Iraq’s minority question is often presented primarily as a humanitarian concern: communities displaced by war, religious sites destroyed, families unable to return home and survivors requiring assistance. That framing is understandable, but it is incomplete. Iraq’s experience since 2003 demonstrates that the survival of minority communities is inseparable from the country’s unresolved problems of governance, political representation, territorial competition and fragmented security.

The central problem is therefore not simply that Iraq’s minorities have suffered repeated waves of violence. It is that the Iraqi state has repeatedly struggled to create political and security arrangements capable of protecting communities whose territories sit at the intersection of competing national, sectarian and geopolitical interests. The consequences are particularly visible in Nineveh, Sinjar and the wider disputed territories, where Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), local communities and multiple armed actors continue to compete over authority.

This makes minority protection an important measure of the strength of the Iraqi state itself. Where citizens cannot determine which authority is responsible for their security, access basic services, recover property or exercise meaningful political representation, the problem extends beyond minority rights. It becomes a question of state capacity.

From Persecution to Fragmented Governance

Iraq’s minority communities have experienced persecution under successive political orders. Under Saddam Hussein, ethnic and political repression, Arabization and forced displacement profoundly altered the demographic landscape of northern Iraq. The Anfal campaign against the Kurds and the destruction of villages demonstrated the extreme consequences of a state using demographic engineering and coercion as instruments of political control.

The fall of the Ba’ath regime in 2003 did not produce a stable alternative. Instead, the collapse of state institutions was followed by insurgency, sectarian violence and the emergence of competing armed actors. For minorities, the transition from authoritarian centralization to fragmented political authority created a different but equally serious vulnerability.

The rise of ISIS demonstrated this weakness with devastating clarity. When Mosul fell in June 2014, ISIS rapidly expanded across northern Iraq and targeted communities including Christians, Yezidis, Shabak and Turkmen. The Yezidis suffered genocide, including mass killings, abductions, forced conversion and sexual violence. The international community and Iraqi authorities eventually defeated ISIS territorially, but the destruction of communities and the political conditions that made them vulnerable did not disappear with the battlefield defeat.

This distinction is crucial. Military victory over ISIS addressed the immediate territorial threat, but it did not resolve the institutional vacuum in which minority insecurity had developed. By the end of 2017, Iraq had declared military victory over ISIS, yet the group continued to operate as an insurgent force, particularly in rural and disputed areas. At the same time, other armed actors were accused of serious abuses, leaving communities caught between multiple security structures rather than protected by a single accountable authority.

The Nineveh Problem

The clearest illustration of Iraq’s unresolved minority question is the Nineveh region. The area is not simply a geographical space inhabited by diverse communities. It is also a political frontier where competing claims of authority overlap.

The result is a security environment in which Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga and various militias operate according to changing political and military configurations. This fragmentation has particularly serious consequences for communities attempting to return after displacement because security becomes dependent not merely on the existence of armed forces but on which force controls a particular locality and whose political interests that force represents.

For displaced minorities, therefore, the question is not simply whether ISIS has been defeated. It is whether their homes are secure, whether local institutions function, whether property can be recovered, whether schools and healthcare are available and whether the political authorities controlling their areas will respect their rights.

This explains why military liberation has not automatically produced sustainable return. The Sinjar Agreement of 2020 was intended to establish local security forces and an administration for local governance, yet limited implementation and continuing insecurity have impeded the process. Repeated Turkish air strikes targeting PKK-linked elements have added another layer of insecurity to an already complicated environment.

The lesson is broader than Sinjar. Territorial disputes that remain unresolved eventually become governance disputes, and governance disputes become security problems. Minority communities located in contested territories consequently carry a disproportionate burden of unresolved state-building.

Representation Without Real Political Power

Iraq’s political system also reveals a contradiction between formal representation and effective political influence.

The post-2003 political order established an informal muhasasa system through which political representation became closely associated with ethnic and sectarian identity. Although the system is not constitutionally mandated, it became deeply embedded in government formation and appointments. Its critics argue that it encourages clientelism, prioritizes identity over merit and reinforces divisions rather than building a genuinely civic political system.

