Sstanding at the mass grave site in Kocho, on the twelfth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide, the Governor of Nineveh acknowledged that “there are still shortcomings by both the local and federal governments toward the people of Sinjar district.”[i] The statement amounted to an unusually direct concession of state failure to address the Sinjar dossier many years after the liberation of the district. More pertinently, it also came only weeks after the same governor had sought to return the offices of Sinjar’s acting mayor along with the director of Al-Shamal subdistrict, currently operating from Duhok Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), back to Sinjar itself.[ii] Just like earlier attempts to normalize Sinjar’s administration, this call too failed to materialize, largely due to rejection by the Yazidi Cause Alliance (YCA), a coalition of Yazidi political and civic actors, who felt excluded (“not consulted”) and feared that the relocation would open the way for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to return to Sinjar’s political scene.[iii],[iv]
This chronic impasse dates to the capture of Sinjar by ISIS in 2014 and the subsequent displacement of its local administration. Since then, the district has been governed through overlapping and externally backed rival claims to authority. Following liberation, the legitimate mayor was reinstated, only to be exiled once more and replaced by a Hashd al-Shaabi-backed administration in the aftermath of the post-referendum violence of October 2017. For some time, two parallel administrations functioned: one informal, based on de facto control within Sinjar, and another officially recognized, operating formally at a distance from Fadiya in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.[v]
The October 2020 Sinjar Agreement, between Baghdad and Erbil, sought to resolve this problem by making the joint designation of a new mayor its leading administrative provision. Yet the agreement was never implemented, as key armed non-state actors and Yazidi actors rejected both its process and substance.[vi] In June 2024, Baghdad intervened at the last minute to suspend a Nineveh Provincial Council (NPC) session convened to impose mayoral appointments. When the Council proceeded on 2 July 2024 and elected Saido Khairi al-Ahmadi alongside other mayors and subdistrict directors, the KDP boycotted and contested the process, leaving the new selection moot.[vii] The Governor of Nineveh later challenged the NPC’s legal mechanism before the Federal Supreme Court. On 18 March 2025, the Court dismissed that challenge and upheld the procedures. Yet no decree was issued, and Sinjar remained and continues to remain to date without a seated mayor.[viii],[ix]
Clearly, within Sinjar’s fragmented and externally patronized political landscape, the legal act of appointment does not generate authority. While political contests can produce winners, as demonstrated by the YCA’s electoral performance, neither appointments, consultation processes, nor legal rulings convert into mutually recognized authority. As a result, formal decisions rarely mature into enforceable settlements.
Consultation Does Not Confer Authority
The standard remedy of “consulting Yazidi representatives” fails for a structural reason rather than a procedural one. For most of the past decade, no single body has held an uncontested mandate to speak for Sinjar’s Yazidis. The Sinjar Coordination Commission (SCC) is the case in point. It was established to fill a representational void, and consisted of official actors, community figures and local party representatives, and soon became the channel through which government actors could claim local buy-in on sensitive issues. Yet only a minority of Yazidis and other Sinjaris had any knowledge of the Commission.[xi] Engaging the SCC may have generated a claim of legitimacy for authorities in Baghdad, but it did not transmit legitimacy back to Sinjar’s communities.
This is the fundamental weakness of representation by appointment: it produces an interlocutor that authorities can consult, but not one that residents recognize or agree to speaking on their behalf. The result is not consensus but the multiplication of claims to representation, each vulnerable to contestation capable of deepening the very legitimacy deficit it was meant to resolve.
The 2020 Sinjar Agreement failed the same test at greater scale. It is widely claimed that representatives of Sinjar’s ethno-religious communities were not included in the negotiations leading up to the Agreement. A survey of 656 residents and displaced persons, conducted by the Middle East Research Institute (MERI), found that 29% of Yazidi respondents and 77% of Sunni Arab respondents had not heard of the agreement or its provisions.[xii]
In the November 2025 parliamentary elections, the YCA outpolled the KDP in Sinjar with 49,211 votes. For the first time since 2014, a quantifiable Yazidi political mandate emerged. Yet local validation continues to be sought through designated interlocutors, and the district still remains without a seated mayor.
An Off-Ramp, beyond Consultation
In a Sinjar where communities lack cohesion and face challenges in conferring recognition, legitimacy has to be accumulated through repeated engagement rather than declared through a single appointment. This is where MERI’s Sinjar Stakeholder Platform (SSP), hereafter referred to Shingal Platform, offers a practical way forward.
This platform is not a substitute for formal appointment procedures, nor is it a body that can decide Sinjar’s mayoralty. Its value lies elsewhere: it can create the recognition base that formal authority currently lacks. By bringing community representatives, local actors, and provincial authorities into regular, structured consultation around service delivery and administrative needs, the platform can gradually build communal unity and trust in the process through which decisions are discussed, tested, communicated, and followed up.
