ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nineveh provincial council has opened a nomination window for the Shingal (Sinjar) mayor post, according to a letter obtained by Rudaw on Monday, signaling a shift toward stability in the Yazidi heartland after nearly 10 years of security turmoil.
In the announcement letter, dated Sunday, the provincial council asked the applications to submit their resumes by Thursday.
"Following the submission deadline, candidate CVs will be vetted over a period of two to three days to ensure they meet the necessary qualifications,” Mohammed Kakayi, member of the council’s security defense committee, told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir.
The letter lists seven conditions for candidates, including having a clean criminal record, being a resident of Nineveh for at least 10 years, and not serving as an active-duty member of the security forces.
Located in the west of the Nineveh province, Shingal is part of the disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad.
Mahma Khalil, a Yazidi figure within the Kurdistan Democratic Party who now serves as a lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, governed as a mayor of Shingal until October 2017, when the Iraqi government launched an offensive across parts of the disputed areas that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) seized during the war with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Khalil, the last mayor elected by the Nineveh provincial council, left the town during the offensive. The council has never convened to select a new mayor, despite Iraq holding provincial elections in 2023.
Various armed factions from the state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces and affiliates to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) accordingly strengthened their foothold in Shingal.
Although the KRG and the Iraqi government signed a deal in 2020 to evict the armed groups and form a joint force to oversee the security in the town, implementation has been largely stalled.
The presence of Turkish troops in the Bashiqa-Zilkan base north of the Nineveh province has further complicated the security landscape. Established in 2015, the base hosted 900 troops, causing diplomatic friction between Baghdad and Ankara.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said late September that they will “gradually” reduce their armed presence in the base and to “ultimately” end it, per an earlier agreement between the Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He tied the withdrawal to Iraq’s implementation of a “roadmap for ending terrorism and the presence of armed groups.”
“Hopefully, once the presence of the terrorist group in Shingal is brought to an end and eliminated, we will, of course, take certain steps as well,” he said in a statement carried by Turkish state media.
Weeks before Fidan’s statement, the Shingal Resistance Units, a group affiliated with the PKK, agreed to hand over its weapons and integrate with Iraqi security forces following a meeting with the Iraqi premier in Baghdad.
Ankara and the PKK engaged in more than four decades of fighting. They agreed to initiate a peace process in late 2024, and it has been two years now they have ceased fighting.
