The Demographic Trap Renewed: Identity Politics and the Failure of Post-2003 Stabilization in Kirkuk.

Fakherddin Salih, a Kurd who returned to Kirkuk after 2003, is one of hundreds of Kurdish families threatened with eviction from their homes. For nearly a year, Salih and others guarded their homes, fearing forced displacement by the Iraqi army, pressured by “influential Arabs” seeking to reclaim residential and agricultural lands that the Ba’ath regime had granted them after seizing them from their original Kurdish and Turkmen owners.

This is a deep-rooted and recurrent conflict over property, fueled by partisan interests and constantly shifting administrative and security power dynamics in the oil-rich province, which is home to a mix of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens.

Kirkuk, located 270 km northeast of Baghdad, is a disputed area between the governments of Erbil and Baghdad, a conflict tied partly to its immense oil resources. Kurdish activists view the city as a victim of systematic policies designed to effect demographic change, including redrawing administrative boundaries, implementing “Arabization” policies, and forced evictions and resettlements.

Historical Roots and Demographic Shift

Kirkuk is an ancient city, its geopolitical significance amplified by the discovery of oil in the late 19th century, making it a focus for international and regional powers. Under successive “Arab nationalist” regimes in the latter half of the 20th century, a deliberate policy was pursued to shift the demographic balance in favor of the Arab component by encouraging the settlement of thousands of Arab families from other regions.

Following the Ba’ath regime’s fall in April 2003, Kurdish forces, leveraging their organized political and military strength and demographic majority, gained control over the administrative and security apparatus, including the Governor position, and secured rights and job privileges previously denied to them.

This reality was reversed on October 16, 2017, after the Iraqi Army reasserted control following the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. The appointment of an acting Arab governor brought the policies of “demographic change” back to the fore, according to Kurdish officials.

The Conflict Over Land

After 2003, thousands of Kurdish families returned to Kirkuk and reclaimed homes and lands from which they had been displaced during the Ba’ath-era “Arabization” policies. To legally settle the fate and belonging of Kirkuk—a conflict zone subject to chauvinistic demographic change—Articles 58 and 140 were included in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution. They designated Kirkuk as a “disputed territory” and outlined steps for resolution: normalization of the situation, a population census, and a referendum.

However, the implementation of the first step stalled, leaving the city’s legal status unresolved for 20 years. In the power vacuum, the influential Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), imposed their political vision, distributing vast tracts of land—often haphazardly and illegally—that belonged to military camps and federal ministries to Kurdish citizens who had previously been displaced. This action, often described as political rewards rather than fair compensation, further complicated the land conflict.

With the return of Arab influence to the city after 2017, and Rakan al-Jubouri assuming the role of acting governor on behalf of the Arab coalition, numerous problems emerged related to Kurdish citizens’ control of homes belonging to federal ministries, and Kurdish and Turkmen farmers with “Ottoman contracts” controlling lands that Arab citizens consider theirs by virtue of their possession of “official ownership contracts” issued by pre-2003 governments.

Security and Military Influence

With the failure to implement Article 140, both sides tried to impose their will through military and security power. The PUK and KDP established separate Kurdish security agencies (Asayish) and Peshmerga forces, achieving near-absolute control until 2014. A key problem was that these forces were exclusively Kurdish in a multi-ethnic city, leading Arab and Turkmen components to feel marginalized in the security file.

The period of Kurdish security control coincided with sectarian strife and active terrorist organizations. This led the Kurdish parties to implement strict security measures, resulting in the arrest of thousands on terrorism charges. The partisan and nationalist nature of the Kurdish security agencies fostered ethnic sensitivities and distrust. Arab forces claim that thousands of Arab detainees from Kirkuk were held in Kurdistan’s prisons, an assertion denied by the Kurdish parties, who maintain the detainees were convicted terrorists.

Following the Iraqi Army’s return in October 2017, the hasty withdrawal of Peshmerga forces and the Kurdish parties’ organizational headquarters was linked to the post-referendum political and economic breakdown. Subsequently, decomposed bodies were reportedly found in the sewage system of the KDP’s headquarters, with Arab officials claiming this as evidence of torture and killings of Arab citizens during the period of Kurdish control—a claim the Kurdish parties reject.

