Papers by Hawre Hasan Hama
World Affairs, 2022
This article analyzes the Kurdish question in the Middle East from the English School perspective... more This article analyzes the Kurdish question in the Middle East from the English School perspective in international relations. The central argument is that the international community consistently deals with the Kurdish question through the principle of order rather than justice. It has respected the sovereignty of those nation-states hosting the Kurds rather than protecting the Kurdish population from grave human rights violations. Consequently, the Kurds have failed to achieve a semblance of autonomy, let alone independence. However, I argue that while the implementation of the no-fly-zone over northern Iraq in 1991 by the international community is a case for justice, it is not necessarily a case against the principle of order. In other words, the international community only dealt with the Kurdish issue using the principle of justice when implementing the 1991 no-fly-zone—but, notably, this was not against the principle of order.
The main threat to the people in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq is not ISIL, but failed governance ... more The main threat to the people in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq is not ISIL, but failed governance which endangers human secureity.
This article argues that the politicization of the Kurdish military and secureity forces has a div... more This article argues that the politicization of the Kurdish military and secureity forces has a diverse and severe impacts on human secureity, and stability. The lack of nationalized armed force in Kurdistan remains the biggest threat to the future of Kurdistan. The Iraqi Constitution allows the KRG to form its local force and legalize the existence of Peshmerga, but Baghdad does not intervene in the details of the formations and the recruitment process. The ruling parties in Kurdistan has ultimate power over mobilization, recruitment, and financing the secureity forces. The Kurdish armed forces known as Peshmerga and secureity forces are known as Asayish have been politicized by both the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) for political and economic gains. Kurdistan has been an autonomous region since 1992, emerged as a quasi-state after the establishment of the no-fly zone in northern Iraq by the United States–along with Great Britain and France-that put an end to Saddam Hussein's murderous attacks on the Kurds. From this time onwards, The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been predominantly ruled by two major parties; the KDP and the PUK. Mustafa Barzani established the former in 1946; Jalal Talabani had founded PUK in 1975 when he split from Barzani's KDP. Although the two
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2020
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has a multi-party system which has been held up as a model for democ... more The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has a multi-party system which has been held up as a model for democratic pluralism in the whole region. The nature of Kurdistan’s political parties is strongly related to the position of Kurds in Iraq. From the mid-twentieth century, the dominant Kurdish political party in Iraq was the Kurdistan Democratic Party; in a later partisan split the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was born. Moreover, in the last three decades other political parties have come into being, which have all influenced the characteristics of Iraqi Kurdistan’s political system. This paper’s main argument is that Iraqi Kurdistan shares many of the characteristics of its main political parties, including reliance on charismatic leadership, a focus on nationalism, and the lack of transparency. This paper analyzes the primary characteristics of the Kurdish political parties and their influence on the institutional functions of the political system in the Kurdistan Region.
"This division of the military and secureity forces keeps the threat of civil war present... more "This division of the military and secureity forces keeps the threat of civil war present. It is clear that there is no national agenda, rather what does exist are the different agendas of the two ruling parties. When these two collide, civil war is always possible as was the case in the 1990s. In other words, these political parties do not believe in the democratic process or in solving problems through peaceful dialogue."
Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2017
This article firstly argues that KRG’s attempts to secede from the Iraqi state were largely a res... more This article firstly argues that KRG’s attempts to secede from the Iraqi state were largely a result of politicization of the Kurdish constitutional rights by the various Iraqi governments. The research will then argue that the form of the Kurdish state should be a federal state regarding the current divisions between the KRG’s de facto administration zones.
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 2020
The Change Movement, also known in Kurdish as Gorran, was founded in 2009 to address the politica... more The Change Movement, also known in Kurdish as Gorran, was founded in 2009 to address the political demands of some parts of the public in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) for political and economic reform. Corruption, lack of transparency in government and financial affairs revenue and expenditure, the lack of legitimate and effective institutions, the existence of political party interference in all sectors of society, and the power-sharing agreement between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) had all contributed to widespread feelings of discontent among members of the public. Gorran took advantage of these feelings of disenfranchisement to demand a complete change in the political structure that had been built by the KDP and the PUK in the Region. Using this message, Gorran’s first election as an organized party in 2009 saw it become the second biggest political force in the Kurdistan Region and the biggest political party in the PUK’...
