Tag: Baghdad

Lawmakers from the southern Iraqi province of Basra have renewed efforts to seek autonomy from the federal government, as they blame it for problems such as lingering electricity crisis in the oil-rich region. This week the 35-member Basra Provincial Council passed a resolution with a majority vote asking Baghdad to give the province control over its oil resources and financial affairs. Basra politicians have been making calls for an autonomy for more than a decade now. “There is a legal ambiguity and lack of a precedent for forming autonomous regions under the current constitution, given that the Kurdistan region has been established well before,” says Harith Hasan, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center. This is something Iraqis are saying a lot these days,” says Ahmed Tabaqchali, an Iraqi investment banker and a commentator on political affairs. Powerful Basra politicians are using autonomy to whitewash their own inefficiency by shifting the blame on the federal government, he told TRT World. Even if by some miracle they get autonomy, they won’t be able to address any of the problems.” Iraq has struggled to generate enough electricity to meet the soaring demand, which in summer can exceed supply by up to 50 percent. It’s all about hope Earlier this year, Iraq approved its 2019 national budget of around $112 billion, it’s largest ever. A Basra politician last year claimed that Bagdad owed the province more than $45 billion. “So I am hopeful.

BAGHDAD (The Borowitz Report)—The government of Iraq announced on Tuesday that it would seek to build an international coalition to establish democracy in the state of North Carolina. Speaking to reporters in Baghdad, the Iraqi President, Barham Salih, said that Iraq had reached out to regional powers including Canada and Mexico to launch a military invasion of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District to “protect the North Carolinians’ right to self-determination.” While many in the international community commended Salih’s desire to bring democracy to North Carolina, some critics warned that the effort could wind up destabilizing other American states. “If North Carolina gets democracy, it’s only a matter of time before the people of Wisconsin, Georgia, and other failed states demand it as well,” Muqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi politician and cleric, said. “Iraq could find itself in a quagmire with no exit strategy.” Brushing aside such concerns, President Salih said that his international coalition could send troops to N.C.-9 as early as next week. “We will be greeted as liberators,” he predicted.