Investing in the ISIS Campaign

In 2014, when the ISIS organization invaded the region, the Iraqi Army completely withdrew from Kirkuk to defend other areas, and the Peshmerga forces replaced it. This move reinforced the Kurdish military presence inside the city, and these forces, along with the other Kurdish security agencies, succeeded in protecting Kirkuk from ISIS attacks for four years.

The singularity of the Peshmerga forces in the region granted the Kurds additional administrative and security influence. They seized most of the important positions in the city, made decisions without consulting Baghdad, and raised the flag of the Kurdistan Region alongside the Iraqi state flag over all government institutions. This influence extended to controlling the oil fields in Kirkuk to be exploited by the “KAR” Oil Company, and Kirkuk began to be treated by the Kurdish leadership as part of the Kurdistan Region.

As evidence of this absolute control, and away from the will of the federal government, Ashti Hawrami, who was then the Minister of Natural Resources in the Kurdistan Regional Government, announced at a special conference held in July 2014 in the British capital, London, that “the Kurdistan Regional Government has connected the Kirkuk oil fields to the Region’s new pipeline to export Kirkuk crude oil to Turkey through it.”

Political Researcher Barua Star says that “this unilateral move, without the approval of the federal government or consultation with the representatives of Kirkuk’s components, was tantamount to declaring Kirkuk’s annexation to the Kurdistan Region and severing its direct link with the federal government, a step that angered both Sunni and Shia Iraqi leaders.”

While Kurdish leaders were exulting in their control over Kirkuk and reinforcing their administrative, security, and economic presence there, a “dilemma” was forming unnoticed: the unprecedented displacement of thousands of Arab families from their residences in the security-volatile provinces of Salah al-Din and Diyala to the stable Kirkuk, fleeing the authority of ISIS and the ongoing battles on the ground.

Researcher Barua points out that “these displaced people, after years, became part of Kirkuk’s component equation, with their desire for permanent settlement, which ultimately means a change in the demographic nature of the city.”

Exporting Kirkuk Oil for Erbil’s Account

Amidst the ongoing war with ISIS, the “KAR” company, affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), whose forces controlled these fields, exported nearly half a million barrels of oil daily from those fields to the port of Ceyhan, without its revenues returning to Kirkuk, and with a lack of transparency regarding sale prices, revenue volume, and the other entities benefiting from extraction, transport, and marketing companies.

The unilateral moves by the Kurdish forces in dealing with a natural resource that is constitutionally owned by the Iraqi people raised the concern and annoyance of the Arab and Turkmen components, as they felt national discrimination, and raised questions about how the Kurdish forces would treat them if Kirkuk legally became part of Kurdistan.

This economic investment during Iraq’s war with ISIS did not last long. On October 16, 2017, less than a month after the self-determination referendum, the Iraqi Army re-entered Kirkuk after limited clashes with the Peshmerga forces, which quickly withdrew with all the Region’s affiliated security formations to the administrative borders of Kurdistan.

The return of the army to Kirkuk, with a force much greater than before, was not limited to its previous positions but extended to the entire area of the governorate. Consequently, a new temporary administration was formed in the absence of the Kurds, marginalizing their position, followed by extensive changes in all aspects of the cities administrative and security structures, which allowed for the reinforcement of the Arab presence.

Kurdish political activist Riband Hussein says that “this major shift in Kirkuk’s reality negatively affected the presence and interests of the Kurdish component, with thousands of Kurdish families migrating towards Kurdistan, and was also translated into the issuance of decisions supporting the presence of Arab farmers on agricultural lands originally owned by Kurds and Turkmens, along with supporting the continued stay of thousands of Arab families displaced from other governorates.”

Riband warns that “the overall repercussions resulting from the referendum decision, the escalating Kurdish nationalist discourse, and then the entry of the Iraqi Army into Kirkuk, were a cause of a type of demographic change that will probably be difficult to address for decades.”

According to information from the Kurdish Areas outside the Region Authority, about 20,000 Kurdish families were forced to leave Kirkuk after October 16.

Kurdish partisan sources say that the movements of the Iraqi Army played a fundamental role in the displacement of the Kurds, as they aroused fear among them of the possibility of retaliatory operations, of not allowing Kurdish farmers to invest their lands, and of the army siding with Arab groups in their dispute over the ownership of those lands.

