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November 4, 2011 Iraq’s oil revenues are currently distributed in a way that sets the financial foundation for a new dictatorship. An economist writes how federalism, a better tax system and the national oil and gas law could avert this danger. In a controversial move, the government of the central Iraqi state of Salahaddin announced last week that it wanted to become a semi-autonomous region of Iraq with relative financial and administrative independence, in the same manner that Iraqi Kurdistan is. Currently the decision is only symbolic: Iraqi provinces need both a public referendum and parliamentary approval in order to attain autonomy and as Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is already criticising the decision, whether Salahaddin actually achieves the desired autonomy is up for debate. From time to time, other parts of Iraq have also called for administrative and financial independence. These include the states of Anbar and Basra. In early 2009, the latter announce that it had failed in its attempt to gather enough signatures to start on a course toward semi-autonomy. What all of these cases have in common though is that both the supporters of independence and its opponents have had their eyes on the assets involved: the oil and gas fields in those areas as well as the potential for the discovery of more oil and gas resources. The only Iraqi region to have been successful in gaining independence has been Iraqi Kurdistan – and a major part of its ongoing conflict with the central government in Baghdad can be traced back to those same assets: oil, oil exploration rights and oil exports. The ongoing conflict over the city of Kirkuk is part of this equation. What all of these examples show is that, despite attempts to sell the idea of independent statehood through various political slogans, the essence of conflict over more independent Iraqi states comes down to wealth. Federalism – when defined as a union of states – denotes a fair sharing out of power and wealth between various regions. In this way it makes it difficult for a totalitarian regime to assume control because such a regime is usually enabled by monopolizing political and economic power. The Iraqi Constitution, which was developed after the demise of the regime led by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was based on the decentralization of government. This was a quantum leap in the evolution of the country’s political system and it guaranteed various states levels of independence and power they had not previously held. In terms of independence, this is primarily based in the fact that provincial governments are chosen by direct election, rather than being appointed by the central government. Direct elections gift provincial governments with legal and moral strength, forcing them to pay more attention to regional needs and also giving them equal status to their peers in the central government. However the regional independence that the Constitution guarantees still faces opposition, especially from those who favour a more central, iron fisted rule. The calls that the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki makes every now and then for the strengthening of the central government at the expense of regional powers is an expression of this oppositional trend. Iraq’s federal union is still fairly young and in order for it to grow properly, greater attention will need to be given to regional finances. It becomes obvious fairly quickly that if the regional powers are to preserve their authority then that authority also needs to have a solid financial footing,www.ekurd.net with a clear distribution system based on the population in each state. The states need to have their own budgets and to be able to depend upon their own resources. Without this, the federal union is only an empty promise. The Iraqi Constitution contains several references to financial management but unfortunately many are open to interpretation and compromise. For example, every year there is disagreement on how much of the national budget the semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan should be getting. And this is mainly because of a lack of clarity when it comes to the rules on national and state finances. The Constitution gives provincial governments the right to increase their revenues independently but in reality they still tend to rely on the federal government’s budget – this means that the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad still holds sway over Iraq’s states, and this power could be exploited under certain political conditions. The focus should be on developing clarity in this area – ultimately this would lead to a reduction in the provinces’ dependence on the central government and would strengthen the basic principles of democracy. But there is another important issue here: encouraging provincial financial independence will also require clarity on exactly how oil revenues are to be distributed. And this question is mired in suspicion, envy and mutual distrust. Currently almost all of the revenue from Iraq’s oil ends up with the central government in Baghdad while the provinces that produce the oil get the left overs. As one classical Arab poem puts it, these provinces are like camels in the desert, who carry water on their backs but then die of thirst. The way that oil revenues are currently distributed – concentrated in Baghdad – sets the financial foundation for a new dictatorship. In order to avoid this, we must agree upon a more fair distribution system that will also calm fears that the oil producing regions will take everything if they are given the chance. Currently the wording of the Iraqi Constitution attempts to solve this problem by giving the national government the right to manage oil extraction and revenues. It’s not clear on what happens with new and undeveloped oil fields but at the same time it stresses equitable distribution of the revenues. However the Constitution alone cannot solve this problem. New laws are needed. Unfortunately the inability of the Iraqi parliament to pass a new national oil and gas law has prolonged conflict in this area. That conflict has also resulted in unusual and uncertain practices – for example, some tribes in Iraq’s southern states have tried to impose extra fees on international companies before they start work on oil-field-development contracts they actually signed with the central government. The decision made by the Iraqi parliament in 2010 to give the provinces US$1 for each barrel of produced oil, each barrel of refined oil and every 150 cubic meters of natural gas produced, is an important step toward reversing the financial injustices that the provinces suffered while Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in power. But it’s only the first step. Further work is needed to ensure the effective redistribution of oil revenues between the federal government and the states, with a clear basis for that redistribution. Equitable distribution of Iraq’s wealth will also require a reformation of the tax system and then a transparent and equitable redistribution of tax revenues between the different provinces, that is covered by new legislation. More taxes should be going into the national budget, which would reduce the national dependence on oil revenues, the so-called “black gold”. To do this, tax collection methods must be improved and the tax base expanded by the introduction of new taxes, like a value added tax for example. Provincial authorities should also be given the power to come up with their own special, regional tax laws so that they can supplement their budgets – although these should not be out of line with Iraq’s national fiscal policies. All of these measures would ease the political, ethnic, sectarian and territorial conflicts in which Iraq is currently engaged. They would establish fair principles on an ongoing basis and promote competition between the various states. And in the end, they will best serve the interests of all parties in a nation characterized by ethnic and religious pluralism