For minorities, the problem is even more complicated. Iraq’s federal parliament contains reserved seats for several minority communities, but minority representatives have repeatedly complained that larger political parties can influence or control these seats. Consequently, formal representation does not necessarily translate into political autonomy or effective advocacy for the communities the seats are intended to represent.

This distinction between representation and agency deserves greater attention. A minority community may have a parliamentary seat while lacking meaningful control over local security, resources, reconstruction or political decisions affecting its future. In such circumstances, representation can become symbolic rather than transformative.

The issue has also affected the Kurdistan Region. Following Federal Supreme Court rulings, minority quota seats in the KRI parliament were abolished, further reducing formal institutional representation for minority communities. The development illustrates how constitutional and judicial disputes between Baghdad and Erbil can have consequences extending beyond the two principal Kurdish and federal authorities.

Displacement Is a Political Problem

Iraq’s displacement crisis also demonstrates why humanitarian solutions alone are insufficient. At the height of the conflict, approximately six million people were displaced. By the end of 2025, approximately one million internally displaced people remained, demonstrating the protracted character of displacement despite the territorial defeat of ISIS.

The closure of displacement camps can appear to represent progress because it suggests that people are returning home. But closure is not synonymous with durable return. If families return to areas without adequate water, electricity, healthcare, education, employment, housing or security, displacement may simply change form.

For minority communities, the problem is often more profound because displacement can sever the institutional and cultural foundations of community life. The destruction of places of worship, loss of property, disrupted education and disappearance of identity documents can weaken communities even after physical security has improved. Language barriers can further complicate access to education and public services.

This means that return should not be measured merely by the number of people who leave camps. A meaningful return requires the restoration of the conditions that allow communities to remain. Otherwise, the state may reduce the statistical number of displaced people without resolving the political and socioeconomic causes of displacement.

The Yezidi and Christian Cases

The Yezidi experience represents perhaps the most extreme example of the consequences of state failure and fragmented security. UNITAD formally concluded in 2021 that ISIS had committed genocide against the Yezidis. Yet thousands remain missing, many survivors continue to face trauma and psychosocial support remains inadequate.

The Christian experience demonstrates another dimension of the same structural problem. Communities that numbered approximately 1.4 million before the fall of Saddam Hussein have declined dramatically, with fewer than 300,000 Christians remaining inside Iraq according to the material reviewed here. Insecurity, inadequate infrastructure and limited employment opportunities have discouraged return and encouraged further emigration.

The disappearance or dramatic contraction of historic communities is not simply a demographic change. It affects Iraq’s social pluralism and the historical character of areas such as the Nineveh Plains. Once communities leave permanently, rebuilding coexistence becomes substantially more difficult.

The strategic question for Baghdad and Erbil is therefore whether Iraq will remain a country in which diverse communities can exercise meaningful political and social agency, or whether continued insecurity and weak governance will gradually transform historically pluralistic regions.

Baghdad and Erbil Cannot Treat This as Someone Else’s Problem

The minority question also exposes the limits of the Baghdad-Erbil relationship. The KRI has hosted large numbers of minority IDPs since 2014 and has therefore become an important part of the security and humanitarian landscape. Yet minority communities have also accused KRG authorities of discrimination, suppression of civil liberties and demographic engineering.

At the same time, disputes between Baghdad and Erbil over the disputed territories continue to shape the political environment in which minorities live. The Nineveh Plains, Sinjar and other contested areas are not merely subjects of constitutional disagreement. For residents, competing territorial claims determine who provides security, who administers services and who exercises political influence.

Article 140 of Iraq’s Constitution remains legally binding but has not been implemented. The continued absence of a definitive settlement leaves disputed territories in an institutional grey zone, where competing claims can persist for years without producing a stable political framework.

For minority communities, this uncertainty is particularly damaging. They become politically important to competing authorities while simultaneously remaining vulnerable to the consequences of their competition.

