The state, sovereignty and strategic decision-making

Federalism and security: how can responsibilities be divided without fragmenting sovereignty?

By Ali Zuweid · Article date: 28 October 2026 · 9 min read

English translation published 31 October 2026. Read the Arabic original.

The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs announced a security meeting in Baghdad on 6 September 2026 involving federal and regional officials to discuss coordination, including joint brigades and training. The announcement establishes that a meeting occurred according to a participating authority’s account. It does not demonstrate that disputes ended or performance improved by a measurable amount. It nevertheless raises a recurring Iraqi problem: how can several authorities perform different security functions within one state without every interaction becoming a fresh test of national unity? Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs statement.

The debate tends towards two simplified answers: concentrate every power at the centre as the guarantee of sovereignty, or treat every local power as a right exempt from national coordination. Neither adequately explains a federal constitution that distributes functions while affirming a single state. The practical difficulty is not simply the number of bodies involved. It is knowing who decides each category of issue, who implements the decision, who answers for the result and how disagreement is resolved before it causes paralysis. A coordination meeting matters insofar as it produces rules that survive changes of personnel and political tension.

Reading the powers together

Article 1 of Iraq’s Constitution describes one federal state. Article 110 makes the formulation and implementation of national security policy—including establishing and managing armed forces to protect the borders and defend Iraq—an exclusive federal responsibility. Article 121(5), meanwhile, assigns the regional government responsibility for establishing and organising internal security forces, including police, security forces and regional guards. Reading one provision while overlooking the other creates an incomplete picture. Recognising regional security administration does not abolish the national competence, and the national competence does not automatically erase every regional function. Iraq’s Constitution, Articles 1, 110 and 121.

Invoking Article 115 requires similar precision. It addresses non-exclusive powers and regional legal priority in disputes over shared competences; it does not grant a general priority overriding exclusive federal responsibilities. Nor should a rule concerning a region be applied to a governorate outside a region without examining Article 122 and the relevant legal framework. This is a reading of the text’s structure, not a resolution of every existing constitutional or legislative dispute. Its value is to move discussion away from treating ‘federalism’ either as unlimited permission for any level of government or as a temporary exception with no practical implications for organising power. Constitution, Articles 115, 121 and 122.

When everyday activities overlap, asking what function is being performed is more useful than asking only who controls the place. Local information, protecting a facility, investigating a crime and assessing an external threat are not identical activities, even when they concern the same area. Several bodies may need to participate. Participation, however, does not eliminate the need for an authority responsible for the final decision within its competence. Practical arrangements must clarify this distinction. Otherwise, ‘shared responsibility’ can become an excuse for institutions to exchange blame when a response is delayed or people’s rights are violated.

What makes coordination institutional?

The September meeting suggests that working channels can continue despite political disagreements, but it cannot by itself establish their durability. In my view, coordination should be tested by established procedures for communication, decision recording and resolving objections, rather than meeting frequency. Publishing these principles need not expose sensitive operational details, locations or capabilities. Citizens and parliament can know which body is responsible for complaints, expenditure or oversight while information whose disclosure would damage security remains protected. Professional confidentiality and institutional clarity serve different purposes and need not conflict.

Temporary cooperation must also be distinguished from permanently shared responsibility. Two bodies may agree an urgent measure for a defined situation. Repeating the arrangement without a clear basis, however, may establish a practice exceeding the legal text. Conversely, insisting that every political dispute be settled first can obstruct cooperation needed to protect people. I propose implementing agreements with defined purposes, durations and review arrangements within existing legal powers. Matters exceeding those powers should go to the competent authority rather than being concealed beneath a vague declaration of understanding.

Financial accountability is part of the security problem. When a mission has been agreed, auditors need to know who funds it, what establishes that commitments were fulfilled and how duplicated expenditure is prevented. This does not require releasing details affecting personnel or readiness. It means enabling authorised oversight to trace the relationship between money and the assigned task. Turning expenditure into an identity dispute alone makes professional verification dependent on political bargaining. Demands for transparency can be legitimate, but their standard should apply consistently to the relevant bodies, rather than being used selectively to weaken one side.

