By Payraw Anwar
The Kurdish question has remained one of the most enduring and complex issues of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 divided Kurdistan into four parts and attached them to Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. The case of Iraq is particularly complicated. At the outset, Mosul was not even part of Iraq. Only after the League of Nations ruled in the 1925s was Mosul—home to southern Kurdistan—formally incorporated into Iraq. This decision planted the seeds of today’s “disputed territories.”
In 1970, negotiations between Kurds and the Iraqi regime produced an autonomy agreement. Yet Baghdad deliberately excluded key Kurdish areas, most notably oil-rich Kirkuk. Decades later, Iraq’s permanent constitution, adopted in 2005 with 80% support, recognized these areas as “disputed territories.” But unfortunately, constitutional recognition has not translated into resolution.
-A History of
Displacement
and Arabization
Since the 1960s, successive Iraqi regimes have carried out systematic displacement and Arabization campaigns across Kurdish-populated areas stretching from Badra and Jasan to Sinjar. Thousands of Kurds were uprooted, their homes demolished, and Arab settlers from other provinces were resettled in their place. These policies not only shifted the demography of the region but also redrew administrative boundaries to destroy the Kurdish presence, particularly in Kirkuk.
Historically and geographically, these areas belong to Kurdistan. The Hamrin Mountain range has long served as a natural border separating Kurdistan from central and southern Iraq. Yet state policies over the decades sought to erase this reality.
Article 140:
A Broken Promise
Iraq’s 2005 constitution sought to resolve the issue through Article 140. It laid out a three-stages process:
1. Normalization – reversing the Arabization policies.
2. Census – to determine the population balance.
3. Referendum – allowing residents to decide whether to remain under Baghdad or join the Kurdistan Region.
The deadline was December 31, 2007. Today, more than 15 years later, Article 140 remains unimplemented. Successive governments have failed to carry out even the first stage. This deliberate neglect reveals a political unwillingness to address one of Iraq’s most pressing constitutional obligations.
-Tensions on the Ground
Meanwhile, Arab settlers—backed by segments of the Iraqi security forces—continue to clash with Kurdish residents. Farmlands are burned, villages attacked, and ancestral lands occupied under the pretext of ownership granted by the former Ba’athist regime. Instead of serving as protectors of all citizens, parts of the Iraqi army have been complicit in discrimination and aggression against Kurds in these areas.
This dynamic perpetuates mistrust between communities and deepens the divide between Baghdad and Erbil. Rather than seeking reconciliation, the central government appears intent on leaving the issue unresolved, allowing tensions to simmer indefinitely.
The disputed territories remain one of Iraq’s most explosive issues—one that fuels instability, ethnic mistrust, and regional fragmentation. Until Baghdad fulfills its constitutional commitments, the question will remain an open wound in Iraq’s fragile state-building process.
Resolving this dispute is not just a Kurdish demand. It is a constitutional necessity, a matter of justice, and a prerequisite for genuine national stability. Ignoring it only ensures that the disputed territories will remain, quite literally, a battlefield for Iraq’s unfinished history.