Iraq was ranked 162 out of 180 countries examined in the annual Transparency International Anti-Corruption Report 2019, which confirms that corruption is endemic in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. More than 1,000 people have been killed or hurt in anti-government protests in Baghdad and the southern provinces. This is because the Iraqi government is fundamentally corrupt and most of the state’s wealth, including in the Kurdish part of Iraq, is controlled by corrupt parties and militias. Transparency groups, lawmakers, observers, and international organizations have been saying for many years that top officials in the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq are corrupt, especially when it comes to taking oil money.
Iraq faces huge corruption challenges, foremost of which is the lack of political integrity. Politicians in Iraq and the Kurdistan region talk a lot about how they support measures to stop corruption, but they haven’t done anything to solve the problem. According to Kurdish lawmakers and leaked documents, Kurdistan is the most corrupt part of Iraq, and there are billions of dollars lost in Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil revenue. As is customary, critics accuse the ruling Barzani family of suffocating and amassing a fortune from the oil trade for the family rather than serving the population. Former President Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), remains the strongest leader in the shadows, followed by his son Masrour (Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region) and nephew Nechirvan Barzani (President of the Kurdistan Region). Transparency groups and outside observers have also often said that the Talabani family and its allies are corrupt and have made a lot of money from the oil trade in areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
It’s true what is said about the Kurdish region’s accomplishments in the war against terrorism, the struggle against ISIS, urbanization, and security. However, no one is talking the issues that should be the top government and Kurdish concerns in Iraqi Kurdistan: battling corruption, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and violence against women. Despite its apparent urban renaissance, the Kurdistan region shares its Iraqi population’s poverty, destitution, and sense of injustice due to a lack of justice in the distribution of wealth and a class disparity between government parties (PUK and KDP), members of major tribes, and the rest of the people.
Through partisanship and clannism, Iraqi Kurdistan has entered the path of corruption, and since they gave up the gun and left the rugged mountains for the city with an easy life and an ideal residence. Press reports say that the Kurdish government is trying to make Kurdistan look like a promising, forward-thinking, democratic region free of nepotism and corruption. However, the average Iraqi Kurdish citizen is fighting for survival while public funds are stolen and put in the pockets of Kurdish politicians from the two main political parties in the area. According to one of the former Peshmerga leaders, Saman Al-Jaf, “If you are close to a political leader, you can get a job in the government with a certain budget or get a contract worth two or three million dollars to pave a road, for example.” He also added that it does not matter if this person knows anything about road paving in the first place, as the contract will be sold many times until it reaches the hands of a real construction company. But then its value will be half the original value.
The truth is that corruption remains the most significant impediment to Iraqi Kurdistan’s economy. According to Iraqi and industrial officials, the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline exports more Kurdish oil than the KRG claims, implying that some oil is sold on behalf of a party or individual rather than as a product of the KRG. Many businessmen have complained about the exaggerated demands of the Barzani sons, tribe, or some Kurdistan Democratic Party leaders. The majority of these demands are a percentage of profits imposed by Kurdish officials on any project that must be implemented in the region. According to a member of the Ministry of Planning for Iraq’s Kurdistan region, government projects are not awarded in a transparent and fundamental manner. According to the source, “Ministers and senior officials try to award contracts to their companies or companies owned by their friends in order to ensure their share of the profits from the projects that are supposed to be completed.”
The reason for the Turkish companies’ monopoly over most projects in Kurdistan and the absence of Western (European in particular) companies from working in Kurdistan is that Turkish investors were able to easily accept the idea of corruption in the region, and that Turkish companies have the password, which is the official’s share reserved or signed the contract and you get your full percentage. Western companies will not enter a “supposed” market without first calculating the outcomes and obtaining “assumed” capital. Western capital is the “mathematical” market capital because it is accurately calculated, multiplied, divided, added, and subtracted within clear and explicit signed contracts that calculate the probabilities of profit and loss, away from favoritism, mediation, and the black market of signatures.
The expressions of concern were clear to the leaders in Iraq because of what the uprising could lead to in accelerating the process of reconsidering, canceling, or rewriting paragraphs of the constitution. This is a bad position because it harbors hostility toward the Iraqi people’s aspirations to restore their normal life, which was destroyed by rampant corruption in the joints of a state that has not established a foundation and cannot see the light in light of the corrupt’s continued efforts to drain Iraq’s wealth. In that situation, there is some concern for the fate of the corrupt sectarian state, as well as concern that the protests will spread like a contagion in the Kurdistan region, whose people face discrimination as a result of corruption sponsored by the two major parties that monopolize power, the region’s share in the Iraqi budget, and smuggled oil revenues that go to the accounts of the great gentlemen, who are the sponsors of corruption, which has never shed light.