Promising to tackle Kurdish corruption isn’t enough

Earlier today at the Sulaimani Forum, Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister and heir to the Talabani fortune his mother Hero Khan has accumulated during her and her husband’s years in government, reportedly said he recognized the plight of ordinary Kurds and promised that Kurdistan would strike an agreement with an international auditing company to provide transparency, especially with regard to oil revenues.

It was a good speech, and Qubad struck a much better tone than earlier this year when he acknowledged the financial plight of Kurds who have gone unpaid for months and suggested they settle for 50% of their salaries. (With traditional Kurdish aplomb, Kurds responded by referring to Qubad as “Mr. Half” and designating half portions in restaurants as “Qubad-size.”)

Iraqi Kurdistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani speaks during an interview with Reuters in Erbil, January 14, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari.

At any rate, independent audits sound good but here’s the problem: In 2011, against the backdrop of protests about corruption and lack of democracy, Qubad wrote a letter to the New York Times promising the same thing. The letter concluded:

There are legitimate grievances about government performance that are being addressed. The president has announced a reform program, and we are prepared to hold early elections.  The government has also been helped by professional experts such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and RAND Corporation to bring performance, transparency and accountability to higher standards.

Perhaps Qubad believes that his audience can’t remember five years into the past. Or perhaps he fears collective memory. After his promise to bring governance closer to the people and with characteristic tone-deaf panache, Qubad left the Sulaimani Forum without taking questions, and never explained why the 2011 audit amounted to naught, if it even existed. Nor did he outline how Kurdish authorities would address irregularities a public audit might identify. He did not explain why his government refuses to abide by the findings of courts and binding arbitration relating to its shady business dealings.

Even if the Kurdistan Regional Government were sincere now, there’s also the problem that not even international accounting firms will be able to have insight into all of Kurdistan’s oil revenue if there is a discrepancy between what they report to have been exported, and what the metering at the Ceyhan pipeline terminal says has been exported. Unfortunately, according to Iraqi oil ministry officials in Baghdad, the discrepancy in this amount seems to have been siphoned off in a separate deal between Turkish and Kurdish leaders and never enters the public Kurdish economy for which Qubad proposes better monitoring. If Qubad were serious, he would acquiesce to independent monitoring of all meters at pipeline terminals outside of Kurdistan, and not take at face value the oil sale figures Kurdistan provides.

Qubad is right that Kurdistan must modernize banking to eliminate ghost employees and supervisors siphoning off cash from their employees’ salaries, and for that he should be congratulated. When this proposal was made three years ago, Kurdish officials working under Qubad launched a twitter campaign of abuse, and there remains no serious effort to trim bureaucracy which is bloated by a factor of ten. Indeed, any serious reform could put Qubad’s own job on the chopping block, since it was created for the purpose of political patronage and has neither constitutional basis nor, according to the Iraqi Kurdish prime minister, decision-making authority.

Corruption may be more of a threat to Kurdistan than terrorism. After all, while terrorism is tragic for those killed or maimed and their families, it impacts relatively few people. Corruption is corrosive and impacts everyone. It is also increasingly blatant.

Kurdistan has suffered under increasingly authoritarian rule for almost a quarter century. Talking about corruption is not enough. Qubad’s speech may have been effective to the foreigners to whom it was geared, but ordinary Kurds will not accept promises of audits when the results of those audits never amount to serious policy changes. Rather, the antidote is public accountability, regular elections, and recognition that no leader should remain in office beyond his term. The financial dealings of no family should stand above the law.