Erbil

Overview

Erbil, called Hawler in Kurdish, is capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region and center of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The city lies within Kurdistan, the wider homeland of the Kurds, and is also an important center for Assyrian and other Christian communities. Its citadel rises above the modern city, linking its present political role to a long urban history. Erbil serves as a base for regional ministries, diplomatic missions, news organizations and security institutions, including forces involved in the campaign against the Islamic State.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is headquartered in Erbil and has historically governed Erbil and Duhok, while the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has generally led Sulaymaniyah. These centers of power shape regional decisions and relations with Baghdad and Tehran. Erbil’s political significance became especially visible during the planned September 25, 2017, independence referendum. Regional leaders presented its result as a mandate to negotiate independence with Baghdad, rather than an immediate unilateral separation. The city has also faced repeated missile and drone attacks, including strikes by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Geography

Erbil is one of the principal cities of the Kurdistan Region, which comprises Erbil, Duhok, Halabja and Sulaymaniyah governorates in northern Iraq. The city’s historic core developed around the citadel, while modern districts, government offices, housing and commercial projects spread across the surrounding plain. Roads connect Erbil with Duhok, Mosul, Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. Kirkuk sits astride the most direct highway between Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, giving control of that city practical importance for travel between Kurdistan’s two main political centers.

Erbil’s location also brings together security, trade and resource questions. The Mosul–Erbil corridor is important to commerce and to the return of displaced communities from the Nineveh Plains. Militias controlling checkpoints, reconstruction contracts and parts of that trade route have constrained Christian communities’ return. Near Erbil, oil infrastructure has become a target of drone attacks; a strike hit the Khurmala oil field on July 14, 2025. The city’s water supply faces a different pressure. Its topography and lack of nearby major rivers and dams have contributed to longstanding shortages, compounded by population growth and unequal access.

Ancient and biblical history

Erbil is associated with ancient Arbela, an important Assyrian political and religious center. Its citadel stands on a mound formed by successive generations of settlement and rebuilding. The raised site remains the defining feature of the old city: streets and neighborhoods developed around it, and the citadel’s surviving built form preserves traces of later urban periods. Ancient names associated with Erbil include Arbela, while Arbil remains another English spelling. The city’s enduring central site distinguishes it from modern capitals established chiefly as administrative projects.

Erbil’s position in northern Mesopotamia placed it within the changing political worlds of ancient Assyria and later empires. The Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, is also historically associated with Arbela, although the battlefield was outside the city. The citadel and its surrounding streets give Erbil’s ancient history a visible place in the present city. Preservation of that heritage matters alongside modern expansion: construction and changing land use must account for archaeological layers beneath and around the historic center.

Jewish history

Erbil forms part of the history of Jews in Kurdistan. Jewish communities lived across the region for centuries, including in northern Iraq, where their languages, trade and religious traditions connected towns and villages. Historical discussion of the early Arab conquest identifies a possible Jewish community at Irbil alongside the better documented community of Mosul. That regional history is distinct from the similarly named Arbel in the Land of Israel; the two places should not be confused.

Most Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan left during the large movement of 1950–51, joining the wider Jewish exodus from the Muslim world. Erbil later became a setting for a public call to renew ties with Iraqi Jews. On September 24, 2021, 312 Iraqi religious and civil society leaders gathered in the city to call for reconciliation with displaced Iraqi Jews and peace with Israel. The meeting drew threats and official pressure in Iraq, illustrating the political obstacles faced by Iraqis who advocated open relations with Israel.

Modern history

After the 1991 Gulf War, Kurdish self-government emerged in northern Iraq amid an uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime, mass displacement and international efforts to protect civilians. Kurds voted in regional elections in 1992, giving rise to the KRG. Erbil developed as its administrative capital. Kurdish parties nonetheless fought over power during the 1990s, leaving a legacy of institutional rivalry between Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. Following Saddam’s fall in 2003, Kurdistan’s regional institutions gained wider authority; Iraq’s 2005 constitution recognized the region’s federal status. Relations between Baghdad and Erbil have shifted repeatedly since then, particularly over budgets, oil sales and the division of sovereign powers.

The KDP’s control of Erbil made the city central to regional disputes. In October 2015, the party barred Gorran’s parliamentary speaker and five ministers from Erbil, ending Gorran’s participation in regional government institutions. Economic crisis and political deadlock formed the background to the 2017 independence drive. Erbil was the political center of the planned referendum, whose leaders sought negotiating authority rather than an immediate unilateral break with Baghdad. The question of how to share powers and revenue remained unsettled afterward. Baghdad insisted that Iraq’s national oil marketing company sell Kurdistan’s oil, while Erbil objected; recurring budget disputes also weakened the predictable conditions sought by investors in regional gas projects. A later United States-facilitated agreement among Baghdad, Erbil and international oil companies enabled a pipeline to reopen after more than two years.

Erbil has also hosted Kurdish diplomacy beyond Iraq. An Erbil Agreement brought together the Kurdistan Workers’ Party-affiliated Democratic Union Party and the Kurdish National Council in a plan to prevent infighting and jointly administer Kurdish areas of Syria. Agreements reached in Erbil in 2012 and 2013, followed by a Duhok agreement in 2014, did not establish durable power sharing among the Syrian Kurdish factions. Within Iraq, the Iranian regime established political and economic relations with the KRG after 2003 and opened a consulate in Erbil. Tehran maintained closer relations with the PUK and Baghdad than with the KDP. Its consul general in Erbil, Nasrollah Rashnoudi, visited Ninewa Province in September 2021 to promote an Iranian role in rebuilding Mosul.

