Zahir Anwar Aassi, the Arab member of the Kirkuk provincial council who disrupted council sessions for three months, has joined back, but says "as an opposition. A day before his return, his coalition, which has only one seat in the council, has been given two posts in the Kirkuk local government.
"After six months of forming the Kirkuk local administration, we have not been able to provide the services that our province deserves, which is rich in natural resources," he told KirkukNow.
Zahir, the son of the former emir of the Obaidi tribe in Iraq and the Arab land and the only member of the Kirkuk provincial council in the Ouruba coalition, has boycotted the meetings since November 5. The meetings were suspended until he returned on February 18.
Aassi, who was one of the participants in the meeting to form the local government held at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad on August 10, 2024, did not attend any of the meetings of the Kirkuk provincial council in the last few months.
"My boycott in the past three months was for two reasons. First, I am concerned about the failure to implement the points of the agreement that was the basis for the formation of the provincial administration.”
Without the participation of Aassi, the Kirkuk local administration would not have been formed as the meeting required the presence of nine out of 16 council members.
Last week, when he resumed attending the meetings of the council which voted on three issues: the election of the heads of Kirkuk's administrative units, the new logo of the province and the election of Angel Zia as secretary general of the council.
"The main point of the agreement was the case of the missing in prisons of the (Iraqi) Kurdistan Region, but after the formation of the local government, which has passed six months, we have no intention to implement the agreement.”
“We have heard several excuses such as security inspection which should have taken shorter time.”
Several leaders of the Arab community say that hundreds of detainees are in prisons of Sulaimaniya and Erbil and "most of them are innocent" and arrested on "fabricated" charges and say they still do not know their fate.
On November 30, 2024, Hatem Tai, Secretary General of the National Council in Kirkuk, told a news conference that "a negotiating committee has been formed, including Wasfi Aassi, member of the Iraqi parliament, Mohammed Hafez, speaker of the provincial council, and Ra’ad Salih, council member.”
"According to the information, 293 persons are scheduled to be handed over to the federal government from Sulaimaniya prisons, out of about 1,000 detainees and missing from Kirkuk, some of whom have been charged with terrorism," he said.
In 2023, a government committee was formed in Kirkuk to begin a search and investigation into the fate of hundreds of missing people in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region IKR, mostly Arabs, accusing the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG of arresting them between 2014 and 2016, when the Peshmerga forces had an upper hand in Kirkuk.
There have been conflicting statements about the number of the missing in the province, some saying the number passed 5,000 people, while the (KRG) security agencies have consistently denied that there is no any missing in their prisons.
"We must be responsible to create a sustainable partnership that will last more than three years and if the obligations under the agreement are not implemented, the partnership will be endangered," Aassi insists on finalizing this dossier, following the general amnesty by the Iraqi parliament.
"We as the Arab community worked for a genuine partnership and reaffirmed that we implemented everything on the ground, not just in words.”
"We made sacrifices and participated in the formation of the local government despite all the obstacles and succeeded in this work, hoping to achieve victory for the people of Kirkuk, but after six months we could not provide the services that our oil-rich province deserves.”
He called on the Kirkuk administration headed by Governor Rebwar Taha to fulfill its duty and serve the residents of the province and take advantage of its natural resources.
"To maintain peace in the city," Aassi said about avoiding speaking to the media and social media platforms over the past three months.
The Kirkuk provincial council consists of 16 members, the Kurdish community, seven seats (five for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK, two for the Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP), six seats, (three for the Arab Coalition, two for the Leadership Coalition and one for the Ouruba Coalition), while the Turkmen have two seats and the last quota seat of the Christians.
The Arab coalition led by Rakan Saeed, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Iraqi Turkmen Front ITF, which together have seven seats, have not attended any meetings of the council.
"I will be present in the next meetings and will be a critical partner for any issue that affects security and peace and service delivery to the people of Kirkuk," Aassi defiantly said.
A day before a council meeting after the completion of the legal quorum on February 18, 2025, two posts were given to the Obaid tribe, the director of agriculture in Kirkuk and the director of finance in the Kirkuk provincial office.
"These posts were to convince Obeidi to participate in the meetings, in the next few days they will be given other posts, including the post of Kirkuk police commander," a senior source in the Kirkuk provincial office anonymously told KIrkukNow.
Since 2003, 32% of the administrative posts in Kirkuk have been allocated to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, with 4% to Christians, based on a proposal by Jalal Talabani, the late Iraqi President and the PUK secretary. The project was agreed upon in July 2009 by the Kirkuk provincial council, although it did not extend to the lower posts.
The entire province of Kirkuk is a disputed between between the two Iraqi federal governments and the Kurdistan Region, and the decision of its fate is within the framework of Article 140 of the constitution through three stages of normalization, census and referendum.
