On the second floor of an old building in Sulaymaniyah, there is a redoubt for Iraqi Kurdistan’s beleaguered activists. It is the kind of unassuming room that is familiar to anyone who has worked for a grassroots cause: a hodgepodge of furniture, whiteboards, and posters from old campaigns. A small kitchen keeps the caffeine coming.
But the activists who run this space — and independent civil society at large — are facing an uncertain future. Running low on funding and support, they are increasingly being displaced by organizations funded and controlled by the Kurdistan Region’s main political parties, who use these partisan groups to increase their already considerable influence and eliminate the last sources of opposition.
“This horrible condition for civil society is not due just to internal problems, but external pressures as well,” said an activist whose organization uses this office, but requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Democratic institutions are already fragile amid profound political and economic dysfunction. Real power is rooted in the two ruling parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — rather than the government. The weakness of both state capacity and independent civil society is opening up space for the parties to take over the functions of both.
Meanwhile, foreign governments have reduced development funding around the world, eliminating a key lifeline for organizations in the Kurdistan Region that do not want to take money from political parties.
The activist said that it has become progressively harder for them to raise the cash they need to keep going, even though their budget is just $20,000 per year.
That money allows them to educate people about their rights, train them to become journalists, and organize women into support groups. They build networks, write reports and press releases, and do all the things that civil society should do in order to hold the powerful to account. Facing the possibility of shutting down is profoundly discouraging.
“Civil society has little hope,” the activist said.
A mile away, the offices of party-connected organization The Foundation feel more like a corporate startup. Located in a refurbished factory, the open-plan office is filled with rows of desks and glass-walled breakout rooms. A colorful display of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is on the wall behind the reception desk, no doubt designed to catch the eye of diplomats and investors who visit.
The Foundation was established two years ago by Qubad Talabani, a senior member of the PUK and deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as a vehicle to promote economic development through entrepreneurship programming.
“We have one goal: to support the community,” said Sarah Rasul, the office manager for The Foundation Hub, a part of the organization that provides office space for prospective businesses and works to connect them with investors and international partners. “We want people to see how Kurdistan is. We want them to see the opportunities here — the right image.”
Under this guise, the work of The Foundation and organizations like it enables the parties to expand their influence while softening domestic and international perceptions of them and their leaders.
“These partisan NGOs stand in as a proxy for supporting the KRG and the parties,” said Dana Jamil, the director of Pasewan Organization, an independent organization that tracks civil society activity.
Several organizations came up repeatedly in interviews for this piece as having partisan ties. The Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF), the Kurdistan Foundation, and Rwanga are all close to the KDP. In addition to The Foundation, the VIM Foundation, SEED, and Vision Foundation are all viewed as being affiliated with the PUK.
Several of the partisan organizations focus on specific issues, as SEED does with violence against women, but most have wide-ranging briefs covering development, humanitarian causes, entrepreneurship, youth, the environment, and providing benefits to families of martyrs.
Some seek to downplay their party ties; for others, the acknowledgment is explicit, particularly in messaging directed at a domestic Kurdish audience.
For example, the face of Rwanaga is 29-year-old Idris Nechirvan Barzani, the eldest son of Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani. Areen Barzani, KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani’s son and Idris’ second cousin, leads the Kurdistan Foundation. To a certain degree, these organizations provide a platform for them to explore the parameters of a budding rivalry that will dictate the next generation of the inter-factional rivalry within the KDP.
The PUK organizations are similarly stacked with party officials. Rasul is clear that The Foundation was established “under the patronage of His Excellency Qubad Talabani” and gets its funding from him. PUK leader Bafel Talabani’s ex-wife Lava Hikma, who is also the daughter of former PUK senior leader Mala Bakhtiyar, heads VIM Foundation.
“This ambiguity between the public and the private roles of leaders has long been a feature in the Kurdistan Region,” said Mujge Kucukkeles, a post-doctoral researcher at SOAS University of London.
She explained that this landscape reflects the intersection of the existing paternal dominance of the ruling parties and the development discourses of reform that became popular in the Kurdistan Region during the war against Islamic State (ISIS), when humanitarian organizations flooded in to manage a massive refugee crisis.
While the work done by partisan organizations is often worthy, their operations alter the relationship between the population and the state and increase their dependence on patronage from the ruling parties.
In effect, the partisan organizations allow the parties to dispense the benefits that the state normally would, and accrue the loyalty it engenders, without any of the political responsibility that being part of the state normally entails.
For example, the Kurdistan Foundation recently announced that it had renovated 100 public schools in ways that “went beyond structural maintenance and painting” and included improving drinking water and sewage systems. Seventy-two of the schools that benefited were in KDP-controlled areas, aligning with the Kurdistan Foundation’s patronage by Areen Barzani, while also extending its influence into PUK areas as well.
Moreover, their focus on social issues, rather than political ones, ensures that civil society does not fulfill the critical democratic function of holding the authorities to account.