The Census Problem

The population census is the primary reference for knowing the total population, and the number and percentage of different components in each area. However, Iraq has not conducted any comprehensive population census since the last one in 1987.

Iraqi governments are supposed to conduct a general population census every ten years. Censuses were effectively conducted in the years: 1927, 1934, 1947, 1957, 1965, 1977, 1987, 1997. But the Kurdistan Region governorates did not participate in the last census as the Region was almost completely separate from Iraq due to the events of the Kuwait War.

Furthermore, the recent census operations in some areas were subject to political calculations and came after demographic changes occurred in favor of some components at the expense of others. This makes the recent censuses in Kirkuk rejected by the Kurds and Turkmens, who insist on adopting the 1957 census as a reference in Kirkuk, as it was not subject to political considerations and was the best in terms of organization, especially since it was conducted with the participation of United Nations experts.

On November 20 and 21, 2024, a comprehensive population census was conducted, the first in 37 years, but for political considerations, it did not include a count of the components by nationalities, religions, and sects, which kept the component distribution of the population unclear.

According to the 1957 census, which Kurds and Turkmens consider an accurate reference for the population distribution before the “demographic change policy” was adopted, the population of Kirkuk was 279,000 people, including 178,000 Kurds (63.7%), 48,000 Arabs (16%), 43,000 Turkmens (15.4%), while the number of Chaldeans and Assyrians reached 10,000 people (3.58%).

Elections as a Population Indicator

In the absence of any census counting the number of components (by nationality, religion, sect) and their distribution in Kirkuk, political forces resorted to election results as an indicator to measure population percentages, and based on them, decisions regarding the division of positions in Kirkuk were made.

In the Iraqi Council of Representatives elections held on 30/4/2014, the percentages of votes in Kirkuk were: Kurds 54%, Arabs 28%, Turkmens 17%, and Christians 1%. This reflected a clear increase in the percentage of Arabs, compared to the 1957 census, versus a clear decrease in the percentage of Kurds, along with a slight increase in the percentage of Turkmens, while the percentage of Christians recorded a decrease.

Those elections came more than ten years after the Kurdish forces had acquired the largest share of leadership positions in the governorate. Nevertheless, the results showed that the demographic change that occurred during the rule of the Ba’ath Party regime had a significant impact, as the number of Arabs increased significantly, while the Kurds notably declined, and the Turkmens maintained their previous representation percentage. It indicated a decrease in the percentage of Kurds over 57 years by approximately 10%.

However, with the loss of Kurdish parties’ control over the city after 2017, the percentage of Kurds declined further, according to the indicators of the Provincial Council elections held on 18/12/2023. The participation rate of the components—measured by the votes of their lists, which is an indicator of the population percentage—was as follows: 43% for Kurds, 38% for Arabs, 18% for Turkmens, and 1% for Christians.

These election results, if used correctly as an indicator of the Kurdish percentage in Kirkuk, show that this percentage sharply declined under the influence of the shift in power that occurred in favor of the Arab component in the last seven years, a percentage greater than that which occurred during the preceding 57 years.

Political activist Riband Hussein says that “the rate of decline between 2017 and 2024 doubled compared to the period between 1957 and 2014, which is due to the demographic change policies practiced by the Kirkuk government, and to the frustration experienced by some Kurdish voters after the absence of the Kurdish administration and the outcome of the situation in Kirkuk.”

What Happened on the Ground?

Before October 2017, there were 11 Arab neighborhoods in Kirkuk: “Tariq Baghdad, Al-Awwal min Huzairan, Wahda, Hurriya, Ishtirakiya, Mamduda, 7 Nissan, Al-Ba’ath Neighborhood, Nasr and Al-Orouba, Qadisiya, and Gharnata.” However, after the transfer of power to the temporary Kirkuk administration, 10 new neighborhoods were established for Arabs, according to reports from the Kurdish Areas Outside the Region Authority.

The Authority states that the neighborhoods of “Hamzali, Alwa, Siyada, Al-Zawraa Neighborhood, Al-Zira’a Neighborhood, Neighborhood 55, Mansiya, Badr Neighborhood, Al-Zahraa Neighborhood, Neighborhood 58” were all formed after 2017. The acting Governor of Kirkuk, Rakan Al-Jubouri, and the other officials who were appointed facilitated the settlement of thousands of Arab families and granted them documents enabling them to vote in Kirkuk.

