Kurds contest Iraq presidency

BAGHDAD, Oct 1, (AFP): With parliament summoned to elect a new Iraqi president, the Kurds’ two historic parties are for the first time contesting the post which is reserved for a Kurd.

The election in Baghdad could take place as early as Monday, a day after parliamentary polls in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and one year after the Kurds’ ill-fated independence referendum.

The presidency has been reserved for the Kurds since Iraq’s first multi-party elections in 2005, held two years after the US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

Under a tacit accord between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK would hold the federal presidency and the KDP the post of Iraqi Kurdistan’s president.

The late Jalal Talabani served as federal president for eight years.

But the Iraqi Kurdish presidency has been left vacant since KDP leader Massud Barzani resigned at the end of his mandate in the wake of the September 2017 referendum that he championed.

The KDP and PUK candidates for president of Iraq, where the prime minister is head of government in the postSaddam era, have been touring the south of the country to lobby support and win the backing of deputies in the federal parliament.

The PUK’s Barham Saleh, a 58-yearold moderate, has served in both administrations, as Iraqi deputy premier and Kurdish prime minister.

His rival for the post of president is the KDP’s Fuad Hussein, a 69-year-old former chief of staff for Barzani and veteran of the opposition to Saddam.

Unlike most Kurds, he is a Shiite, a factor likely to win support from members of the Shiite-majority parliament.

A vote was scheduled for Monday, unless the two parties unite behind a single candidate. Under the constitution, if no candidate wins a two-thirds majority, the contest can be rerun on Tuesday or at a later date.

Iraq’s parliament has chosen a Speaker of the House but the post of prime minister has yet to be decided, more than four months after legislative elections.

In Iraq, the Speaker of parliament is always a Sunni Arab while the prime minister is Shiite and the president a Kurd.

Parliamentary coalitions – which bring together lists of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds – must agree on the selection of the three positions.

Iraq’s Kurds have been a key US partner in the war against the Islamic State jihadist group and had hoped their role would boost international support for statehood.

But a massive “yes” vote in the referendum for independence, deemed illegal by Iraq’s federal government, backfired on the oil-rich autonomous Kurdish region.

Baghdad imposed economic penalties and sent federal troops to push Kurdish forces out of oil fields vital for the region’s economy, depriving it of a key lifeline.

Over the last few weeks, four go-getting Iraqi women have separately met premature deaths – two falling victim to men firing automatic weapons into their vehicles.

The deaths have sparked fear among women who dare to break the mould and visibly achieve in the conservative country.

The latest to die was 22-year-old social media influencer and model Tara Fares.

Her bloody demise at the wheel of a white Porsche convertible in Baghdad on Thursday has sparked as much debate as her racy photos.

Fares had built an Instagram following

of 2.7 million people thanks to edgy fashion shoots, assertive missives and eyecatching, colourful hairstyles.

She also posted publicly about a violent ex-husband and a fiance who died after being attacked in Istanbul.

But while Fares’ fearless embrace of social media inspired many young Iraqis, it upset traditionalists.

Fares was the target of a deluge of online insults over her perceived lack of modesty, in a society where many adhere to hardline interpretations of Islam.

It was this darker side of online platforms that forced the outspoken Fares to quit living in her native Baghdad and spend much of her time in comparatively liberal, secular Iraqi Kurdistan.

Fares is not the only Iraqi fashion and beauty entrepreneur to have met her death in recent weeks.

In August, the managers of Baghdad’s two most high profile aesthetic and plastic surgery centres died in mysterious circumstances.

The first was Rafif al-Yassiri, whose nickname was Barbie – the same name as her business venture.

A week later Rasha al-Hassan, founder of the Viola Beauty Centre, was also found dead.

Both were found at their homes, and despite ongoing investigations, the caus- es of their deaths remain undetermined.

But the rumour mill has churned up plenty of theories: drugs, heart attacks and murder.

On Tuesday this week, two days before Fares was shot dead, came the first officially confirmed murder among the spate of suspicious deaths.

In circumstances that foreshadowed the social media star’s assassination, activist and businesswoman Soad al-Ali was shot several times while travelling in a car in the southern city of Basra.

Police opened an investigation and pointed the finger at her ex-husband, who is on the run.

While motivations for the two confirmed murders are far from officially established, women’s rights group Amal is deeply concerned.

“Armed groups, tribes, criminal gangs ... all these control positions” within the state and security forces, Hanae Edwar told AFP at the NGO’s Baghdad office.

The recent assassinations are “threatening messages sent to activists in particular, but also to the whole of society,” she said.

“Attacking women who are public figures is a bid to force them to shut themselves away at home”, Edwar added.