30 Billion. Erbil wants a solution that will address these debts while Baghdad is not willing to do anything about the ‘self-inflicted debt crisis’, at least not for now.

As for the disputed areas, a big step towards the solution is the census that Baghdad is working on now, especially after the supreme court’s ruling which stated that article 140 had not been implemented. It is a challenging effort and might take a long time before the Iraqi government is ready for the census. It however would be an important step towards permanent solutions, especially that of the disputed areas.

Some believe Iraqi PM Adel Abdul Mahdi is a close friend of the Kurds and compromises over some issues including oil and budget, but some others believe that in the case of going easy with the Kurds, anti-Kurds could make him step down. What’s your idea in this regard?

It is true, Adel Abdul Mahdi is a friend of the Kurds. They even say that it was Abdul Mahdi who suggested and supported the 17% rate to be the share of the Kurds from the Budget. But as mentioned above, it has to do less with who is running the government in Baghdad and more with the realities on the ground that not prime minister can escape. The central government itself is now scrambling for money to rebuild the destroyed cities in the formerly Daesh-occupied areas as well as to finally deal with the sharp services crisis that requires costly infrastructure projects. With the Kurds exporting oil and not handing over anything back per budget agreement, no prime minister will be able to get the political support to be lenient with the KRG.

The Turkish army has begun a military campaign against PKK in the Kurdistan Region. Why both the KRG government and Baghdad are silent?

The relationship with Turkey is a complicated one, and Turkey is known to be less willing to respect any boundaries when it comes to its arch-enemy the PKK. Furthermore, the issue with the PKK is an old one where Saddam had actually allowed the Turks to bomb inside Iraq and since then, Iraq has failed to make the Turks go back from that.

However, what complicates the issue even further is the enmity that exists between the KDP and PKK at one hand, and the good relationship between the Barzanis and Erdogan at the other. This makes a unified stance between Erbil and Baghdad difficult which Ankara gladly exploits to target the PKK.

I have read articles which belive there will be a significant demographic change in Iraq so that Kurds population falls down to only 10 per cent and it will have political and economic effects on the Kurdistan Region. Accordingly, Kurds will not have the current power and leverage. Is that a reality?

This is true and part of the changing realities on the ground that I mentioned above. Iraq excluding the Kurdish region has one of the highest birth-rates in the world. On top of the infrastructure and services crisis, the population is growing very fast and this is putting even bigger pressure on the government to provide services and accommodate for the rising population. This requires better water, electricity, and gas services. It requires more housing, wider and better streets, even more schools, and very importantly more jobs.

In a situation like this, Baghdad can’t spare any additional dinar and is not free to offer any ‘goodwill’ money as it was able to do in the past when Kurds were estimated at 17% without evidence that this number continued to reflect a good estimation over the years.

Therefore, it is very important for Baghdad and Erbil reach a fair agreement and anything but will cause unrest not only in the political arena but is also very likely going be reflected on the streets.

This year we did not see extensive demonstrations in the South of Iraq, can this be the result of a better service provided by Abdul Mahdi’s government?

The biggest challenge when it comes to services is electricity and in this regard, Abdul Mahdi’s government is doing some important progress. Although the people haven’t gotten the services they are asking for, they can see that the government is working hard on reducing the sharpness of the crisis, and this certainly has a soothing effect on the unrests in the South.

However, I believe that the crisis in the South last year had also gotten a strong political push, both local and regional. Although the demonstrations were legitimate and important, some political ‘wave-surfing’ happened that aimed at denying Abadi another term, which happened. Today, however, there is no mature alternative political vision for Iraq other than Abdul Mahdi continuing to run the government, despite the strong pressure and a new political opposition that is forming.

Reporter’s code: 50101