Allawi, Kurds Set to Form Coalition: Report

Middle Eastern News Agencies ^

[jmc1969]

The two main Kurdish parties in Iraq have given their conditional go-ahead for a parliamentary coalition with interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, well-placed Kurdish sources have revealed.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) asked, in swap, for Allawi’s backing for PUK leader Jalal Talabani to be elected president, the sources told Al-Quds Press Friday, February 11.

During a surprise visit by Allawi to Arbil on Thursday, February 10, Kurdish officials further asked that Arabs in Kirkuk be regarded as “refugees” who must be deported gradually to allow the return of Kurds allegedly forced to leave their homes by the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.

Allawi nodded enthusiastically to the Kurdish demands in return for backing his hard-fought battle to keep the much-coveted and influential prime minister post.

The Allawi-Kurds deal came after the UIA failed to entice the two Kurdish parties into a parliamentary alliance, Al-Quds Press said.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Hard to tell the players without a program.

[Buck W.]

Does this now give the new Allawi coalition a majority, or is Sistani still in the lead?

[McGavin999]

This will be a Sunni/Shiia government since the Kurds are mostly Sunni. The Sunni Arabs won't like it much, but it'll work as long as Allawi gets over his "extended hand to Baathists". The Arabs in Kurdish country were moved in to displace the Kurds during Saddam's time. Moving them back makes sense as long as they are compensated. Actually, they should be "enticed" by offers they would be foolish to refuse.

[oldleft]

I don't think we'll know until tomorrow. Sistani may get a simple majority. Even then, infighting between Dawa (more secular) and the SCIRI (more Islamist) may cause them to lose the majority. It's not inconceivable that some Dawa delegates may jump ship and join a secular Allawi-Kurdish alliance.

[traderrob6]

AHHH yes, I love the smell of a new ,well oiled Democracy in the morning. Already the 2 minorities are banding together as a counterweight to the suspected majority winner in the elections. Smart strategy for sure and what one would expect to keep things on the up and up. I truly enjoy watching things function as they should; Are you sure these people haven't done this before??

[REDWOOD99]

Gotta love them politicians.

[MrNatural]

..I love the smell of a new ,well oiled Democracy in the morning.... Are you sure these people haven't done this before? ..

What a surprise: Arabs know how to bargain and make deals! :D

Nice post.

[rwfromkansas]

THe UIA is not run by Sistani.

[rwfromkansas]

I just mention that because there is a perception that the UIA is bought and paid for by the clerics, but that is not true.

[CyberAnt]

Really ..?? Kurds are Kurds - and Sunnis are Sunnis - and they're not interchangable. They have very different belief systems.

The Sunnis only represent 20% of the total population of Iraq .. I hardly see them in a power position of any kind. That's why they boycotted the elections - to try to force people into abandoning the elections so they could have a chance of regaining their power - but it didn't work and now the Sunnis are trying to make nice with other groups in hopes of getting some representation in their assembly.

I believe the Shiia and the Kurds will have the most members and therefore - I'm hoping Allawi will remain as PM. I want him to stay because I think he's tough - and he's a big supporter of President Bush and America's military. The Sunnis will have representation, but they will no longer be able to wield power over Iraq.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I believe the Shiia and the Kurds will have the most members and therefore - I'm hoping Allawi will remain as PM. I want him to stay because I think he's tough - and he's a big supporter of President Bush and America's military. The Sunnis will have representation, but they will no longer be able to wield power over Iraq.

I like the way this is shaping up.

We need Allawi to remain the main Man!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ping!

[oldleft]

Sunnis are not just Sunnis. The Sunnis we refer to most of the time are Arab Sunnis, but most Kurds in Iraq are Sunni as well. Sunni is a branch of Islam just like Shia. The Shia in Iraq are Arabs like the Sunnis where as the Kurds are a different ethnic group, not semitic, and have a distinct language and culture.

The major difference between Sunni and Shia is the lack of an organized hierarchy within the clergy of Sunni. The Shia do have a hierarchy, much like the Catholic church, where the highest level one may obtain is Grand Ayatollah which is what Sistani is.

