Basra provincial council moves to collect signatures backing autonomy bid

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Basra’s provincial leadership has begun formally mobilizing political support for an autonomy push, with council members starting to collect signatures to advance the initiative, an official said.

“I have adopted the matter of collecting signatures from about a majority of the Council in the province, because they represent the Basra people who support this direction,” Osama al-Saad told Rudaw on Wednesday.

Basra, which accounts for an estimated 80 percent of Iraq’s oil exports, has long complained of poor public services despite its economic importance, fueling repeated calls for greater autonomy.

The first major autonomy push dates back to 2008, led by former lawmaker Wael Abdul Latif, and regained momentum in 2018 after a water contamination crisis sent more than 100,000 residents to hospitals.

Past efforts to achieve autonomy, such as those in the Kurdistan Region in the north, have yielded no results.

“We must demand the [establishment of the] region, because 90 percent of Iraq's budget comes from Basra province, and in return the province receives nothing but pollution, in addition to water scarcity or the rise of the salt tongue [intrusion of saltwater from the Arabian Gulf into the Shatt al-Arab], and has not enjoyed any of the wealth that goes to all of Iraq,” he said.

“Basra received from the 2023 budget 48 percent of its allocations, and from the 2024 budget, we received only 38 percent, and from the 2025 budget, zero,” he said, adding that “There are three decisions [to establish Basra as a region] from the previous Provincial Council regarding the establishment of Basra Region, but they were not activated,” he said.

He said previous appeals to the parliament speaker, prime minister, and presidency failed to advance the request. “No measures were taken to transfer the request” to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Iraq’s electoral body, he said.

IHEC said on Thursday it has begun issuing the “official signature forms” required to initiate an autonomy bid.

Saad said the Provincial Council had grown frustrated by what he described as systematic neglect. The council “was disappointed,” he said, adding that Basra “has not received any entitlements to establish its service projects.”

Saad acknowledged that the effort would face resistance.

“We will face difficulties, because the central government usually rejects this request from Basra,” he said.

In recent years, Basra Governor Asaad al-Eidani has been a central figure in the dispute with Baghdad, alternating between calls for constitutional autonomy and warnings against national fragmentation.

In 2018, Eidani said “a delegation from Basra will soon visit the Kurdistan Region to study their model of decentralization,” aiming to “benefit from the Region’s experience and transfer it to Basra.”

At a press conference in late 2025, Eidani accused the federal finance ministry of starving the province of funds, saying, “Basra has not received even a penny of its share from this year’s federal budget,” and that only 37 percent of its 2024 allocations had been released.

In Iraq’s mid-November parliamentary elections, Eidani’s Tasmim Alliance won 12 of Basra’s 23 seats, strengthening his influence nationally.


Mushtaq Ramadan contributed to this article from Erbil.