A high-level Kurdistan Regional Government delegation was due in Baghdad on Sunday to press for the Region’s financial entitlements in Iraq’s 2027 federal budget bill, The Insight International reported, citing Rudaw and an informed source in the delegation. The source said the team includes Omed Sabah, head of the Diwan of the Council of Ministers, Cabinet Secretary Amanj Rahim, and senior Finance Ministry officials. Finance Minister Awat Sheikh Janab is not taking part after submitting his resignation to Prime Minister Masrour Barzani over an administrative dispute inside the ministry, the same source said. Iraq did not pass a new budget law for 2026 and has operated under a one-twelfth spending mechanism based on earlier allocations. The Sunday talks follow technical meetings aimed at locking in a mechanism for the Region’s share and salary funding. The September payroll for Kurdistan Region public employees was scheduled to go to Baghdad early this week for federal finance ministry auditing before salary funding can proceed, according to the report. Last month a senior KRG Finance Ministry source told Rudaw English that Erbil was seeking 14.1 percent of the national budget, calculated on the 2025 census — a figure that outlet alone has given for that claim. Earlier federal arrangements set the KRG share at roughly 12.5 percent after sovereign expenditures.
On the same weekend, Iraqi Customs and Kurdistan Region officials still disagreed on how many unofficial border crossings exist, even as talks on applying the ASYCUDA customs system advanced. Samer Qasim, director general of Iraq’s General Commission of Customs, told Rudaw on Sunday that Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region had reached very advanced stages of coordination and that the Kurdistan side had given preliminary approval. He said work was under way to close unofficial crossings, with practical steps to follow after a Customs Commission delegation visits the sites. Federal officials say about 20 unofficial crossings on the Region’s borders must close. Sami Jalal, a legal adviser at the KRG Interior Ministry and head of the Region’s ASYCUDA negotiating team, told Rudaw there are only six unofficial border crossings in the Region, that the KRG recognizes those six, and that it is waiting for Baghdad to do the same. Jalal said the sides agreed that Baghdad will visit the crossings before ASYCUDA is applied and will recognize them if they meet the required conditions. The gap between Baghdad’s figure of about 20 and Erbil’s count of six remains unresolved.
Separately, the KRG Department of Foreign Relations on Sunday denied that its head, Safeen Dizayee, had said tree cutting along the border with Türkiye was taking place with the KRG’s knowledge. The department called the remarks attributed to him “baseless and completely fabricated” and said he had made no such statement, pointing to a June 2021 interview with Voice of America’s Kurdish service in which Dizayee called tree cutting in border areas illegal and unacceptable. The denial came on the same day that the Kurdistan Green Party filed a complaint with the Iraqi parliament seeking an investigation into environmental damage it links to cross-border activity from Türkiye. Party leader Malako Baziani told a press conference in Sulaimani that the activity may have harmed forests, water sources and wildlife, and asked parliament to preserve evidence and summon the environment minister. Duhok Governor Ali Tatar said on Sunday that the trees shown in recent footage were cut inside Türkiye and trucked into the Region through the Sarzeri crossing, according to The Insight International.
Federal budget delays are also holding up road projects in the Kurdistan Region, KRG deputy minister of reconstruction and housing Agreen Abdullah Aziz said in remarks reported by Kurdistan24. “When the budget is not available on time, projects are also delayed,” he said, blaming what he described as repeated obstacles from Baghdad in releasing allocations. He said between 80 and 90 percent of people working on the Region’s road projects are local residents — a range he alone has given in that report — and that a National Road Master Plan meant to link main cities and border crossings is close to final approval. In a separate cultural note, Erbil Antiquities Director Nader Babakr told Kurdistan24 on Sunday that the government has allocated an annual budget of 900 million Iraqi dinars, about $687,000, for Erbil’s archaeological sector, with more than 10 foreign teams currently working in the governorate and permits for more than 50 foreign teams across the Region.
In Syria, residents of Amuda continued protests on 4 October against a Syrian Education Ministry decision limiting Kurdish-language instruction to three classes a week, Hawar News Agency reported. At an event at the Martyr Ismail Shrine, student Frashin Issa read a statement from the city’s sons and daughters of martyrs rejecting the limit, noting that children in the region have been educated in Kurdish for 14 years. The statement called for restoring the previous format of Kurdish-language education and for recognizing Kurdish as an official language under the Syrian constitution.
In Turkey, DEM Party lawmaker Pervin Buldan said over the weekend that there may be “a concrete development in October” on allowing visitors for imprisoned PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan beyond his next of kin, lawyers and DEM lawmakers, Daily Sabah reported on 4 October. Buldan said Öcalan would be a “coordinator” in both disarmament and the “political and democratic building process,” and that he needed free working and communication conditions. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking at the opening of parliament’s new legislative year last Thursday, hailed a law passed on the terror-free Türkiye initiative and urged parties to strengthen the “homefront,” the same outlet reported.
English-language reporting from Iranian Kurdistan on 4–5 October remained thin beyond ongoing analysis of how Turkey’s PKK process may affect Iranian Kurdish armed groups.