A bounded and testable German lesson

Germany’s Basic Law offers an example of regulating assistance between levels of government. Article 35 provides for mutual assistance, defines requests for support during disasters or serious accidents, and regulates federal intervention where danger crosses a Land boundary, including a requirement to end measures. The example matters because multiple authorities need not leave the beginning and ending of assistance to unrestricted discretion. It illustrates legal design; it is not standalone evidence that federalism produced every German security outcome or that procedures are always applied without disagreement. German Basic Law, Article 35.

Iraq can learn the importance of defining what triggers a shift from local action to wider assistance, who requests it, who reviews it and what ends it. Transplanting Germany’s actual allocation of powers would be unsound. The constitutions differ, and Iraq’s political and historical relationships and security organisations do not replicate those of the German Länder. Comparison should therefore start with a defined Iraqi question—such as preventing an emergency exception from becoming permanent—rather than assuming a foreign institution’s success makes copying it a general remedy.

The comparison also reveals the opposite mistake. Fear of central encroachment cannot justify leaving risks that cross administrative boundaries without a responsible decision-maker. A threat may extend beyond the jurisdiction that detected it, while detailed knowledge remains with that body. The state therefore needs to combine knowledge and coordinate decisions while retaining each level’s responsibility. Withholding necessary information because of a jurisdictional dispute may impose greater costs on residents than the administrative dispute itself. The institutional answer is to organise participation and safeguards beforehand, not abolish legal protections at the first crisis.

Sovereignty depends on implementing lawful decisions

I propose a joint Iraqi review starting with a defined set of functions that repeatedly cross jurisdictional boundaries. It would produce a written account of responsibility for decisions, implementation, funding and oversight in each case. Legal and professional specialists from the relevant bodies would participate, and findings requiring legislation would enter the legislative process. The purpose would not be to reinterpret the Constitution through an administrative document, but to expose what is clear and what remains disputed. Knowing that a matter is unresolved is preferable to assuming an agreement exists and discovering otherwise during a crisis.

Arrangements should be tested through institutional reviews that do not release sensitive operational information. Did a complaint reach the appropriate body? Was the agreed route for objections used? Was the decision implemented within the authorised period? Was expenditure recorded once and by the correct authority? These administrative questions can be assessed without publishing a map of security weaknesses. A review should also produce a defined correction where a defect appears, rather than another meeting restating the importance of coordination. Oversight of violations remains part of performance quality, not an issue postponed until political understanding is complete.

One condition goes beyond the Baghdad–Erbil relationship: at every level, force must belong to public institutions rather than partisan or personal allegiance. Article 9 places armed forces and security institutions under civilian leadership and excludes them from the transfer of political power. Moving a decision from the centre to a region, or the reverse, is consequently insufficient if appointment and accountability rules remain unclear. Constitutional distribution of authority loses its meaning when the level assigned a responsibility cannot secure its agencies’ compliance with its lawful decision. Iraq’s Constitution, Article 9.

Nor can trust be built by demanding complete trust before any cooperation begins. Smaller, verifiable safeguards can be established: stable channels for objections, recorded reasons for decisions and reviews of commitments at known intervals. These procedures cannot independently settle disputes about resources, representation or territory. They may nevertheless prevent every dispute from spreading across the entire security relationship. Coordination arrangements should neither be burdened with promises of a comprehensive political settlement nor condemned for failing to accomplish something they were never designed to achieve.

Federalism preserves sovereignty when it distributes state functions without making every lawful decision dependent on a fresh bargain. Fragmentation becomes a greater risk when formal powers are declared but practical responsibilities remain undefined. What deserves attention after a security meeting is not the participants’ photograph. It is whether citizens have gained a clearer understanding of who protects their rights, and whether institutions know how to cooperate and disagree within a common rule.

Ali Zuweid — Researcher in strategic affairs and national security