Defeat In Iraq November 4, 2011 Iraq is not Vietnam. There are certainly analogies: the length and unpopularity of the wars; the late escalation and increase in forces; the counterinsurgency success that came after public support for the effort seemed already exhausted; the decision to abandon the effort and thus ****** failure from the jaws of possible victory; and the arguments about the irrelevance of the conflicts to the core interests of an America riven with internal strife and economic troubles. But for all that, Iraq is not Vietnam. Because, unlike Vietnam, Iraq is at the center of two of the most pressing national security challenges facing America today—the growth of Iranian power and the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates. The United States left Vietnam, and some but not all of the dominoes in the region did fall, but Southeast Asia per se became ancillary to American national security after 1975 and has remained so to this day. The symbolism of U.S. defeat and retreat from South Vietnam was extremely important, to be sure, and continues to shape both American and international narratives of U.S. power and self-definition. But the facts on the ground there ceased to matter much to the United States after Saigon finally fell. In contrast, the Iranian offensive to overrun what the American counterinsurgency accomplished will look very different from the 1975 conventional offensive in Vietnam, and it has begun instantly, without even a decent interval. As a symbol, America’s withdrawal from Iraq will likely be similarly significant, but the facts on the ground in Iraq will continue to be centrally important to American national security for the foreseeable future. The United States can leave Iraq alone, but Iraq will not leave us alone. The collapse of U.S. Middle East strategy U.S. President Barack Obama ® salutes as he steps off of Marine One after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House October 26, 2011 in Washington, DC. Photo: Getty Images. Two dramatic challenges to the security of the American homeland spring from the area around Mesopotamia—the threat of attack by terrorist groups, and the prospect of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The recently revealed Quds Force plot to use Mexican drug cartels to conduct bombings on American soil demonstrates that the danger of terrorism emanating from the Middle East is cross-sectarian: Al Qaeda, primarily Sunni, is still in business, despite the administration’s premature claims of success, while Iranian agencies (like the Quds Force) and proxies, primarily Shiite, are becoming more potent and immediate threats to the American homeland. The U.S. abandonment of Iraq will almost certainly increase the sectarian violence that drove Iraq’s Sunni Arabs to welcome the support of Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters. The seeds of renewed sectarian conflict are already being sown, both by the efforts of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to build his Dawa party into something like a Shiite Baath party, and by indications that Sunni Arab leaders are rapidly losing faith that their participation in Iraq’s government can benefit or even protect their communities. The renewal of sectarian conflict will push both sides back toward the extremes, opening the way for Al Qaeda in Iraq to reestablish itself and for Iranian proxy groups to dig themselves even deeper into Iraq. This time there will be no American forces to resist these developments. U.S. strategy for preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, moreover, has relied almost entirely on economic sanctions. The Iran-Iraq border runs for more than 900 miles. Saddam Hussein was more than content to participate, informally and indirectly, in sanctions against Iran, a neighbor he had invaded in 1980 and fought until 1988. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait, embroiling himself in a 13-year conflict with the United States and its allies that imposed even harsher sanctions on Iraq than had been imposed on Iran. But since 2003, the presence in Iraq of more than 100,000 American troops—not to mention some of the most ruthless and vicious urban fighting and road-mining the world has seen in decades—prevented Iraq from being used as a major portal through which Iran could circumvent sanctions. Now, all of those conditions have vanished, and Iraqis have already made it clear that they do not feel bound by our sanctions against Iran. Any strategy that relies on the economic isolation of Iran, then, has just been thoroughly vitiated for the first time since Ayatollah Khomeini seized power (and American hostages) in 1979. Our defeat in Iraq will require a fundamental reevaluation of America’s strategy toward Iran. American national security strategy on a central front in two conflicts is now a smoking ruin. It may be some time before the full weight of this defeat is apparent in newspapers or on television. Its effects will be felt increasingly, however, as America’s leaders grapple with a rising and nuclearizing Iran and the reemergence of al Qaeda franchises in the Arab world. Many, most prominently the White House, now argue that this denouement was made inevitable by the mis-behavior or unreasonableness of the Iraqis. That argument is not merely false, but also fundamentally obscures serious errors in the Obama administration’s policy toward Iraq. Those mistakes encouraged the failure of the negotiations to extend the U.S. troop presence, the failure of the Iraqi state, and the collapse of the fragile intersectarian accord that a great deal of blood had been shed to achieve. It is important to review the administration’s errors for the historical record and for an understanding of both the state-of-play within Iraq today and the trends that threaten to unravel American strategy throughout the Middle East. Forming an Iraqi government Iraq’s 2010 parliamentary election was critical for securing and furthering political changes already underway after the security gains of the American surge in 2007-08. The emphatic anti-incumbent results of Iraq’s provincial elections in January 2009 had raised a serious challenge to the popularity Prime Minister Maliki had earned by defeating the Shiite militias in Baghdad and Basra in 2008. Since then, he and numerous provincial governors and councils had failed to improve the quality of government for ordinary Iraqis. The defeat of incumbents had left room for new political parties, including those representing Sunni populations in vital provinces such as Nineveh. Nationalist, secular rhetoric characterized the provincial elections and continued to predominate in the summer and early fall of 2009. The Shiite parties had been unable to form an alliance—either with one another or with the Kurdish or Sunni parties—prior to the spring 2010 election, so there was no unified Shiite bloc, as there had been in the 2006 parliamentary election. This made it possible to imagine cross-sectarian political coalitions for the first time. Cross-sectarian parties, government inclusive of minor-ities, a peaceful transfer of power, and secular political principles were thus all very much within Iraq’s reach in the summer of 2009. But those possibilities were threatening to incumbents, many of whom sought to prevent change. Rather than protecting these delicate political trends, however, the United States adopted a hands-off posture during the lead-up to the March 2010 parliamentary election and the protracted period of government-formation that followed. The United States greatly diminished its own leverage and permitted political developments that both undermined its previous achievements and complicated efforts to negotiate the troop extension that was essential to U.S. national security interests. The United States adopted a meek position, for example, on early, sectarian attempts to eliminate popular Sunni candidates in late 2009 and early 2010. The Iraqi political environment became highly charged when, on January 7, 2010, the Accountability and Justice Commission (AJC, informally known as the de-Baathification commission) announced a ban on roughly 500 candidates. The decision was highly controversial and shrouded in secrecy. The names of the banned candidates were not initially made public, nor were the methods of determining who was disqualified. Nor was it clear that the AJC was a legally constituted body that could make binding decisions on who ran for office. The move was especially controversial as the committee was led by two individuals, Ahmad Chalabi and Ali Faisal al-Lami, who were themselves candidates. Al-Lami had spent a year in U.S. custody for his links to Iranian-backed militia groups, and he’d been released only months before the announcement. Vice President Biden visited Iraq at the height of the de-Baathification controversy in what many hoped was an effort to resolve the crisis. Yet, during his visit he said, “I want to make clear I am not here to resolve that issue [of the banned candidates]. This is for Iraqis, not for me. I am confident that Iraq’s leaders are seized with this issue and are working for a final, just solution. .  .  . The United States condemns the crimes of the previous regime, and we fully support Iraq’s constitutional ban on the return to power of Saddam’s Baath party.” This unwillingness to push back against an overtly sectarian maneuver not only diminished U.S. standing, but also meant that the issue would continue to plague the electoral process. The election—Iraq’s second under the current constitution—took place on March 7. The voting was largely peaceful, with only sporadic violence meant to deter voters from heading to the polls. Turnout was high among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Many observers believed the race would be tight and come down to a contest between the two leading electoral coalitions—the State of Law list, a predominantly Shiite bloc led by Prime Minister Maliki and his Dawa party, and the Iraqiya list, a largely Sunni bloc led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Ultimately, Iraqiya came in first, with 91 seats, just 2 seats more than State of Law. The Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite coalition comprising primarily the Sadrist Trend and other religious parties, came in third with 70 seats. The Kurdistani List, comprising the two main Kurdish parties,www.ekurd.net came in fourth with 57 seats. No bloc came close to winning the 163 seats needed to form a majority in the 325-member parliament. It seemed that a secular, cross-sectarian party with a significant Sunni contingent had won the privilege of trying to form a government. The result surprised Prime Minister Maliki, who believed the election had been rigged in favor of Iraqiya. Maliki’s State of Law coalition and other Shiite parties undertook a concerted campaign to alter the election results. While many groups made claims of electoral fraud, the Iraqi Appeals Court special judicial panel ordered a manual recount of votes only in Baghdad on April 19 in response to an appeal by State of Law. This move was made even though Iraq’s electoral commission and international election monitors found little evidence to support Maliki’s claims of fraud. Again, the United