Some carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the scorching sun, others covered their heads with cardboard sheets, while the rest sufficed with their kifiyyas, or traditional Arab headdresses.

The crowd converged after Friday prayers on a section of the desert highway near the city of Ramadi in Iraq, which they named the “Square of Dignity and Honour” and chanted slogans denouncing the Shia-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.

The rally in the provincial capital of Iraq’s western province of Anbar, the stronghold of Iraq’s Sunni minority, was one of several being held by Sunni Arabs every week to voice their anger and press demands for ending their grievances.

For months, Sunnis have taken to the streets across Iraq to protest against the perceived exclusion, marginalisation and persecution of their sect under Iraq’s Shia-led government.

In this weekend’s protests in Ramadi and elsewhere, the mood was still upbeat but the meetings drew notably fewer people than previous rallies held since December that drew unprecedented numbers of tens of thousands to each.

No one knows exactly if the fewer number of protesters in Ramadi and elsewhere in Iraq’s Sunni provinces is a sign that the Sunni demonstrations are fading or whether it is just the lull before the storm.

The low turnout of the protesters could signal a shift in strategy as organisers have indicated that they might be ready to negotiate a settlement with the government to handle their demands.

On Friday, tribal leaders in Anbar agreed to give the parliamentary speaker Osama Al-Nujaifi, a moderate Sunni politician, the go-ahead to negotiate an agreement with the government to end the protests.

Before travelling to Ramadi, Al-Nujaifi ended nearly five months of boycotting Al-Maliki after mediation by another Shia leader. Al-Maliki has made some concessions to the protesters, but after the meeting with Al-Nujaifi he made no promises to meet the protesters’ demands.

Sunni anger has been growing for several months over what they see as their mistreatment in Shia-run Iraq. Their complaints have included the arbitrary use of anti-terrorism laws and the prolonged detention and mistreatment of prisoners in government jails.

They have also demanded the abolition of a law banning senior members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from public service. Sunnis say the rules target mostly Sunni Arabs, who were largely in power during Saddam’s rule.

The protests were triggered by the arrest of the bodyguards of Sunni Finance Minister Rafei Al-Essawi on 21 December. They quickly grew to include rescinding the US-orchestrated political process, which Sunnis believe has empowered Shias and Kurds at their expense.

The protests reflect a widely shared Sunni Arab hostility to a political system and constitution that they say have subjected them to an order that will do nothing to restore Sunni Arab primacy.

Regardless of the reasons behind the nearly six-month-long protests, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs seem to have opened a new chapter in their struggle to regain prominence a decade after the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that toppled Saddam’s minority Sunni regime and propelled Iraq’s majority Shias to power.

For months, the Sunni protest movement was seen as sign of regained confidence, driven by increasing support from Iraq’s Sunni neighbours and hopes that a Sunni-dominated regime would come to power in neighbouring Syria following the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad’s Alawite regime.

But the Shia-led government’s insistence on rejecting any drastic changes in Iraq’s political process that could weaken its hold on power and Al-Assad’s recent gains in his war against opposition forces might have pushed Iraqi Sunnis to rethink their options.

One of those already floated looks at establishing an autonomous region within federal Iraq like that already established by the Kurds.

Recent statements by many Sunni leaders provide important evidence for the growing acceptance of regionalism.

Many leaders are now saying that they should seek their own autonomy and set up a federal region like that of the Kurds. Such ideas are considered to be a major shift in the perspective of the country’s Sunni Arabs.

Iraq’s post-Saddam constitution allows ethnic communities or provinces to set themselves up as autonomous regions under a federal system.

The idea was pressed by the Kurds and backed by the Shias, but most Sunnis boycotted the referendum on the new constitution in 2005, arguing that the document was a recipe for the end of Iraq as a unitary state.

Now proponents of federalism say the establishment of an autonomous region could improve the Sunnis’ lot by boosting their province’s share of federal revenues and giving them a larger say in running their own affairs.

Among those who support a Sunni autonomous enclave is Al-Nujaifi. He has said that the Sunnis should seek autonomy because they are being treated as second-class citizens in Iraq and not partners in the government.

He has even warned that if things get worse, the country’s Sunnis might even think of separation.

