Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Iraqi parliament’s Second Deputy Speaker Shakhawan Abdullah on Saturday warned that Iraqi factions harboring animosity towards the Kurdistan Region, some with a history of militarized positions, could become the dominant force in the Iraqi parliament.

In an interview with The New Region, Abdullah, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) MP, asserted that the duty of Kurdish lawmakers will “become more challenging,” since “a force has entered the parliament that has had a bad view towards the Kurdish Region.”

The official stated that several armed groups have entered the “political sphere” in which, some who have won seats in the country’s latest parliamentary elections “perhaps had a role in sending drones to the Kurdistan Region,” and who have “displayed a militarized stance” towards the Region.

In July, a series of drones targeted several of the Kurdistan Region’s oilfields in the provinces of Erbil and Duhok for several days, leading to a temporary halt in the oil companies’ operations.

Th Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) accused Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups, in particular the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), of conducting the attacks.

The reason why these factions have gained a dominating position, Abdullah said, was due to the “the absence of the Sadrist movement,” who, with the withdrawal of its dominating seats in the parliament, allowed for other voices to fill the vacuum.

“When the Sadrists were present, they numbered much less, for example… Asaib [Ahl al-Haq] only had eight seats” in the previous parliament, Abdullah asserted.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq is an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, belonging to the PMF, which operates as the armed wing of Qais al-Khazali's Sadiqoon party that won 28 seats in the 2025 parliamentary elections.

Iraq concluded its sixth parliamentary elections on November 11, in which nearly 7,750 candidates competed for the Iraqi legislature’s 329 seats.