Shafaq News
In Baghdad, governments are not bornfrom ballot boxes alone; they emerge from a long chain of understandings,guarantees, and mutual anxieties, and it was into this chain that KurdistanRegion President Nechirvan Barzani pressed his weight during a two-day visit tothe capital that, in its timing and the breadth of its meetings, amounted tosomething more deliberate than protocol.
On the surface, the visit followed afamiliar pattern: a Kurdish leader arrives in Baghdad ahead of a new governmentcycle, reaffirms constitutional principles, and returns to Erbil. But thepolitical moment it landed in was anything but routine. Iraq's governmentformation process is unfolding under simultaneous pressure from an unresolvedregional conflict, Washington's recalibrating posture toward Baghdad, Tehran'scalculations about the next Iraqi cabinet, and a set of Erbil-Baghdad disputes—oil, salaries, budget allocations, the status of disputed territories underArticle 140— that have not left the negotiating table in years.
Within the first hours of hisarrival, Barzani met with leaders of the Shiite ruling Coordination Framework,including State of Law head, Nouri al-Maliki, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, al-Hikma (Wisdom) Movement leader Ammar al-Hakim, then withprime minister-designate Ali Falah al-Zaidi, and leaders of the Sunni NationalPolitical Council.
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The agenda moved from governmentformation to oil revenue sharing, salary arrears, the federal budget, and thenecessity of insulating Iraq from regional escalation —a range that reflectednot a courtesy call but a substantive attempt to shape the parameters of whatcomes next.
Official statements from themeetings emphasized the need for a government "commensurate with thechallenges of the current phase," capable of meeting the demands of Iraq'sconstituent communities while resolving outstanding Erbil-Baghdad disputes on aconstitutional basis. Barzani also reaffirmed Kurdistan's readiness to supportthe new government's formation.
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Testing the Ground
Kurdish politician Abd al-SalamBarwari described the visit as "a new positive development for breakingthe tensions that accompanied the post-presidential election phase"—tensions that had been building since the KDP staked a claim to the Iraqipresidency as a matter of established political entitlement, only to find Sunniand Shiite coalition leaders divided between rival Kurdish candidates, withsome backing the PUK's nominee, Nizar Amedi, over Fuad Hussein, one of theKDP's most senior figures. Barwari was careful to characterize Barzani'smeetings as exploratory rather than conclusive— closer to preliminaryconsultations for testing positions and exchanging views before the moment ofdecision than to a finalized political settlement.
Speaking to Shafaq News, Barwaripointed to al-Zaidi's recent visit to Erbil, where the prime minister-designatemet separately with Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani,President Nechirvan Barzani, PM Masrour Barzani, and Patriotic Union ofKurdistan head, Bafel Talabani, as evidence that the Kurdistan Region'sposition is being treated as a structural variable in the government formationcalculus, not an afterthought.
The KDP's weight in that calculus isconcrete: the party secured over one million votes in November's parliamentaryelections, the highest total of any single party nationwide, translating into26 seats in parliament, making it a bloc no government formation can ignoremathematically. Political circles in Baghdad read that visit as an attempt toavoid repeating the crises that plagued previous governments' relationshipswith the Region from the outset.
Researcher in political affairsSuhad al-Shammari offered a broader frame, noting that the current governmentformation is unfolding in conditions meaningfully different from previouscycles, with a prime minister-designate navigating simultaneously betweenrebuilding trust among political forces, managing divisions within eachcommunity, and arranging a working relationship with the Kurdistan Region thatdoes not begin in confrontation.
Barzani's visit, in her assessment,signals Kurdistan's readiness to “engage constructively,” though she stoppedshort of predicting specific outcomes, describing the visit's likelycontribution as “bringing positions closer rather than resolving the underlyingdisputes.”
That picture from the meetings saidmore than any statement. In one session with leaders of the Sunni NationalPolitical Council, Barzani sat at the center flanked by prominent Sunnifigures, including rivals Khamis al-Khanjar and Mohammed al-Halbousi, acomposition that appeared to summarize the visit's function.
He was not present solely as Erbil'srepresentative but as someone operating in the grey space between adversaries,attempting to anchor a proposition: that the next government cannot be bornfrom an internal Shiite understanding alone, nor from an isolated distributionof positions, but from a broader equilibrium that includes Kurds, Sunnis, andShiites within a single political architecture. Both sides agreed that the newgovernment must prioritize services and reconstruction, and that dialogue amongpolitical forces must be the entry point for resolving crises rather than aformality that follows them.
Files That Never Leave the Table
Political analyst Ali al-Baydarsituated the visit within a structural argument, telling Shafaq News that theissue is less about individual political figures than about the prevailingpolitical culture, and that the next government will largely be a continuationof the Coordination Framework's internal balances, with the variable being howBaghdad manages its relationship with Erbil rather than whether thatrelationship changes fundamentally.
Al-Baydar assessed al-Zaidi assomeone disinclined toward escalation with the Region or toward unilateraldecisions against it, suggesting the new prime minister-designate may offermore room for addressing outstanding files within constitutional frameworksthan his predecessors, while leaving open whether that room translates intoresolved disputes.
Hussein al-Kinani, head of al-HadafCenter for Studies, noted to Shafaq News that Barzani's meetings with al-Zaidifall within the standard pattern of coalition-building that precedes every newgovernment cycle, but that their substantive content centers on concreteunresolved files: the federal budget, oil exports, oil and non-oil revenues,and the degree to which both Erbil and Baghdad have honored previousagreements.
Those files carry weight beyond thepolitical. Salaries in the Kurdistan Region have become a recurring livingcrisis for the population. Oil has become the permanent headline of theconstitutional and financial dispute between Erbil and Baghdad, a disputesharpened in 2023 when the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris ruledthat Turkiye must pay Iraq approximately $1.5 billion for breaching theIraq-Turkiye Pipeline agreement by allowing unauthorized Kurdish oil exports,halting loading, and export operations through the pipeline, and significantlyimpacting the Region's revenues. The budget, renegotiated in cycles, hasexposed the fragility of arrangements that both sides treat as temporary. Takentogether, they make Barzani's visit an early test of whether the incominggovernment intends to manage these crises as it finds them or move towardclosing them, a distinction that matters more to the Region's population thanto the political class on either side.
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Al-Zaidi is operating under timepressure, constitutionally required to present his cabinet within 30 days, andaware that passing the government will require more than a numericalparliamentary majority; it will require understandings that ensure Kurdish andSunni participation within an arrangement that no party feels excluded from.
Barzani's visit, in this reading,functions as an attempt to produce a dual political guarantee: an assurance toErbil that the incoming Baghdad will not revert to the language of financialpressure and punitive measures, and an assurance to Baghdad that the Regionwill be a source of governmental stability rather than a recurring source oftension.
The details of ministerialportfolios and the distribution of positions also remain subject to ongoingnegotiation. What Barzani's visit makes visible is that the contest over thenext government is not only about who enters the cabinet, but about the shapeof the state that cabinet will manage, the boundaries of the relationshipbetween center and Region, and Iraq's capacity to hold its internalarrangements together in a region changing faster than its political class ismoving to keep pace.
The Bill Comes Due
Three baseline conditions Barzaniwanted to stress before the new government takes shape: genuine partnership indecision-making, constitutional rather than provisional solutions to theoutstanding files, and Iraq's insulation from the currents of regionalescalation. Whether those conditions become structurally embedded in the nextgovernment or remain aspirational language in post-meeting statements is thequestion the visit leaves open.
Written and edited by Shafaq Newsstaff.