1-20-13 Iraq Business News:   Since Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani’s visit to Baghdad on April 29, 2013, there has been talk of the agreement signed between Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, considered to be a “bilateral agreement” that reproduces the “Shiite-Kurdish alliance” theory for the leadership of Iraq.

The seven articles of the agreement, revealed by the Kurdistan Regional Government a few days following the visit, but which were not yet clearly referred to by the Iraqi government until now, reflect an approach that is completely different from the reproduction of the Shiite-Kurd alliance.

The basic principle is that political work is defined as the management of situations under changing circumstances. Therefore, the handling of mechanisms change and evolve depending on variables and conditions. In a highly complex situation like the Iraqi situation, previous positions and options must be examined and assessed without being reproduced.

It is only based on this principle that one may be optimistic about the current dialogues and political movements’ capacity to lead to permanent solutions covering the entire Iraqi political crisis. These solutions shall not be based on understandings including some parties and excluding others, or on a vision tackling Iraqi problems in a superficial rather than in an in-depth manner.

It is obvious that the solutions [formulated in] 2003 are no longer valid for the problems of 2013, and the duplication of past experiences will only lead to a vicious, never-ending cycle.

Iraq’s Sunnis felt that the agreements arranged between Shiite and Kurdish leaders in the Iraqi opposition conferences before 2003, and the state administration’s arrangements after this date, were targeting them and that the so called Shiite-Kurdish alliance led to their marginalization in their own country.

Surely, there are several reasons preventing Sunnis from taking their natural position in the political process. These positions are to be filled by politicians, and some Sunni clerics issued fatwas during different periods prohibiting [Sunnis] from involvement in the political process and preventing their peers from enlistng in the military and the police forces, or participating in and running for elections under the slogan of “resistance to the American Occupation.”

Yet all this does not exempt the current Iraqi political class from its obligation to find a common ground for all the Iraqi parties, which must not suggest the exclusion of any of them.

This does not mean neglecting the specificity of the historical relationship between Kurds and Shiites and their common interests throughout their opposition to the former regime and also in the leadership of the country after the fall of the regime.

Furthermore, the Iraqi people deserve forward-looking agreements, which set the foundation for a lasting social peace, well-established citizenship and a sophisticated political movement.

LINK

Don't be shellfish...