Biggest Iraqi Kurdish political parties will reunite, share absolute power again

Honar Hama Rasheed writes for Niqash:

At the end of last month, two of the biggest political parties in the semi-autonomous northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan held a meeting. The meeting was convened by Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, a leading member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, and Mullah Bakhtiar, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. At a press conference following the meeting the politicians announced that the meeting was the beginning of a new relationship between their two parties.

Which sounds very cosy. And considering that in the not-so-distant past, these two parties were actually at war, it also sounds like a positive development. However almost all of the other notable political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own borders, military and Parliament and often acts independently of Baghdad, are extremely concerned.