A house divided: Why forming a government in Iraqi Kurdistan is so difficult

When voters in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region cast their ballots last October, a major question was how quickly the lawmakers they elected would form a government.

Hard experience from the previous cycle suggested it might be a long and difficult process.

More than ten months later, the prospect of a new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet seems as remote as ever because of disagreements between the two main parties.

Long government formation processes are the norm in the Kurdistan Region, but its governance problems run deeper. Over the past seven years, the KRG has endured long periods where the legislative and executive branches either did not function or operated in a caretaker capacity.

In fact, there have been more days since the 2018 regional election where that is the case - more than 1,300 - than the 1,215 days where the KRG was in ordinary government.

Combined with a two-year delay in holding last year’s elections, this suggests a deeply dysfunctional model that lacks a strong connection between political leaders and their constituents.

“The absence of a legitimate government in the Kurdistan Region is not a new phenomenon,” researcher Farhad Mamshai told The New Arab, referring to the Barzanis of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Talabanis of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

“The source of legitimacy of governance in Kurdistan is not the people and voters, but the political families…This situation undermines the legitimacy of formal institutions, and people's trust in them has been very weak,” he added.

The primary reason why government formation is so difficult stems from disagreements between the KDP and the PUK. They have collectively governed the Kurdistan Region since it achieved a measure of autonomy from Iraq in 1991, but they are also locked in a tense competition for dominance.

Since 2017, their relationship has become increasingly dysfunctional as both parties passed the torch to a new generation of leaders who lack the pragmatism of their fathers.

In other countries, these ill-fitting partners would be unlikely to form a governing coalition. Yet, both parties are necessary for the Kurdistan Region to operate as a cohesive entity. The KDP controls Duhok and Erbil governorates, while the PUK is the most powerful party in Sulaymaniyah and Halabja.

Their influence runs deep into state institutions, the military and security services, and the business environment. In many ways, the power of the parties exceeds that of the state.

“Without the participation of either of the two main parties in the upcoming government, the cabinet would be a single-zone cabinet, which would officially lead to the division of the Region,” said Mamshai.

That would fatally weaken the Kurdistan Region, leaving it broken in half and easy prey to antagonists in Baghdad and regional powers like Iran and Turkey. Despite these high stakes, the parties consistently fail to rise to the moment.

Following the 30 September 2018 election, it took KDP and PUK negotiators 283 days to form a government in concert with the Gorran Movement. On 10 July 2019, the Kurdistan Parliament elected Masrour Barzani, the former head of the KDP’s intelligence services, as KRG prime minister, and approved a slate of cabinet ministers that included all three parties.

The Ninth Cabinet, as it is known, was dogged by tensions between the two main parties. The PUK complained that Barzani’s abrasive governing style had excluded it from meaningful governance.

In return, the KDP resented its partner acting like an opposition party while still in government. This acrimony reached a head in late 2022 when KRG Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani boycotted cabinet meetings for nearly seven months.

According to the quadrennial election calendar, new elections were scheduled for 1 October 2022. However, the KDP and the PUK disagreed over the mandate of the Kurdish election commission and the issue of seats reserved for ethnic and religious minorities.

Unable to overcome these differences, the election was repeatedly postponed, and in November 2022, MPs controversially voted to extend the terms of the Kurdistan Parliament by a year in an effort to resolve the impasse.

In May 2023, the KDP attempted to push through legislation in parliament that would have run elections according to its partisan preferences. The session descended into chaos with MPs punching and throwing water bottles at each other.

Days later, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled that the extension of the parliamentary term was unconstitutional and voided all of its activities back to 6 November 2023.

Since that date, at least one branch of government in the Kurdistan Region has not had a full mandate.

The cabinet continues to operate, but the political opposition now claims that it is only doing so in a “caretaker” capacity. This status is reinforced by the fact that it remains in power nearly three years after its term was legally supposed to expire in 2022.

“KRG officials have never defined themselves as a caretaker cabinet. What is important to them is the support of ruling political parties and families in the Region, not public consent,” said Mamshai.

After more than two years of delay, the Kurdistan Region held new elections on 20 October 2024, which was the fifth announced date for the cycle. The polls were conducted by the federal election commission in the absence of a valid regional commission.

The KDP and the PUK won 39 and 23 seats respectively, with the opposition New Generation Movement coming in third with 15 seats.

Mathematically, the KDP could have formed a government with the New Generation Movement, which shares a Sulaymaniyah power base with the PUK. Analysts spilt much ink speculating whether there would be a deal between this even more unlikely pair.

However, KDP and New Generation sources told The New Arab repeatedly over the course of several months that perfunctory talks between the two were never serious. That left a new KDP-PUK government as the only option.

Over the last ten months, the two parties have met repeatedly and occasionally at the highest levels in an effort to reach the critical breakthrough to forming a cabinet.

According to PUK officials, there is agreement on a “program for government,” which outlines how to manage disagreements and ensure that all involved parties fully share in power. Despite the name, it is not a list of the social and economic policies that the Tenth Cabinet will pursue.

Instead, it outlines an arbitration mechanism that will operate in case of particularly thorny problems. If this is unsuccessful and one of the two resigns from government, new elections will automatically be triggered.

However, there is no progress on how ministerial positions and other important offices like the parliament speaker should be distributed, much less which politicians should hold them.

Questions posed by The New Arab to officials from both parties and observers about the progress of talks were met with rhetorical shrugs.

Last winter, politicians insisted that the KDP and the PUK would form a government in the spring before the parties began campaigning for Iraq’s federal parliamentary elections in November.

That did not occur, and now they are stuck in that particular vortex. Diplomats in Erbil are now debating whether Erbil or Baghdad will be first to form a government, with most bets placed on the latter.

“The ruling parties are considering how to distribute the Kurdish share of federal government posts along with KRG posts as a unified package,” said Mamshai, noting that this complicated negotiations.

The impasse means that the two parties are unable to present a united front during tense negotiations with Baghdad over oil, the budget, and the provision of salaries to Kurdish public servants.

The KDP and the PUK are starting to feel the pressure. On 17 August, they announced that the Kurdistan Parliament will reconvene in September to at least elect a speaker.

It was lost on no one that the announcement arrived hard on the heels of meetings with the new US consul general, where government formation was reportedly discussed. The fact that scolding from the US brought about this promise is indicative of the lack of domestic legitimacy.

“Public disappointment towards the government and governance in the Kurdistan Region is at its highest level,” said Mamshai.

“People may have participated in past elections hoping to change the government and governance, but after the elections, their votes seem ineffective.”

Winthrop Rodgers is a journalist and analyst based in Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdistan Region. He focuses on politics, human rights, and political economy.

Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @wrodgers2