In contrast, Jamil said, independent organizations have historically lobbied for legislation and amendments, advocated on a wide range of issues, and monitored government and party activities — and had success doing so. But the current wall of challenges, including interference from the security forces and the political parties and lack of funding, is proving existential.
“They could do many things, but now they cannot,” Jamil added.
For years, independent civil society organizations in the Kurdistan Region relied on funding from foreign funders to support their work. Organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), UN agencies, and embassies poured money into grants to support democracy promotion, freedom of expression and media, and rule of law. This meant that independents could resist the lucrative temptation of taking funding from the KDP or the PUK and ensure that their work was not tainted by partisan patronage.
The boom times are over, however, as the Trump administration and many European countries move to cut their overseas aid budgets. Inkstick Media has previously reported on the cuts’ impact on landmine clearance operations and funding for media outlets in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Past recipients of aid must now compete for this smaller funding pot both with each other and with the partisan NGOs, which activists claim are now gobbling up the lion’s share of grant money in the Kurdistan Region.
“Because of the lack of international funds, the activist organizations cannot have a role now,” Jamil said. “They cannot work. Only the organizations supported by a political party have a role.”
Earlier this summer, The Foundation launched the Raparin Regional Development Agency (RRDA) partnership with the British government and Adam Smith International, a global advisory company. It is designed to “promote self-sustaining local economies, expand employment opportunities, and encourage entrepreneurship” around the city of Ranya, which is a major place of origin for Kurds coming to the United Kingdom as irregular migrants. It is a discussion that is occurring at senior levels.
Rasul said that the partnership came about following conversations between Talabani and British officials about how to address push factors — the conditions that motivate migrants to leave home — from the area that were leading young people to attempt the dangerous journey. If fewer migrants were coming from the area, it would alleviate a persistent political problem for London.
“Let’s find a way to get people to stay [in Kurdistan],” Rasul said. “Let’s do something in collaboration so people can have a livelihood.”
Yet, the lack of economic opportunity at home is only one reason why Kurds are migrating, with political reasons also playing a major role, according to researchers. The KDP and the PUK regularly suppress public criticism of corruption, human rights abuses, and economic dysfunction. This leaves people feeling frustrated with their economic circumstances, but unable to hold anyone to account or organize themselves to advocate for change. Looking for an exit is an understandable response to those conditions.
The activists that Inkstick Media talked with criticized the British and other foreign governments for providing funding and support for partisan-affiliated organizations when their patrons are responsible for this bleak combination of economic and political dysfunction.
“Do foreign funders want to make change? Or do they just have funds to spend?” Jamil asked rhetorically. “If they want to make real change, they have to understand the agenda behind these organizations.”
Inkstick Media sent requests for comment to several foreign consulates in the Kurdistan Region about their processes for selecting partner organizations and whether they took partisan affiliation into account, but only received a response from the British government.
“Any decisions to provide funding for programs are based on a number of factors, including value for money and alignment with our objectives,” a Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) spokesperson said.
“We support locally led development where we can, partnering with local actors on the ground to provide effective, accountable responses,” they added.
Instances of international connections with the partisan organizations usually happen in less sweeping fashion — but are nonetheless becoming more visible.
For example, the Dutch government recently held a workshop with KRG officials about climate change. Rather than at government offices, it was held at the Youth Hub, a facility run by the KDP-affiliated Kurdistan Foundation.
In October, the Barzani Charity Foundation celebrated a decade of partnerships with German organizations. UN organizations also have a long history of working with that foundation.
Some of those interviewed for this article believed that the reasons why foreign funders partnered with partisan organizations was a lack of due diligence on the part of the funders and that they did not understand that the recipients were not politically independent or experienced in the field.
“These funds are given to the wrong people,” the activist in Sulaymaniyah said. “It needs to go to people who care. These big [partisan] organizations get the money and then do not show up in the right ways.”
Kucukkeles, the researcher, wryly observed that “money brings the appearance of capacity.”
Others argued that the partisan connection was the point and that the foreign governments used these relationships pragmatically as a way to build ties with politicians from the KDP and the PUK or to ensure that the parties did not cause complications for the funded programs.
“Many activists are eager to do something, but for any activity they need to get permission and it is very hard to get it from the security forces,” Jamil explained. “It is very easy, for example, for Vision Foundation to do these activities because they are supported by the PUK.”
“It is not easy for me to do the same,” he added.
Regardless of whether it is negligence or realpolitik, independent civil society is hurting as a result of international funding going to partisan organizations.
“These civil society organizations are about to go extinct if this keeps happening,” the activist in Sulaymaniyah said.
Space for critical civil society is growing smaller as partisan groups move in and muscle out independent groups, rendering their future uncertain and blunting their ability to hold powerful interests to account. Meanwhile, traditional partners are cutting down their financial support and even shifting it to partisan organizations.
“It is a two-sided problem,” the activist explained when asked how to solve the challenges facing independent civil society. “Parts must be addressed domestically, but external help is very important.” But they worry that the tide has already turned.
“In five years, if this continues, we will wish for what we have now,” they added.
