The leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (UPK), the second political force in Iraqi Kurdistan, Bafel Talabani, has firmly rejected any attempt at dialogue with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), which has remained as the only party in the regional Executive. The crisis, triggered a week ago, puts at risk once again the institutional unity of a key region due to its oil production.
The trigger for the conflict was the election, last Wednesday, of a new president of the parliament of the semi-autonomous region, more than two years after the last elections were held. Talabani's UPK boycotted the session, but the vote went ahead thanks to a very tight quorum that, according to the opposition leader, was achieved "through bribes, threats and psychological pressures" on lawmakers from small formations and even on three parliamentarians of the UPK itself who broke party discipline.
In response, Talabani decided to break the government coalition, declared the new Parliament illegitimate, and has come to propose the creation of an alternative administration. The leader himself stated this Thursday that Iraqi Kurdistan is already de facto divided, in his view, awaiting only an official proclamation.
Kurdish President Masud Barzani and the U.S. envoy, Tom Barrack, have urged Talabani to reconsider his position and sit down to negotiate. However, the UPK leader reiterated this Thursday that he does not contemplate opening talks and that the strategy of appealing to dialogue "is an old trick", since, according to him, there is no real will for understanding beyond public calls in the media and on social networks.
"We have our phone numbers; our political offices are always in contact. When someone officially asks us to speak, we will study the proposal and respond to it, but right now nobody is going to bite with this kind of stratagems," Talabani warned upon leaving the Solimania Forum, held in Iraqi-Kurdish city of the same name, one of the UPK's main strongholds, in statements collected by the Kurdish agency Rudaw.
The UPK's exit from the Executive has left the region on the brink of returning to the stage of the two administrations that was experienced between 1998 and 2006: the UPK controlled the areas of Suleimaniya and Halabja, while the PDK maintained power in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and in the province of Duhok.
On Wednesday, Barrack urged both formations to resolve their disagreements on their own, considering that the situation is too convoluted for Washington to intervene effectively. “I can’t go to Congress and start explaining the complexity of the Iraqi Constitution, the federalist alignment of the Kurdistan region, and how all this matter ends up having repercussions on Baghdad,” he said in London during his appearance at an event at Chatham House.
“The thing is that we are dealing with a family dispute in Kurdistan, and that American and international companies—sources of income throughout the region—are right now waiting to see what might happen,” he warned, before concluding that Iraqi Kurdistan is caught up in “a tribal brawl” that the United States is not in a position to take on.