“The people of Kurdistan with all of its components who live here want to peacefully and democratically express their opinion about their future, and how it should look like,” Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told the press.

While the referendum is largely symbolic, the governments of Turkey, Iran, Syria and the United States, oppose it, fearing that it will destabilize the region. (Russia, quietly, supports it.) Also complicating matters are the disputed territories, where control has changed hands between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds as the frontline against ISIS has shifted. But the issue of the disputed territories, and who will ultimately govern them, also throws the fate of Iraq’s myriad religious and ethnic minorities into question. These groups, like the Yazidis, Turkmen, Christians, and the Shabak, have been persecuted by ISIS in the disputed territories, and are now forced to choose which government—Iraq or the KRG—they deem less oppressive. “The competition between the central government and the KRG over the loyalty of minority groups in the [Ninevah] plain is one of the main drivers of conflict there, from Saddam's time onward,” Joost Hiltermann, MENA Program Director for the International Crisis Group, told me. Neither Baghdad nor Erbil, some say, is particularly appealing. Somewhere between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government in Baghdad, they believe, lies financial prosperity and survival.

What worries many minority groups in the disputed territories: the possibility of deliberate Arabization, or the forced incorporation of Arab culture and ideology into their identities, under Baghdad rule. But aligning entirely with the KRG may too be perilous. While the Kurdistan constitution states that “Kurdish society … prides itself on its ethnic and religious groups” and is “open to all,” the government considers all non-Kurds within its borders to be Kurdish by citizenship. So while the official policy is one that recognizes ethnic minorities, in practice such recognition is no guarantee. “The Kurdistan Regional Government’s anthem and the flag are Kurdish at the expense of others,” Kaldo Oghanna, the media director for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, told me. “It fails to reflect all ethnic groups.”

These larger disputes have very real, local consequences for groups like the Shabak, many of whom live on the Ninevah plains, an area to the east and northeast of Mosul predominantly settled by minorities. Influenced by Sufi, Shiite, and Yazidi traditions, the Shabak do not follow some of the main pillars of Islam, like fasting, prayer, and making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Their demographics in Ninevah change frequently in response to persecution. The group found itself caught between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the nationalist movement of the Kurds in the 1970s. Some who registered as Kurds were deported. A group of some several thousand who had registered as Kurds in 1988 were exiled to Sulaimaniyah and Erbil.