What Iraq’s Minority Crisis Really Reveals

The most important conclusion is that Iraq cannot resolve its minority crisis through security operations alone. Nor can humanitarian assistance compensate indefinitely for weak institutions, contested sovereignty and inadequate political representation.

A durable solution requires a shift from protecting minorities as vulnerable populations toward recognizing them as political communities with legitimate claims to security, representation, local governance and participation. Minority leaders themselves have argued that their future depends on political arrangements providing guarantees of security and self-governance. Civil society activists have also called for stronger anti-discrimination legislation and greater protection for minority women facing overlapping forms of discrimination.

Such an approach would also require greater clarity over the relationship between federal and regional authorities, particularly in disputed territories. Local communities cannot be expected to build confidence in the state when authority remains divided among governments and armed groups.

The deeper challenge is therefore one of state-building. Iraq has spent decades moving between authoritarian centralization, international intervention, sectarian conflict, insurgency and fragmented political governance. Minorities have repeatedly suffered at each stage because they have lacked the institutional protection necessary to withstand changes in the balance of power.

The future of Iraq’s minorities will consequently depend on more than defeating armed groups or rebuilding damaged towns. It will depend on whether Iraq can construct a political order in which citizenship provides greater security than political affiliation, and in which local communities possess meaningful mechanisms to influence the institutions governing their lives.

For Baghdad, Erbil and Iraq’s international partners, this should be understood as a strategic rather than purely humanitarian priority. A state that cannot protect its smallest communities, guarantee their political participation or provide conditions for their voluntary return remains vulnerable to renewed fragmentation.

Iraq’s minorities are therefore not merely among the victims of the country’s instability. They are among the clearest indicators of whether Iraq’s post-2003 state-building project has succeeded.Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

Iraq is one of the Middle East’s most historically diverse societies, shaped over centuries by overlapping ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural communities. Arabs and Kurds constitute the country’s largest ethnic groups, while Iraq is also home to Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians, Turkmen, Shabak, Yezidis, Kaka’i, Feyli Kurds, Sabean Mandaeans, Roma, Black Iraqis and other communities with distinct histories and identities. The country’s religious landscape is similarly diverse, encompassing Shi’a and Sunni Muslims alongside Christians, Yezidis, Bahá’í and other religious communities.

Yet Iraq’s diversity has increasingly become a measure of the country’s political and institutional weakness. Decades of authoritarian rule, Arabization, war, sanctions, sectarian violence, the 2003 US-led invasion, the rise of ISIS and continuing competition between political and armed actors have transformed the demographic map. Communities that once formed substantial parts of Iraq’s social fabric have been displaced, fragmented or reduced to a fraction of their former size.

The central question is consequently no longer simply how many minorities remain in Iraq. It is whether the Iraqi state can create the political, legal and security conditions necessary for these communities to remain, return, participate in public life and preserve their identities.

Iraq’s minority question is therefore simultaneously a demographic, political, security, constitutional and state-building question.

Iraq’s Diversity and the Problem of Demographic Uncertainty

According to the 2024 Iraqi census, the first census covering all governorates since 1987, Iraq’s population was approximately 46.1 million. However, the census deliberately excluded questions on ethnicity and religious affiliation because of the political sensitivities surrounding these issues. This makes it difficult to establish a precise contemporary demographic picture of Iraq’s communities.

Available estimates suggest that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are Muslim, divided principally between Shi’a and Sunni communities, while Christians, Yezidis, Kaka’i, Sabean Mandaeans, Bahá’í and other religious communities constitute smaller populations. Ethnically, Arabs and Kurds form the largest groups, alongside Turkmen, Shabak, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Armenians, Black Iraqis, Roma and others. Some communities themselves have differing understandings of their ethnic identity, further complicating attempts to produce a simple demographic classification.

The absence of reliable demographic data is more than a statistical inconvenience. In Iraq, demographic identity has historically been connected to political representation, territorial claims and access to state institutions. When ethnicity and religion are politically sensitive categories, the inability to establish accurate population figures can itself become part of the political problem.