States proceeded as though the recount were strictly an Iraqi issue and the courts were operating in their proper, independent role rather than as servants of a political master, which was the reality. One week after ordering a recount, the same special judicial panel upheld the AJC’s ruling to disqualify several winning candidates on account of their alleged ties to the Baath party. This included several winners from Iraqiya. When asked about the politicization of the judiciary in the de-Baathification process, U.S. ambassador Christopher Hill said, “I would see this as a close election that has caused great strain and great challenges to all of Iraq’s nascent democratic institutions, and I would say the court system has not been immune to this challenge.” But Hill did not repudiate the decision to ban the candidates. In addition to the Baghdad recount and de-Baathification efforts, the Shiite blocs sought other means to alter the outcome of the vote, including a move to redefine Article 76 of the Iraqi constitution, which stipulates that the “largest bloc” has the first chance to select a prime minister and form a governing coalition. On March 25, the day before the final results were announced, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court issued the opinion that Article 76 could mean a coalition formed either before or after the election, giving a second chance to the Shiite blocs. In early May, the two main Shiite groups—Maliki’s State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance—announced the formation of a bloc later named the National Alliance. This move was widely seen as politically influenced, but allowed the National Alliance, with its 159 seats (just 4 shy of a majority), to be the largest bloc. Maliki had been laying the groundwork for such a ruling since the summer of 2009, as it became evident that he would not succeed in forming an alliance before the election. U.S. officials maintained a posture of noninterference and insisted they favored no bloc, but their unwillingness to resist Maliki and other Shiite parties’ blatant manipulation of the political process through the courts was, in effect, an endorsement of Maliki—and was seen as such by many Iraqis, including some with whom we spoke at the time. What did concern the Obama administration was the speedy formation of a government so that the drawdown to 50,000 troops and the cessation of combat operations could be achieved on schedule, by August 31, 2010. But as the process dragged on into the early summer, and as the number of U.S. troops fell by a combat brigade a month, administration officials decided that Maliki was the only candidate who could form a government. They also believed that the fastest way to achieve this was by facilitating an alliance between Maliki and Allawi in a “national partnership government.” In an effort to appease Allawi and ensure Iraqiya’s participation, U.S. officials pressed for the creation of a National Council for Higher Policies, which Allawi would head. This council, however, had no grounding in the constitution, and any effort to invest it with executive authority would have required a constitutional amendment, a virtually impossible move. Furthermore, the notion of a Maliki-Allawi alliance was at odds with political reality, as the two men were bitter rivals. U.S. support for Maliki also undercut attempts to find creative and viable alternatives to his remaining prime minister. If U.S. efforts to broker a Maliki-Allawi partnership that summer were ineffective, the Iranians, by contrast, intervened decisively. In late September, Iran convinced Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to drop his support for Allawi in favor of Maliki. At the same time, the Iranians convinced Shiite populist Moktada al-Sadr to back Maliki, in exchange for concessions including extra ministerial positions for the Sadrist Trend. Sadr’s support was instrumental in shifting momentum in Maliki’s favor. Other parties, sensing that Maliki would emerge the victor and wanting to share in the spoils of government, soon lined up behind the prime minister. Yet the question remained how to incorporate Allawi and Iraqiya into the government. U.S. officials, including Vice President Biden and even President Obama, tried several times to ask the Kurds to cede the presidency and make way for Allawi. The Kurds, offended, rebuffed them. Ultimately, Kurdistan Regional Government president Massoud Barzani gathered representatives from the main blocs together in Erbil and Baghdad and brokered a compromise that became known as the Erbil Agreement, whereby Maliki would retain the premiership, Allawi would chair the NCHP, and the Kurds would retain the presidency. This paved the way for the seating of the government in December 2010. There has been little political progress in the 10 months since. The deep division within the large ruling coalition has made it all but impossible to reach consensus on key issues, such as selecting ministers of defense or the interior. Prime Minister Maliki took advantage of the deadlock to make himself acting head of both ministries and thus exercise de facto control over the entire security apparatus, without ministerial accountability or parliamentary oversight. The government is bloated and ineffective, as dozens of new ministries and positions were created in an effort to include all the major parties in the governing coalition. Maliki has used this period to consolidate control over the security and intelligence ministries. He has also successfully kept Iraqiya (especially Allawi’s faction) from assuming the power it earned at the polls or even from serving as a check on his own power. Ambivalent—or incompetent—negotiations The character of the Iraqi government complicated the negotiations to extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Most blocs privately favored keeping U.S. forces in Iraq for training. Yet it was difficult for any politician or party to champion an agreement publicly for fear of attacks from rival groups. Maliki made clear that he would not move on the issue without the support of a large majority of other political groups. Iraqiya, meanwhile, sought to use the issue to extract concessions from Maliki on the NCHP and the naming of the minister of defense. The U.S. position on the troop extension was also problematic. U.S. officials insisted that negotiations could not begin until the Iraqis formally asked the United States to stay. But this is not how most such negotiations unfold. Normally, private discussions precede any formal request. The insistence that the Iraqis ask first and talk later remained the common refrain of senior U.S. officials such as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who during his July 2011 visit told the Iraqis, “Dammit, make a decision.” This hurt more than it helped. During his visit, Panetta also pressed Maliki to name a minister of defense. The administration feared that without a minister, the negotiations over U.S. troops could not begin. But in reality, the decision on U.S. troops was always going to be taken up by Iraq’s political leaders. By focusing on the side issue of naming a defense minister, U.S. policymakers lost precious time that could have been spent building confidence and consensus amongst Iraq’s various political actors in favor of an extended U.S. presence. The Obama administration made the negotiations even more difficult by choosing the most difficult path to securing immunities for U.S. troops. No one doubted the need to secure immunities, but according to a recent McClatchy article citing diplomats in Baghdad, when State Department lawyers presented the president with options for doing so, “Obama chose the most stringent, approval by Iraq’s legislature of a new agreement, citing as precedent that the Iraqi parliament had approved the 2008 agreement.” Requiring parliamentary approval set the bar far higher than Iraqis saw as realistic or achievable. It also may have been unnecessary, given the variety of status of forces agreements the United States has negotiated with other countries without parliamentary approval. Senior Iraqis, including Maliki himself, countered that a memorandum of understanding granting immunity was all that was required for a continued training mission. The result of these complications was that serious negotiations to extend the security agreement did not begin in earnest until August 2011, a year after the drawdown to 50,000 troops and just months before the December 31 withdrawal deadline. By this time, many Iraqis had grown skeptical of the U.S. commitment to a partnership with Iraq. The fact that President Obama was not involved in the process gave politicians further reason to doubt U.S. intentions, as did leaks that the United States would keep only 3,000-5,000 troops in Iraq, far short of the 15,000-20,000 that the U.S. command in Iraq had requested. Iraqi politicians who might otherwise have resisted Iranian entreaties and threats no longer felt confident that the United States had the willingness or capability to balance Iran. For those seeking to scuttle the agreement, the immunities issue proved the easiest means of doing so. When Iraqi politicians said in mid-October that U.S. forces would be granted no immunities at all, the talks ceased. The Shiite reaction—purges and militancy Iraqi leaders have been remarkably quick to adjust to the reality of American abandonment, and their reactions show that they really had considered the American presence a meaningful check on sectarianism and the consolidation of a vengeful, authoritarian Shiite government. Maliki has been working seriously to transform his Dawa party into a Shiite version of the Baath party since late 2009. He has been steadily replacing key officials with loyalists throughout the government, but particularly in security-related ministries like the intelligence services and the army. We have long had reports that Maliki was establishing a de facto requirement of Dawa party membership for those who would hold certain key positions. He supported the efforts of the AJC to remove from office even individuals explicitly protected by the Iraqi constitution because their past membership in the Baath party was either coerced or at low rank. The failure to complete the government, with the defense and interior ministries effectively in Maliki’s hands, greatly facilitated these efforts. Within days of President Obama’s announcement of the U.S. withdrawal on October 21, political firings and arrests picked up, now amounting to a full-scale purge. Iraqi police sources report that roughly 200 people from provinces including Kirkuk, Diyala, Babel, Salahadin, and Basra have been arrested since October 24, all on charges of affiliation with the Baath party under Saddam and vague accusations of plotting to conduct terrorism within Iraq. It is clear from this reporting that many of those arrested had not held rank in the Baath party high enough to permit their legal arrest for that reason alone. Even before Obama’s announcement, the purge had reached the higher echelons of the Iraqi Army, with the forcing out of 14th Infantry Division commander General Abdul Aziz Noor Swady al Dalmy and Vice Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Joint Command Nasir Abadi. The