Do not mistake Sistani for the Ayatollahs in Iran however. Khomeini was given the title by the Shia church because he was sentenced to death and under Iranian law at the time and Ayatollah could not be executed. But he, Rafsanjani and their ilk are not Ayatollahs like Sistani is. I believe there are currently two Grand Ayatollahs.

[TexKat]

Iraq (news - web sites)'s Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi walks in front of Kurdish military General Bahram in the Kurdish capital of Suleimaniya, northern Iraq, February 12, 2005. The final vote tally from Iraq's Jan. 30 elections will be announced on Sunday, the Election Commission said. Allawi traveled to northern Iraq on Saturday to meet Jalal Talabani, leader of one of two main Kurdish parties, in the hope of striking a deal with the powerful Kurdish bloc. Photo by Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Really ..?? Kurds are Kurds - and Sunnis are Sunnis - and they're not interchangable.

i think the Kurds were an offshoot from the Sunnis at some time.

[CyberAnt]

Hmmmm? That's interesting! Is that why the Kurds settled up in the northern part (and practically isolated themselves from the rest of Iraq?) and is that why Saddam's goons decided to gas them ..??

[ApesForEvolution]

Fascinating...

[TexKat]

Iraq PM says no reason why Kurds should not take top post

12/02/2005

SULEIMANIYAH, Iraq, Feb 12 (AFP) - 18h22 - Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Saturday that he saw no reason why a Kurd should not take one of the top posts in the country’s government.

"Following on from the principle of equality between all Iraqis, we support the Kurds’ desire to have any post in Iraq," Allawi said after talks with Kurdish politician Jalal Talabani, who has said he expects either the presidency or the premiership in a new government.

The interim prime minister had been asked whether he supported Talabani’s candidacy for one of the two posts in the light of the main Kurdish alliance’s expected second place showing in January 30 elections.

After the release of partial results, the Kurdish list is currently in second place, trailing the main Shiite list but ahead of Allawi’s.

"Against all expectations, these elections were a real success," said Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two factions in the alliance.

"After the results are announced, we will go to Baghdad where we will continue cooperation with our allies... in order to reach our shared goal, which is to build a federal, democratic and independent Iraq," he said.

Allawi already met the leader of the other main Kurdish faction -- Massud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party -- in the northern town of Arbil on Thursday.

[TexKat]

The next president of Iraq?

12/02/2005 IPS - By Aaron Glantz

ARBIL, Iraq, Feb 10 (IPS) - Fresh from their success at the polls, Iraq’s two main Kurdish political parties have put forward 72-year-old Jalal Talabani as their candidate for the presidency of Iraq. If he succeeds in winning the post, it will be a fitting coda to one of Iraq’s most colourful careers.

Born into a prominent Kurdish family in1933, Talabani didn’t waste much time getting into politics.

After obtaining a law degree in Baghdad, he threw himself into the movement for Kurdish autonomy. He served on the politburo of the movement’s main organisation, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and when the Ba’ath Party came to power in a coup in 1963, he served on the KDP’s negotiating team with the regime.

When negotiations didn’t go well, the founder of the KDP, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, opted to keep fighting.

Talabani disagreed. He called Barzani ”tribal, feudal, and reactionary” and formed his own splinter group, taking part of the group’s politburo with him.

The split got so bad that in 1966, Talabani launched an armed assault on Barzani’s KDP with the help of the Iraqi Army. It would be the first of Talabani’s many short-term alliances.

”We Kurds are surrounded by enemies in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq,” says poet and human rights activist Farhad Pirbal. ”Sometimes our leaders go crazy and they think that by making an agreement with one of these leaders they can help themselves and the Kurdish cause.”

Talabani’s alliance with the Ba’ath Party didn’t last long. He returned to the Kurdish nationalist movement as the KDP’s representative in Damascus, but when Barzani’s revolt failed in 1975, Talabani split again -- this time forming a new group called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which came to control much of Kurdish northeastern Iraq along the Iranian border.

