In March this year, Nineveh Governor Abdul Kader Al-Dakhil signed a contract with Italian engineering company SGI to initiate a long-stalled project on the expansion of provincial capital Mosul. The proposed project would expand the northern Iraqi city by 7 km (4.5 miles) in all directions, and includes the development of 160,000 dunums (1,600 hectares) of land earmarked for investment in industrial, agriculture, housing, and tourism projects.

With a population of approximately 4M, Nineveh Governorate is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse regions of Iraq. A majority of its Arab, Turkmen, and Kurdish residents are Sunni Muslims, with most of them...