ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—As Iraqi, Kurdish and coalition forces are finalizing plans for an expected offensive against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Mosul, local officials and Kurdish politicians stress the importance of a post-ISIS roadmap for the province.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces are expected to participate in the offensive from the northern front as part of an agreement signed with the United States and Iraqi army.
However, they argue that political and administrative guarantees must be given to the Kurds and other minority groups such as Christians and Yezidis in the province by the Iraqi federal government in the post-ISIS era.
“There hasn’t been equal citizenship rights in Mosul where people could live together,” Saadi Ahmad Pira, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) told Rudaw.
“Therefore, the Kurds and others must think about making some administrational changes there whether or not it means making it into two or three provinces or a special region,” he added.
Mosul is one of Iraq’s most multiethnic cities where Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Kurds among them Yezidis and Shabaks live.
Bashar Kiki, head of the Nineveh Provincial Council said at a conference in Erbil on Wednesday that “it is important that the rights of every group are protected and honored after ISIS in Mosul.”
Kurds have for their part been involved in the local administration of Mosul since 2003 by running in local elections and choosing their representatives into the provincial and city councils.
“The issue of Mosul is not military alone,” Hemin Hawrami, a senior Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official and its foreign relations chief told Rudaw. “It has human, economic and social aspects and unless those are addressed it will negatively affect the military aspect too.”
Hawrami said that the official Kurdish stance is that forces that will run Mosul after ISIS should not create trouble for the city in the future “and turn it into a center of further geopolitical rivalries.”
Dr. Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, head of the Middle East Research Institute suggested that a kind of framework should be created for Mosul “where everyone is a winner.”
Local Sunni authorities in Mosul argue that they must be given full powers by the central government to run their affairs and as late as Thursday Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised transferring governance authority to all Iraqi provinces as stipulated by the constitution.
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