BAGHDAD — The Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee raised alarm bells Sept. 7 about the political crisis rocking Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, which stretches to the Iranian border. It warned that the Islamic State (IS) could stage a comeback in some liberated areas due to the ethnic, sectarian and political conflict in the province. Diyala province has a population of some 1.27 million people, including a majority of Arabs who are more or less equally divided between Sunni and Shiite, followed by Kurds and Turkmens.
As if to underline the prospect of an ethnic conflict, 100 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) on Sept. 10 took over the municipality headquarters of Mandali and forcibly lowered the Kurdish flag.