Vol. 71/No. 39      October 22, 2007

The deals drew criticism from Iraq’s central government, which has been engaged in drawn-out negotiations over a national oil law. The law is supposed to divide vast oil wealth between competing sections of Iraq’s capitalist class through regional administrations and the central government.

The KRG began negotiating directly with oil companies for exploration and development in Iraqi Kurdistan after approving its own oil law in August.

Canadian-based Heritage Oil and Gas, and Perenco S.A., based in France, both signed accords for a 15 percent profit from oil they discover. Dallas-based Hunt Oil signed a similar deal with the KRG earlier. Joint ventures to build two refineries in the region are also under way.

Iraqi oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani told Dow Jones Newswires October 5 that companies that deal with the KRG could be blacklisted by the central government. Commenting in September on the deal with Hunt Oil, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told the press, the deal was not “helpful” given the pending national oil law.

KRG prime minister Nechirvan Barzani responded to critics in an October 6 editorial in the Wall Street Journal. “Federalism means that we have the liberty to develop our resources under the umbrella, but not the central control, of Iraq,” he wrote.

In May the KRG was granted full military control over the northern Iraqi provinces of Erbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyah. It exercises de-facto control over parts of Diyali, Tamim, and Nineveh provinces. The region is approximately 32,000 square miles and borders Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

A majority of Iraq’s 5 million Kurds live in this region. They are part of an oppressed nation of 25 million that spans large areas in Turkey and Iran, as well as parts of Syria and Armenia.

The Kurdistan Regional Government was formed in 1992 following the first U.S.-led assault on Iraq.

The two main political parties that dominate Iraqi Kurdistan are Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A September 6 article in the Economist described them as largely “tribal fiefs, with power, money and even land distributed from the top by the ruling families.”

The KRG has “supported nearly every major initiative and decision that the U.S. has sought in Iraq,” wrote Barzani in the editorial. “We want the U.S. to remain, and we need American help. In return for our loyalty we ask understanding.”

At the same time, the Kurds’ growing autonomy in northern Iraq has fanned the national aspirations of Kurds throughout the region, who see their flag flying for the first time over a section of historic Kurdistan.

This has alarmed the regimes of neighboring countries with large Kurdish populations. In Syria, Kurds staged the largest mass protests in decades in 2004 and were brutally suppressed by Damascus. In Turkey, a decades-long war against the Maoist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has threatened to spill into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Washington and its allies have pressed the KRG to crack down on the activities in of the PKK and other parties involved in the Kurdish national struggle. In September, the KRG declared two such parties illegal, the PKK and the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, a PKK offshoot based in Iran.  
 
 
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