After decades of waiting, the Kurds are finally set to hold a referendum on independence in the fall. Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, met June 7 with Kurdish political parties to discuss the referendum. Though the Gorran party (Movement for Change) and Kurdistan Islamic Group refused to attend the meeting, participants scheduled the referendum for Sept. 25.

The decision came soon after Barzani's son, Masrour Barzani, unexpectedly arrived June 4 in Baghdad to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, though the men did not talk about the independence referendum, according to Abadi's office. Masrour Barzani is chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, a hard-liner toward Baghdad and an outspoken supporter of the referendum who calls for "divorce from Baghdad." A memo from Abadi's office said they discussed military coordination to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State (IS).

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), especially the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani, supposedly favors holding the referendum, though some skeptics doubt Barzani's true intentions. Hoshyar Abdullah, a member of the Gorran faction in the Iraqi parliament, told Al-Monitor that the referendum is "a political card" — leverage toward winning from the KDP the oil fields west of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. He said the referendum also is a tool "to distract the Kurdish people from the KRG's failures and allow the KDP to regain positions lost in Baghdad."

When IS advanced to Kirkuk in 2014, the KDP deployed two peshmerga brigades to protect the western oil fields. When the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) became suspicious about the KDP's intentions, the PUK deployed its forces in June 2014 to the oil fields north of the city to block further KDP advances. Since then, there have been tensions between the KDP and the PUK over the future of the oil fields, oil exportation and the resulting income.