I Thought It Was Too Good to be True

There was great ballyhoo yesterday about the government of Iraq finally reaching a breakthrough, if only partial, agreement on its controversial oil legislation. This law is considered one of the key benchmarks of Iraqi progress, defined by the US government.

The story that was coming out yesterday had all of Iraq's ethnic groups agreeing to the country's oil reserves being taken over by a federal oil agency. What I couldn't understand was how the Kurds had been brought to accept this deal. Today it turns out they hadn't.

The story in brief. After the Gulf War, the Kurdish north achieved autonomy thanks to US and British airpower that kept Saddam at bay. When the Iraq government was toppled in 2003, the Kurds demanded terms to remain within the new government. Their ultimatum required the Baghdad government to accept and incorporate within the new Iraqi constitution a form of constitution the Kurds had earlier drafted for themselves. The Kurdish constitution provides that existing oil wells within the Kurdish region would remain a national asset but undeveloped oil fields would become the exclusive property of the Kurdish regional government to be administered and developed for the Kurdish minority.

America's proconsul in the occupation, Bremer, didn't see the Kurdish constitution thing coming. The Americans were preoccupied with the Sunni and Shia Arab constituencies and believed (wrongly) that the Kurds would be complacent. They weren't. The constitutional deal was struck but the American occupation went ahead and drafted the proposed oil law as though the snag didn't exist.

Now the Kurds and representatives of al-Sadr and the Shia are crying "foul" and moving to put the supposed breakthrough deal on hold. The Kurdistan Regional Government says the new law is unconstitutional - and it is. The Shia are loathe to share the country's southern oil wealth with the Sunnis of central Iraq.