Shafaq News- OPINION
By Ali Hussein Feyli*
Kurdish concerns over Iraq’s political and security landscape are not merely emotional or temporary, but reflect a deeper sense of existential anxiety and a realistic assessment shaped by historical tragedy, the hard numbers, and harsh geographic realities. Any observer viewing this equation from outside the Kurdistan Region will struggle to understand such concerns without examining the events that continue to carry considerable weight in the Region’s collective memory.
The political history of Iraq’s Kurds is marked by a succession of broken promises and agreements that lacked effective guarantees. Kurdish experience has reinforced a belief that decision-making centers in Baghdad, regardless of the ideology of the ruling authority, tend to impose their dominance and retreat from previous understandings once they regain strength.
From the violation of the March 11, 1970 agreement to the 1975 Algiers Accord, followed by the Anfal campaign and the chemical attack on Halabja, these episodes have contributed to a political consciousness that views the absence of international guarantees as a warning sign for Kurdish national gains. Written commitments, in this view, remain vulnerable when they are not supported by a balance of power on the ground.
Read more: Kurdistan Region faces air-defense gap as US troops leave Iraq
Despite the bitterness of this legacy, Kurdish leaders have continued to extend a hand toward peace and dialogue, particularly since 2003, when they helped build Iraq’s new institutions and draft its Constitution, with figures such as Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani and former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani playing central roles in bringing political forces together and building national consensus.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani’s address at Baghdad’s “Sovereignty Day” ceremony on Oct. 1, 2026, reflected the same approach, as he wore an Iraqi flag pin and delivered a roughly seven-minute speech in Arabic aimed at Iraqis across the country rather than a specifically Kurdish audience.
On the security front, the departure of US-led Coalition forces could leave a vacuum through which security threats may emerge. During the war against ISIS that began in 2014, the Kurdistan Region lost more than 1,800 Peshmerga fighters and saw around 10,000 others wounded along a frontline stretching more than 1,000 kilometers.
Today, those security concerns overlap with continuing disputes over the Kurdistan Region’s budget and the deliberate obstruction of the full implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution. More than two decades after the Constitution was adopted, leaving this obligation unresolved has reinforced Kurdish perceptions that a policy of imposing faits accomplis is taking precedence over legal and equitable solutions.
In the Kurdish political consciousness, this obstruction goes beyond administrative failure and has become a threat that recalls policies of demographic change and the seizure of agricultural land, deepening doubts over commitment to the national settlement on which post-2003 Iraq was built.
Read more: The evolution of Kurdish power in Iraq
Another source of concern is the activity of armed groups operating outside the state and its official chain of command. Such groups have targeted the Kurdistan Region dozens of times as a means of military signaling and pressure, striking economic infrastructure, airports and energy facilities with rockets and drones, weakening the investment environment and disrupting Erbil’s economic and political situation.
International protection therefore occupies an important place in Erbil’s strategic calculations as a security necessity at the current stage. Historically, such involvement was not the result of a unilateral Kurdish decision: the policies of Saddam Hussein’s government prompted the international community to establish a “safe haven” for the Kurds in 1991, while the Coalition formed in 2014 entered Iraq at the formal request of the federal government in Baghdad and in partnership with Erbil.
Over the past two decades, the international presence has also served as one factor in balancing external influence inside Iraq. As that military umbrella recedes, concerns are growing that internal pressure could converge with pressure from neighboring states, particularly given the Kurdistan Region’s geopolitical position as a landlocked territory.
Yet the experience of international protection confronts the Kurdish leadership with a basic reality: external support shifts with changing interests and offers no permanent guarantee, making its value dependent on the time it provides to build domestic safeguards, resolve disputes, and consolidate a constitutional partnership capable of enduring changes in international positions.
The other side of the dilemma is the transition of pressure from military threats to legal and financial restrictions, weakening the Kurdistan Region as a political entity and threatening to reduce it to a constrained local administration while stripping Iraq’s federal system of its constitutional substance. Such a course would undermine the principles of consensus and national partnership and open the way for majority dominance.
At the same time, the Kurdistan Region bears responsibility for addressing its internal problems and developing a more stable strategy for managing relations with Baghdad. Internal Kurdish divisions have weakened its ability to preserve the political weight it once held as a “kingmaker” and reduced its leverage in confronting an increasingly uneven balance of power.
These concerns, however, do not amount to shirking national responsibility, nor are they a tool for political maneuvering or an attempt to diminish Iraq’s standing; rather, they highlight a test facing the country at a rare opportunity without external “guardianship”: whether sovereignty can become a guarantee for the security of all its components and federalism can move from constitutional text to a genuine partnership that protects rights and gives coexistence a stable foundation.
Read more: Nearly four weeks of attacks on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
* Ali Hussein Feyli, Chairman of the Shafaq Foundation for Culture and Media and former member of the Kurdistan Region Parliament.
This article was originally written in Arabic.