State-Building, Stability, and Oil as 'Shared Competencies' in Iraq

摘要

Despite the democratic and developmental progress made in Iraq, the state's key ethnic, sectarian, and political groups have yet to achieve consensus on core issues, including the division of oil wealth and resolutions to territory disputes in Khanaqin and Kirkuk. Control of Kirkuk represents control over one of two major oil producing regions in Iraq and, thus, control over a substantial amount of wealth from the surrounding region's oil development. Moreover, tensions between the leadership within the Government of Iraq (GOI) and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) demonstrate that progress on issues such as these is critical to achieving a stable, secure Iraq that is not merely a short-term phenomenon. These tensions are exacerbated by the inability of the Council of Representatives (COR) to pass a set of hydrocarbon laws that clarify oil and gas policies as well as related management procedures, constitutional amendments, and other investment laws. The short history of Iraq's nascent, democratically elected government has shown that legislation passed by the COR sometimes fails to be implemented. Even worse, a meddlesome executive is occasionally wont to tinker with legislation already passed or, in extreme cases, quash it altogether. These actions only serve to degrade a legislative process that is beset with indecision and institutional delays most recently associated with the certification of the 2010 election results and the protracted government formation process. As of October 2010, the four hydrocarbon laws that were introduced in the COR in 2007 have been neither finalized nor signed into law. The discord regarding hydrocarbon legislation is, arguably, driven by competing regional interests and exacerbated by the asymmetrical constitutional division of powers and weak institutions that exist at the federal, regional, and gubernatorial levels.