Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq, has ordered the Iraqi national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish flag in Kurdish areas, in a move that could further inflame ethnic tensions in Iraq. According to Azad Jundiyani, a member of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Suleymaniyah, Barzani issued a formal message asking for the Iraqi flag to be lowered. The message was also broadcast on Kurdish radio on Thursday. The Kurdish flag is already flown outside government buildings throughout Kurdistan. A move for Kurdish autonomy has slowly been gathering momentum since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Sunni Arabs fear that Kurds are pushing for secession under the nation's new federal system, a step which, if imitated by the Shia majority in the oil-rich south, would leave Sunnis little national resources.
In May, the Kurdish parliament in the northern city of Arbil unified the Kurdish region's two long-standing administrations, one headed by Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the other by Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.