There is no official information on the population of these neighborhoods because the concerned authorities do not disclose accurate data. However, according to follow-up and verification operations conducted by the Kurdish Areas Outside the Region Authority, four new neighborhoods alone (Alwa, 55, Siyada, Mansiya) received more than 6,000 Arab families, most of whom came from outside the Kirkuk Governorate borders.

Officials in the two Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, say that thousands of Arab families within the areas of Hawija, Al-Zab, Rashad, and Riyad came to Kirkuk during the past years, and the numbers continued to rise due to facilities provided by the administrative and security authorities responsible.

The Authority estimates that 20,000 Arab families settled in Kirkuk after 2017, some of whom came as displaced persons after the ISIS attacks in 2014 and subsequent years, and some as a result of the Arabization policy after the events of October 16.

The same period also witnessed practices that fall under the “demographic change policy,” such as the closure of Kurdish centers, institutions, and organizations inside the city, which were forced to cease their activities, while the departments affiliated with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Kirkuk were closed, and the properties of some were seized.

Some of these entities returned after two or three years, but without raising any signs or flags identifying them. Other entities, such as the Asayish headquarters, the Kurdistan Parliament offices, the Directorate of Trade in the Kurdish regions, and the Kurdistan Region Authority office outside the region, were unable to return.

Arabs Doubled in Kurdish Neighborhoods

Kurdish sources say that the number of individuals of the Arab component clearly increased in many Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods, especially in “Failaq (Kurdistan), Panja Ali, Shorawa,” where they had no significant presence before the events of October 16, 2017.

A resident of Shorawa, who works in the contracting and real estate sector and refused to disclose his name to protect his work, said: “In the past year alone, more than 20 new houses were built in the neighborhood, and I personally sold more than 15 houses to Arab citizens… This is happening in many other Kurdish neighborhoods.” He adds: “Some alleys have completely turned into Arab neighborhoods after they were purely Kurdish.”

Haidar Sabah, a retired Kurdish employee from Kirkuk, says that the events of October 16 had a great impact on the convictions, psychology, and way of thinking of Kurdish citizens. “It represented a fracture in the idea that the fate of the city had been settled in favor of the Kurds and that there was no longer any fear about permanent residence, investment, and establishing projects there.”

He adds: “This happened with the departure of Kurdish administrative and security officials, and many investors and contractors from the city, and their preference to live in Sulaymaniyah or Erbil, which many Kurds considered a readiness to abandon the defense they considered sacred of the city’s Kurdish identity.”

Obstacles to the Kurdish Language

During the years 2003 to 2017, under Kurdish control of Kirkuk’s administration, the Kurdish language witnessed remarkable development despite some obstacles. Kurdish was officially used in all government departments alongside the Arabic language in a rare implementation of constitutional provisions, compared to the rest of the Iraqi governorates, and it was adopted in official correspondence, while Kurdish education expanded significantly in official schools.

But after October 16, and as a result of the near-absolute absence of Kurdish representatives from the city’s administration, a policy of banning the use of the Kurdish language in official institutions was adopted, and Kurdish correspondence was widely canceled, with only Arabic being used in most departments.

The use of the Kurdish language was banned in Kirkuk International Airport, and its official use was canceled in the correspondence of the Kirkuk Health Directorate, as well as in the Planning and Follow-up Directorate, which issued a decision to adopt only Arabic and English, whereas correspondence was previously issued in all three languages.

The Kurds tried to resist this policy through some of their representatives and through legal channels, considering it a violation of Article 4 of the Constitution. Later, after follow-up and pressure from Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi Parliament and officials in the federal government, the Ministry of Health decided to reinstate the Kurdish language in official correspondence.

Kurdish language education also faced many obstacles due to the delay in the payment of salaries for teaching staff in Kurdish schools, which are paid by the Kurdistan Region, which caused some families to worry about their children’s education being affected.

Removal of Kurdish Symbols

The administration of Rakan Al-Jubouri, the acting governor, during the period between 2017 and 2023, worked to remove many Kurdish national symbols as part of Arabization policies and to influence the city’s identity, according to Kurdish activists.

