Since Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani’s visit to Baghdad on April 29, 2013, there has been talk of the agreement signed between Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, considered to be a “bilateral agreement” that reproduces the “Shiite-Kurdish alliance” theory for the leadership of Iraq.

The seven articles of the agreement, revealed by the Kurdistan Regional Government a few days following the visit, but which were not yet clearly referred to by the Iraqi government until now, reflect an approach that is completely different from the reproduction of the Shiite-Kurd alliance.

The basic principle is that political work is defined as the management of situations under changing circumstances. Therefore, the handling of mechanisms change and evolve depending on variables and conditions. In a highly complex situation like the Iraqi situation, previous positions and options must be examined and assessed without being reproduced.

It is only based on this principle that one may be optimistic about the current dialogues and political movements’ capacity to lead to permanent solutions covering the entire Iraqi political crisis. These solutions shall not be based on understandings including some parties and excluding others, or on a vision tackling Iraqi problems in a superficial rather than in an in-depth manner.