Tarek Al-Hashimi, the country’s Sunni vice president who fled Iraq in 2011 after being charged with terrorism and murder, is also an advocate of a federal Sunni region.

Under Article 119 of the Iraqi constitution, “one or more governorates shall have the right to organise into a region based on a request to be voted on in a referendum.”

However, many Sunnis reject the federal notion. These pride themselves as being the sons of the builders of modern Iraq, which came into being after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.

Iraq’s Sunnis are vehement exponents of Arab nationalism, and they consider themselves to be a bulwark against Iranian ambitions and the guardians of Iraq’s unity in the face of Kurdish secessionism and Shia dominance.

Some of these Sunnis have been active in the insurgency, and they are expected to continue their armed rebellion against the Shia-led government.

Indeed, there have been increasing concerns that these disenfranchised Sunnis might be behind the mounting violence of recent weeks in an attempt to increase pressure on the Baghdad government.

The attacks, including bombings that ripped through Shia neighbourhoods, mosques and markets, killed some 1,700 people in April and May. There have been reports of retaliatory violence, including killings by Shia militias, triggering memories of the brutal sectarian conflict that followed the US-led invasion in 2003.

With the lack of a common goal and a unified strategy, Iraq’s Sunnis seem to be in an existential dilemma. The key question facing their leadership remains what options they really have to end their perceived marginalisation.

That they have started weighing their options to advance their cause away from armed insurgency is good news, but it is also imperative that they should end their divisions and make it clear what they want to all.

On the other hand, the country’s Shias should also know their limits and should provide leadership that shows understanding of the deep structure of the legacy of the Baath regime and an even more profound understanding of the foundations of the envisaged pluralistic Iraq.

They should know that Shia empowerment is not just about having Shias in leadership positions. It is also a matter of a visionary leadership that expands the boundaries of opportunity to all citizens, enabling them to contribute their expertise and talents to creating a prosperous and egalitarian society.

In this regard, the Shia-led government should understand that a dwindling number of Sunni protesters is not a sign of an end of the Sunni rebellion.

Sunni resentment is unlikely to wane as long as their dissatisfaction with the government, which stems from feelings of marginalisation, continues.

Plans put forward by the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Masoud Barzani, for a referendum on a draft constitution have sparked criticisms that the veteran Kurdish leader is seeking a third term in office despite objections by opponents who say the controversial document imposes a two-term limit. 

Barzani’s defiant move has also raised fears of a setback in the northern enclave that has been dubbed a paradise of political stability and economic growth in the sharply divided and violence-torn country.

On 23 May, Barzani announced that he would call for the referendum and accused the opposition of turning the issue into a political war. “If it’s a bad constitution, people are free not to approve it,” he declared to a huge, cheering crowd in Erbil, the Kurdistan provincial capital.

Opposition groups, however, were swift to blast Barzani’s suggestion.

The rising Change Movement, or Goran, and several Islamist parties demanded that the constitution be sent back to parliament for amendment before any referendum was held. Barzani’s long-term political ally, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also did not agree with the call for the referendum.

The Kurds have been enmeshed in internal wrangling over the elections after Barzani announced plans last month for balloting in provincial, parliamentary and presidential races in September.

The dispute centres around the right of Barzani himself to stand for election for a third term in office, despite the Kurdistan region’s draft constitution which stipulates in article 64 that the president of the Kurdistan region “may be re-elected for a second term as of the date this constitution enters into force”.

Barzani has not declared his candidacy, but his supporters argue that term limits are not retrospective, so Barzani, initially appointed by the Kurdish parliament in 2005, and re-elected by in a public vote four years later, is eligible for re-election. Barzani will complete his two terms in July.

The opposition accuses Barzani, whose Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and family members have dominated Kurdish politics for more than half a century, of becoming increasingly authoritarian.

It argues that Barzani’s move is designed to circumvent the opposition’s efforts to reform Kurdistan’s political system and make it more democratic.

The draft constitution of the Kurdistan region was passed by the regional parliament in 2009, but the two parties, the KDP and the PUK, that share power over the region never put it to a referendum.

The opposition argues that the draft constitution was rushed through by the parliament at the time by a caretaker government that was controlled by the two ruling parties.