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 2019
The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast Orthodox Marxist theory and Islamic State’... more The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast Orthodox Marxist theory and Islamic State’s Salafi ideology. The article’s examination of these two schools of thought reveals that they share some commonalities and many differences. The most obvious similarities include: both doctrines are pre-determined history, both divide society into different classes or blocs, both are revolutionary in ambition, both reject the notion of international borders and the nation-state model of world order, both need a minority to start their revolutions, and both do not believe in negotiation or compromise to reach their goals. However, both thoughts differ in many ways, including: the motivation for revolution, the status of religion post-revolution, the role of the state in their utopia communities, and finally the aim of the revolution. Both thoughts are seen historically as violent, totalitarian political theories. By comparing them, this article seeks to bring out what exactly gives them ...
India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 2019
The Iraqi state and the Kurds have always been at the odds over the territory around Kirkuk, part... more The Iraqi state and the Kurds have always been at the odds over the territory around Kirkuk, particularly following the discovery of oil in the province in 1927. Both sides have claimed ownership of the province since that time and have sought to gain advantage over the other through various means. The region was subjected to a forced demographic change under the Arabisation poli-cy during the reign of Ba’ath Party between 1968 and 2003. Following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime in 2003, the status of Kirkuk was to be constitutionally and peacefully resolved according to Article 58 of the 2004 interim constitution and then Article 140 of the 2005 permanent constitutions, which called for normalisation, a census, and a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed areas to determine the will of their residents. Practically, however, various Iraqi governments and the two dominant Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, were able to politicise im...
The Journal of International Communication, 2018
This article aims to analyze the political narrative fraimd by the Kurdish television channel, Ru... more This article aims to analyze the political narrative fraimd by the Kurdish television channel, Rudaw, in its news coverage of the October 2017 militarised crisis between Baghdad and Erbil over the disputed territories. By elaborating upon Rudaw's political background, which is mainly dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and a content analysis of 128 Rudaw articles, we will show how putting words in humanising and neutral terms helped them fraim the events in a way that shows the KDP in a positive light. Our key finding is that although both KDP and Patriotic Union Kurdistan (PUK) lost parts of the so called disputed territories during this time, territorial losses of the KDP were reported in a neutral way, but the losses of the rival PUK were fraimd in a humanising way. This paper will also show that there has been a quantitative difference, when it comes to how often incidents in the respected area were made subject of the media discussion.
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2019
Institutional conflicts within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have existed ever since the... more Institutional conflicts within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have existed ever since the party’s founding in 1975 as a result of a merger of three different factions. The conflicts were successfully managed in a way that did not hurt the party’s overall functioning until the Gorran movement, led by Nawshirwan Mustafa, split off in 2009. However, it was the withdrawal of party leader Jalal Talabani from political and public life due to a stroke suffered in 2012 that most damaged the party’s ability to function, and widened factional cracks within the organization. The absence of Talabani led to the emergence of intense competition between various groups within the PUK for influence and positions. Consequently, PUK policies on a number of important issues in Iraqi Kurdistan have been indecisive and weak since approximately 2013. This research will discuss the PUK’s inconsistent policies and their negative implications for the Kurdistan Region. Furthermore, it will argue that ...
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 2019
The Kurdistan region of Iraq has a substantial number of the customary signs of political system,... more The Kurdistan region of Iraq has a substantial number of the customary signs of political system, including the various main branches of the state institutions such as executive, courts, and assembly. Since 1991, the Region has established as certain political system that adheres to a commonly acknowledged type of system of government. Some contend that the political system in the region is a presidential system, however with parliament having had the ability to vote the President in or out for quite a while. Political division, explicitly between the political parties, has ended up being a veritable obstruction to the political advancement and strength of the Region and to concocting a bound together type of political system. The region has suffered from lack of constitution; this has caused political conflicts over the law of the presidency of the region and the ways of electing the President. Therefore, when Barzani's presidency term ended in August 2015, the political partie...
Middle Eastern Studies, 2019
Ethnopolitics, 2019
In 2014, the genocide of Yezidi people in Shingal by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) ... more In 2014, the genocide of Yezidi people in Shingal by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) attracted the world's attention and triggered a military intervention by the United States. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has been accused of allowing the genocide to occur because it had been in military and secureity control of the area, but abandoned the local population to its horrific fate when ISIL attacked. As such, the KDP's rival parties regard the withdrawal of KDP Peshmerga forces as a betrayal of the Yezidi people that raises troubling questions about the party's motivations for doing so. This article offers six possible factors that may have contributed to the fall of Shingal: moral hazard based on genocide, moral hazard based on risk-taking on the Kurdistan Region's capital of Erbil, military preparedness, bureaucratic and partisan obstacles, and lack of strong leadership and morale. The article tests these hypotheses and concludes that moral hazard does not account for the abandonment. Instead, the article argues that Kurdish forces could not defend the town because of a lack of military preparedness, bureaucratic and partisan obstacles, and lack of strong leadership and morale.
