Maritime border casts shadow over Kuwait-Iraq relations

Maritime border between Kuwait and Iraq remains a point of contention between the two Arab Gulf neighbors.

On Friday, Kuwait lodged a letter of protests with Iraq over a recent court ruling pertaining maritime navigation in Khor Abdullah.

On Thursday, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled to invalidate the Khor Abdullah maritime border agreement, citing inconsistency with the Iraqi Constitution, which mandates approval through legislation passed with a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 833 in 1993, which determined the land border between Iraq and Kuwait.

However, the delineation of the maritime border was left to the two countries.

After the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Iraq and Kuwait in 2003, negotiations began to determine their maritime border.

In this context, an agreement regulating navigation in the Khor Abdullah region was signed in 2012 and approved by Iraq in 2013.

However, the agreement had been criticized by some Iraqi politicians, lawmakers and experts who said that the deal removed Khor Abdullah from Iraq's sovereign territory.

According to the world’s leading geopolitical intelligence forum Stratfor, the Khor Abdullah is a narrow waterway that leads in from the Persian Gulf, curving around Kuwait's Bubiyan and Warba islands on one side and Iraq's Al Faw Peninsula on the other.