Sunni Region

The Sunni Region (Arabic: الإقليم السني), also called the Arab-majority Sunni Region, or in secular usage as West Iraq (Arabic: غرب العراق), is a proposed autonomous federal region of Iraq that would encompass all Arab Sunni-majority governorates of the country. The purpose of which is to allow the Sunni Arab population mainly located in the west of Iraq to exercise a degree of local self-rule, akin to the Kurdistan Region.

Also proposed is the Anbar Region (Arabic: إقليم الأنبار), a proposed federal region that encompasses solely the Anbar Governorate. A common proposal for the capital city of a Sunni region is Ramadi, the current capital of the afformentioned Governorate.

Neither the proposal to establish a Sunni federal region nor the idea of a separate Anbar region has gained universal support among Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Critics argue that such initiatives could be seen as a step toward sectarian division, tribal rule, and a form of partition of the country, potentially undermining Iraq’s national unity and straining relations with the Shia-led federal government.

Federal initiatives among Iraqi Sunni Arabs, particularly in the Saladin Governorate and the city of Tikrit, have been met with suspicion from the Shia Muslim ruling elite who viewed the proposals as establishing potential safe havens for former members of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. This view was endorsed by former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

History

Before 2003, Iraq's Sunni-majority regions were politically dominant under the Arab Socialist Union and later Ba'ath Party under Saddam Hussein, and many urban Sunnis were relatively wealthy and secular, identifying primarily as culturally "Arabs" or "Iraqi Arabs" in a pan-Arab, Iraqi nationalist or Nasserist sense rather than along sectarian lines. Formal proposals for Sunni autonomy were largely absent, as Sunni Arabs controlled much of the country's political, military, and economic structures and had little incentive for regional self-rule.