Follows are details of the principal political forces in Kurdistan.

Kurdistan Democratic Party: The KDP was founded on August 16, 1946 by Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the father of Kurdish nationalism, during an uprising in northern Iraq. It is now led by his son Massud Barzani, who took the party leadership when his father died in 1979.

The party operates its own armed force, known as peshmerga, some of whom have been integrated into Iraq's security forces, as well as its own partisan militia, the Asayeesh. Its zone of influence includes Arbil and Dohuk provinces in Kurdistan.

Since its creation, the KDP has dominated politics and institutions in the region.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan: The PUK was formed by a group of dissidents who broke away from the KDP in 1975 as the Kurdish rebellion collapsed. The party's founder is Jalal Talabani, current president of Iraq, whose support base is centred in Kurdistan's second-biggest city Sulaimaniyah.

A year after forming the PUK, Talabani began a guerrilla war against the central government in Baghdad. Much like the KDP, the PUK has its own peshmerga and its own Asayeesh.

In 1994, the PUK and the KDP went to war, the conflict between the two only ending in 1998 after the two parties signed an accord in Washington.

The Goran list: Goran is led by a former deputy leader of the PUK, Nusherwan Mustafa, and is largely composed of other PUK defectors who left the party just months ahead of the legislative elections to protest what they claim is the PUK's unwillingness to reform and fight corruption.

Those two themes formed the central plank of Goran's parliamentary election campaign.

The list is headquartered in Sulaimaniyah.

Services and Reform: The list comprises an unlikely alliance of two Islamist parties -- the Islamic Kurdish Union, which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Salafist movement Jamaa Islamiya -- as well as two leftist and extreme-leftist parties -- the Kurdish Socialist Party and the Kurdish Workers' Party.