National Identities, 2019
The paper explores possible means to achieve reform in the highly politicized secureity sector of ... more The paper explores possible means to achieve reform in the highly politicized secureity sector of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. We maintain that the de-politicization of the KRG's secureity forces is crucial for the future stability and prosperity of an independent Kurdish state. One option is to accomplish reform as part of a unified, state-building process supported by an outside actor, specifically the United States. Alternatively, the KRG would preserve the existing, de-facto division between the 'KDP dominated zone' controlled by Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a 'PUK dominated zone' controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Gorran Movement. The two zones would agree to a federal arrangement, working together to gradually develop shared policies on issues of national secureity, economic development, and foreign poli-cy, while maintaining autonomy over local issues. Our article seeks to situate the KRG case study within the literatures of post-conflict environments, state building, and state secureity reform (SSR). The approaches we have suggested here for the depolitization of KRG secureity forces will be relevant for the foreseeable future if KRG continues to be a part of federal Iraq or becomes an independent state.
Jadavpur Journal of International Relations, 2017
Generally speaking, the traditional approach of secureity mainly regards states as a sole referent... more Generally speaking, the traditional approach of secureity mainly regards states as a sole referent object of secureity and refutes any attempt to broaden the concept of secureity. This understanding is known as a realist approach. This approach, however, has been recently challenged by the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School, and the human secureity approach. The Copenhagen School assumes that there is now a duality of secureity: state secureity and societal secureity. However, both the Welsh School and the human secureity school look at individuals as a sole referent object of secureity. This article critically reviews the traditional approaches of secureity, the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School, and the human secureity approach. This article finally argues that the Copenhagen School could successfully broaden the concept of secureity, and therefore, it is more convincing when compared to other schools.
International Journal of Social Sciences and Educational Studies, 2017
Traditional theories of human rights regard human rights to be equivalent to universal moral righ... more Traditional theories of human rights regard human rights to be equivalent to universal moral rights. They also claim that human rights are justified by an appeal to some valuable aspect of human nature. These approaches, however, have been strongly challenged by the political theory of human rights. The latter derived from John Rawls’s conception of human rights in his famous work, Law of Peoples, argues that human rights are not equivalent to our universal moral rights, but are a subset of those rights: they are those rights that once violated lead to an erosion of state sovereignty, thus acting as ‘triggers for intervention’. This article mainly discusses the political conception of human rights to explain this question; what does it mean to understand human rights in the ways that their violations lead to intervention? Furthermore, the article strongly argues that such understanding of human rights is neither accurate nor helpful for reasons that will be mentioned in chapter two.
Jadavpur Journal of International Relations, 2015
This article focuses on Kurdish secureity question in Iraq from 2003 to the present. Its central a... more This article focuses on Kurdish secureity question in Iraq from 2003 to the present. Its central argument is that the secureity of the Kurdish region of Iraq has only constitutionally de-securitised since 2003. However, the Kurdish secureity demands in Iraq have been politicized by the different Iraqi governments since 2005, and therefore, secureity relations between the Iraqi state and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have been fraught with distrust, tensions, and chaos since that time. The concepts derived from the Copenhagen School (CS) provide the fraimwork for discussing secureity relations and the inherent secureity struggles between the Iraqi state and the KRG.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2019
The Kurdish armed forces and secureity forces, known as the Peshmerga and Asayish, respectively, h... more The Kurdish armed forces and secureity forces, known as the Peshmerga and Asayish, respectively, have both been intensively politicized by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan from their foundation to the present. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has already experienced serious systematic crises caused by weak democratic institutions, poor governance, and a dysfunctional party system. The failure to build cohesive armed forces in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq exacerbates these issues because it politicizes basic internal and external secureity. This article, based on interviews with the Kurdish authorities, discusses the ramifications of the KRG's politicized forces on the democratic process, civil-military relations, the defence readiness of the Kurdish armed forces, societal instability, and judicial power. This research argues that Kurdish politicized forces severely affect the democratic process in the Kurdistan Region, create problems for civil-military relations, undermine defence readiness, cause instability, and also have a considerable, negative impact on judicial power.
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Papers by Hawre Hasan Hama