The meeting in Baghdad took place against a troubled backdrop: Neither the autonomous Kurds in the north, or the large Sunni minority chafing at a bloody police crackdown at recent anti-government protests, see eye-to-eye with Maliki’s Shiite-led rule in Baghdad.
For months, Erbil and Baghdad both have had thousands of troops on alert in disputed Kirkuk province, which both sides claim. In addition, Kurdish MPs have boycotted parliament sessions for weeks, after the Iraqi assembly forced through a bill that allocated only a fraction of the oil revenues requested by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
In addition to alienating the Kurds, Maliki also has angered the other component of his coalition government: The large minority Sunnis. Months of anti-government Sunni protests, over discrimination and alleged indifference by Baghdad toward the country’s deprived Sunni regions, turned deadly recently after a police crackdown killed 63 people in the town of Hawija in Kirkuk province.
It was a friendless Maliki who went into the meeting with Barzani. But, lest anyone think the Iraqi premier – who the Kurds and Sunnis both accuse of increasingly authoritarian rule – had lost any of the bluster that got him into the present mess in the first place -- Maliki went into the meeting in typical form.
In the 24 hours before the talks, he suspended nine Sunni television channels. On the morning of the meeting itself, according to Kurdish sources, he discharged 14 ethnically Kurdish officers of the Iraqi army stationed in troubled Kirkuk.
It was in this vein that the much-anticipated meeting -- called in large part as a response to the bloodshed in Hawija and the subsequent movement of Kurdish Peshmarga forces closer to the eponymous provincial capital -- resolved practically nothing.
“Nothing is going to change right away,” remarked Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim, who was part of the Kurdish delegation in the Baghdad talks, after explaining the two sides had only agreed to return to their original deal of shared security in the northern disputed territories.
He added it was agreed that the controversial Dijla forces -- which the Kurds say were formed illegally and which brought Erbil and Baghdad close to war after Maliki sent them into Kirkuk last year – would no longer be deployed in disputed territories.
But he suggested there would be no immediate pullout, because the issue still needed to be discussed by committees. It is important to note that such “committees” and “agreements” for joint-security presence have been around for years, in an attempt to solve the problem of the contested region that is much of Kirkuk province. But the situation there has only continued to deteriorate.
Maliki’s so-called Dijla forces – or the Tigris Operations Command – have been active in Kirkuk since 2012, to the chagrin of many in the province. The chances of them leaving disputed areas now, especially since the shootout in Hawija, appears highly unlikely.
On the issue of whether Kurdish leaders would push MPs to end their boycott and return to Baghdad, Karim said that would not be decided until the leaders meet again.
But “the likelihood of (Kurdish MPs returning to Baghdad) is very good,” he said, noting that, “Our issues are not with the parliament, but with the government.”
Press releases that followed the Baghdad meeting made no mention of the disputed territories in general, Kirkuk, or the budget row.
As the situation in has continued to deteriorate, there has been serious speculation that a partitioned Iraq is a real possibility.
“It is a very trying time,” Karim agreed. “I think there is likelihood -- well I think there is possibility of Iraq breaking apart,” he said.
“I believe Iraq is going through its most critical phase since the creation of the state in 1921,” Iraq’s former national security advisor, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told Britain’s Independent daily, adding there were serious murmurs in Baghdad about a partitioned Iraq.
According to the Independent, Rubaie estimates that such an outcome would lead to a gruesome conflict similar to when India was partitioned in 1947, giving birth to Pakistan.
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