The Shingal Platform model therefore changes the question from ‘who should be consulted before an appointment’, and to ‘what standing mechanism can make consultation credible and communally acceptable over time?’ This shift is crucial. One-off consultation allows authorities to select favorable interlocutors and claim local buy-in. Regular consultation, by contrast, exposes claims to representation to repeated testing. Actors must return to the table, respond to grievances, defend their positions, and demonstrate whether they can deliver. Legitimacy, in this sense, is not conferred by attendance alone; it is built through continuity, transparency, responsiveness, and follow-up.
Piloted and launched in November 2024, the SSP provided evidence of how this mechanism can work in practice.[xiii] The Platform convened community representatives across the board (Yazidis, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Kurds and others) with the Nineveh executives, including the Governor, Deputy Governor, and directors of public services in attendance. This inclusive meeting produced measurable gains, as strongly acknowledged by the Governor and the community leaders. Participants’ willingness to collaborate constructively across communities increased over the course of the dialogue sessions, and grievances were translated into actionable service demands on roads, health, education, documentation, and survivor support.
The Nineveh Governorate, in coordination with Baghdad and Erbil, should build on the Shingal Platform’ success and institutionalize it as a standing consultative mechanism linked to the provincial executive and relevant service departments. Its mandate should be procedural and confidence-building, hence limited to: (a) provide a credible forum through which community grievances can be heard before they harden into political rejection; (b) identify administrative and service-delivery priorities and track their implementation; (c) make consultation regular, transparent, and accountable; (d) test claims of representation over time; and (e) connect local grievances with responsible authorities.
Such a mechanism would not resolve the mayoral deadlock for now, but it could reduce the legitimacy deficit that has caused every appointment attempt to fail and therefore pave the ground for smoother and more intitutionalised transitions in the future.
[i] Abdulqader al-Dakhil, “Video: Nineveh Governor Visits Sinjar and Participates in the Commemoration of the Twelfth Anniversary of the Genocide,” Facebook video, August 5, 2026., accessed August 5, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/AbdalQaderAlDakhil/videos/2480204145833505/.
[ii] KirkukNow, “Shingalis Reject Return of Pro-KDP Local Administration,” KirkukNow, 16 May 2026, https://kirkuknow.com/en/news/71669.
[iii] https://x.com/YazidiCause/status/2054505003272765555?s=20
[iv] https://x.com/murad_ismael/status/2052379601666539801?s=20
[v] Khogir Wirya and Dlawer Ala‘Aldeen, Mediating Governance in Sinjar: Bridging the Public-Authority Gap (Erbil: Middle East Research Institute, October 2025), https://www.meri-k.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Sinjar-English-Report.pdf.
[vi] Zmkan Saleem and Renad Mansour, Responding to Instability in Iraq’s Sinjar District: How a Remote Area of Iraq Became a Transnational Conflict Hub, and What This Means for Peacebuilding in the Middle East (London: Chatham House, March 2024), 29–30.
[vii] Ahmad Bulla, “Nineveh Provincial Council Elects Sinjar Mayor and Decides Nineteen Other Positions,” KirkukNow, 2 July 2024.
[viii] A Political-Administrative Conflict Obstructs Reconstruction and Services and Holds Sinjar’s Residents Hostage to the ‘Road of Death’ to Duhok,” NIRIJ, 16 February 2026.
[ix] Federal Supreme Court Rejects Nineveh Governor’s Challenge to Provincial Council Decisions,” Shafaq News, 18 March 2025.
Independent High Electoral Commission. (2025). Total votes of parties and coalitions [PDF]. Republic of Iraq., accessed August 5, 2026, https://shorturl.at/s05l0
[xi] Khogir Wirya and Dlawer Ala‘Aldeen, Mediating Governance in Sinjar: Bridging the Public-Authority Gap (Erbil: Middle East Research Institute, October 2025), https://www.meri-k.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Sinjar-English-Report.pdf.
[xii] ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
For more on Sinjar’s governance, read MERI’s report.
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About MERI
The Middle East Research Institute (MERI) is internationally ranked as Iraq’s leading think tank and policy research institute. As an independent, non-profit, grant-funded organisation, MERI advances evidence-based policymaking, democratic governance, and sustainable development through research, policy analysis, dialogue, and public engagement.
MERI’s research focuses on Iraq, the Levant and the wider Middle East, covering governance, state-building, foreign policy, regional security, post-conflict recovery, violent extremism, displacement, minority rights, women’s rights, civil society, Baghdad–Erbil relations, and broader geopolitical developments. Through its publications, policy dialogues, and the annual MERI Forum, MERI brings together policymakers, diplomats, academics, and civil society leaders to promote informed debate and practical policy solutions for the region’s most pressing challenges.