On Monday 25th August a court in Text decided to release the seized ship in the Gulf of Mexico with one million barrel oil from the Kurdistan Region. The ship was under seize since late July due to a request form the federal Iraqi Ministry of Oil who claimed that the Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, has acted illegally by selling “Iraqi oil” to the international buyers without the consent of the federal government in Baghdad. The Texas court’s ruling is of a particular interest: "Kurdistan's unauthorized export of oil over land—and later overseas—may violate Iraqi law, but it doesn't violate U.S. maritime law," the Judge said. The KRG’s attempt to export oil could be seen as “unauthorized”, but it is not “illegal” as the Shia dominated government in Baghdad has labelled every KRG attempt to implement Iraq’s Constitution. This could be seen as a minor decision in a long and prolonged constitutional battle between the KRG and the rest of Iraq. However, it is a further step towards KRG’s systematic endeavor to achieve its constitutional goals. Before this Texas court decision the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court in Baghdad also rejected a similar attempt by Iraqi authorities to stop the KRG from exporting its oil from new fields.

Put in its appropriate context, these two decisions are a clear receipt given to the federal Ministry of Oil, federal Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Shahristani and the outgoing Prime Minister Nouri Maliki regarding their failure to undo federalism in Iraq and the federal constitution. This is also receipt given the KRG confirming the fact that they are going in the right direction.

For the Kurdistan Region (KRG) in Iraq, every achievement is, has been and will be a struggle. When the Kurdish forces were opposing various Arab nationalist regimes in Baghdad, they had to fight for basic rights, human rights and minority rights. Kurdish leaders had to convince Arab socialists, liberals, mild Islamists and communists that it was in the best interest of Iraq to grant these rights to the Kurds and other minorities in the country. Even in the middle of the fight against oppressive regimes in Baghdad, Kurdish leadership never stopped talking about democracy for the whole of Iraq and then autonomy for Kurdistan. As Khaled Qashtani, an Arab columnist for Sharq Awsat, wrote a few days ago, Kurdish Peshmerge forces never targeted Arab civilians in their political struggle to achieve their basic rights. During the worst period of Kurdish life in Iraq in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s regime committed genocide against the Kurds, using chemical and biological weapons, Kurdish resistance movement did not deviate from its noble practice of not attacking Arab civilians.

In the 1990s, the Kurdish leaders worked systematically to introduce the idea of federalism to Iraqi opposition leaders hoping that life in the post-Saddam Iraq will be based on a constitution that will reflect Iraq’s religious, ethnic and geographic diversity. The Kurdish leaders hoped that pluralism, federalism and democracy will be practiced by a new generation of leaders in the entire country so that different groups, ideas and ways of life can co-exist in what would become “a new Iraq.”

Shortly after the approval of the 2005 Constitution of Iraq, approved by four out of five voters in a referendum, the “new Iraq” was turned into a nightmare by some Shia Arab politicians who were part of the pact for a new start. As far as the issues of oil and revenue sharing were concerned, Hussein Sharistan and Nour Maliki played a clearly decisive and destructive role. Despite political understanding, signed agreements, public government commitments to adhere to the new constitution, they worked systematically to undermine Iraq’s new constitution, more intensively so in the past 8 years under Maliki’s premiership.

The two court decisions mentioned earlier will certainly allow the KRG to continue its oil policy, but the dramatic events of the last two months are adding few new dimensions to the complex issue of constitutionalism in Iraq. The Shahristan-Maliki highjacking of Iraq’s constitution might be stopped temporarily by the fact that the ISIS attacks on Mosul, the collapse of the Iraqi armed units, the brutality of the ISIS terrorists and their surprising attacks on Kurdistan led to domestic and internal demand for the removal of Nouri Maliki. However, a substantial risk of repeating the past destructive oil and revenue issues is not far from the surface. One very obvious sign of that previous catastrophic policies was visible when Iraq’s new president, Fuad Massoum, appointed the Haidar Abbadi as a Prime Minister to form a new government. Among the very few men who were in the room was Hussein Shahristani, re-enforcing his presence with a simile that reminded me of previous once when he was promising to respect Iraq’s constitution but using Saddam Hussein’s laws to undermine Kurdistan. Will he not repeat the same behavior as before? Will he not create another alliance with Abbadi to prevent the KRG to implement its oil policy? Will he not convince the new Prime Minister to further undo Iraq’s constitution as before?

In a worst case senior, the KRG will continue its journey using the two court decisions. In the best case senior, the entire leadership of KR will go one step further: They will demand to fundamentally reform the failed federal system in its current content, language and implementation mechanisms. Ideally, they would propose Kurdistan Region to have a confederal relationship with the reset of a centralized Iraq, in which Kurdistan will be a sovereign entity responsible for its own security, oil policy, revenue collection, international relations, etc. In order to succeed, Kurdistan Region as a confederal entity will decide on its final status with the rest of Iraq in three or five years in a referendum (to remain within a confederal Iraq to go for full independence). If these mechanism are in place, Shahristan, Abbadi, the Da’wa party or any anti-Kurdistan alliance (only Shia or Shia-Sunni) will have to face the consequences of any destructive policies. In the past ten years, Iraqi political leaders could be as destructive as they wished and felt they would still be in power for another period and repeat the same behaviour. This time responsibility should be individualized, as it happened to Nour Maliki. So watch out for Sharistani in the new government.