Kurdistan Region – Iraq Enters Political
Quagmire?
Hiwa Zandi
Kurdistan Region of Iraq is at the behest of an emerging political
crisis as the political tension over forming the new government after the September
2013 parliamentary election is procrastinating. The tension has reached a level
that has warranted regional States intervention, complicating the impasse even
further.
The predicament couldn’t be at a worse timing when much of
the region is locked in deep-seated turmoil from Anbar and Fallujah to the
borders of Syria, yielding the likelihood of expanding the conflict into the Kurdistan
Region.
According to a local press, Levin, Peshmarga, the
armed forces of the Kurdistan Region, have been put on high alert after al-Qaeda
terrorist fighters linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant entered the
predominantly Kurdish region of Khanaqin, a disputed area between the Kurdistan
Region and Central Government in Baghdad adjacent to the current administrative
borders of the Kurdistan Region.[1]
On the surface, the political impasse lingers over the division
of important posts of the new government between the two ruling parties,
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and
the previous opposition parties, in particular Movement of Change (Gorran).
This is because the opposition parties have decided to join the new government
as no party could win a clear majority to form the government.
