Iraq’s budget: A victory for centralism

After much political scrambling, Iraq’s parliament passed the 2013 budget by a narrow margin on 7 March. Two key features stand out. One is the budget’s centralist bent: passed in the face of a Kurdish boycott, it makes no concession to autonomy, offers no separate funding for the Kurdish Peshmerga, and gives Baghdad the right to deduct from the Kurds’ 17% share for any oil not traded through the federal system. Oil currently bartered to Turkey or smuggled to Iran will likely be an issue.