Even before the Ba'th Party achieved power, the Kurdish question had been discussed in several meetings of the Ba'th National and Regional Commands. However, in late 1968, fighting between the Kurds and the Iraqi army began once again and escalated to full-scale war. With military aid provided by Iran, the Kurds were able to pose a serious threat to the Ba'th regime. By early 1970, negotiations between the Ba'th leaders, the Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa al-Barzani, and the leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Party were under way. The government agreed to officially recognize the Kurds as a "national" group entitled to a form of autonomous status called self-rule. This would eventually lead to the establishment of a provincial administrative council and an assembly to deal with Kurdish affairs. This was proclaimed in the Manifesto of March 11, 1970, to come into effect in 1974, following a census to determine the frontiers of the area in which the Kurds formed the majority of the population.

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he was allowed to return to Iraq after that country's 1958 revolution. Barzani rejected the Iraqi government's subsequent offer of autonomy for the Kurdish area in northern Iraq, and in 1960 he escaped to the mountains and started a guerrilla war against the Iraqi forces.