It also claims that some of the constitution’s articles were changed within a matter of days and presented for endorsement by the parliament while one third of its members were not present.

The opposition said that among the articles that were changed were those that made Iraqi Kurdistan region into a presidential system, whereas the document states in article 1 that the region enjoys “a parliamentary political system”.

Under the controversial draft constitution, the president wields absolute powers including the power to declare a state of emergency, issue decrees that have the force of law, dissolve the parliament and dismiss ministers.

Many of Barzani’s critics believe his insistence on holding a referendum has more to do with his autocratic tendencies and his intentions to stay in power for life than it does with any concern for democratic politics.

Now the wrangle is expected to deepen divisions between Barzani’s KDP and pro-democracy groups that have been trying to stifle Barzani’s overall control of the government and politics of the Kurdish region.

Since the uprising that took place in the Kurdish region following the defeat of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the US-led Gulf War in 1991, the region has been ruled by Barzani’s KDP and Talabani’s PUK, though the two groups control two linguistically and politically diverse portions.

After the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the Kurds were able to convert their regional government into a semi-independent federal region.

The two parties, which had fought each other intermittently, entered a strategic alliance to run a government that many Kurds criticise for being authoritarian and corrupt. Critics say that the two parties have been using the 111-member parliament as a mere rubber-stamp assembly for executive actions.

But Kurdistan’s political landscape has been changing since the latest elections in 2009 when the Goran List won a total of 25 seats, making it the second-most successful list in the elections after the ruling Kurdistan List.

Since then the party has displayed a broader show of defiance against the two-party rule, and it is now leading opposition to Barzani’s decision to put the draft constitution to a referendum. 

However, it is uncertain whether Barzani and his party will take a step back, and he is more than likely to be his party’s candidate for president in the general elections due in September.

Indeed, Barzani is the dominant figure in Kurdistan, and his past shows that he will stop at nothing to keep himself, the KDP, and his family in power in the region.

His pressure to put the constitution to a referendum seems to be an attempt to mobilise the Kurdish street against the opposition by portraying it as undermining stability and prosperity in the region.

Yet many believe that by trying to humiliate the opposition by forcing the referendum Barzani may be taking a gamble too far that will awaken the long-stifled resentment felt by many Iraqi Kurds about his authoritarianism.

In fact, it could be said that the constitutional brinkmanship could mark a turning point in the almighty image of Barzani, proving his greed for power and his using of democracy for his own purposes.

In addition, his move will have far-reaching consequences for Kurdish national unity, and it will underscore deep splits at a time of great challenges for the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

The fact that the next elections are now on the rocks means that Barzani’s desire to remain president threatens the future of his party’s partnership with the PUK which for years has remained the bedrock for peace in Kurdistan.

The PUK has already announced that it will participate in the upcoming elections on separate lists, despite the fact that the two parties’ strategic alliance stipulates their participation in the local and national elections on the same list.

Barzani’s success in winning the referendum is far from guaranteed. If he loses the referendum, opposition to his rule will be stronger, and it will be unlikely that he can secure more power under the new constitution. This will likely deepen the crisis and heighten tensions in the region.

In 2011, protests against the two parties swept the Kurdish main cities in what was called the “Kurdish Spring” to rival the pro-democracy uprisings that toppled three Arab dictatorships.

The brutal crackdown on the peaceful demonstrations, which left ten people dead, then tarnished the image of Kurdistan as an emerging democracy.

Thus far, Kurdistan’s powerful leader has showed no sign of changing his mind, and he has used his assertive style and the common touch that courts the Kurdish populace to manipulate national politics.

These days, his rhetoric is all about his strained relations with Baghdad, with hints that the Kurds will seek full independence from the rest of Iraq if attempts to resolve disputes over oil and land fail.

On Monday, Barzani warned that the current round of talks with Baghdad that started last month marked the final opportunity to end the feud. He said that Kurdistan would be forced to seek a “new form of relationship” with the central government in Baghdad if no deal was reached.

Such blustering, apparently aimed at distracting attention, is unlikely to convince the Kurdish opposition to give way to Barzani. Given the determination of the opposition to oppose a new term for Barzani in office, a new spectre could haunt Kurdistan soon.