Kirkuk to witness new agreements after forming the new government, source

Shafaq News/ On Saturday, a political official revealed new agreements in Kirkuk Governorate regarding religious and ethnic components after forming the new government.

A member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Luqman Abdul Latif Kaki, told Shafaq News Agency, "after forming the new government, there would be changes in the administrative system in Kirkuk to guarantee the rights and entitlements of all components without marginalizing any group."

"People in Kirkuk coexisted peacefully over the past years before the October events (2020). It is an example of a miniature Iraq despite the national and sectarian diversity." The KDP official said.

Kurdish parties frequently demanded the next federal government stop "Arabization" in the disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad.

In the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, Article 140 was specially written to address the issue of lands that are disputed between the KRG in Erbil and the federal government in Baghdad. The areas are in Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Saladin governorates.

The Ba'athist (Saddam Hussein's regime) Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq involved ethnic cleansing of minorities -primarily Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, and Shabaks, in line with colonialist settler policies to shift the demographics of northern Iraq towards Arab domination.

In 1978 and 1979, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down, and around 200,000 Kurds were forced to move to other parts of Iraq.