Erbil’s public institutions have faced scrutiny over civil rights and the treatment of detainees. On March 26 and 27, 2018, regional forces prevented television crews from covering demonstrations over delayed salaries in Erbil and Duhok governorates; airport security reportedly blocked two crews from a March 27 press conference with the airport director. The KRG closed Nalia Radio and Television’s Erbil and Duhok offices in August 2020 over protest coverage. Security forces prevented a peaceful Erbil demonstration against Turkish bombardments in Kurdistan on July 22, 2022, and two journalists were arrested in Erbil and Duhok for their professional activities that year. In September 2018, Kurdistan’s human rights commission recorded 56 boys held at an Erbil juvenile facility on Islamic State-related accusations: 42 convicted and 14 awaiting trial. As of November that year, more than 40 children aged six months to 12 years lived with their convicted mothers in Erbil prisons without access to education.

Security

Erbil became a refuge for people fleeing Islamic State attacks in northern Iraq and a base for forces fighting the organization. United States forces based in the city supported operations against the Islamic State in Syria, while Kurdish security forces detected increasing Islamic State activity in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. Arrests of suspected operatives rose sharply across Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Kirkuk during the period covered by regional security analysis. On December 2, 2021, Islamic State gunfire at two Peshmerga posts near Erbil killed six fighters and wounded five. Coalition forces also trained nearly 1,000 women in the Peshmerga Zeravani unit outside Erbil in 2016.

Erbil has faced attacks by armed groups operating within Iraq as well as direct strikes from Iran. Following a February 15 rocket attack, an arrested fighter identified Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada as his recruiter; his account alone does not establish that militia’s command of the operation. Other reporting indicated it may have supplied personnel while Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq drove and claimed the attack. On September 11, 2021, coalition defenses intercepted two explosive drones at Erbil International Airport without injuries to civilians or coalition personnel. A militia media channel linked that attack to the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in a message it later deleted.

On the night of March 12–13, 2022, the Iranian regime fired at least ten missiles toward Erbil. The IRGC claimed responsibility, portraying the strike as an attack on an Israeli base; missiles exploded near the unfinished American consulate building, and two people were wounded. Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani praised the operation using the same Israeli-target narrative. In January 2024, the IRGC again struck Erbil. Its January 15 attack hit the home of Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, killing him, his infant son and two other people. Iranian regime media falsely presented a photograph of a man outside the Middle East during the strike as evidence that an Israeli had been injured. The photograph did not support the regime’s account of an Israeli target. Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba threatened the KDP three days after the missile strike.

Attacks continued during the 2026 conflict. Drone and missile strikes in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah provinces on March 7–8 killed two people and wounded others. Later in March, a drone struck Erbil’s Lanaz oil refinery, causing a fire, while another hit the United Arab Emirates consulate and injured two guards. On March 29, air defenses shot down a drone near Barzani’s residence in Erbil. During April 2–8, two drones targeting Erbil International Airport and four targeting the United States Consulate in Erbil were intercepted. Two drones struck homes in central Erbil, damaging them without causing casualties; another crashed into a home in the Karizan area. On August 17, two Iranian drones targeted Barzani’s office in the Pirmam district. On the night of September 1–2, Iranian strikes in the Kurdistan Region included a camp near Erbil housing families of Iranian Kurdish dissidents.

Present day

Erbil remains both a Kurdish government center and an institutional home for displaced Christian communities. The Assyrian Church of the East inaugurated a new patriarchal headquarters in the city in September 2022. In August 2019, the Syriac Catholic patriarch celebrated Mass at Erbil’s Queen of Peace church to mark the reestablishment of a diocese for the Kurdistan Region. The city also hosted registered evangelical and Protestant congregations in 2019, including the Baptist Church of the Good Shepherd and Seventh-day Adventist churches. Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda warned that year that Christianity in Iraq was perilously close to extinction. Holiday Masses nevertheless continued to draw worshippers in Erbil and Qaraqosh.

Religious institutions operate amid continuing concerns for minorities. On July 23, 2018, three gunmen entered a government building in central Erbil and killed a Christian employee; KRG authorities believed he was targeted because of his religion. Iraq’s Council of Representatives reserves one of its five Christian candidate seats for Erbil. The United States Consulate General in the city has raised religious freedom concerns with Iraqi officials and supported stabilization work for displaced religious communities. Such work is closely tied to conditions beyond Erbil, especially security and reconstruction in the Nineveh Plains.

Water scarcity is a pressing test of Erbil’s development priorities. Residents of poorer neighborhoods have faced summer shortages, bought water from tanker trucks at high prices and protested for reliable access. Against that background, the Erbil Hills project combines luxury housing with an 18-hole championship golf course, fourteen artificial lakes and other water features. Irrigating those features would place additional demand on scarce water. Household supply and equitable access require priority as the city weighs water-intensive development. The contrast between basic shortages and the proposed course has made Erbil Hills a prominent local dispute over whose needs urban investment serves.