The demographic decline of minorities is also inseparable from Iraq’s modern history. Successive waves of repression and conflict have caused large-scale displacement, while insecurity and economic hardship have encouraged many members of minority communities to emigrate. The result is a cumulative process in which communities can lose not only population but also the institutional networks, economic foundations and territorial presence necessary to sustain themselves.

A History of Diversity, Displacement and State Control

The territory of modern Iraq has been a crossroads of civilizations for millennia. Mesopotamia produced some of the earliest major developments in agriculture, writing, mathematics, architecture and law, while successive Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Arab and Ottoman political orders shaped the region. Modern Iraq emerged following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the British Mandate, followed by the creation of the Iraqi monarchy and independence in 1932.

The modern Iraqi state, however, struggled to construct an inclusive political identity capable of accommodating its diversity. Under Ba’athist rule, political loyalty and centralized state control increasingly shaped access to public institutions. The regime also pursued Arabization policies that profoundly affected Kurdish and other minority communities, particularly in strategically important northern areas.

The experience of the Assyrians illustrates how questions of identity and state power became intertwined. Assyrians constitute a distinct ethno-religious community with deep roots in Mesopotamia and speak varieties of Aramaic. Their modern history includes communities originating in Hakkari, Urumiya and Iraqi Kurdistan.

The twentieth century brought severe disruption. After the First World War, Assyrian survivors were settled in Iraq, but tensions between the community and the new Iraqi state eventually culminated in violence in 1933, when hundreds to thousands of Assyrians were killed. Later, Assyrians were also caught up in the Kurdish conflict and the Anfal campaign.

The Armenian experience similarly reflects the intersection of historical migration, displacement and modern conflict. Armenians had established communities in Iraq centuries ago, while a much larger influx followed the Armenian genocide of 1915–18. Communities developed in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk, Baqubah and northern Iraqi towns. The community subsequently declined through conflict, economic hardship, displacement and emigration.

These histories demonstrate that Iraq’s minority crisis did not begin with ISIS. ISIS represented one of the most devastating chapters in a much longer history of state weakness, demographic engineering, political exclusion and communal insecurity.

Christianity and the Shrinking of Iraq’s Historic Communities

Iraq’s Christian communities provide one of the clearest examples of demographic transformation.

The country’s Christians include Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians and other Syriac Christian traditions. The Chaldean community in Iraq has deep historical roots, with Chaldean identity connected to the ancient heritage of Mesopotamia and a distinct Catholic ecclesiastical tradition. Chaldeans historically concentrated in and around Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, although substantial communities later developed in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Political upheaval repeatedly altered the geography of Christian life. By the second half of the twentieth century, Baghdad had become an increasingly important centre for Christians, while political repression, economic pressures and conflict encouraged further migration. Following the 2003 invasion, Christian communities were particularly exposed to sectarian violence, kidnappings, bombings and attacks on churches and homes.

The rise of ISIS in 2014 produced another historic rupture. ISIS seized Mosul and large parts of the Nineveh Plains, forcing hundreds of thousands of Christians and other minorities to flee. Christian families remaining in Mosul were given the choice of conversion, payment of jizya or death, while homes were marked and confiscated.

The significance of this goes beyond the immediate humanitarian catastrophe. When a community leaves a city in which it has existed for centuries, the consequences extend to churches, schools, businesses, cemeteries, cultural institutions, family networks and collective memory.

For this reason, the question of Christian return is not simply a matter of rebuilding houses. It requires restoring the conditions for community life.

The Armenian experience illustrates a similar trajectory on a smaller scale. The Armenian community once numbered as many as 25,000 before 2003, while some estimates now place the population below 8,000. The Armenian community in Mosul has effectively disappeared, while Kirkuk has experienced severe decline.

At the same time, the Kurdistan Region has provided an important refuge for displaced Armenian and Christian communities. The KRI recognizes Armenians as an ethnic minority, provides for Armenian-language education and reserves parliamentary representation for Armenians.

