# Iraq starts first nationwide census in nearly 40 years under two-day curfew

Iraq has launched its first comprehensive nationwide census in nearly four decades, an exercise officials say will help the state see itself in far greater detail while also reopening some of the country’s most sensitive political questions.

The Ministry of Interior announced a two-day curfew as the operation began, with 120,000 researchers set to gather household data across all 18 governorates on Wednesday and Thursday. The last nationwide census in Iraq was held in 1987. A later count in 1997 did not include the three northern provinces that now make up the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, which means the current exercise is being watched as the first full national picture in a generation.

Ministry of Planning spokesman Abdul-Zahra al-Hindawi said the census, carried out with the United Nations Population Fund, would reveal "the reality of Iraq in its smallest details" and help authorities identify gaps in health, education and housing. The government is presenting the count as a planning tool, not just a statistical exercise. It is designed to feed decisions on development, service provision and resource distribution.

That practical purpose does not make the census politically neutral. The count has already revived tensions between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan, where leaders fear that any documented decline in the Kurdish population could reduce their political influence and budget entitlements inside Iraq’s sectarian power-sharing system. The census is therefore being treated as a national administrative event and a test of trust between the central government and the region in the north.

The disputed areas may prove particularly sensitive. Counting residents in places such as Kirkuk, Diyala and Mosul has drawn intense scrutiny because authority in those territories remains contested between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government. Ali Arian Saleh, the executive director of the census at the Planning Ministry, said researchers from all ethnic groups, including Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians, would work in disputed areas to ensure fairness. The wording reflects how carefully the authorities are trying to manage a process that can easily become a political flashpoint.

Saleh said the Kurdish region’s share of the national budget, currently 12 percent, is based on an estimated population of six million. He estimated Iraq’s total population at 44.5 million. Those figures matter because any change in the demographic picture can have knock-on effects for funding, representation and long-term planning. The census is expected to carry implications for resource distribution, budget allocations and development policy well beyond the two days of fieldwork.

The questionnaire also shows what the state wants to know. Officials say the count will collect information on health, education and employment, and that it includes religion but does not break it down by sect, such as Sunni or Shia. Unlike previous counts, it excludes ethnicity. That choice may reduce some forms of political sensitivity, but it does not remove the underlying importance of population data in Iraq, where identity and state power have long been closely linked.

The wider backdrop remains the legacy of decades of upheaval: conflict, sanctions, the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, sectarian struggles and the rise of Islamic State. Demographic change has also been shaped by displacement, including the exile of hundreds of thousands of Christians and tens of thousands of Yazidi families forced from Sinjar by Islamic State atrocities.

In that context, the census is more than a statistical update. It is an attempt to measure a country whose political map has been repeatedly reshaped by war, migration and disputed sovereignty. Whether the count produces acceptance or fresh argument will depend on how Iraq’s communities interpret the numbers once they arrive.