Samarra city - which is the largest city in Salahuddin province, and was the capital of the Abbasid Empire for centuries – is located about 120 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Member of Salahuddin council, Khaled al-Darraji told “Shafaq News” that "the residents of Samarra in general are not against the project and they wish their city to be the capital for its long history, but they are haunted by anxiety about the boundaries of the areas that will join them."
Darraji , one of the elected members of Samarra Council added " the Southern borders of Tikrit toward Dujail is the focus of contentment , but if areas would be added outside this range , the residents and officials in the city and in Salahuddin would not agree on that."
Samarra Officials as well as its population are concerned from adding more cities such as Khalis in Diyala province and Shulaa in Baghdad province to the borders of Samarra province.
According to observers, the dominant demographic composition will be of Shiite nature, because Balad, Dujail and areas such as Khalis and Shulaa will be added, it would be a Shiite majority against Samarra city that includes Sunni tribes.
The Cabinet decided recently to make a new number of provinces and that sparked some resentment of the local population and officials while other cities welcomed transferring some areas to provinces .
Among the created provinces are Halabja in Sulaimaniya , Tuz Khurmato in Salahuddin , Nineveh Plain and Tall Afar in Nineveh and Fallujah in Anbar province.
Transforming these cities to provinces have emerged the idea to transform Samarra, but that opinion may be far from Qutaiba al-Badri , a resident of Samarra .
Badri told “Shafaq News " that " the provinces have positive features , but it will reflect negatively in Samarra because of the increased sectarian nature at this time that has cause problems among communities because of Samarra."
8 years ago, Samarra almost caused a breakout of sectarian war after the bombing of al-Askariyeen mosque.
Samarra people look with suspicion to the project of transform their city to a province and to talk about it now , talking about this subject is annoying for many of its inhabitants.
Iraqi journalist , Ghazwan al-Jubouri said in an interview with " Shafaq News " , that " the idea of creating new provinces is unsuccessful because they are being founded on sectarian division”.
He explained that the " Samarra issue is very sensitive for being a Sunni city that contains Shiite shrines bordered by Sunni and Shiite areas , a fertile ground for conflicts, so we must think a lot clearly before creating a state of instability by calling for the establishment a province”.