ICC Note: As the Iraqi army is preparing to fight and hopefully repeal IS, minority people are facing the choice of returning to their homes or fleeing the country still. The areas which IS currently occupies are known as the disputed territories. The Iraqi government forces and the Kudistan Regional Government are at competition to acquire said territories. It is a complicated issue being faced by many minorities that have already suffered too much.

08/16/2016 Iraq (Ankawa): With the imminent launch of the operation to liberate Mosul, announced by Iraqi Minister of Defense Khaled al-Obaidi on Aug. 8, the Chaldean National Council — which got together on the occasion of the second anniversary of the displacement of Christians from Mosul — expressed concern about the future of minority areas after the liberation operations end. Representatives of other minority communities share this concern about their areas; the Yazidis are concerned about Sinjar, the Turkmens about Tal Afar and the Shabak community, Christians and other minorities fear for the Ninevah Plains.

As Iraqi forces are advancing against the Islamic State, Iraqi minorities express their worries about the future of their lands post-IS.

These areas are known as “disputed territories,” a description that deprives the minorities from determining their own fate, since it indicates that these areas have long been disputed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi federal government.

Prince Breen Tahseen Bek, a representative of the Yazidi royal institute, told Al-Monitor, “When we speak with representatives of the federal government or the KRG, the discourse tends to take a turn toward finding out whether we are with them or against them. The Kurdish and Arab political elites do not take the Yazidi genocide seriously; all they care about is whether our areas will be part of the federal government or the KRG.”

Thus, the representatives of minority communities hope for an internationally supervised negotiation process on the disputed internal borders for areas that are ethnically, religiously and linguistically diversified, but are subject to an Arab-Kurdish conflict that could clearly drag the country into an internal war.

Meanwhile, Pascale Warda, the president of Hammurabi Human Rights and a Christian activist who has served as deputy minister of displacement and migration, said, “Applying Article 125 of the Iraqi Constitution — by turning it into legislation that would ensure self-administration for minorities in the disputed areas and in a way that would ensure keeping them away from the conflict between the major powers — will guarantee these areas’ right to manage their own affairs without its meaning supporting these territories’ desire to disengage.”

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