The raising of the Kurdistan Region flag was banned in government departments and even on Kurdish party headquarters. The raising of the Kurdistan flag in Kurdish schools, where it was previously raised alongside the Iraqi flag, was also banned.

The “Region’s flag” that was raised on the Peshmerga monument was replaced with the “Iraqi flag,” and the official plaque installed on the statue was removed, a step that caused great annoyance to the Kurds, as the statue, erected in 2016 at the entrance to the “Kirkuk – Erbil” road, was a symbol of the Peshmerga’s sacrifices against terrorist organizations and its success in protecting the city.

The statue, which is considered the most prominent and largest in the city, embodies a Kurdish fighter placing his rifle on his shoulder with one hand, and carrying the Kurdistan Region flag with the other, while looking towards the Region’s areas, in a message that the city is part of the Kurdish land.

Military vehicles equipped with “Dushka” machine guns guard the statue to prevent any attempt to re-raise the Kurdistan flag. Journalist Baran Garmiyani comments, saying: “This does not only represent a message denying the sacrifices of the Peshmerga in the face of terrorist organizations, but also a symbolic attempt to change the identity of the city and the identity of the Kurd who defended it.”

The same period witnessed the erasure of Kurdish slogans raised on schools and departments, and the painting over of walls that carried Kurdish phrases indicating the city’s Kurdish identity.

The measures reached the extent of obstructing the lighting of the Newroz fire for more than a year and imposing restrictive security measures on the popular celebrations that the Kurds, in particular, are accustomed to holding on March 21 of each year.

The Kurdish Areas Outside the Region Authority believes that the former acting Governor, Rakan Al-Jubouri, tried to repeat the Arabization policy pursued by the Ba’ath Party in Kirkuk, and that he resorted to using military and security forces to implement this policy, by demanding them to execute orders he issued to expel Kurdish farmers from their agricultural lands, describing them as “trespassers,” just as the Ba’ath regime did.

Systematic Policies Against Kurds

Despite the end of the absolute Kurdish administration dream for Kirkuk, and the departure of thousands of citizens from the city during the years following 2017 under security pressure, and their recourse to living in Sulaymaniyah or Erbil, where economic opportunities and service conditions are better, the temporary Kirkuk administration (2017-2024) did not stop practicing policies aimed at fighting the Kurdish presence.

In early 2024, army forces, under orders from the local authority, moved to forcibly evict the residents of 120 houses occupied by displaced Kurds in the Newroz neighborhood. The army actually seized 5 houses and pressured to seize the rest of the houses and expel their residents from the neighborhood, on the pretext of them being trespassers.

The army’s movements to evacuate real estate or agricultural lands were based on letters issued by the Kirkuk administration. On May 18, 2020, the acting Governor of Kirkuk, at the request of an Arab tribal Sheikh in Kirkuk, issued an order to the military forces to evacuate the houses occupied by Kurdish citizens, whom the letter described as trespassers, and to resettle Arab citizens in their place as the former owners of the houses and the “original Arabs of Kirkuk” who had left their homes after 2003.

At a time when the Kurdish Areas Outside the Region Authority states that the real owners of those lands are Kurdish citizens from Kirkuk who were displaced by decisions of the Ba’ath Party and Arabs were settled in their place, and that the areas referred to by the Governor are disputed areas covered by Article 140 of the Constitution, and therefore the Governor does not have the right to change their nature through resettlement operations.

Furthermore, the army’s attempts to confiscate Kurdish and Turkmen lands contradict Cabinet Resolution No. 29 issued in January 2012, which stipulates the return of lands to their owners who possess their official deeds, as the farmers point out.

Ahmed Kirkuki, a member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, says: “After the events of October 16, policies were adopted to exclude Kurds from the governorate’s administration, step by step, as 80% of the administrative and military positions in the city were seized, and there was discrimination between neighborhoods in terms of providing services.”

The Council member adds: “We, as members of the current Council, want to provide service to all components without discrimination. Past events have proven the impossibility of marginalizing any component… Kirkuk must be for all its people, and repeating the policy of demographic change is unacceptable, as that will not serve anyone.”

This article was produced under the supervision of the NIRIJ Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism, as part of the ” Qareeb” project supported by CFI.