The Cost of Paralysis: The Kurdistan Region's Unformed Government and the Threat to Its Autonomy

More than a year and a half after voters went to the polls on 20 October 2024, the Kurdistan Region still has no new government. The tenth cabinet of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) remains unformed, and the two parties that have shared power for decades, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), have been unable to agree on how to form it. Their relationship has fallen to almost its lowest point in living memory.

The dispute is not abstract. It is concentrated on a small number of the most sensitive offices: the post of prime minister, the Interior Ministry, and the leadership of the Region's main security body. Each of these positions carries real control over force, money, and administration, which is precisely why neither side is willing to give way. The KDP won 39 of the 100 seats in parliament and the PUK took 23, a result that hands the KDP a clear plurality but not the numbers to govern comfortably on its own. The friction between a dominant party and a junior partner that refuses to behave like one sits at the very centre of the crisis.

Beneath the cabinet fight runs a second and colder conflict, this one in Baghdad. The two parties have turned the question of who should hold the Iraqi presidency, a post reserved by convention for a Kurd, into another front in their rivalry. What was once a shared Kurdish prize has become a test of which party can outmanoeuvre the other. The contest in Erbil and the contest in Baghdad now reinforce each other, and neither can be settled in isolation.

Maneuvering instead of negotiating

What makes the present phase unusual is that formal talks have largely stopped, yet both sides keep moving against each other through other means. Rather than seek a compromise at the table, each party has worked to improve its position before sitting down.

The PUK has drawn the New Generation Movement, which holds 15 seats, closer to its orbit, using those seats as leverage to offset the KDP's advantage in the chamber. The KDP, in turn, has reached out to the Kurdistan Islamic Union and to the minority and quota seats, building a counterweight of its own. The effect is that the two leading parties are no longer simply negotiating with each other. They are assembling rival blocs, which raises the stakes of any eventual deal and narrows the space for an easy settlement.

The competition has also been pushed outward. The KDP has leaned on its close ties with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to apply pressure, while the PUK has worked through Shia partners and Iran to pressure the KDP in return. An internal disagreement over posts has, in effect, been mapped onto the region's wider rivalries. That makes the deadlock far harder to unwind, because resolving it now touches interests well beyond Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.

A crowded field of mediators

The blockage is heavy enough that a long line of mediators has formed around it. Foreign missions have tried to nudge the parties toward an agreement, and the Kurds' longtime partner, the United States, has repeatedly attempted to break the impasse. For a stretch, Washington's attention was elsewhere, absorbed by its confrontation with Iran and by the drawn out formation of the federal government in Baghdad. That focus is now expected to return, because a functioning partnership with Erbil remains central to American interests in Iraq and the wider region. The leader of the Kurdistan Islamic Union has likewise stepped into the role of bridge between the two main parties, hoping to revive a dialogue that has, for long stretches, simply gone silent.

The election gamble

Against this backdrop, the idea of fresh elections keeps surfacing. The KDP in particular sees an opportunity. A new population census is expected to give Erbil additional seats while reducing Sulaymaniyah by one, a shift that would widen the KDP's lead before a single vote is cast. The party also calculates that younger voters, who can see the visible governance and development in KDP held areas, and who are exposed to a steady current of Kurdistani patriotism in KDP aligned media, may reward it at the ballot box.

The gamble is far from certain to pay off. The PUK's electorate is not necessarily loyal to the two sons of Jalal Talabani, but it remains deeply attached to the PUK as an institution and to the legacy of Talabani himself. That loyalty has survived earlier predictions of decline, and it could blunt any expected KDP windfall.

There is also a practical obstacle that is easy to overlook. The mandates of the high electoral commissions, both the federal body in Iraq and its counterpart in the Kurdistan Region, have expired and would have to be renewed before any vote could be organised. Given the political bargaining and the tangled relationships that govern such appointments in Iraq, that renewal could take a long time. A snap election, in other words, is not a tool either side can reach for quickly.

The damage is already done

Some voices prefer to let the current caretaker arrangement simply run until the next scheduled election. Yet the cost of waiting is real and is already being paid. The Region's international partners place a high value on legitimate institutions, and they are far more comfortable working with an active, mandated government than with a caretaker administration or a body shaped by partisan deals. Every month without a formed cabinet chips away at the credibility of Erbil as a serious counterpart.

The erosion is most visible in Baghdad and in the disputed territories, where Kurdish weight has fallen sharply. The two leading parties pursue different agendas in the capital, and the smaller Kurdish opposition parties bring priorities of their own. The result is a divided Kurdish presence that wins fewer senior federal positions and carries less collective influence than it once did.

The same pattern has appeared in the lobbying arena, especially in Washington. For much of the period after the post 2003 settlement, the KRG lobbied as a single voice. Today the two main parties lobby separately, and the KRG itself works through yet another channel, so the institutional weight of the Kurdistan Region has been split three ways and weakened accordingly. The PUK has gone further, retaining a new lobbying firm and expanding its footprint in both Washington and London. London has traditionally been the PUK's stronger ground, while Washington has long been the KDP's, and the new investment signals a contest for influence in capitals where the Kurds once spoke with one voice.

A warning, not a forecast

Taken together, these shifts have damaged more than the KRG as an institution. They have left both parties less trusted, and if the drift continues, each will become a less convincing partner for the Western governments that have historically backed the Region.

The strategic environment makes the timing especially dangerous. Washington's central aim in Iraq is to strengthen the federal state and to pull it away from Iran linked militias and influence. US Special Envoy Tom Barrack has been blunt that federalism, in his view, does not work, and he favours a more centralised model along the lines of the integration now underway in Syria, where Kurdish led forces are being folded into unified state institutions. That template, if applied to Iraq, points toward a weaker, not a stronger, Kurdistan Region.

The Kurdistan Region cannot simply be dissolved. It is a constitutionally recognised entity, and unwinding it would require a referendum that could be blocked if even a single governorate refused. The realistic objective, then, is not abolition but attrition: to weaken the Region significantly and to shift the centre of gravity toward Baghdad. This has long been Baghdad's preference, and at various points over the past two decades it has aligned with American thinking as well. What always neutralised the risk was the unity of the two largest Kurdish parties, whose alignment made them kingmakers in the capital and removed the danger before it could mature. That guardrail is now gone, because the rivalry between them is close to an all time high.

This is the heart of the matter, and it should be read as a warning rather than a forecast. If the KDP and the PUK cannot come together and present a united front, both in Erbil and, above all, in Baghdad, the political and economic autonomy the Kurdistan Region once enjoyed could shrink with surprising speed. The danger is sharper still under a Trump administration that holds a clear and assertive vision for the Middle East and for Iraq. The parties retain the power to protect what they have built, but only if they choose unity over advantage, and only if they choose it soon.