Demographics
This city is indicative of the mingling ethnic and religious cultures of Iraq. There is a Sunni Arab majority in urban areas, such as downtown Mosul on the Tigris. Across the Tigris and further north in the suburban areas, thousands of Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens, Shabaks and Armenians, make up the rest of Mosul's population. Sunni Arabs make up the majority of the city's population. Sunni Kurds, Yezidi Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrians are also present. Shabaks are concentrated on the eastern outskirts of the city.
The population of Mosul has progressively become a mixture of Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens. The Arabization plans were counteracted in the 1980s by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party, which forced some of those minorities to move outside the city, back into Kurdish regions.
The city is close to the Kurdish regions of Iraq. Kurdish fighters have been moving into the city since the fall of the Ba'ath government, causing some tensions with the Sunni Arabs of the city. Clashes have erupted in recent months between Sunni Arabs in Mosul and Kurdish fighters entering the city from the Kurdish regional governorates.
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