removal of these two generals is particularly worrisome, not merely because it expresses Shiite vengefulness, but also because the two epitomized the Iraqi uniformed leadership that sought close relations with the United States and resisted Shiite militias. General Aziz has held Basra tenaciously against Iranian proxy militias since the city was cleared in early 2008. General Nasir has been a pro-American, secular, nonsectarian, and highly competent leader. These professionals posed little or no military or political threat to Maliki himself, but they did strongly oppose any turn by Baghdad toward Tehran. The most recent purge in Saddam’s home province of Salahadin has already sparked local resistance. On October 26 the Salahadin Provincial Council refused to hand over a number of detained former army officers and former Baath party members and subsequently voted to declare the province an autonomous administrative and economic region. These events are the culmination of a two-year contest between the Salahadin Provincial Council and Baghdad over changes to local security and government offices. The purge, moreover, has not been confined to the security ministries. More than 100 faculty members and employees at Tikrit and Mosul universities have been fired. This comes after reports since June that Maliki’s right-hand man, Ali al Adeeb, was conducting a mandatory survey as part of the “de-Baathification” process. Al Adeeb recently accused the former minister of higher education, Abd Dhiyab al Ajeely (a Sunni), of taking orders from Baathists. Maliki is now arresting Iraqis simply for having been Baath party members under Saddam. This is exactly the kind of bid for exclusive Shiite control over the government that Iraq’s Sunni Arabs have long feared would come when the United States left. Both Maliki’s actions and the nascent resistance to them in Salahadin and elsewhere dramatically increase the likelihood of a return to sectarian civil war in Iraq. Iran triumphant Iranians and their allies have hastened to take credit for their victory over the United States. Much of the official Iranian reaction thus far has been somewhat cautious and focused on warning that the United States no doubt sought continued involvement in Iraq to Iran’s detriment. Some Iranian senior military leaders have been more direct. The chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hassan Firouzabadi, for example, said that “American soldiers had no other choice than to leave Iraq, and this is the beginning of all American forces withdrawing from the region.” A statement by the Basij militia, which played a central role in suppressing the protests in Iran following the 2009 presidential election, said that “the United States has no way out but to retreat from the region as the Middle East has become an exhibition of its failures.” It spoke of a “Great Islamic Middle East” in which all “Muslim and freedom-seeking nations” would cooperate with Iran “to distance themselves from bankrupt powers.” An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman attributed the pullout of U.S. military forces to the “resistance put up by the Iraqi people, government, and clerics. .  .  . If the United States had been capable of maintaining its military presence in several parts of the world, U.S. officials would not have made such a decision.” The Iranians’ repeated references to “resistance” are direct evocations of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is always defined as a resistance force against Israeli aggression. Hezbollah was the model on which Sadr’s organizations were based, with help from Lebanese Hezbollah leaders and fighters who had traveled to Iraq. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told Iran’s Press TV that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq is a “historic defeat for the United States.” He told the interviewer that “Iraqis owe this remarkable achievement to the resistance groups,” adding that “U.S. troops would have stayed in the country if they had felt secure.” And he likened the U.S. withdrawal to the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. Further evidence of the Iranian victory over the United States is the fact that Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani went to Tehran a week after Obama’s announcement for only the second time in his presidency of the Kurdish Region. Barzani has historically been the Kurdish leader most staunchly opposed to Iran and inclined toward maintaining a strong partnership with the United States. Sadr’s reaction, on the other hand, indicates that he (and his Iranian handlers, no doubt) see this withdrawal as an opportunity to push even harder against any American presence in the region. As late as October 20, Sadr declared that a continued U.S. presence in Iraq of some sort might be acceptable under certain conditions. Three days later, and two days after Obama’s speech, he said that even a significant American diplomatic presence would be an occupation. He called on his followers to continue their armed fight against American civilians in Iraq after the end of this year. And there is another reason Sadr is now able to act with renewed confidence in his own position within the Iraqi political and religious order. Seventy-two hours after Obama’s speech, the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Court issued a remarkable announcement. The court not only dismissed charges against Sadr for his involvement in the 2003 murder of Ayatollah Khoei, an act for which Sadr was directly responsible. It actually asserted that there had never been any such charges, which is not true. Ayatollah Khoei had been one of the most obvious candidates to succeed the aged Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who heads the Shiite religious establishment in Najaf. Like Sistani and the other Najafi Shiite clerics, Ayatollah Khoei preached a vision of Shiite Islam at odds with the theocratic doctrine developed by Ayatollah Khomeini that serves as the religious basis for the Islamic Republic of Iran today. The Iraqi clerics’ vision is characterized by the belief that, although the state must be run in accord with Islamic law, clerics themselves should play no direct role in government or politics—a view that is flatly at odds with the clerical dictatorship in Iran and that Iranian leaders have long seen as a threat to the principles on which their regime was founded. The charges against Sadr, combined with his poor religious credentials, had hitherto made the prospect of inserting him into the Najafi clerical establishment, let alone having him succeed Sistani in some way, almost laughable to Iraqis. The official evaporation of the charges, combined with the clear ascendancy of Iran, make such a prospect very likely. If and when that happens, the last bastion of Shiism in the Middle East that rejects the Khomeini model of theocracy and champions a degree of separation between church and state will have fallen. The price of failure America will pay a high price for defeat in Iraq. Our global credibility is seriously damaged—it is surely no accident that the weekend after President Obama announced that we were abandoning Iraq, President Hamid Karzai said that Afghanistan would stand with Pakistan against a U.S. attack. Why not? The Iranian and Pakistani narratives all along have been that the Americans will ultimately abandon their allies to their fate, while the neighbors will be around to exact revenge. President Obama has just reinforced that narrative before all the world. The United States will also pay a high moral price for this retreat. Tens of thousands of Iraqis sacrificed and put themselves and their families in enormous danger relying on the backing of the United States against our mutual enemies—al Qaeda and Iranian militias. The Maliki government, perhaps partially at the behest of the Quds Force, is now beginning to eliminate some of those people, and the trickle of blood and refugees will likely become a river. Yet another group of brave people who share America’s core values and risked their lives to fight with us will conclude bitterly that Americans can never be trusted. Iran will be strengthened in the region, and Iraq’s traditional tensions with its Arab neighbors will suit Tehran’s policies. The United States has worked tirelessly to maintain decent relations between Iraq and Kuwait, and to mediate between Baghdad and Riyadh. Iran has no similar interests, and will likely encourage Baghdad to pursue its territorial and financial disputes with Kuwait (not through direct armed conflict, of course) and to distance Iraq from Saudi Arabia. In place of a coalition of Arab states resisting Iranian expansion, we can expect the emergence of an Iran-Iraq-Syria axis as a counterweight and deterrent to any such coalition. If the Syrian regime should fall, Iraq could be a valuable replacement, but also a point of leverage for continued Iranian involvement in Syria and the Levant. Above all, the war is not over even when that last American soldier leaves Iraq. Sadr’s troops with Iranian support will continue to attack and probably kill our embassy personnel. Iran and its allies—now bolstered by militias and political groups that can function without hindrance in Iraq—will continue their explicit efforts to expel the United States from the Middle East entirely. Iran will gain free access to the world’s trade through Iraq’s cities, highways, ports, and banks, circumventing any sanctions the United States might painfully push through the U.N. Security Council. And the Shiite world will lose its leading advocate for a vision of Islam that is more compatible with Western ideals—and with the views of the overwhelming majority of Iraqi Shiites. The return of an al Qaeda franchise to Iraq, finally, is all but certain. Al Qaeda in Iraq—which even today the Obama administration is loath to recognize as part of the al Qaeda movement despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary—has been trying to reestablish itself in the wake of the U.S. drawdown of surge troops since 2009, with limited success. The American retreat and the reemergence of sectarian conflict in Iraq will create fruitful ground for such a reestablishment. U.S. Special Forces and drones, now denied formal bases in Iraq, will be hard-pressed to develop the intelligence necessary to continue to degrade that organization, nor is it clear that they will be allowed to act as they see fit. Tehran is working to establish a U.S.-free Iraq, and will pressure Iraqis to resist American violations of their sovereignty, fearing Iraqi-American military partnership at any level. The likelihood is that al Qaeda will regain some sort of safe haven in Iraq, and the main pressure it will face will be renewed Shiite sectarian cleansing operations that will exacerbate internal conflict and regional tensions but will not eliminate al Qaeda itself. Now that President Obama has perfected so many of the analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, we may well come to wish that Iraq, like Vietnam, were ultimately a sideshow. But Iraq is much more vital to our national security than Vietnam ever was. The United States will have to bear the burden of this defeat and its disastrous consequences for a long time to come.

