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Creating Problems for the Kurdistan Region::: Provocation and Foolishness
The provocative practices of the political actor in Baghdad towards the Kurds and the Kurdistan Region, particularly in obstructing and fabricating excuses on the path to resuming the export of Kurdish oil and disbursing salaries for employees and retirees in the region, have drawn attention and sparked the interest of observers, rational thinkers, and advocates for Kurdish human rights who care about security and stability in Iraq. They have called upon the Kurdish negotiator, more than once, to embody diplomacy, strategic patience, wisdom, and to show flexibility in dialogue in order to clarify points until all negotiating and diplomatic efforts are exhausted. They urged acceptance of some partial and superficial solutions for specific problems and disputes, striving to reach acceptable solutions. They also called upon the other party in Baghdad and their representatives to adhere to previous promises, agreements, and statements, or at least to some of them, not to ignore the reality and its reasonable limits, potential changes, and to stop maneuvering and complicating issues to distract attention from secondary matters. They should not evade moral commitments and should not underestimate the constitution they wrote and the laws they enacted, in a hateful and abhorrent game overshadowed by fanaticism, sectarianism, and chauvinism under the guise of majority and democracy.
In the midst of events that threaten significant changes, rounds of negotiations took place between Erbil and Baghdad, with increasing meetings and visits that lasted for many arduous years. However, it seems that those consumed by a culture of superiority and authoritarianism, with malicious intent, who believe that deceit can serve as a means to address problems, still strive to mix the cards and waste time. They continue down a path of mock indifference, committing new errors, perhaps more severe than previous ones, aiming to drag the Kurds into new crises and blackmail them on the issues of oil and the financial entitlements outlined in the federal budget law, as well as many other unresolved contentious files.
These individuals, referring to the political players behind the obstacles obstructing the export of Kurdish oil and complicating and delaying the disbursement of salaries for the region's employees and retirees with flimsy excuses, subjecting matters to political considerations far from legal, economic, and technical realities, and exhausting Kurdish negotiators in details detached from the truth, alongside all those who seek to drag the region (government and people) into stifling economic crises, are not swayed by diplomacy or polite dialogue. This is especially true after the people of Kurdistan have grown weary of the masks of individuals whose true faces they recognize, of the sweet talk whose real voices they know, and they are tired of political promises and auctions that attempt to undermine their will. After confirming that the obstacles to exporting their oil and the failure to disburse their monthly salaries are mere obstinacy, provocation, and foolishness, they realize that the logic of “discuss with them in a better way” is ineffective with those who do not wish to grant the opportunity to build a dictatorship-free Iraq that accommodates everyone—a unified democratic federal Iraq.
Therefore, in order to avoid dragging the region into crises and conflicts with dire consequences, it is essential to solidify the foundation, mobilize energies, organize and arrange the internal Kurdish house, and build a clear collective Kurdish stance to face all eventualities and invest in closing the doors and windows from which foul winds blow, not putting all the eggs in one basket, and engaging with positive steps and expected changes, relying with high confidence and firm conviction on the legitimacy of the intended goal.
Sobhi Salih