This creates an important paradox: the Kurdistan Region has served as a relatively safer environment for many minorities displaced from other parts of Iraq, while minority communities have also raised concerns about discrimination, political pressure and property disputes within the KRI.

The broader lesson is that physical security and political equality are not necessarily the same thing.

The Yezidi Genocide and the Security Failure in Sinjar

Among Iraq’s minorities, the Yezidis experienced perhaps the most devastating consequences of ISIS’s expansion.

The Yezidis were subjected to mass killings, abductions, forced conversion, forced conscription and systematic sexual violence. In 2021, the UN investigative mechanism UNITAD concluded that ISIS had committed genocide against the Yezidi community. Thousands of Yezidis remain missing, while many survivors continue to live with profound psychological and social consequences.

Yet the Yezidi crisis did not end with the defeat of ISIS.

Sinjar remains a symbol of Iraq’s wider governance problem because authority remains contested and security is fragmented. The 2020 Sinjar Agreement attempted to establish a local administration and security arrangements, but implementation has remained limited. Continued insecurity, including Turkish strikes against PKK-linked elements, has further complicated sustainable return.

The underlying problem is structural. A community cannot confidently rebuild its future when several competing armed and political actors claim authority over its territory.

This is why the Yezidi question should not be reduced to the language of victimhood. Yezidis are not simply a community requiring protection from others. Their long-term survival depends on having meaningful agency over their own security, political representation and local governance.

The same principle applies to other communities across the Nineveh Plains.

The Nineveh Plains: Where Minority Rights Meet Geopolitics

The Nineveh Plains have become one of Iraq’s most important laboratories of contested governance.

The region contains Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, Shabak, Yezidis and other communities. It also sits within the wider geographical and political space contested between Baghdad and Erbil. The unresolved status of the disputed territories has therefore transformed minority communities into participants in a much larger struggle over sovereignty, territory and political influence.

The constitutional framework provides for resolving the status of disputed territories, but the relevant process has never been completed. The resulting uncertainty has allowed competing political and security structures to coexist.

For minorities, this produces a dangerous equation: the more contested the territory, the less certain the political protection of the people living there.

The presence of Iraqi security forces, Peshmerga and different militia formations can provide short-term security against particular threats, but fragmented command structures can also generate insecurity. Communities may face checkpoints, competing political demands, property disputes and uncertainty over which authority is ultimately responsible for their protection.

The Nineveh Plains therefore demonstrate why minority protection cannot be separated from the Baghdad-Erbil relationship.

Political Representation: Quotas Are Not the Same as Power

Iraq’s constitutional and political system provides minority communities with certain forms of representation, including reserved parliamentary seats. Yet reserved seats alone cannot guarantee meaningful political influence.

At the federal level, nine parliamentary seats are reserved for minorities, including seats for Christians, Yezidis, Sabean Mandaeans, Shabak and Feyli Kurds. Minority representatives and advocates have nevertheless argued that larger political parties can influence who wins these seats, weakening their ability to independently represent their communities.

This illustrates a broader problem with Iraq’s post-2003 political order: representation has often been organized around communal identity while political power remains concentrated among larger parties.

The muhasasa system was not formally established as a constitutional requirement, but it became deeply embedded in the distribution of political offices. Critics argue that it encourages clientelism and identity-based political competition rather than meritocratic and civic institutions.

For minorities, the consequences can be especially severe.

A community can possess a parliamentary seat but still have little influence over the police force operating in its area, the allocation of reconstruction funds, the disposition of disputed land or the appointment of local officials.

The real measure of minority political participation should therefore be political agency, not simply numerical representation.

Black Iraqis and the Minority Question Beyond Religion

The experience of Black Iraqis exposes another weakness in the way Iraq approaches minority rights.

Black Iraqis are largely descendants of East African migrants and enslaved people whose presence in Iraq dates back to the ninth century. Their largest concentration is in southern Iraq, particularly Basra, and the majority identify as Shi’a Muslims.

