2026-08-31T13:13:12+00:00

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Shafaq News- Khanaqin

Kurdish parties in Khanaqin, a disputed district between the federal
government and the Kurdistan Region (KRI) in eastern Iraq, have called off a
planned mass protest and will send a delegation to Baghdad instead, citing
concerns for demonstrators’ safety, according to a joint statement released on
Monday.

The parties said the security arrangements for the gathering, meant for
the center of Khanaqin, were insufficient to ensure participants’ safety

Behind the decision sits one of Iraq’s most intractable territorial
disputes. Khanaqin lies in Diyala province, among the areas claimed by both the
federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in
Erbil, and its status hinges on Article 140 of the constitution, a long-stalled
mechanism for settling those disputed territories. A recent push to redraw the
district’s administrative boundaries has dragged the question back into the
open.

Read more: The borderland bargain: Daily life inside Khanaqin’s quietly shifting frontier

From TV Remarks To Street Tensions

The latest confrontation began with a television interview. Leaders of
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), the KRI’s two dominant parties, spoke of “Arabization” and
demographic change in Khanaqin since October 16, 2017 —the day Iraqi federal
forces retook the district and other disputed areas from Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters after the KRG’s independence referendum. They pressed for Article 140
to be carried out.

The remarks drew opposition in neighboring areas. In areas bordering the
district, residents and public figures rejected the call and questioned the
legal footing of Article 140 itself, and a few demanded that those raising it
be prosecuted.

Protest Called Off,  An Arrest Hardens The Mood

Kurdish parties met Sunday at a cultural center in Khanaqin and settled
on a peaceful demonstration in the city center to demand that Article 140 and
related constitutional clauses be enforced, a participant told Shafaq News.
Organizers intended to fly the Iraqi and Kurdistan flags side by side and to
print slogans in both Arabic and Kurdish, and they insisted the event singled
out none of the district’s communities. Civil-society activists, meeting
separately, agreed on much the same terms.

The demonstration never went ahead. A committee overseeing it called the
event off over the risk to participants and resolved to send a delegation to
Baghdad to put the area’s demands to the president and other senior officials.

Sharper still was the detention of Kamran Ways Murad, a former commander
in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella of mainly Shiite armed
factions under nominal state control. A government source told Shafaq News that
a security unit had arrested Murad —better known as Abu Muntadhar al-Dalawi— in
Khanaqin under Article 200 of the Penal Code, which covers incitement to
“sectarian, racial and nationalist strife.”

Accounts of what he said pull in opposite directions. In a video posted
online, Murad urged that Khanaqin be treated as an “Iraqi Kurdistani”
city and that the rights of every community be protected, framing his remarks
as a reply to a Badr Organization figure in the nearby town of Jalawla who had
attacked the Kurdish position. The security source, however, said Murad was
arrested over videos authorities viewed as incitement against Arabs in the
district. Murad’s own path has been a winding one: he once ran Badr in
Khanaqin, broke with it, later left Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and had recently aligned
with a Kurdish party.

Local PUK officials in Diyala said they knew nothing of any warrant for
his arrest.

The joint statement did more than endorse the suspension. It demanded
the immediate release of everyone held and the cancellation of arrest warrants
issued against politicians, activists and young people, calling their
involvement peaceful. It also urged Iraq’s four top offices —the presidency,
the premiership, parliament and the judiciary— along with Kurdish
representatives in Baghdad, to take up the area’s demands through
constitutional channels.

The Longer Dispute

None of this came out of nowhere. Khanaqin shut down in a general strike
in February after the federal Planning Ministry moved to raise the Jalawla
sub-district to a full district, fold Saadiya into it, and turn Qara Tapa into
a separate district, changes that would strip territory from Khanaqin. Kurdish
officials and residents branded the plan a breach of Article 140 and an attempt
to shrink the district, while Shiite Arab figures in the area saw it as
reinforcing their standing in the border zone near Iran. No direct comment from
the Jalawla figure or from Arab and Turkmen residents appeared in the reporting
reviewed by Shafaq News.

The article sets out three steps to decide the disputed territories’
future: undoing the population changes imposed under Saddam Hussein, conducting
a census, and holding a referendum in which residents choose between joining
the Kurdistan Region and remaining under Baghdad. The timetable was meant to
close by the end of 2007, but security and political turmoil derailed it. In
2019, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled that the article stays in force until
its requirements are met.

For now, the parties have asked residents to hold off until the
delegation finishes its meetings in Baghdad. The Diyala Provincial Council is
due to convene Wednesday, September 2, to question the Khanaqin district
commissioner about the recent turmoil, a session sought in a memo backed by six
council members, according to a document reviewed by Shafaq News.