In 1978, he fought another round of battles with Barzani, but his main confrontation would come in the 1980s, when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. This time Talabani threw in his lot with Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeni against Hussein. His PUK fighters took part in joint missions with the Iranian military, and he became an arch-enemy of the regime in Baghdad.

In 1988, Hussein launched al-Anfal, a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, depopulating thousands of Kurdish villages where support for Talabani was strong.

As part of the Anfal, tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians were brought to desert camps in southern Iraq while others were simply shot and buried in hastily dug trenches near Kirkuk. At least 50,000 were killed. Kurdish politicians say the number is 182,000.

Many survivors remember officers in Hussein’s army making specific reference to Talabani during their detention.

”They told us that we are bringing you here for dying because you follow Jalal Talabani,” relates Hasna Ali Mohammed, an elderly woman who was sent to a desert detention facility near Samawa, where she says that seven to eight prisoners died daily. ”What could we do? We had to stay there with no food and no water.”

Nuri Abdel-Rahman Mohammed, a 63-year-old night watchman, tells a similar story.

”During the dark nights, we were pressed against each other like sardines and we would ask (the Iraqi military captors) ’for God’s sake, at least provide us with some candles to have light’.”

He says the Ba’athists responded: ”Go and tell Jalal Talabani to send you some candles.”

On Mar. 19, 1988, the Iraqi Army issued a communique after it attacked the city of Halabjah, which had been held jointly by the Iranian Army and the PUK.

”Our forces attacked the headquarters of the rebellion led by the traitor Jalal Talabani, agent of the Iranian regime, the enemy of the Arabs and Kurds,” it read. ”Our people have rejected from their ranks all traitors who sold themselves cheaply to the covetous foreign enemy.”

Some 5,000 Kurdish civilians died on Mar. 16 of that year when Hussein doused Halabjah with chemical weapons.

Through all this the West stood by and watched.

”It was because they were thinking about Iran,” says Aref Korbani, a journalist at the PUK’s television station in Kirkukand and an expert on the Anfal campaign.

”They were thinking that Iran would be powerful and they were worried that there would be a strong, powerful Islamic state in the region. The U.S., Britain, Germany and so many other countries filled Iraq with weapons to help destroy Iran.”

But when Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait a few years later, geopolitical calculations changed, and so did Talabani’s. The United States and Britain began supporting Kurdish leaders as a way of containing Hussein, and Talabani played his part.

After the 1991 Gulf War, Talabani’s PUK, along with his old rivals in the PDK (now led by Mullah Barzani’s son, Masoud Barzani), responded to then U.S. President George Bush, Sr.’s call to rise up against Hussein and launched attacks throughout the region..

The revolt failed when Bush withdrew U.S. support, but it eventually led to the establishment of a Kurdish autonomous region in the north, protected by a U.S.-British no-fly zone.

Even then, the situation was difficult. From 1994 until 1998, Talabani’s PUK and Barzani’s KDP fought a civil war for control of all of Iraqi Kurdistan. Before the conflict was over, both sides called in Ba’athists, and Talabani called on Hussein’s Kurdish supporters. Barzani called directly on the Iraqi Army, which ejected the PUK from the regional capital, Arbil.

Then, in 2003, with George W. Bush in charge in Washington, Talabani’s alliance with the U.S. intensified. When the U.S. military invaded Iraq, PUK forces fought alongside U.S. soldiers and kicked the Iraqi Army out of the country’s northern oil-rich city Kirkuk. Today, the PUK is the most powerful force in the city.

Now, at age 72, Jalal Talabani is a front-runner in the race for president of Iraq. A unified Kurdish slate came in second in the voting during the country’s Jan. 30 elections and Talabani has made a proposal to the victorious Shi’ite slate, together with his rival Barzani. Either Jalal Talabani will go to Baghdad and become president or prime minister of Iraq, or the Kurds won’t join the government. Under this agreement, Barzani would become the president of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Talabani’s alliance with the United States has so far proved successful for both the aging leader and the Kurdish people. But as history demonstrates, especially in the mountains of northern Iraq, political winds have a tendency to change direction.