Their history demonstrates that minority vulnerability in Iraq cannot always be understood through the Sunni-Shi’a or Muslim-Christian divide.

The legacy of slavery has contributed to long-term racial discrimination and socioeconomic marginalization. Although Black Iraqis began organizing politically after 2003, they remain significantly underrepresented in political institutions and lack the parliamentary quota enjoyed by some other communities.

The socioeconomic consequences are stark. Black Iraqi communities, particularly in Basra, have experienced severe poverty, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure and deficiencies in water, sanitation and electricity. Some members of the community have also faced problems obtaining nationality documentation, limiting access to public services.

The Black Iraqi case challenges a narrow definition of minority protection. A minority community can be religiously part of Iraq’s majority while remaining socially, economically and politically marginalized.

The Bahá’í and the Problem of Legal Recognition

The Bahá’í community demonstrates another dimension of minority vulnerability: the relationship between law and identity.

The Bahá’í faith was prohibited under a 1970 Iraqi law, while regulations subsequently restricted the ability of Bahá’í citizens to have their religious identity reflected in civil documentation. Although some restrictions were repealed or altered after 2003, the underlying legal prohibition remained.

The consequences are practical as well as symbolic. Some Bahá’í have faced difficulties obtaining identity documentation, while lack of documentation can affect access to education, property ownership, healthcare and other citizenship-related rights.

This illustrates an important principle: religious freedom is not meaningful if citizens cannot legally record and exercise their identity without fear of discrimination.

The survival of a minority therefore depends not only on protection from physical violence but also on the neutrality of the administrative state.

Displacement and the Failure of Return

Iraq’s minority crisis is inseparable from internal displacement.

At the height of the conflict with ISIS, approximately six million people were displaced. Although displacement has declined considerably, approximately one million internally displaced people remained at the end of 2025.

The closure of displacement camps can reduce the visible scale of the crisis, but camp closure does not necessarily mean successful reintegration.

Families require functioning schools, healthcare, electricity, water, employment, housing and security before return can become sustainable. Minority families face additional barriers associated with destroyed religious and cultural sites, missing documentation, property disputes and fear of armed groups.

This is particularly important because displacement can become permanent through cumulative pressure. A family may initially leave because of violence, remain away because its house has been destroyed, delay return because employment is unavailable and eventually emigrate because it concludes that its community no longer has a viable future.

In this way, demographic decline can occur without a single new act of persecution.

Property, Demographic Change and the Politics of Return

Property is one of the most consequential issues facing returning minorities.

When families return after years of displacement, they may discover that their homes or agricultural land have been occupied, transferred or otherwise disputed. Such cases are especially sensitive in regions where demographic engineering and territorial competition have a long history.

Iraq’s 2005 Constitution prohibits property expropriation for the purposes of demographic change, yet minority representatives have continued to raise concerns about demographic transformation in areas such as the Nineveh Plains.

This creates a critical connection between property rights and minority survival.

If displaced families cannot recover their homes, their ability to return becomes severely constrained. If property disputes remain unresolved, demographic change can become self-reinforcing: those who left cannot return, while those who remain or move into the area gradually establish a new demographic reality.

Consequently, property restitution should be treated as part of conflict prevention and state-building rather than merely as an administrative issue.

Cultural Heritage Is Part of Security

The destruction of minority heritage has also had consequences extending far beyond the loss of individual buildings.

ISIS deliberately destroyed churches, tombs, ancient cities and cultural artifacts associated with Iraq’s historical communities. Assyrian heritage sites, including ancient Nimrud, were among the sites targeted, while religious buildings and cultural property belonging to Christian communities were damaged, occupied or destroyed.

Cultural heritage matters because communities do not exist solely through population numbers. They also exist through language, religious institutions, historic sites, schools, cemeteries, traditions and collective memory.

The destruction of those institutions can accelerate emigration even after physical security has returned.

