Actors, Conflict, and Comeptition in Iraq’s Disputed Territories After the Islamic State: The Cases of Northren Diyala and Eastern Salahaddin

Abstract

This article examines the emerging security, political, and economic dynamics in Iraq’s Internally Disputed Boundaries (DIBs) following the defeat of Islamic State (IS) and the withdrawal of the Kurdish security forces from those areas. The research focuses on two vital but unappreciated areas of the DIBs: Tuz Khurmatu and northern Diyala. As the vast majority of the media and policy attention is directed towards either Kirkuk, due to oil interests, or the Nineveh Plains, due to the presence of vulnerable ethnic minorities, the other centres of the DIBs receive insufficient consideration among scholars, policy makers and development practitioners. Some NGOs have gone so far as to make a policy of avoiding Tuz and northern Diyala altogether due to the difficulty of local conditions and the ever-present potential for violence. This is a grave error. The DIBs cannot be resolved without engaging these two regions, as they are strategically important for commercial and political reasons, and any final deal on the status of the DIBs between Baghdad and Erbil will have to include them.