Announced that the General Company for Ports of Iraq that the port of Khor Al-Zubair has exported more / / 10 million tons of dates in the past month. A source in the company that with the beginning of the season dates and cattle exported from Iraq to many countries of the world could the port of Khor Al-Zubair ports to be attractive to exporters of these materials. " He noted that "the volume of oil exports for the month of last October amounted to ten thousand and 825 thousand tons of dates and / 400 / tons of cattle

TEHRAN (November 3) : Iran has impounded a tanker carrying smuggled Iraqi oil in breach of United Nations sanctions, state radio said on Thursday. The tanker, carrying 1,800 tonnes of crude, was seized by police in coastal waters near Kish island after a tip-off, the radio said. The ship's captain has been detained and the oil confiscated. Ten other crew, mainly Arabs and Indians, have been allowed to go free, the radio added. Iranian officials said in September that ships carrying smuggled Iraqi oil through Iranian waters would be confiscated along with their cargoes. Previously the tankers were allowed to leave without their cargo after paying a fine. The United States, which remains antagonistic towards Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, has accused Tehran of lapses in enforcement of the UN sanctions imposed against Iraq in 1990.

Kurds Confirmed their support for President Jalal Talabani’s plan to re-demarcation borders in provinces covered by Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, before the U.S. troops withdrawal from the country at the end of this year. President Talabani submitted a draft law to the Iraqi Parliament to re-demarcation of administrative borders of the provinces covered by Article 140 of the Constitution in order to return them to what they were, before their change in the era of the former regime. Adel Barware , a Kurdish Adviser to the Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki , in a press statement said that the President’s project is not a violation of the constitution which provides the necessity to implement Article 140 , solve the outstanding problems and the demarcation of provinces and Separated Areas borders. We, the Kurds are keen to activate Article 140 and re- demarcation of the Separated Areas before the U.S. troops withdrawal which still control those areas, Barware added.

21bil for 72,000 units ??? somethings sounds fishy here , when south korean construction was going to build 100,000 units for 7.25 bil Iraq unveils 100,000-home 'master plan' by Staff Writers Baghdad (AFP) Aug 25, 2011 Iraq's investment commission and a South Korean construction firm unveiled a "master plan" on Thursday to develop a sprawling suburb of Baghdad with 100,000 homes in a US$7.25 billion deal. The final contract for the Besmaya redevelopment project has yet to be signed, but promotional material displayed at a news conference promised a "new home for 600,000 Baghdadis", a day after commission chief Sami al-Araji told AFP new housing was Iraq's top priority. someones pockets are filling up $$$$$$$$$

Martin Kobler, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq and head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), said : there are efforts to end the outstanding differences between Iraq and Kuwait. Kobler during a joint press conference with the Governor of Basra Province , Khalaf Abdul Samad, clarified that the United Nations pay great heed to bilateral relations between the two countries. the governor of Basra, for his part , called on development of economic ties between Iraq and Kuwait in order to reduce political differences between them. Abdual Samad , demanded during the press conference , the United Nations to help Iraq to get out of Chapter VII of the UN’s Charter.

http://www.pukmedia.com/english/inde...raq&Itemid=386 http://www.gksat.tv/interior-news/3586

http://www.uncc.ch/theclaims.htm Decisions of the Governing Council http://www.uncc.ch/decision.htm#_2009

not sure if this help looks like 2012 ? Iraqi mobile telecoms firm Asiacell LLC, an affiliate of Qatar Telecom , has picked HSBC and Morgan Stanley to manage an initial public share offer next year, four sources familiar with the process said on Tuesday. The company is currently converting from being a limited liability company to a shareholding corporation, the public offering isn't expected until 2012, two of the sources said, due to volatile market conditions and the time needed to complete the pre-IPO process. Qtel declined to comment. While Asiacell and two other Iraqi telecom companies -- Korek Telecom, part-owned by France Telecom and logistics firm Agility , and Zain Iraq, a unit of Kuwait's Zain -- were required to list 25 percent of their shares before August, the commissioner of Iraq's Communications and Media Commission said last week it did not expect any offerings until mid-2012. "All three operators are in dialogue with the regulator and they are trying to find a suitable roadmap which doesn't overload the system," one of the sources said. "It is all about the fine balance between being late on the deadline and, even if they were ready, going public in an environment where they price at a reasonable rate." Last year's listing of Nawras , Oman's second mobile operator whose majority shareholder is also Qtel, encountered a similar situation. The terms of its licence dictated that it needed to list 40 percent on the Muscat Securities Market by February 2010 but volatile equity markets saw the regulator grant it an extension and the IPO was completed in October 2010. For the three Iraqi telcos, listing on their home exchange also presents challenges. There has never been an IPO on the Iraqi bourse which is structured like a Western offering, with a roadshow and then a period of bookbuilding before final pricing. The format of Asiacell's IPO has yet to be decided but one of the sources said discussions were taking place around whether to use the book-build method. A fixed price offering would be the other option for Asiacell, which is easier for investors to understand but doesn't reflect the true value of the shares; with shares liable to big jumps on the first day of trading as the market corrects. The size of the three listings are also set to be much larger than any other stock on the Iraqi bourse. The combined freefloats would be worth around $5 billion but the current daily turnover on the Iraqi exchange was around $1.5 million, Ghada Gebara, the chief executive of Korek Telecom, told Reuters last week. Therefore, ensuring a smooth listing process will be important for both the future performance of the stocks and the credibility of the wider exchange. "You can't have listings from the same sector and the same country on top of each other as it damages investor demand so it would be better if the regulator gave all of 2012 to get the three deals done," the first source said. "But the regulator seems to understand what a proper process should be, with their recent comments about timing sensible and without the sabre-rattling of having to get it done by a certain date." Zain Iraq said last month it has also begun the process of changing to a shareholding company. It has appointed BNP Paribas , Citigroup and National Bank of Kuwait to run its offering, three of the sources said.

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi Iraq plans to slash its budget deficit by two-thirds in the next three years by raising oil production and allowing more private sector involvement in the state-dominated economy, Finance Minister Rafie al-Essawi said on Saturday. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Dead Sea, Essawi told Reuters in an interview that he expects the deficit to fall to 5 trillion dinars from 16.6 trillion ($14.2 billion) forecast for this year. "There will also be unrealized spending that will end up plugging the budget gap, so the deficit is not worrying," Essawi told Reuters in an interview. The minister did not say how much the deficit would be as a percentage of GDP, but official figures set the budget for 2011 at $82.6 billion, giving a deficit of around 17 percent of revenue. Essawi said he hoped economic growth would rise slightly to around 5 percent this year and to 9 percent in the next three years as Iraq begins to end a legacy of reliance on the state for economic activity and buck a general slowdown in the region. He said extra spending on salary hikes and on security personnel, purchases of F-16 military planes and a surge in the commodities import bill would raise spending by another 8 trillion Iraqi dinars in 2012. But this would be offset by a projected revenue rise to around 95 trillion dinars next year as more oil comes on stream and privatization reduces the pressure on government finances, Essawi said. The country is currently producing about 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) and is trying to ramp up output capacity to 12 million bpd in 2017. Iraq's 2011 budget is calculated based on an average oil price of $85 per barrel and 2.2 million barrels per day in crude exports, and the 2012 budget is based on 2.6 million barrels per day at this year's average oil price estimate of $85. Budget shortfalls are challenging Iraq's ability to rebuild. The country has announced massive projects to build hundreds of thousands of new homes and to boost electricity generation, which has been plagued by severe shortages after war and sanctions over the last two decades. "Today the main challenge is the destroyed infrastructure which requires more capital investment, and this means openness toward the private sector," Essawi said. The government was planning to accelerate privatization of state industries and now offer investors land free of charge to encourage investment, Essawi said. "We have a conviction that part of the solution is in the hands of the private sector," Essawi said. The major challenge facing the Iraqi economy remained diversifying away from oil to spur growth, Essawi added. "Diversification is minimal with the economy dependent on oil. This is what is restricting growth and investments," he added. Eight years after the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq's economy is still largely disconnected from the global financial system and is dominated by oil, with exports from some of the world's largest reserves accounting for more than 95 percent of state revenue. OIL PRICES CUSHION BUDGET Essawi said current oil prices that have hovered above government estimates have helped cushion government finances. "The oil price is still around $100 or more and this makes us on the safe side," he said. The 2012 budget was still not finally fixed but higher state revenues projected next year will help lead to more capital investment, he added. Violence and corruption deprived Iraq of investment during the years of conflict triggered by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein and the process of rebuilding has been slow. "The challenge is the damaged infrastructure in a transitional phase. This doesn't just need financing but also time. Even if you had funds this would not solve the problem without more time," Essawi added. (1,170 dinars = $1)

my quess would be more like the usd 25,000 =25.00 10,000=10.00 5,000=5.00 1,000=1.00 the 500 and 250 would be a coin..jmo and come out at 1 to 1

