Duhok

Overview

Duhok is both a city and a governorate in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. The governorate is one of the region’s four, alongside Erbil, Halabja and Sulaymaniyah. Its towns include Zakho and Akre. Duhok’s position near Turkey and the routes toward Sinjar has made it important to regional trade, displacement and security.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has long controlled Duhok and neighboring Erbil, while its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has generally led Sulaymaniyah. Duhok’s political importance was evident in the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum: turnout in Duhok, a KDP stronghold, exceeded 90 percent. The governorate has also been a major refuge for people uprooted by the Islamic State, particularly Yazidis driven from the Sinjar area.

Geography

Duhok Governorate occupies part of northern Iraq’s mountainous borderland with Turkey. Zakho is a major town in its north, while Akre lies within the governorate farther east. Mountain streams and summer destinations near Amedi, including Geli Sherane, attract visitors from other parts of Iraq. Fighting between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has constrained life and tourism in border areas. More than 400 villages in Duhok Province have been evacuated because of that conflict.

The road from Duhok toward Sinjar connects the governorate to communities beyond the Kurdistan Region. In November 2018, it remained closed to civilian traffic even after other roads between areas governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraq’s central government had reopened. Checkpoints operated by Peshmerga, Iraqi security forces and Popular Mobilization Forces restricted movement along the route. Such barriers mattered especially to displaced families seeking access to homes, relatives and services.

Modern history

Campaigns against the Kurds under Saddam Hussein in the 1970s and 1980s destroyed Christian villages in Duhok Province and displaced many residents to Baghdad. Kurdistan Region authorities later supervised reconstruction of some destroyed villages and provided stipends to some returning residents. The province’s Christian communities remain part of its social and political life. Iraq’s parliamentary minority-seat system reserves one Christian seat for Duhok Province, and the Kurdistan Region has funded more than 30 Aramaic-language elementary schools and eight secondary schools there.

After the Gulf War, a Kurdish safe haven centered initially on Zakho expanded to include Duhok. It began as a 36-square-mile area around Zakho and grew to roughly 3,600 square miles. Unclear American protection commitments nevertheless left Kurds uncertain whether territory beyond Zakho and Duhok would be defended. The safe haven formed part of the setting in which Kurdish self-government developed in northern Iraq.

Duhok became a firm KDP electoral base. Turnout in the province’s 2014 provincial election reached 73.9 percent; the opposition Gorran movement won one seat. During the 2017 independence referendum, participation in Duhok exceeded 90 percent, as it did in Erbil. Participation in Iraq’s May 12, 2018, parliamentary election was much lower: turnout in Duhok was 51 percent. The differing figures show strong engagement with the independence vote and more limited participation in the subsequent parliamentary contest.

Duhok has also hosted Kurdish political diplomacy beyond Iraq. The Duhok agreement of 2014 followed agreements reached in Erbil in 2012 and 2013 in efforts to establish power sharing among Syrian Kurdish factions; those agreements did not achieve that aim. During renewed efforts to end the PKK–Turkey conflict, the KDP invited former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to a November MEPS Forum in Duhok. The KDP welcomed a call by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan for the organization to disarm and expressed the KRG’s readiness to assist the peace process.

Security

Duhok became a center for people fleeing the Islamic State’s assault on Sinjar and surrounding areas. In February 2016, the city’s Azadi hospital treated nine Peshmerga fighters exposed to chlorine mortar shells fired by Islamic State operatives near Sinjar. Duhok also housed a KRG center providing treatment, psychological care and rehabilitation to women who survived Islamic State captivity. Its work included documenting rapes. In 2022, more than 330,000 Yazidis lived in displacement camps in Duhok Province. At a Duhok commemoration of the Islamic State’s genocide of the Yazidis, then-prime minister Masrour Barzani appeared alongside survivors and Yazidi leader Mir Hazim Beg.

Displacement brought continuing questions of return and freedom of movement. Duhok was among the Iraqi provinces where camps and informal settlements for displaced people were concentrated in 2020. In 2019, humanitarian agencies reported movement restrictions in Duhok and other governorates for families whose relatives were suspected of Islamic State affiliation. In 2020, the KRG prevented thousands of displaced Arab families from returning to homes in Duhok, including families uprooted from five villages in Ninewa’s Rabia district since 2014. These restrictions affected people who had already spent years away from their communities.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party insurgency has affected Duhok’s border districts through fighting between the PKK and Turkey. The evacuation of more than 400 villages has reduced settlement and economic activity in affected areas. In July 2020, PKK members kidnapped two people in Duhok Province; their fates remained unknown. In July 2023, a car explosion in Zakho killed Mohammed Mirza Sinda, a former senior intelligence official linked to the KDP. The Kurdistan Region Security Council held the PKK responsible, while representatives of the PKK’s armed wing denied involvement. Turkish airstrikes killed two Kurdish civilians in Duhok in April 2023. A Turkish drone strike killed another civilian and injured one person that August.

Security forces in Duhok have also restricted protest and journalism. On March 26 and 27, 2018, KRG forces prevented television crews from covering demonstrations over delayed public-sector salaries in Duhok and Erbil governorates. In Akre on March 27, security forces attacked a Kurdsat crew, injured reporter Dilbrin Ghazi and detained him for two hours. On May 26, Duhok security forces detained freelance journalist Mustafa Salih Bamarnee for 10 days after he criticized the KRG on social media. A fire set during a May 2018 riot at Zarka Prison in Duhok Governorate killed seven inmates and injured 18.

Arrests intensified during protests in 2020 over corruption and poor public services. In May, armed Asayish officers entered the Duhok home of teacher and activist Badal Abdulbaqi Abu Bakr and arrested him without a warrant. He was charged with “misuse of electronic devices” for organizing peaceful protests through social media. In late August, KRG security forces detained at least 50 protesters, activists and journalists in Duhok and Zakho. Asayish and KDP intelligence officers arrested dozens more in the province’s Badinan area during 2020. More than 80 journalists and activists were jailed in Duhok Province that year under Masrour Barzani’s government. The KRG also closed Nalia Radio and Television’s Duhok and Erbil offices over protest coverage.

The consequences of those arrests extended for years. Sherwan Sherwani and Guhdar Zebari, two of the Badinan detainees, remained imprisoned in 2023 after new charges extended their terms immediately before scheduled release. In July 2023, Asayish officers arrested Duhok journalist Omed Baroshki after he criticized Sherwani’s extended sentence and called for protests. Another Duhok journalist reported death threats that September over coverage of government corruption in the city. These incidents formed part of a wider pattern of pressure on journalists and people organizing public dissent in the governorate.

Present day

Oil facilities in and near Duhok became targets during three consecutive days of drone attacks on Kurdistan Region energy infrastructure in July 2025. Drones struck the Khurmala oil field near Erbil on July 14 and the Sarsang field in Duhok Province on July 15. Sarsang, operated by the American company HKN Energy, sustained damage, and production was halted as a precaution. Another Duhok Province oil field was attacked on July 16. An American-operated field in the Duhok area was among the facilities hit during the attacks.

Further drone activity reached Duhok during the regional attacks of March 28–April 1, 2026. A drone struck near the Duhok residence of KRG President Nechirvan Barzani, and other drones were intercepted over the city. These incidents underscored the governorate’s exposure to regional violence as well as the longstanding pressures of displacement, border conflict and contested public freedoms. Duhok remains a major population and political center of the Kurdistan Region, shaped by both its role as a refuge and its position on northern Iraq’s security frontier.