For Iraq, protecting minority heritage should therefore be considered part of national reconstruction. Preserving an Assyrian church, a Yezidi shrine, an Armenian institution or a Sabean Mandaean site is not simply about preserving the past. It is about maintaining the conditions under which Iraq’s pluralistic society can reproduce itself.

Women and the Intersection of Minority Vulnerability

Women and girls from minority communities frequently face additional layers of vulnerability.

The ISIS assault on Yezidis demonstrated this most brutally through systematic sexual violence, enslavement and abduction. Yet the challenges do not end with liberation or return. Survivors may face trauma, stigma, economic insecurity and difficulties accessing psychosocial support.

Displacement can also alter family structures. Women who lose spouses or other male relatives may become primary breadwinners while simultaneously facing increased vulnerability to harassment, exploitation or forced marriage.

This means that minority policy cannot be designed around communities as homogeneous units. Security and rights policies must account for differences based on gender, age, displacement status and socioeconomic position.

Iraq’s Minorities and the Future of the State

The decline of Iraq’s minority communities should ultimately be understood as a test of the Iraqi state.

A state can claim sovereignty over territory while failing to provide equal security to its citizens. It can hold elections while political representation remains dependent on larger parties. It can close displacement camps while families lack the conditions necessary for dignified return. It can recognize constitutional rights while enforcement remains inconsistent.

These contradictions are at the heart of Iraq’s minority question.

The country’s experience since 2003 shows that military intervention alone cannot produce social stability. The defeat of ISIS was necessary, but the political conditions that allowed communities to become vulnerable to armed groups cannot be resolved exclusively through military means.

The same applies to the Baghdad-Erbil relationship. Resolving disputes over territory, resources and administrative authority is not only a matter of federal politics. It is directly connected to the security and political future of communities living in contested areas.

From Minority Protection to Minority Agency

Iraq needs to move beyond a model in which minorities are treated primarily as vulnerable populations requiring protection from the state.

Protection is essential, but it is insufficient.

The more sustainable model is one in which minority communities possess meaningful agency over their political, cultural and local institutional affairs. This does not necessarily mean creating separate states or autonomous territories for every community. It means developing arrangements through which local communities can participate meaningfully in decisions concerning security, administration, education, property, reconstruction and cultural preservation.

Some minority leaders have called for stronger security guarantees and forms of self-governance, while civil society organizations have advocated anti-discrimination legislation and stronger protections for minority women.

The challenge for Baghdad and Erbil is to translate these demands into workable institutional arrangements.

That requires accountable local governance, professional security institutions, effective property restitution, genuine political representation and the enforcement of constitutional protections.

The Communities Iraq Cannot Afford to Lose

Iraq’s minorities are often described as remnants of an older Iraq. That description is misleading.

They are not merely historical remnants. They remain part of Iraq’s contemporary political and cultural landscape, even as decades of conflict have dramatically reduced their numbers.

The Feyli Kurds, Kaka’i, Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Sabean Mandaeans, Shabak, Turkmen and Yezidis each represent distinct dimensions of Iraq’s complex social fabric. The Roma and minority persons with disabilities likewise demonstrate that vulnerability in Iraq extends beyond conventional ethnic and religious categories.

The future of these communities will depend on whether Iraq can replace fragmented security with accountable institutions, political competition with genuine representation and demographic competition with equal citizenship.

The fundamental issue is therefore not whether Iraq can preserve a particular percentage of minorities within its population.

It is whether Iraq can become a state in which being a minority does not mean being permanently vulnerable to whoever controls the territory, the security forces or the political system.

That is the real test of Iraq’s post-2003 state-building project.

If Iraq succeeds, its diversity can become a source of social resilience and national pluralism. If it fails, the continuing emigration and fragmentation of minority communities will represent more than demographic decline. It will be evidence that the country has been unable to build an inclusive political order capable of protecting all of the communities that constitute Iraq.

The survival of Iraq’s minorities is therefore inseparable from the survival of Iraq as a pluralistic state.

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj is the founder and editor of Kurdish Policy Analysis, an independent publication focused on Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, regional security, energy geopolitics and the changing Middle Eastern order.

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