October 26, 2011 The idea of independent Kurdistan has been making the headlines recently. Politicians and commentators from all spectrums are airing their views like never before. The latest politician to wade into the argument is no other than Hassan Alawi, who is identified as a vocal support of the Kurds and one of the founders of Baath party, which is not two qualities one hear in a one sentence too often. The leader of the State of Law coalition, Izzat Shabander, also proposed that Kurds should form their own independent state. Both comments have enraged many Iraqi nationalists, but have done little to make Kurdish politicians jumping on the bandwagon. Kurdish flag controversy in Diyala province has demonstrated the impasse between KR (Kurdistan Region) and the rest of Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri AL-Maliki, has issued a directive ordering the removal of Kurdish flags from government building in the area. The decision has sparked an emotional outcry from the Kurdish public, which followed by large demonstrations. Consequently, Diyala province office refused to comply with the order and the PM was rebuffed. When it became clear that the Kurds are not willing to listen to Baghdad, Maliki 's spokesman retracted his statement by saying that the PM did not issue the directive, but order was issued by local government. Maliki’s backtracking and his inability to force his directive is a telling sign that he has little or no authority in the area. The Kurdish flag issue with its motives and outcome is a clear indication that relation between the Kurds and state of law coalition is hanging by a thread or possibly over. The majority if not all Kurds would love to see an independent Kurdistan, however, most Kurdish politician keep talking about a united Iraq despite being ostracised for not mentioning the I word. The easiest way for a Kurdish politician to become popular is to call for an independent state, but if you are a politician and conducting diplomacy with the authoritarian neighbours and see the economic and political reality of KR, it is hard to take any other position but the current one. KR and the greater Kurdistan is landlocked and surrounded by hostile neighbours. Having bad or no relation with the neighbouring countries is not an option and Kurdish politicians often have to conduct diplomacy while holding their noises. Arab politicians are coming out of the woodwork and calling for Kurdistan to declare independence. They portray themselves to be friends of the Kurds but the political dimension of the recent statements is not as innocent as one might think. It is also worth noting that most of these calls have come when the US troops are about to leave Iraq, which many experts are predicting to lead to a reduced Kurdish influence in Baghdad. The phrase goes “it's the Economy Stupid”, which applies to Kurdistan region and Iraq as anywhere else. The question is why senior Iraqi politicians are calling for independent Kurdistan while Iraq's income from oil is rapidly increasing. Kurdistan region's economy like Iraq is largely dependent on oil and gas revenues and the sector in KR is mostly underdeveloped. Iraq's oil export will reach 3 million bopd soon and with buoyant oil prices, the central government’s budget is swelling and with it the 17 per cent share of the KRG. Meanwhile due to log standing disagreements over oil policy and revenue sharing among other disagreements, KRG is pursuing its own agenda and not contributing as much as it can to Iraq's oil exports. If the disputed territories- like Kirkuk- are discounted from the overall Iraqi oil exports, the 17 per cent share of the KRG is not proportionate if calculated at rate of export not according to land mass, population and other factors. While KR economy is booming due to better security and extra revenue- received in a way of bounces from oil explorers, selling oil to domestic market, local taxation and other schemes- the rest of Iraq is falling behind due to lack of security and chronic corruption within government and institutions. Needless to say that KR is not immune from mismanagement and corruption. The main ruling parties of PUK and KDP have so far resisted the temptation of publicly calling for independence, despite being under a tremendous pressure from the public and the opposition parties. It is arguable that KR is politically qualified to stand on its feet, but it is doubtful that the region is militarily or economically ready for such step. Throughout the KRG lifetime,www.ekurd.net the political consequences of independence have always been greater than the economic impediments, but now the table has turned. It is highly unlikely that the international community would recognise Kurdistan overnight, but the main issue remains, whether the economics of independence would work bearing in mind the geopolitical problems. Iraqi politicians may encourage Kurdistan to become independent, but Baghdad has repeatedly failed or refused to implement article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. The issue of the disputed territories defined by Article 140 is another obstacle because there are no consensuses on KR borders and the oil-rich areas of Kirkuk. The Kurds are known as a kingmakers in Iraq at the moment and enjoy a considerable amount leverage on Baghdad. They are like a state within a state without the responsibilities and burden of one. The region has a generous allowance form Baghdad and most of the revenue has been generated from oil sold from Iraq’s southern regions. An independent Kurdistan would lose its current budget overnight and from being kingmakers in Iraq they have to go cap in hand to Turkey or Iran. Although the KRG has other streams of income, it is nowhere near enough to keep paying the bloated public sector salaries let alone keeping the investment and rebuilding programs and the day to day running of public services and the government machine. The economic impact could be devastating for the region where the whole economy could implode taking years to rebuild. The Kurds maybe yearning for independence, but when the public purse becomes empty, leading to cutbacks, high unemployment and a reduction in living standards, people will have different views. The best-case scenario would be to annex Kirkuk and the other disputed territories to Kurdistan and has full use of Ceyhan pipeline, which is very unlikely as the pipeline is not entirely in KR. Even in the unlikely scenario-in short and medium term- Kurdish region would still not generate income anywhere near the allocated current budget from Baghdad. It would take years before building the infrastructure allowing for exporting hydrocarbon resources given the neighbouring countries consent. Kurdistan economy will be based on oil &gas despite calls for self-sufficiency and the revival of the agriculture sector. Even if the agriculture sector is revived, Kurdistan will still be dependent on Iran and Turkey as they are controlling most if not all of the water sources into KR. Iran has recently demonstrated future policy on water by blocking Alwand River and Turkey has been building dams for the best part of two decades on Tigris River. The Kurdish independence will come down to the nature of the relation with Turkey, which is the main gateway for KR. Contrary to the common perception by Kurds and Turks, an independent KR will immensely benefit Turkey. And despite all the political rhetoric and historical antipathy, Turkey is most likely to support the idea of independence simply because Turkey will have a grater influence on the KRG and Kurdistan has the potential to become the cheap energy source that fuel the booming Turkish economy in the future. It is hard for any Kurd to say no to independence because it makes perfect sense for the largest nation on earth without a state, but if considered rationally, it is not as straight forward as it sounds. Kurdish politicians have hard choices to make, either to declare independence and lose their clout in Iraq -becoming more dependent on Turkey and Iran- while coping with decrepit public finances or stay within Iraq and buy more time to build up the country and resolve the outstanding issues of the disputed territories. Once these areas are annexed and the infrastructure is in place, Kurdistan can become more of an economic power which would give it a better bargaining power if and when Kurdistan state becomes a reality.

pic is from baghdad

cash from oil sales or trade oil

do we start looking for these, THE KURO, the euro of kurdistan

Written by: Farid Asasard Since 2003 when the US forces entered Baghdad and the former regime collapsed, the threat of returning dictatorship to Iraq never has been talked about than recently. Although some exaggeration of imagining this threat may be seen, but this does not mean that taking the threat into consideration is baseless. Practically there are a legitimate concern about the retreat of democracy, and President Talabani himself during a meeting with a number of editors-in- chief and directors of satellite channels expressed his concern over the weakness of democracy’s path. If the top of the executive authority be concerned in this regard, then it seems the issue cannot be neglected. A great part of Iraq’s political class in this regard is suspicious of the Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s behaviors and policies, and deems Maliki’s autocracy may lead Iraq to a bad destiny. In fact most of the concerns have strong bases. Maliki has controlled the army, security and police forces totally and has also controlled the two key ministries of defense and interior. He makes his best to marginalize his rival list (Al-Iraqia List) and slips himself away from implementing Erbil agreement. In a bid to continue his efforts for controlling the independence bodies, Maliki last week replaced some employees and director of the Independent High Electoral Commission with some persons near to his party. Political observers are surprised with Maliki’s behavior, because controlling the ministries of defense and interior, as Maliki did, will not strengthen his political and social positions since Maliki basically has not got the premier post through the majority vote and whenever the majority stood against him and withdrew confidence from him he will lose his post. In Iraq’s circumstances, even, controlling the army, security and police forces will not make an opportunity for controller that to make a successful coup. Because if any coup is being made, those who are behind the coup can only control Baghdad and its surroundings, and they cannot guarantee the support of other areas and eventually the issue may end with a civil war. The council of representatives and the political class are responsible from a crucial part of the current Iraqi situation. Although a special circumstances made Maliki to be asked to establish the government, as a measure for exiting from a bigger crisis, but giving trust to an incomplete government, which lacked three ministers and Maliki held those three posts himself, gave Maliki all factors to grip power and be an autocrat. Accordingly, Maliki got the guarantee that to run the country’s affaires as he likes. Autocracy is a threat against three principles in Iraq. If these three principles were not available, Iraq will not be stable and secure. These three principles are: democracy, partnership, and accordance. Anybody in Iraq who is against these three principles, that person may create a big issue for his or her country.

Not to hi-jack this topic, but its a question about CBI, is this statement correct? Kuwait has 1 bil dinars in circulation,worth 3.50US.--kuwait currency worth 3.5 billion Iraq has 28.5 trillion dinars in circulation, worth .00085US.-- iraq currency worth 23.8 billion Iraq currency is worth 6.8 times more then Kuwait wouldn't Iraq have to remove dinar from circulation in order for the value to raise,and is that by cbi auction sells USD to bring in dinars to remove from circulation

if they dont sign something soon,we might see some kuro's

October 18 2011 Iraqi parliament announced on Monday that quartet talks will be taking place in Baghdad between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to discuss pending issues in the region upon the initiative of Iraqi Parliament Speaker. “Iraqi parliament speaker Osama Al Nujaifi, who is attending the International parliamentary conference in Swiss capital Bern, met on Monday with Iranian speaker Ali Larijani,” spokesman of parliamentary foreign relations committee Abbas Al Amiri told Alsumarianews. “Both parties agreed upon holding quartet talks in Baghdad between Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey,” he noted. “The meeting was positive. Iranian Speaker showed positive interaction and did not oppose the initiative,” Al Amiri declared. “The initiative was made by Al Nujaifi. As a first step, the Saudi Parliament and new Turkish Parliament Speaker will be contacted in this regard,” Al Amiri added expecting the meeting to “tackle regional issues and set forth a resolving strategy.” “Iraqi speaker suggested that Iraq hosts the quartet talks and hold them on a regular basis in the three concerned countries in view of dealing with urgent issues”, Al Amiri proposed. “This initiative is a start of a union that gathers influential parties to discuss pending issues in the region in addition to security, economic and political cooperation among regional countries,” he added. “Iraq is now aware that it has the ability to deal with intense crisis through dialogue and not through tensed escalation,” Al ‘Amiri quoted Iraqi parliament speaker as saying.

October 18, 2011 Tension between Baghdad and Kurdistan region has reached its peak since the Iraqi PM, Nuri AL-Maliki ordered the removal of Kurdish flags from government buildings in Khanaqin in Diyala province, which is in the disputed territories defined under Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. Since the directive was issues by the Iraqi PM, many protests in Diyala province and elsewhere in Kurdistan region have taken place. The demonstrations were highly charged with nationalistic slogans and even one protester is reported to have set himself alight. The head of Diyala province also refused to comply with the order from the PM to remove the Kurdish flag from government buildings. The focal point of the incident was in Khanaqin, in an area which has been the subject of ethnic cleansing and arabization for decades by the former regime. The Iraqi PM's latest decision to remove Kurdish flags has evoked painful memories from the past, and brought the simmering ethnic disputes and mistrust to the surface. Maliki's directive is seen as a symbolic move by Baghdad to assert control over the areas, which is still disputed and successive Iraqi government after 2003 failed to deal with it. Kurds does not see areas like Khanaqin as a disputed territory but as part of Kurdistan region, which is waiting to be annexed back to the region if and when the long-awaited article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is implemented. It is needless to say that areas like Khanaqin and Kirkuk which falls under the "disputed territories" are strategically very important for whoever controls it, because it has abundant hydrocarbon reserves and Kirkuk has one of the largest giant oil filed in Iraq. Resentments and *** for tat politics are on the increase between the central government and the KRG (Kurdistan Regional government). Oil output from Kurdistan region is decreasing as payment issues is still not being resolved. Companies like DNO international ASA and others operating in the region have been pumping oil to the northern Iraqi pipelines and they have been increasing their output in the last year after an agreement was reached to be paid the cost by the Iraqi government. However, after a couple of payments, the central government reneged on its undertaking and no further payments being made since September and oil export from Kurdistan through Iraq has slowly but surely fallen. It has been reported that the fall in production is due to technical glitches but it is odd that as soon as payments stopped from the central government the productions has withered away. Moreover, DNO announced on Monday that it has reached a deal to supply the domestic market in tune of 675000 barrel of oil at the rate of 10.000 bopd at $50, and made it clear that it will receive payments in advance. Although DNO has said that it has had a go-ahead from the authorities, it is not clear if this has been cleared with the central government. Furthermore, it remains to be seen if the revenue generated by this deal would be taken into account when Baghdad allocate KRG budget. It is a known fact that Iraq and Kurdistan has a deficit in refining capacity and Turkmenistan's surplus refining capacity along with Turkey and other neighbouring nations has been used to supply the domestic market. Many oil companies in Kurdistan region are reaching the final stages of their initial exploration programs and are in a position to start selling oil to create a revenue stream in order to continue their programs and balance their books. However, limited access to the much-need funds and obstruction by Baghdad will not make it easy for them and compel them to find other ways to sell their oil. DNO has been one of the early entrants to region and has made an early move to switch to local market, which means trucking the oil rather than sending it through the central government's pipelines. What is happening in Kurdistan oil market feels as if the region is under a sanction imposed by Baghdad that laves KRG no choice but to improvise and sell the oil to alternative markets. The indiscretion by the Iraqi government towards Kurdistan region is alienating the Kurds further. The battle over the control of the oil and revenue sharing is one which will determine the shape of Iraq and the level of Kurdish independence from central government, but tactics deployed by Maliki's government is pushing the parties further apart. Unless the Iraqi government change its stance and wake up to the fact that Kurdistan region is not willing submit to central government's authority like before,www.ekurd.net the KRG would find other ways to sell the oil and generate a revenue stream. Meanwhile, KRG will continue demanding its 17 per cent of the overall Iraqi budget, which is entitled to under the Iraqi constitution. Iraq depends on oil for 95 per cent of its income and as the disputes escalates and KRG redirect its oil supplies, the rest of Iraq will be the net loser as a direct consequences of Al-Maliki's governments polices.

October 17, 2011 KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region, — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is drafting a proposal to delineate some of Iraq’s disputed territories along pre-1968 borders, the year the Baath party came to power in Iraq. The Baath party changed the administrative jurisdiction of several towns and villages in Nineveh, Diyala and Kirkuk provinces so that they would fall under the central government. Kurds always considered those areas part of the Kurdish north and Talabani is now trying to reverse the demographic changes that occurred during Saddam Hussein’s 30-year rule. Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state. Photo: Hawlati Talabani, a Kurd, will present his proposal to the Iraqi Parliament. Some Sunni political parties which push Arab claims to the areas are expected to strongly oppose the initiative, though the proposal reportedly has the backing of key Shiite parties. Khalid Shwani, a Kurdish MP in Iraqi Parliament said, the Iraqi council of ministers has promised to provide Talabani with all documents about the disputed territories seized from the former regime in 2003. “President Talabani is working on gathering all the former regime documents regarding this issue,” he said. Friyad Rawandzi, a senior official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who is close to Talabani told Rudaw, “The President prepared the proposal in light of Iraq’s Constitutional Article 140. It was discussed by the Council of Ministers and will be sent to the Parliament.” Article 140 lays out a series of initiatives to resolve territorial disputes, mostly between Kurds and Arabs, but almost none of the steps have been taken. Rawandzi maintained, “President Talabani assigned a number of legal experts to prepare this proposal. He will send it to Parliament as soon as possible. The Parliament should revoke all the decrees related to altering the demographics of certain regions including Kirkuk and other disputed territories.” According to Rawandzi, the proposal could receive enough votes to pass given that several parliamentary blocs have already expressed their support for it. “In the Council of Ministers’ discussions on the president’s proposal, political blocs such as the State of Law Coalition, the Supreme Islamic Council and the Sadr Movement were in favor of the proposal. That’s why we expect positive results in Parliament. We will still need to work hard in Parliament in order to gather enough votes for it,” Rawandzi said. According to Rawandzi, Talabani’s proposal is a major step toward solving the disputed territories issue. The Al-Iraqya bloc, which represents Sunni Arab and secular interests, is seen as a possible opponent to the plan. Rawandzi, however, was confident that the plan would garner wide support from key figures such as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “The prime minister strongly supported the implementation of Article 140 and the return of all lands and property forcefully taken from Kurds,” he said. Separately, Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani met with leaders of Kurdistan’s major political parties on Saturday and decided to form a committee to address ongoing disputes between Baghdad and Erbil. The committee will include members of all Kurdish parties and staff members from the president and prime minister’s offices. Their task will be to strengthen Kurdistan’s representation in Baghdad and meet with Iraqi leaders on issues related to the Kurdistan region.

17/10/2011 DNO International ASA has redirected nearly one third of its crude oil production in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to sales to the domestic market in a move that will improve predictability and stability of its revenue stream. The Company recently signed contracts with three buyers for delivery of around 675,000 barrels of oil from the Tawke and Bastora fields at prices ranging between USD 50-55 per barrel. Daily deliveries into these contracts are averaging 10,000 barrels a day. Payments are received in advance of deliveries and accrue fully to DNO’s account. “We are very pleased to have been given the green light by the authorities to commence cash sales to the local market and at a price twice last year’s levels,” stated Helge Eide, President and Managing Director. “At current rates, DNO’s local sales bring another USD 15 million in payments to the Company on a monthly basis which allows our operations to be self funding across our portfolio,” he added. The Company expects to continue its domestic sales on an on-going basis, though future volumes and prices will be contingent on market conditions. Exports meanwhile have declined due to continuing technical glitches in the northern Iraq pipeline system and now average around 25,000 barrels per day. The first test on the Summail-1 exploration well on the Dohuk license has been completed and the lowermost Triassic zone was found to be water bearing. This is the first of several tests to be undertaken in the well over the coming weeks. so a foriegn company DNO int. of Norway is selling Iraq oil. under iraq law that would be illegal, right? SOMO is iraq's oil marketing company

Poneman said the US was encouraging Iraq to adopt a much-delayed law on hydrocarbons that investors see as key to stability. ASTANA: The US will press major oil-producing nations to ensure they are pumping enough oil to meet demand, regardless of price, while also encouraging a recovery of oil output from Libya and Iraq, a senior energy department official said. “We don’t assess the supply and demand equation as a function of price per se,” US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman said. “We look at satisfying consumer demand.” “The focus still must be on making sure that the existing producers produce adequate quantities to meet current demand.” While US oil prices have fallen back under $90 a barrel, President Barack Obama’s administration has played an active diplomatic role to keep a lid on prices so they do not threaten the economic recovery. “When it comes to international diplomacy, we have very strong partnerships with oil producers and consumers around the world,” Poneman said. He said oil diplomacy, however, should be integrated into the country’s overall strategy of reducing its dependence on imported oil by 30 percent by 2020, a strategy outlined by by Obama in March. Such a goal has eluded his predecessors. “We intend to do that through the responsible, environmentally sound development of our own natural gas and oil resources, which we are very energetically pursuing,” Poneman said. The US consumed almost 20 million barrels of oil a day in 2010, of which roughly half was imported. Poneman said the US was hopeful that the global shock to oil supplies from the Libyan turmoil would soon be reversed. “We are still recovering from the loss of in the order of 1.5 million barrels per day from Libya,” he said. “We are hoping that is going to come back sooner rather than later, thankfully now that the new government is taking the reins.” He said the US was talking with all major oil-producing nations, both inside and outside OPEC, to ensure markets were well supplied. “We are in continuing, robust diplomatic engagement with consumers and producers alike, with a consistent message to make sure that we are satisfying global demand and that producers are making the quantities available to do that,” he said. Poneman said the US was encouraging Iraq to adopt a much-delayed law on hydrocarbons that investors see as key to stability. The new law has been in the making for years but has faced opposition over who controls the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, some in areas disputed by ethnic Arabs and Kurds and and some in Iraq’s semi-autonomous north. “We’ve been very encouraging of Iraqi efforts to increase their oil production, with tenders that have been offered and taken up by a number of companies, including US-based oil producing companies,” Poneman said. “They’re up to a point of 2.6 million barrels per day of production, over 2 million barrels of which they’re exporting. That’s moving in the right direction. “The next things we need to do are to continue to make sure that the pipeline infrastructure that’s needed to get that oil to market is enhanced,” he said. Poneman was in Kazakhstan attending a conference on nuclear nonproliferation. The Central Asian country voluntarily surrendered the nuclear arsenal that it inherited after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Poneman said he expected “existing players” in the uranium enrichment market to make up a shortfall in global supply when a 20-year nuclear fuel pact between the United States and Russia expires in 2013. The so-called ‘Megatons to Megawatts’ program, on which Poneman has worked under several US administrations, is recycling the equivalent of 20,000 Soviet-era nuclear warheads to create enough uranium to power the US for two years. “It shows how you can harness the power of the commercial marketplace to drive a national security imperative,” Poneman said. “One in every ten American light bulbs is fueled by material that used to be targeted on American cities on the top of missiles.” Russian supplies from old warheads are key in the global uranium market, accounting for 13 percent of world supply and helping to fill a gap from mined output. The Kremlin, however, has shown little appetite for renewing the deal. “The end of that deal will create headroom in the marketplace,” Poneman said. “The question will be how that shortfall is made up by other sources of production... I believe that the existing players in the enrichment market will likely step up and try to satisfy that demand.” He added: “When that is done, we are going to continue to have a robust engagement with Russia

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Tamouz Organization for Social Development stressed today the importance of implementing a national plan to combat poverty, expressing concern for the loss of Iraqi funds allocated by the Higher Strategic Commission to Minimize Poverty within 2012 budget, which reached to 717 billion dinars. In a statement, copy received by Aswat al-Iraq, directed to the three Iraqi Presidencies, the organization referred to the 19th Anniversary to Poverty Eradication Day, and the necessity to make a social insurance law, the continuation of ration programme, health insurance, decent lodging to the poor, combating unemployment and corruption eradication. It added that the percentage of poverty in Iraq exceeded 23% according to official statistics. RM (TP)/SR